👁️ Context

🌎 Macro

2023 has been a long grind through the bear market. Capital deployed to web3 startups is down ~75% YoY from 2022, and regulatory action - including criminal action - against projects like Tornado and Barnbridge has left much of our industry fearful or stalled out. Despite the FUD, there are signs of the impending thaw. Although the SEC’s final decision is outstanding, there are multiple contestants racing to launch a Bitcoin ETF which now feels inevitable. There have also been important and surprising positive court rulings in the cases of major projects Ripple and Uniswap. Although we can expect to see higher courts provide more material rulings, these small wins are important. Ripple is of particular relevance due to its focus on what defines Securities violations for our industry: a token sold to an institution is considered a security in that context, but not when sold to or earned by individuals. The Uniswap ruling is of particular relevance to Decent due to our shared concepts of tokenization and decentralized governance on Ethereum, as well as the concept of liability regarding the usage of open source software.

Luckily, Decent has been very well positioned to weather this winter, having raised a healthy round 18 months ago. Now repositioned with our north star to become the leading Privacy DAO, and shoring up our treasury through resurrecting our agency services, we are preparing for the market expansion conditions expected in our industry through 2024.

My personal take? Extremely bullish on the cryptocurrency market inside the next 12 months. 🚀

🔬Micro

As mentioned, Decent is establishing ourselves as the leading Privacy DAO. We’re taking a more focused, market-driven approach in our ventures by following a process that prioritizes research, opportunities, and market validation over personalities and ideas. We are quickly moving to organize, structure, and launch the DCNT token and corresponding DAO governance. Our refined focus on Privacy will give us an efficient framework for working through the challenges ahead and a unique position in the market. By following through on delivery with Fractal, Lumen, our next venture, and our agency, we will be lined up for our business to grow exceptionally in 2024.

✒️ Details

You’ll notice this season we have once again restructured the format of our OKRs, with Objectives and Key Results structured properly for each area of focus within the constraints of our annual objectives (cash flow and decentralization). This allows for more granularity, articulating overarching objectives by functional area and then layering in measurable Key Results that should align closely with newly defined Workstream-level KPIs.

🚧 ☠️ DISCLAIMER ☠️ 🚧

It is not lost on me that we recently made a big decision to focus on Privacy, and be a DAO (but actually this time). The goals of our listed OKRs are not anticipated to change so much, but the execution will be affected. Just as one example: we need Research, Revenue, and Marketing at Decent, but “Workstreams” may not exist after this season. For that reason, it is important to remember the OKRs are meant to focus, not hinder, us and if we need to adapt them throughout the season to better suit our organizational structure or evolving business strategy, so be it.

There is no excuse to pat ourselves on the back and check off boxes if they are the wrong boxes.

🎯 OKRs

🧪 Research

The research workstream is a nascent but relevant part of our studio. This season we are establishing clear and ambitious OKRs and adding a part time contributor to identify validated opportunities and create relevant content that clearly positions Decent as the leading Privacy DAO.

Objective: Establish the Research Workstream.

Key Results:

1. Take 2-3 opportunities through Discovery 04: Market Validation.

2. Develop 3-5 insightful pieces of original content that help position us as the leading Privacy DAO, are rooted in our research, and are aligned to our new strategic focus and brand positioning.

3. Draft the second iteration of our Studio Thesis to narrow focus in both technical and commercial specialization.

Budget: $54,000

🗺️ Strategy

Decent recently voted for its new strategic direction to become the leading Privacy DAO. This season will be spent developing that strategy more concretely through our organizational structure, governance, brand, and community.

Objective: Develop the Core Strategies for Decent, the Privacy DAO.

Key Results:

1. Articulate and ratify the Brand and Community Strategy of Decent DAO

2. Articulate and ratify the Governance Structure Design of Decent DAO

Budget: $69,000

💸 Revenue

We are in the process of rebuilding our agency after having shut it down to focus on developing our studio practice and the first cohort of venture projects. The agency side of our business gives us access to ideas, talent, network, and paid opportunities to upskill and grow our team and capabilities. This season we are focusing on strengthening and unifying our sales and marketing efforts, establishing a healthy pipeline, and closing new work, all within the Privacy space.

Objective: Establish the Revenue Workstream.

Key Results:

1. Leadership: Establish objectives, process, and necessary roles with Metamorphosis.

2. Marketing: 600 MQLs (see Decent DAO Marketing: 🍁 Fall 23 Season Strategy)

3. Sales: One closed deal or grant received ≥ $50,000

4. Business Development: Propose the ETH validator concept to the DAO.

Budget: $76,500

🕸️ Fractal

Fractal is focused on gaining traction through the Validation 04: Beta User Enrollment phase while continuing to develop the core product. The season’s goals are primarily focused on onboarding new users in anticipation of scaling through 2024.

Objective: Acquire Users and Prepare for Scaling and Monetization.

Key Results:

1. Leadership: Refine the product strategy for Fractal to emphasize Privacy.

2. Marketing: 400 MQLs (see Decent DAO Marketing: 🍁 Fall 23 Season Strategy)

3. Sales: 7 Goerli Users, 2 Mainnet Users, 2 MAUs, 1 User with TVL exceeding $10M

Budget: $130,500

• Note on Mid-Season Extension - Rather than predict what will happen by mid-season, it’s been agreed that - at the point Lumen doesn’t need all their devs - a Fractal OKR extension can propose moving resource over to apply ZK for Fractal anonymous voting.

💡Lumen

Lumen is also focused on beta user enrollment, leveraging LOIs from institutional players to validate the market need while developing the core ZK layer of the MVP. This season’s goals include core product development and closing both underwriters and protocols with LOIs to deploy a Lumen-enabled credit pool as our go-to-market.

Objective: Complete Validation 04: Beta User Enrollment with signed LOIs.

Key Results:

1. LOIs Executed with two pairs of Underwriters and Protocols to launch a Lumen-enabled credit pools and satisfy our Go-to-Market needs with redundancy

2. 2 Borrower Relationships defined as:

   1. someone we can receive consistent product feedback from.
   2. someone who may potentially use a Lumen-enabled credit pool

Budget: $345,000

🤖 DAO

The DAO is maturing its infrastructure in anticipation of token launch. Once the token is launched, we will move through a process of ratifying agreements with DAO members and begin on-chain governance in earnest. Our seasonal goals center around having all the TradLegal infrastructure in place for token launch, and actually distributing tokens to all relevant parties, along with going live with basic governance systems.

Objective: Launch The Decent Foundation, DAO Governance, and DCNT Token.

Key Results:

1. The Decent Foundation is legally up and running.

2. The Founder’s Round is completed.

3. The DCNT Token is distributed to contributors and investors.

4. Working agreements are ratified between DAO members and The Decent Foundation.

Budget: $185,000

⚙️ Operations

Our day-to-day operations continue to mature as we add more rigor and transparency through our planning processes. Alongside this, our operations team will be adding key KPIs to each workstream in order to measure velocity and progress DAO-wide. This will enable more clarity around our throughput and health in an ongoing way.

Objective: All Workstreams Have Weekly Quantitative Metrics of Performance.

Key Results:

1. Develop and experiment with 1-3 KPIs for each workstream this season.

2. Get Workstream Leader buy-in on KPIs relevant to their work by end of season.

3. Develop DAO-wide KPI Dashboard v1.

Budget: $28,000

💜 Community

Decent has largely paused the development of our community to focus on current ventures, internal operations, and agency and studio strategy. With the help of Magnet and renewed strategic clarity, we will begin laying the groundwork for growing our network in 2024 by running a handful of experiments meant to draw people towards Decent and help them stay engaged.

Objective: Build the Foundation of Decent’s Community through Content, Events, and Culture.

Key Results:

1. Run one Hackathons in the Privacy space.

2. Develop the Content strategy and calendar for Winter 2023.

3. Overhaul and redesign communication strategies optimizing for contributor experience.

   1. Take an initial contributor survey to understand the present state of affairs.

   2. Align communications infrastructure such as Discord, Handbook, Notion, Email, and our Website with Decent’s operational and community strategies.

4. Host AMAs and other cultural development activities.

🏦 A Note on Budgets

I find it very exciting that this is the first season in which Decent is budgeting based on results rather than activities. Historically, our budgets have always been scoped to departments, which we’ve structured based on specialized discipline (such as Engineering and Design). This season, we’re budgeting through our OKRs, which gives me much greater clarity into what we are investing in - to the tune of $906,000 budgeted dollars this season.

This perspective begs a lot of questions regarding the allocation of our funds. I’m eager to have more thoughtful budgeting conversations throughout the season with other members of the DAO who care about how we spend our money.

Lastly, since not all expenses are captured in these budgets, we can use the delta between our real spending and this model to help reflect on expenses we aren’t considering completely enough in this planning stage. This even occurred during the planning stage for these OKRs, bringing to mind unexpected expenses such as event attendance.