The Rules
Three Maker Improvement Proposals (MIPs), proposed in January 2021 and ratified in March 2021:
- MIP39: the Core Unit Framework.
- MIP40: the Budget Framework. It also set on-chain incentives for contributors, with time-locks of 12 months or more.
- MIP41: the Facilitator Framework.
Every Core Unit that MakerDAO ran was set up under these rules. At its peak, MakerDAO had about 250 contributors. The MIP40 text on the portal today is a 2022 rewrite by another team.
The SES Incubator
Sustainable Ecosystem Scaling (SES) was a MakerDAO Core Unit that I co-founded in 2021. Its incubator helped new teams start work for the DAO: eight teams, four voted in as independent Core Units.
- Voted in as Core Units: DUX, Immunefi Security, Sidestream and TechOps.
- Also incubated: Maker Talent, Chaos Labs, Maker Academy and Lending Oversight. The Lending Oversight team later co-founded M0.
Project-Based Budgeting
In August 2022 I wrote Project-Based Budgeting on the forum (7.8k views, 87 likes).
What I Learned
What worked: it scaled. Every team the organization ran was created, funded and held to account under the same rules, with no company and no courts.
What didn’t: boundaries drawn too wide stop meaning anything. The all-or-nothing team budgets became too coarse, so in 2022 I proposed replacing part of my own design with project-level budgets. Getting the size of the boundary right is most of the work.