Deepfunding Blog

By Tommy Headelf, on behalf of the Deep Funding Review Circle and Focus Group

Please take a short journey with me as we travel back through time to a tale of two DeepFunding rounds. A journey that began just as another tale was coming to an end – DeepFunding Round 2. DeepFunding Round 2 had dramatically increased in size and volume from the very first DeepFunding –  Round 1. DF R2 tested the capabilities of the staff and ancillary workers involved in DeepFunding.

That story, the one previous to this one, if it were not a short story, would tell you about the management of Jan Horlings and Rafael Presa of the DeepFunding ecosystem. How they pivoted from a very small team (of two) and asked for volunteers in the midst of R2 to review submitted proposals for guideline compliance. It might also tell you about how successful that on-the-fly initiative was, if this were not a short journey.

That journey and story could be expanded on and tell how in the face of an unexpected surge of proposals in the DF R3 this expanded circle team of proposal reviewers were asked to review the community comments submitted on the SWAE Platform about the Proposals. As a short tale it could tell about the bots and how some attempted (and maybe succeeded) to game the reward system established for involved and committed community members. But no, that story was already told during a DeepFunding Focus Group Listening Session created and focused on listening to and soliciting the communities opinions on whether or not to continue to reward all commenters including the bots, or to ignore the set rules and ignore the comments and rewards. 

That tale, if retold, would outline the two breakout listening rooms held during the Thursday Listening Session. This, a first of its kind, was an initiative of the newly formed DeepFunding Focus group, charged with driving community involvement and the transparency of the DeepFunding process. It would recount the success of this first listening session and how the community feedback helped shape the actual rewarding of all reviewers. It would recount how this listening session resulted in a decision to add additional rewards to the top human commenters. 

That story, if there were space in this short tale, would recount how the review team (yes, the same one formed in Fund 2 to review proposals) was pivoted again and asked on short notice and with a five day deadline to devise a system to decide how to decide who the best reviewers were. In that time frame, one member created an algorithm to screen suspected bots using community reactions (different emoji and comments) and scrape 3-5 of the best comments from each commenter.
Over 100 commenters were reviewed and narrowed down to three comments. The comments were anonymized, read, reviewed and rated on a 0-3 (0 crap – 3 excellent) basis by at least three of each of the two review team groups. These scores were averaged and the top 5 from each of the review teams were selected. But as I said, that story was told last week by Rojo at the DeepFunding Town Hall, and is not the purpose of this short journey. No, this tale is simply to introduce the 10 winners and reveal their reward and to express deep thanks to all community members.

This story is one of human consideration by the DeepFunding Team for the community, and of the expense, both monetary and human time, that was expended to be certain the community was heard. This story will tell you about the value placed on community comments about the proposals. It will tell the story of the hours spent by the DeepFunding Focus Group during their weekly meetings, asynchronous efforts, time during the DFFG Listening Sessions and all the ancillary activities surrounding the comments. It will attempt to convey to you the reader how concerned the SNET DeepFunding Team was and is about community, your engagement and proper rewards for your involvement. I suspect I will not achieve the proper conveyance of this highest level of concern by the DeepFunding team.

I suppose I could attempt to convey this human concern over community involvement by quoting numbers and statistics and dollars (in AGIX) spent on the hours of review, discussions, meetings, TownHalls, Listening Sessions, comment rewards, special rewards, blog writing, review team correspondence and even ancillary things like this article.  But, I cannot since this is a short story of a short journey. I will before I introduce the awardees mention two items I consider to demonstrate the depth of care to our concern for the community.

The first is the result of a brief survey over rewards to reviewers possibly including bots. One person objected. Only one! Yet that one objection was heard.  That is one example of concern for our community and the entire DeepFunding team’s resolve to listen and hear what you have to say. We value your input and your engagement. We recognize you are freely providing the most precious asset any human has – your time.

The second example is more of a practical one from a financial viewpoint. The two review team coordinators, along with the 7 reviewers were left in the dark on how many awardees there would be and how much they would get rewarded. My suspicion is both Jan and Raphael had a budget and a number in mind, but to me it seems they played the age old opera of ‘go ask the other parent’. We would ask Raphael and he would say ‘oh I thought the DF Focus Group decided that’. We would ask Jan and he would indicate that he would discuss it with Raphael (like a sensible parent (LOL)). But when the time came the Review team was asked what we thought the reward should be. We debated, discussed and reached consensus then made our recommendation based on the understanding that the commenters had already been rewarded. These rewards were for the best comments!

Our recommendation was essentially ignored. The DeepFunding team valued the excellent community engagement of their reviews so much they doubled what we had recommended. This second action to me is a strong sentiment of how highly our community and meaningful engagement is valued.

Oh, the top ten reviewers may be the ones being recognized and receiving extra rewards in the form of AGIX. However, all of us are champions as seen in the quality of newly funded proposals and the strength of culture that is being built for future rounds and the entire AI/AGI ecosystem. But to keep the short journey somewhat short I congratulate the top 10 and hope they will appreciate the $800 USD in AGIX they get to share or $80 extra per contributor. We are using their Discord, email or wallet for their ID:

• Yoram Ben-Zvi
• Matthew Halloran
• ₳aire Voltaire
• Donald Nguyen
• pjk thosian
• Snek Snek Coin
• Robert Haas
• Inés Gaviña
• Mack Daddy
• hillary

So to summarize this journey and story: 10 of the top contributors were rewarded an extra $80 USD for their outstanding comments as filtered and human judged. The system was devised on the fly and was partly random in metrics. While certainly not perfect, it does lay out a blueprint for future teams, should comments continue. It should also be recognized that the reviewers did their best but may have overlooked or missed other contributions and contributors that were on par to those awarded.  There will be an additional Listening Session(s) on this topic. We hope, invite and encourage your feedback, criticism and constructive suggestions on how to improve. And, we want to thank all engaged community members as we all are winners in life.

Thank You.