Cabin's $2.7 million problem - Questions about Cabin

đź’ˇ Open Discussion
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TL;DR

Cabin has an exceptional vision and hundreds of amazing people have contributed their time, money, and expertise to experiment with ideas related to its vision.

I have spent the last two months engaging with every active member of Cabin willing and interested (18 individuals) about their questions about Cabin, their vision for it, and their ideas for its business models.

During this time I’ve tried to seek fundamental answers to questions like, “Who does Cabin exist to serve and create value for?” with no avail.

Cabin Labs’ 1-year of approved funding expired last month with $95k underspent, no financial report, and no plans for the future.

The closest thing I could find to a financial report is at Cabin Labs - Fall 2024 posted on Oct 20th:

  • "Cash (DAO + Pods): $2,722,202
  • Burn Rate (current approved proposals): $37.5K / month
  • Implied runway: 72 months = 6 years
  • Default dead by 2030"

As of December 15, 2024, Cabin has:

Yet in 2024 the numbers of voters per DAO proposal were only 5, 3, 13, 32, 10 & 13 voters, indicating extremely low engagement. For more analysis of Cabin’s recent voting history see Governmental Structure Change for Cabin: Quorum voting requirements for large money DAO Proposals - #3 by Matai. Despite these membership numbers, less than 30 people have participated in Discord in the last two months and its not clear how Cabin is trying to serve its 1,700+ members.

I come from a research, open source intelligence, disaster response, community development, and tech entrepreneurship background (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickinparadise) and I’ve approached Cabin with open, honest questions and with solutions in mind. I’ve done my best to listen to everyone and have tried to prepare this document with full respect for the contributions everyone has made to Cabin.

In the spirit of Cabin’s vision (Cabin | Cabin's Network City) and especially “Do the Thing” and “Do-ocracy”, I have prepared this document summarizing my questions and the questions others have asked about Cabin Labs, the Network Accelerator Program (NAP), the marketing of the NAP, and the ₡ABIN token. This forum post is designed to continue the conversations started in Discord at Discord.

I don’t see why the DAO wouldn’t want to commit 50% of its remaining funds (~$1.25m) to make bets in 2025 with 50% reserved for scaling the most successful.

In the spirit of Cabin’s vision, “Do the Thing” and “Docracy”, I have worked collaboratively with Cabin’s active membership to prepare a holistic 6-month plan to get Cabin to profitability, requesting an investment of $396,000 USDC @ Cabin's Stewardship - a 2025 Path to Financial Sustainability - #4 by nickinparadise. This would leave Cabin Labs with $95k, the NAP with $120k, with Cabin having $850k remaining to invest in 2025, leaving at minimum $1.35 million as reserves.

Background

For context:

For additional context, three recent reports from Cabin Labs:

Dan has also presented “A Discussion on Potential Business Models for Cabin in 2025” @ https://forum.cabin.city/t/a-discussion-on-potential-business-models-for-cabin-in-2025/357/1

Findings from my consultations:

  • Cabin’s investors have written off the project due to lack of results;
  • Cabin Labs’ team has faced few attempts to hold it accountable, not answering many genuine inquiries around Cabin’s financial, business and other operations due to apparent personality conflicts;
  • The Cabin Labs team appears to demonstrate little desire for transparency in their operations;
  • Trust levels within the Cabin community are low;
  • Engagement within the Cabin community is low;
  • Governance systems appear weak;
  • Standard operating policies and procedures for operations appear absent;
  • Cabin’s community seems to be in crisis; and,
  • Based on all my consultations, I actually think it’s easy to kickstart things going in the right direction for Cabin and to make it profitable quickly. See my proposal @ Cabin's Stewardship - a 2025 Path to Financial Sustainability - #4 by nickinparadise

Cabin Labs

  • In November 2023, Cabin Labs (Cabin Labs) was seeded with a $400k budget and $200k in technical support for one year to figure out how to make Cabin break even, yet I can only see $4,763.04 in revenue at $1.00 | USDC (USDC) Token Tracker | Etherscan.
  • Cabin Labs’ 1-year plan ended in November 2024 with $95k left unspent, no financial report, and no plans presented for the future.
  • Cabin Labs has produced only three proposals to the DAO in 2024:
  • On March 29, Cabin Labs announced “burning the ships” without asking for the DAO’s approval despite it being beyond what I’d see of the typical mandate of an experiential Lab designed to develop business ideas. See: Cabin Labs - Spring 2024.
  • Cabin Labs produced the following revised vision document but has not brought it to the DAO for approval: Cabin | Cabin's Network City.
  • On Oct 31, 2024, Cabin Labs produced three reports on its activities:
  • Cabin Labs has also produced other reports about its ideas @ đź“  Memos - Cabin that do not appear to have manifested.
  • Cabin’s technical funding expires in January with no plan for renewal (Meeting Cabin's Technical Needs).
  • When asked for transparency on Cabin Labs’ expenses in Discord, the questions were not fully addressed (Discord). I followed up with Jon via DM presenting a review of the Etherscan transactions (Cabin Labs Etherscan USDC Export 2024-12-12 - Google Sheets) and offered to help analyze Cabin Labs’ expenses and produce a financial report but never received a response. It is unclear who owns which wallets and questions have been raised about $75,000 in possible credit card payments without sufficient explanation (Discord):
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Approximately $2.7 million in USDC remains in Cabin’s accounts for utilization to achieve Cabin’s vision, including $95k remaining in Cabin Labs’ account.

For more information, see the conversations on Discord @ Discord from the past weeks.

My questions about Cabin Labs:

  • Why was the decision to burn the ships not brought to the DAO for feedback and approval?
  • Why was the output of Cabin Lab’s vision process not brought to the DAO for feedback and approval?
  • Why has Cabin Labs not produced a detailed financial report, profit and loss statement, end-of-project report, impact statement, and plan for 2025?
  • Why has Cabin Labs overseen a $400,000 budget, $200,000 in technical funding, and sought approval for the $120,000 NAP project with only $4,763.04 in visible revenue achieved that has a goal of only $30,000 (75 participants * $400) in revenue in 2025?
  • Why is there an investment in a membership growth strategy when there is no existing plan to serve Cabin’s 34 neighborhoods,149 users of forum.cabin.city, 1,732 neighbors registered on Cabin.City, 4,172 members in Discord, 13,500 Twitter followers, and 765 ₡ABIN holders, and no plan to be financially sustainable?
  • Where is the data on how the pilot ideas abandoned by Cabin Labs were brought to market and their data-driven reasons for failure?
  • If I understand correctly, Cabin Labs had a threefold mandate in 2024 to “keep the lights on”, “achieve Cabin’s vision of building a network of modern villages”, and “refine vision & strategy” as per https://snapshot.box/#/s:cabindao.eth/proposal/0xe7a3066daefbc4916f3ac1919dfaa2f1f3cab827df1e5c5c1938ae781232c8e0 and linked budget at https://forum.cabin.city/t/cabin-labs/23 - why has Cabin Labs burned so much money figuring out how to keep the lights on without a solution?

Network Accelerator Program

In 2024 the NAP was identified by Cabin Labs as its only program worth spinning out and despite concerns about the proposal like Discord it was approved at Cabin Governance.

The latest report on the NAP is from Oct 26: Reflections on NAP1 & NAP2. According to this post, “The program has grown from 16 people (12 participants + 4 mentors in NAP1) to 47 people (24 stewards & 11 mentors in NAP2 + 12 stewards from NAP1 continuing on).” Where is this revenue recognized on Etherscan?

The NAP proposal targets 75 participants across two ten-week courses at $400 each for $30,000 in projected revenue for 2025. I have been asking questions about the NAP for two months without receiving many substantive answers. Some of the fundamental questions in my head that remain unanswered:

  • What is the business justification for this program?
  • The apparent justification is membership growth, but why is Cabin investing in membership growth when Cabin has hundreds of unserved token holders and other members?
  • The NAP only provides 2 hours of week of coaching per week for ten weeks for a total of 20 hours per cohort with a goal of running twice a year.
    • With only 2-hours of coaching and an estimated 8-hours per week of additional support work, and eleven mentors, why isn’t the NAP team planning 3-4 courses at a time?
    • Why are there only 2 cohorts per year? What about the other 32-weeks?
  • Where is the revenue from the NAP in 2024 reflected in Etherscan?
  • New educational course development time from scratch is typically 3-10x delivery time, so 60-200 hours of preparation for a 20-hour program; where is the rest of the time going for the NAP team? Why are they full-time? What was wrong with the curriculum of the last NAP and why is so much time required to improve it? Where are the survey results with the participant’s feedback?
  • Why is there no marketing plan or marketing budget for the project?
  • Why is there no detailed plan for the project and associated financial projections?
  • Why are there no plans to scale the NAP?
  • What other facilitators have been recruited into the program and what will their contributions and compensation be?
  • What is the strategy for expanding opportunities for Cabin’s members to participate in the NAP as facilitators in accordance with the principles of progressive decentralization?
  • Why was this the only successful idea from a huge investment?
  • Why is Kaela telling me that she’s too busy working on the NAP curriculum to tell me about her sales and marketing plans when her title is “Content & Community Growth”? Why haven’t we seen any content created by her as per her job description?

Quoted Questions that remain unanswered about Cabin Labs and the NAP

The following are questions and suggestions I’ve asked publicly and privately, or seen asked publicly in Discord to the staff of Cabin Labs and the NAP that have not been responded to yet, in no particular order:

  1. “I think it’d help a lot if you reported to the community weekly on your plans and activities! That way we can all help out and support you”;
  2. “Do you think we could also create a #NAP-Business-Talk channel in Discord so that everyone interested in the project has a place to contribute?”;
  3. “I didn’t realize the marketing position is primarily for the NAP, which would put its annual budget at over $200k for a $400/person program, which would require more than 500 one-time participants per year to break even without a plan for continued revenue upon their completion of the NAP program?” (Discord);
  4. “Would you also be willing to share the NAP2 curriculum publicly so that the entire community can make suggestions for improvements and understand better what Cabin has offered in the past? That way everyone can help out with NAP3’s design”;
  5. “I’d also like to suggest a #cabin-labs-business channel specifically devoted to the $400k allocated to Cabin labs last year and a channel for each funded proposal so that proposal owners can report on their use of funds, results, and answer questions. This should allow for the cultural conversations to remain in this channel and for business conversations to broken out into other spaces. A #cabin-strategy ideation chat also seems appropriate” (Discord);
  6. “I’d also suggest a full-time paid Community Manager is absolutely essential for Cabin going forward, with responsibility and accountability for maintaining community spaces and improving community engagement. Who would like to put forward the proposal and take responsibility for hiring? I suggest a budget of $2,500/month for a 1-year full-time community manager based in a low-cost destination (e.g. a digital nomad or a virtual assistant-type from the Philippines). This is more than enough money to hire excellent talent and could be reduced to $1,500”;(Discord);
  7. “I’m also suggesting a proposal be made to ensure all recipients of DAO funds report monthly on their budget vs. actuals and their progress against OKRs they set for themselves. It’s easier to build this in as a system-wide policy than to write it into each new proposal.” (Discord);
  8. “Why is Shani no longer involved in the NAP?”;
  9. “I don’t see why the DAO wouldn’t want to commit 50% of its remaining funds (~$1.3m) to make bets in 2025 with 50% reserved for scaling the most successful.” (Discord);
  10. “How do non-NAP neighborhoods participate in Cabin?”;
  11. “How does a former co-living steward in the Cabin directory engage with the current Cabin Network and the projects of focus like NAP or the Cabin App?”;
  12. “What currently are the services being provided to those neighborhoods and their stewards? Especially the NAP graduates no longer actively enrolled in a 10-week course”;
  13. “What are those neighborhoods contributing financially on an ongoing basis for services?”;
  14. “If Cabin exists to serve and provide value for its member neighborhoods, their stewards, and their residents, I think there should be more emphasis on amplifying their social media (e.g. autofeed their SM posts into a Discord channel, providing them AI tools to improve their efficiency and amplify their management), providing project, event and volunteer management support, providing resources not just for stewards but their residents as well… outside the NAP I’m not sure how stewards are currently being served?”;
  15. “I’ve been watching Cabin on social media, Discord, Telegram and the forums, so I’ve observed every public interaction of the Cabin community for the last two months. I think you’re seeing a narrow slice of community that exists only for you (and other core members) - you’re in community with those people because you have relationships with those people, and maybe they’ve established relationships with each other, but they no longer choose to use Cabin as a platform to engage with each other. So Cabin might have created value for them in the past but I don’t see it currently creating additional value for them outside of a website listing. Once someone has graduated from the NAP I don’t see additional value being delivered in either direction, them for Cabin or Cabin for them? Please correct me if I’m missing something.”;
  16. “Without you and your relationships, what is Cabin?”;
  17. “You’ve been working on business ideas for Cabin since we first engaged. I’d love to provide input. When do you expect to have your 2025 plan ready? How can I contribute to it instead of adding my own?”;
  18. “How many participants you are targeting for the next NAP cohort and what are your plans, strategy and budget to acquire them?”;
  19. “I can’t find any public information about your work and your plans. If you’ve already published them where can I find them? I’d like to be able to add value and contribute”;
  20. “I’d love to hear more about what you would do as Cabin CEO”; and,
  21. One respondent said “my sense is that most tokenholders dont want any active role in what cabin’s doing. they’re all doing their own thing, they don’t vote on proposals, they check in from time to time to say hi. when i talk to them they generally wanna know whats up but dont have particular opinions on cabin’s vision or strategy other than broadly supporting it,” and I asked, “Why do you think that is?”.

Can the folks from Cabin Labs and the NAP program respond to these questions?

NAP Marketing

The Neighborhood Accelerator Marketing proposal was rejected by the DAO (Cabin Governance).

Despite being rejected by the DAO, I was told Graham McBain was hired by Cabin Labs to perform marketing work, received payment, and that he ghosted the Labs team without delivering. Is this true?

Despite the proposal for a marketing budget for the NAP being denied by the DAO, on December 2nd, 2024, Kaela announced in Discord that she had been hired to take the role of “Content & Community Growth for the NAP Program under Cabin Labs” (Discord). I learned about this position from this Discord message: Discord. I can’t find the announcements from Cabin Labs’ leadership about the position being posted or hired.

Upon investigation I found Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

  • Why was this position not approved by the DAO?
  • Why was this position hired from Cabin Labs’ budget when it is not in the budget approved by the DAO?
  • Why was $100k/year offered when Cabin Labs did not have that much funding remaining?
  • Who was on the hiring committee and what was the selection process?
  • Where was the position posted to ensure the best possible candidates applied?
  • Why was there no community consultation on the job description development or hiring process?

I reached out to Kaela to discuss my ideas for Cabin and we had a good discussion about my proposals over 5 hours via Discord, exchanging 28 messages, until I asked “What is the sales strategy to get ready for the next cohort? What’s the target number of participants for this cohort? I think its 75 for the year?” and was told by Kaela:

  • “I am not actually going to take the time to map that out for you right now, but I appreciate your interest”;
  • “I’ll hopefully have more availability after a few weeks, but right now I simply don’t have capacity to be doing what I am doing and also having side convos in discord, as much as I would love to!”; and,
  • “Your questions are reasonable and it’s also not my job to spend hours a day on discord answering individuals questions.”

Kaela also told me she is not planning on staying in the marketing role beyond a year, that she would not be the right person to market a super large scale version, that she’s tired of making things scale, and that she is best fitted for a short-term or consultant role, yet apparently she has a long-term full-time contract now?

I don’t understand this from someone hired to be responsible for “Community Growth” and whose job description includes “Foster relationships within the Cabin network, engaging directly with community members to create excitement and momentum for the Accelerator and other initiatives,” and “Partner with other team members to align goals and ensure cohesive messaging across all of Cabin’s initiatives.”

Can someone please explain the above?

To be clear, everyone I have spoken to has said that Kaela is amazing and a huge asset to the team and community!

Cabin DAO’s Tokenomics and Valuation

I’ve been able to research the following information about Cabin’s tokens and fundraising:

  • On Oct 29, 2021, the DAO approved the mint of “1,000,000 ₡ABIN and replace the current CABIN token. If approved, the DAO will distribute up to 21% to existing CABIN holders, swap up to 10% with strategic partners in exchange for $2,500,000 USDC, and hold the remaining portion in the DAO treasury.”, and “Execute a treasury diversification by swapping 100,000 ₡ABIN for $2.5M USDC into the DAO treasury”, valuing ₡ABIN at $25 (https://snapshot.box/#/s:cabindao.eth/proposal/QmbRbQKUS65GqC3H7BcuBcFvhGx7rrAqRUUvxUiwxgPLWB);
  • July 20, 2022 Cabin swapped 64,171.1 ₡ABIN with strategic partners in exchange for $2,400,000 USDC, valuing ₡ABIN at $37.40 (https://snapshot.box/#/s:cabindao.eth/proposal/0x46614796407387c0718d7138eea54e0ba7d1e073dc3fc79357f837d55effeb94)
  • According to the “Founder-level Token Vesting” proposal at Cabin Governance
    1. "Jon Hillis - 2 more years of time locked tokens @ 2.5% of supply per year (25,000 ₡), vested based on continued work for the DAO since the end of the previously approved proposal, which covered the first two years
    2. Alex Grintsvayg - 4 years of time locked tokens @ 2.5% of supply per year (25,000 ₡), vested based on continued work for the DAO with a 1 year cliff, starting 1/1/24" (noting the cliff is in 10 days with no review planned);
    3. 25,000 ₡ABIN is the equivalent of $935,000 at the valuation of $37.40 above.
  • The Cabin Labs proposal has “$396,000 USDC and 12,600 ₡ABIN” (Cabin Governance);
  • Grin’s 2024 technical proposal has 200k USDC and only 2,400 ₡ABIN for him (Cabin Governance);
  • The NAP budget has $120K USDC and 18,900 ₡ABIN (Cabin Governance);
  • The Ideation Pod has “Dahveed: 2,000 USDC/month, Kat: 1,300 USDC/month”, and “1,500 CABIN total for rewarding participants (500/month)” (https://snapshot.box/#/s:cabindao.eth/proposal/0xd9699953c2995906ef12630d3f1086218af34051c6b70d0a9cba0ed4ed40106e);
  • The “# MTNHAUS: Cabin x mtndao Pop-Up Co-Living House in Salt Lake City” proposal has an “Initial outlay is $10,000 and 800 ₡ABIN, with the goal that this is profitable and returns between $12,000 - $40,450 to the treasury” (https://snapshot.box/#/s:cabindao.eth/proposal/0x0d4be7de9d703668f420b291ce857a74e4bc66b7debabae19e68e955c841138b);
  • The failed DEI proposal had “Upfront contributor payments of $420 in USDC and 69 CABIN tokens each to the proposal stewards for their leadership and coordination of the initiative” (Cabin Governance); and,
  • The Campfire Season 3 proposal was for “$28,860 and 1,170 CABIN”(Cabin Governance).

Could someone please rationalize the above fluctuations and irregularities in the valuations of ₡ABIN?

Why are there not regular reports summarizing the distribution of ₡ABIN as per approved proposals? The data at Etherscan is not clear on who is receiving ₡ABIN for what purposes or the identity of the recipients (₡ABIN (₡ABIN) Token Tracker | Etherscan).

Does anyone have a proposal for the rational distribution of ₡ABIN in the future proportionate to their USDC compensation and work effort?

Solutions and Conclusion

Approximately $2.7 million in USDC remains in Cabin’s accounts for utilization to achieve Cabin’s vision, including $95k remaining in Cabin Labs’ account.

While it has been suggested that given that the Cabin Labs “proposal [was for] a year, I think one could argue that if one token holder objects, that the budget should be returned with a new proposal vote”, I propose that Cabin Labs retains its remaining 95k in funds to continue its experiments. If anyone objects, I suggest a separate thread or proposal.

I don’t see why the DAO wouldn’t want to commit 50% of its remaining funds (~$1.25m) to make bets in 2025 with 50% reserved for scaling the most successful. What are we waiting for?

In the spirit of Cabin’s vision, “Do the Thing” and “Do-ocracy”, I have worked collaboratively with Cabin’s active membership to prepare a holistic 6-month plan to get Cabin to profitability, requesting an investment of $396,000 USDC @ Cabin's Stewardship - a 2025 Path to Financial Sustainability - #4 by nickinparadise. This would leave Cabin Labs with $95k, the NAP with $120k, with Cabin having $850k remaining to invest in 2025, leaving at minimum $1.35 million as reserves.

This initiative would establish:

  • A Cabin Council of 7, with @eileen as its Chair, to oversee Cabin’s various activities and guide this project (42,000 USDC);
  • A Cabin Steward, me, acting as an “Interim-CEO” on behalf of the membership and reporting to the Cabin Council (90,000 USDC);
  • A Cabin Secretariat and Steward Support Team of 3 full-time staff devoted to Cabin’s governance and serving the needs of Cabin’s members (45,000 USDC);
  • A Market Research, Sales and Business Development Team of 4 full-time staff devoted to Cabin’s profitability (105,000 USDC);
  • A pool of USDC 50,000 to be rapidly deployed to the five ideas with the highest likelihood of cashflow positivity submitted by January 15, 2025;
  • Budget for Operations, Technology and Development (18,000 USDC);
  • Budget for sales, marketing, advertising, data acquisition, events, conferences, subscriptions, travel and other discretionary expenses dedicated to making Cabin profitable that will be reported on weekly to the Cabin Council (46,000 USDC); and,
  • A Cabin House for five of us to work on Cabin’s vision (free!).

Please discuss solutions @ Cabin's Stewardship - a 2025 Path to Financial Sustainability

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Thanks for taking the time to engage with so many people from the community while putting together these insightful posts @nickinparadise

I resonate with a lot of the questions and concerns you bring up, especially “Who does Cabin exist to serve?”

In @savkruger’ NAP proposal, @jon wrote:

To me, this clearly shows that under Jon’s leadership of Cabin Lab’s strategic guidance, the focus is first and foremost on seeking profitability opportunities from “network scale”, and is in fact not focused on supporting neighborhood stewards or other community members.

This is demonstrated by @jon deciding mid-2024 to

  • End the Supper Club program funding for Cabin Citizens, while allocating a $100K budget to hire a marketing lead for the NAP, without a plan for long term engagement beyond the 10 week course
  • Removing Outposts from the City Directory to focus solely on curating a network of “neighborhoods”
  • Pivot away from the crypto community that rallied around Cabin to enable it to successfully fundraise funds in the first place
  • Stopping support for previous initiatives that attracted hundreds of people to Cabin without a DAO vote through the Burn The Ships pivot

While I am a fan of the community building going on within the NAP, the pretenses of community building which the team uses to recruit new paid cohort members are in fact part of a broader scheme to extract value from the community without equitably sharing in the benefits, or fairly valuing community members who show up to particpate (more details in my Cabin Labs retrospective reply and responses on the NAP Accelerator proposal).

How is the current approach extractive?

Simple math, in 2025, 16K CABIN governance tokens were allocated by @savkruger’s NAP proposal to reward 100 Neighborhood Stewards, while 50K CABIN tokens will reward @jon & @grin, when they have yet to even put forward proposals for how they want to work for the DAO next year.

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(screenshot from the Cabin Discord #challenges-and-solutions channel)

~$200K has been allocated to two people for 2024 to lead (@savkruger) and market (@Kaela ) the NAP, while $0 has been allocated towards any sort of financial support for neighborhood stewards, with the exception of 5 scholarships offered for the upcoming cohort that starts in Feb. 2025.

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(screenshot from the Cabin Discord #general cahnnel)

If the current Cabin team were serious about having Cabin’s first purpose be to support neighborhood stewards in building community, they would choose to allocate more resources towards helping them “do the thing” while also building the greater DAO alongside them, with more opportunities to earn an equitable amount of Cabin governance tokens along the way.

Instead they choose to fund personal salaries while claiming its the best thing for community building and Cabin.

From my perspective, under @jon’s leadership the purpose of the DAO has been to serve those in power who hold the Cabin token to suit their agendas, and it just so happens that he holds and earns the most. I think Jon means well, but the cultural roots of extractive capitalism run deep.

DAOs present an opportunity to create new community centric economic models that foster mutual aid and collective decision making. As Cabin DAO’s voting and community engagement history shows, that has not been the case here.

Even the VCs who funded Cabin’s multi-million dollar treasury have been left out to dry, with most seemingly writing off the investment and shirking their voting responsability, allowing Jon to run the show as he sees fit with only one proposal passing that Jon didn’t support.

For reference, I’ll end with these screenshots to bring back up conversation from the Cabin Discord general chat.

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From my perspective, the focus should be on supporting a thriving community while sustaining a treasury that can support the manifestation of the community’s vision, recognizing that mutually beneficial paths forward for investors, contributors, and anyone who wants to be a part of Cabin are possible.

For these resons I am very excited about @nickinparadise’s proposal to establish a Cabin Community Council to help steer the future of Cabin while continuing these discussions with everyone who shows up to participate :v:

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the energy of someone who’s not just peeling back the curtain but yanking it down, inspecting the stitching and asking who sourced the fabric lol…fertile grounds for humility, transparency, accountability, and authenticity in these weeds. Hope to see a more cohesive community emerge post “growing pains” :orange_heart:

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I’ve agreed to chair the proposed Cabin Council, following discussions with Nick. His proposal aligns well with the community engagement goals I outlined in my earlier Gatherer’s Guild Proposal draft, particularly around:

  1. Bringing together community facilitators
  2. Creating digital spaces for connection and collaboration

My background with Cabin runs deep - I’ve been involved since 2022, drawn in by the vision of a nomadic coliving community with a tokenized reputation system. I’ve contributed significantly through:

  • Hosting Build Week at Neighborhood Zero (as a volunteer)
  • Managing the Passport Stamps project, including coordinating design and NFT minting

While I’m now a full-time mother with limited bandwidth, this proposal would allow me to contribute my experience in an advisory role while working alongside compensated team members who can drive execution. For this reason, I’ll be setting aside my Gatherer’s Guild Proposal draft and focusing on this unified approach to address Cabin DAO’s fragmentation and clarity challenges.

I appreciate @Kat’s observation here. I found Nick’s direct investigation and questioning quite compelling. I’m optimistic about the energy Nick brings and look forward to discussions regarding this proposal, and if it moves forward I would be honored to help create a functioning council.

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. I’m looking forward to the audit of Cabins past spending . That should be easy to find since a grand a month was being spent on accounting. All these records should have been available from the start especially when large sums of over 50k a pop have been flowing out of the treasury. Maybe an audit proposal should be presented??

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Thanks for your interest in learning more about Cabin and the time you’ve invested in talking to community members. I had the chance to get to know you better over the course of our 4.5 hour call this week. As a person who showed up recently, I can tell you have a lot of excitement about Cabin and desire to contribute.

I was surprised in our conversation by your lack of understanding of how Cabin operates, and I offered to answer any questions you had. You said you didn’t want to focus on asking questions about the past because you weren’t there and couldn’t pass judgment on it, and have proceeded to ask many questions.

I am happy to try to answer your questions, but I think there are a lot of broader misconceptions, misunderstandings, and misrepresentations in this post. You’ve spent a lot of time talking to a small but vocal group of community members who are dissatisfied. Cabin is in a period of transition and is grappling with real, hard questions. Those community members’ opinions are valid, but they do not represent the whole picture.

But it’s much easier to show up and ask dozens of questions than to do the work of building and providing comprehensive answers to questions, and you seem to have grown frustrated with multiple members of the community that you aren’t getting detailed answers at the speed you are requesting them. As far as I can tell from your Census profile, you aren’t a token holding member of the DAO, and multiple members of the community have independently reached out to me to share that your conversations with them have come across as aggressive, harassing, accusatory, misleading, and unproductive, especially for someone who recently showed up and has no prior history of contributing to or participating in Cabin.

Ultimately, Cabin decides what to do via our governance process. We don’t always all agree on a path forward, but people who have been involved and earned our governance token get a say in what we do. We approve proposals, and those proposals create scoped pods to execute on a specific direction. I can only speak on behalf of the pod I steward, Cabin Labs.

I will try to address your core questions about Cabin Labs below:

Cabin Labs’ plans, experiments, and priorities were discussed within the community extensively and the DAO overwhelmingly approved Cabin Labs to execute on them.

Here are some of the forum posts where we discussed and iterated on what we were planning to focus on:

In Fall 23 Product Directions, we asked:

In Cabin Labs’ approved proposal to the DAO (Cabin Labs), we shared our intended focus areas:

Cabin Labs’ Spring 2024 Roadmap update (Cabin Labs - Spring 2024), which received and incorporated lots of positive feedback from the community centered on discussing these questions:

I only used the phrase “burn the ships” once, in the Cabin Labs 2025 Roadmap Planning Kickoff, referring to a post from Kevin Owocki about Gitcoin DAO. I then reiterated that Cabin Labs’ roadmap was planning to deprioritize the things we’d already said we were planning to deprioritize (to very positive reception from the community, and incorporating further community feedback) in the previous roadmap update:

Cabin Labs is only one contributor pod at Cabin, and I can only speak for its roadmap and what we did and didn’t focus on. Anyone else in the DAO could have focused on and worked on these other things, if they put together their own proposal to do so. I highly encouraged and supported some of the people you interviewed to create their own proposals to pursue the things they wanted to do that Cabin Labs wasn’t planning to do, including things on this list. No one submitted a proposal.

Cabin Labs is still active, and Cabin has never asked contributor pods to publicly publish all of the things you’re asking for. We have provided many updates to the DAO (I shared a laundry list of some of them above) and operate as an onchain organization, with all contributor pods operating via independent onchain multi-sigs visible publicly to everyone in real time.

Cabin Labs did not oversee these other proposals. The goal of Cabin Labs has been to run experiments and spin out projects that were ready to create their own proposals to the DAO, and that’s exactly what we’ve done. Both of the other proposals you referenced are examples of that.

Those are also not accurate representations of 2024 revenue or the NAP’s plans for 2025. We don’t have our final 2024 revenue numbers yet because the year isn’t over and we do our full accounting annually. For the NAP, Savannah is best suited to talk more about the 2025 plans, which she wrote about in her extensively discussed proposal.

I wrote about our pilots and experiments over the last year, including explanations of which ones succeeded and failed and why here: Cabin Labs - First Year of Experiments, Oct 23 - Oct 24

Very little of Cabin Labs’ money and time was spent keeping the lights on. When we started Cabin Labs, Cabin had just shut down its core product due to lack of product/market fit and had no contributors, very little DAO engagement, and no clear path forward. Most of our efforts were focused on rebuilding the pipeline of experiments, the network of neighborhoods, the DAO, and the contributor team from the ground up.

Here’s the retro on what we said we would do, and what we did: Cabin Labs - First Year Retrospective. Given where we were a year ago and what we said we’d do, I think we met our objectives and helped set Cabin up for its next chapter.

There is more work to do, and we as a community are doing the work of figuring out the path forward together. I have been heartened by the community conversations happening about the path forward recently, and I expect them to continue to blossom as we navigate this path together in the coming weeks and months.

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