Catalyst Audit Circle

Resource the Catalyst auditing circle to guide improvements needed to maximise each funding round's return on intention.

The Audit Circle will consist of members from the Catalyst Audit Community. See details of team members below.

[IMPACT]

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Overview

The Catalyst Circle has been an effective way to help problem-sense and prioritize problems that can be solved by the community. This approach is now being applied to the auditing process of the Project Catalyst ecosystem.

Since October 2021 community members with an interest in auditing and oversight initiated research into reporting and participated in the Catalyst Auditing working group ( see https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-auditing/admin/meetings ).

The Catalyst Audit Circle is tasked with:

• Listening to problems around auditability including use of the reporting system, confusion in the process and identifying bad actors.
• Prioritizing proposal audit issues with the help of the community. Looking at the complexity, implementation effort and relevant concerns to guide what to solve first.
• Coordinating and collaborating with the community to investigate and develop potential solutions to auditing issues. Any solutions developed can go through the Catalyst funding process.

Catalyst Auditing Circle proposal Intent

This proposal's intent is to problem-sense and prioritize problems about the auditing of proposals that can be solved by the community.

A complementary proposal "Community Governance Oversight" ( https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398225 ) will provide oversight of improvements to and innovations in Catalyst Governance.

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Catalyst Audit Circle addresses the Auditability Challenge by providing much needed transparency of the use of Cardano's treasury resources.

Audit processes, innovations and experiments directly impact how funded proposals are assessed, voted on & executed. The Catalyst Audit Circle will allow the Cardano community to have more information at a high level on the effectiveness of the proposal process & the Catalyst innovation fund in general.

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Risk: Lack of liaison with IOG

Mitigation: Audit Circle has liaised with the IOG Catalyst team since the submission of its Fund 7 proposal in November 2021. Regular contact is maintained with Daniel Ribar, Harris Warren, Kriss Baird & Dor Garbash.

Risk: Lack of community awareness & engagement

Mitigation: Biweekly slides are presented at Catalyst Town Halls to update the community on progress and provide a platform to engage people in oversight activities.

[FEASIBILITY]

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Timeline

Prior to funding

March 2022 to May 2022

1. March 2022 - The Audit Circle is formed
2. March to May 2022 - Regular Audit Circle Bi-weekly meetings are held
3. This Fund 8 proposal is prepared and submitted to resource Audit Circle's ongoing activities
4. The Audit Circle will survey, facilitate retrospectives and report on funded proposal audit processes

Post funding (if voted for)

June 2022 to September 2022

1. June to September 2022 - Regular Audit Circle Bi-weekly meetings are held
2. A Fund 9 proposal is prepared by the Audit Circle, and submitted in an appropriate Challenge, to resource its ongoing activities in proportion to the scope of Catalyst governance changes in Summer 2022
3. The Audit Circle will survey, facilitate retrospectives and report on funded proposal audit processes

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A) Meetings :

Remuneration for members of Audit Circle: $1,000 per person (up to 10 members) for a total of 12 hours' work per person : comprises meetings (1 hour twice a month - approx 6 meetings over 3 months) and preparation (communications, working sessions, etc. : 1 hour twice a month).

Subtotal : $10,000

B) Fixed Costs :

Internal/external communication and organisation tools: ($1,000)

1. Video conference/meeting (Zoom/hangout) x 3 months
2. Google form / survey design
3. Web hosting, Domain purchase
4. GitBook subscription.

Subtotal : $1,000

C) Deliverables / Outputs :

Note : Provision is made for a range of approaches and the budget may be reallocated to adapt to changing circumstances that the changing Catalyst environment presents. This will be divided between members according to the amount of work they contribute to creating, disseminating and analyzing a survey, presenting it at After Town Hall and facilitating discussion.

1 Surveys

For each survey : 

Survey design, review by group, implementation, execution, data collection, interpretation and presentation.

Up to 2 surveys (1 internal & 1 external) over 3 months -

$ 1,600 for 2 surveys or $800 per survey

2 Facilitation of an internal retrospective

For each retrospective :

This will be divided between members according to the amount of work they contribute to the retrospective including interpretation, synthesis and identifying improvement recommendations.

Facilitation of up to 3 internal retrospectives over 3 months -

$ 800 for 1 retrospective or $ 800 per retrospective.

3 Production of a report

Production of a report on one area of audit standards. This will be divided between members according to the amount of work they contribute to the report writing, including checking whether actions to resolve or improve have been executed and recommending further improvements.

$ 800 for 1 report or $ 800 per report.

4 Preparation for a Fund 9 proposal

Preparation to support the submission of a Fund 9 proposal to resource its ongoing activities in proportion to the changing Catalyst environment in Summer 2022.

$ 500

Subtotal : $ 3,700

D - Project Management & Administration

A project management & administration resource will :

• Draft & circulate Agendas
• Prepare Town Hall Slides
• Record & take notes or summaries of meetings
• Maintain project documentation
• Administer the Governance Oversight Discord server

Subtotal : $ 2,000 for 4 months ($ 500 per month)

E - Treasury

Andre Diamond & Miroslav Rajh of Treasury Guild will set up the wallet for Audit Circle, arrange ADA payments to members and maintain budget records.

5 hours/week for 4 months = 80 hours = $40/hour for 80 hours 

Subtotal: $3,200

Total : $ 19,900

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The Catalyst Audit Circle : From the Catalyst Community (up to 10 paid members) including :

• Eric Helms - SCATDAO - Founder of Smart Contract Audit Token. Fund 5 Winner for Scaling up Cardano DeFi. Fund 6 Winner for Improve and Grow Auditability. CPA with over 10 years of audit experience in Big 4 as well as Fortune 500 Companies.
• George Lovegrove - PACE, Funded proposer in F6: Improve and Grow Auditability.
• Jo Allum, Auditability Challenge Team Lead, Funded proposer in F6: Scale-UP Cardano's Community Hubs (Cardano Canvas, Cards & Calculator).
• Matthias Sieber - CEO Loxe Inc., Circle V2 representative for Cardano Foundation. Funded proposer in F6: Atala PRISM DID Mass-Scale Adoption, F6: DApps & Integrations, F6: Scale-UP Cardano's Community Hubs, F6: Developer ecosystem
• Ron Hill - founding board member and CEO of SPOCRA (Stake Pool Operators Trade Guild). CQE, CSSGB, Industrial & Systems Engineer, Continuous Improvement Professional and Serious Change Agent.
• Phil Khoo - experience as an accountant, UI/UX frontend and graphic design and business advisor amongst numerous other pursuits. He currently has a lead position in the development and direction of Cardano AIM and is co-creator of the Community Tools.
• Stephen Whitenstall - Quality-Assurance DAO, Circle V2 representative for funded proposers. Funded proposer in F6: Improve and Grow Auditability.
• Vanessa Cardui - Community engagement professional with 20+ years' experience of working with communities to record and collate their information, archive it, and make it discoverable. Part of QA-DAO where she is leading on documentation of Catalyst Circle (see https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/catalyst-circle-oversight-v3)
• Thorsten Pottebaum - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thorstenpottebaum/

Treasury Guild : offers a 1 to 1 accounting and treasury service to projects within the Catalyst ecosystem. Setting up and managing Project Wallets and the distribution of funds. Keeping track of all budget items and the exchange rate at which the funds were released to ensure that the budget is spent correctly. Including metadata in the transactions enabling future dapps to pull data and create dynamic tailor made dashboards & templates.

• Andre Diamond has experience in small business operation and accounting. Joined the Catalyst Circle Admin team as treasurer in Nov 2021 and has expanded this role by starting the Treasury Guild alongside Miroslav to support projects in the Catalyst community as well. Currently using and documenting GitHub actions to help automate some of the tasks in Catalyst Circle and treasury work. Linkedin
• Miroslav Rajh has 20 years of experience in managing finances and organizing the business of NGOs and the University. He also worked as a Human Resources Manager (HRM). Joined the Catalyst Circle Admin team together with Andre as treasurer in Nov 2021. Currently he is recording, documenting and managing all transactions for CC Admin Team, Swarm, Cardano4Climate, Community Governance and Bridge Builders. LInkedin

[AUDITABILITY]

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The Audit Circle maintains a record of its progress in a project GitBook at https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/audit-circle/

If this proposal is voted for and funded, its progress will be tracked and documented in a similar fashion to its preceding Fund 7 proposal here : https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/audit-circle/project/overview

This will include documentation of :

• Meeting recordings & summaries
• Analysis of funded proposal audit processes
• Survey design, execution & results
• Workshop recordings & summaries
• Retrospectives & Final Reports
• Community Research

At the end of this project's 3 month timeline a Project Close Report will provide an overview of progress & lessons learnt.

Audit Circle will seek to ensure that :

1. No central entity or authority controls improvements or innovations to auditing of funding proposals.
2. Activities of participants in any changes to the audit of funded proposals are accountable to the community.
3. That audit of funded proposals is transparent and understandable through accessible, timely and widely distributed documentation and communication.
4. Will assess whether improvements to audit processes : a) recruited capable participants, b) access to impartial data and analysis, c) robust methodologies, d) clear rules and policies.
5. Risk mitigation mechanisms are developed and implemented.
6. Audit culture is legitimate, stable and lively.

This is a continuation of the Fund 7 Catalyst Audit Circle proposal - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/381354