Community Lifeguards Initiative (CLI) Reform Proposal

Proposals
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TLDR

  • CLI transitions from a program with active contributors to a lightweight, grant-focused committee. Hence Community Lifeguard (CLGs) roles, contributor compensation, and OpEx budgets are removed.
  • Total quarterly budget goes down from 197K to 50K and exclusively used for community grants, removing compensation and OpEx.
  • CLI remains an independent sub-committee to preserve execution speed.
  • Responsibilities shift to contributors within the Lido Labs Foundation.

Context

With the pilot and initiative together, the CLI has been operating for two full years, playing a meaningful role in cultivating the Lido brand and community stakers in the protocol and broader Ethereum. During this period:

  • There’s over 500 NOs in the Community Staking Module (CSM).
  • Several strong regional communities emerged, contributing not only to CSM growth but can also be leveraged to support future objectives.
  • The effort was led by active Community Lifeguards (@Stakesaurus and @enti), who have since transitioned into other roles within Lido.

As the initiative matured, the need for full-time Community Lifeguards decreased. Many of the ongoing community-facing responsibilities can now be maintained as part of broader efforts.

At the same time, there remains a clear need for a low-friction micro-grants path for small, grassroots initiatives (e.g., a $500 local workshop) that are not a good fit for LEGO.

Accomplishments

1. Built community-staking awareness & education

  • Produced and facilitated the creation of a substantial library of educational content containing podcasts, written and video guides, etc.
  • Organized IRL and virtual content with workshops on Ethereum validation, Lido and surrounding topics.

2. Facilitated the onboarding of community stakers

  • We collaborated with communities around the world to work closely with Ethereum enthusiasts in their journey to run validators. Which contributed significantly to the 500+ operators in CSM.
  • Helped onboard contributors to multiple web3 projects to Ethereum validation via Lido Community Staking Tribes.

3. Supported communities around the world

  • Generated structured campaigns to attract and reward community members for building relevant content or tooling.
  • Supported community activations (>20 events worldwide), tooling (APIs, CSM integrations, etc) and content (guides in multiple languages and formats) with economic and non-economic support.

4. Laid the foundations for long-term community infrastructure

  • There’s now an active community around Lido, many of the members have proactively contributed with content or tools.
  • Built relationships with community leaders, which can help lower the cost and barrier to grow the Lido brand and rise awareness about current initiatives. This is not only helpful for the health of the CSM, but can also be used in future Lido products.

Updates to the committee

Scope and responsibilities

The revised CLI will:

  • Administer a quarterly grants budget for community-oriented initiatives.
  • Provide a lightweight, fast-response channel for smaller proposals that benefit community operators, home stakers, and grassroots groups.
  • Enable a structure that can adapt to the needs and priorities of the Lido community. Today it consists of community operators, but may change as Lido’s product offering evolves.

CLI grants may also support community representation and operator-facing activations (e.g., workshops, meetups, local operator support) that have expenses associated, provided the primary purpose is community impact and the activity is not already funded through other budgets.

Structure and objectives

  • Keep the CLI as a sub-committee, rather than being absorbed into LEGO, to preserve speed and simplicity for small community initiatives.
  • Members of the committee need to have understanding of the needs of Lido and its community. We expect the composition of signers to evolve with Lido as well.
  • Move community management responsibilities to be taken care of by Lido Labs’ broader community strategy and grant operations.
  • We will publish a quarterly forum update reporting grants and priorities/objectives for the year or quarter.

Members

Multisig: 3/5 Safe on Ethereum mainnet at 0x6faCCcE132d5C397068807Ca73883d3df198dFF4. New members will confirm their addresses in the forum thread and any future signer rotations will be announced on the forum.

Budget

In the previous proposal we had a quarterly budget of 197K USD, broken up as:

  • 117K USD per quarter for CLG compensation
  • 60K USD per quarter for grants
  • 20K USD per quarter for operational expenses

In this new phase, we’re proposing the sub-committee to be structured with:

  • Removal of the CLG compensation and operational expenses buckets due to the reduction of expenses over the last year and the handover of tasks to other contributors.
  • 50K USD every quarter with up to 10K USD per grant (larger grants can be approved as per normal LEGO approval requirements).

Note: The quarterly budget does not roll over; unused funds are not carried into the next quarter.

7 Likes
Lido Ecosystem Grants Organization (LEGO) Reports
[EGG] Establishing the Community Lifeguards Initiative (CLI) Sub-Committee
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Given the already successful work in supporting validator communities over the last few years and the success of the CLI in creating a lively community around CSM, but also taking into account the current economic climate, I concur and support the proposal to transition the CLI to a more lightweight version.

I confirm that as a part of this transition, I will be transitioning my duties in the CLI multisig to @remus who will represent the Node Operator Mechanisms workstream.

6 Likes
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@enti @Stakesaurus thank you for pushing and maintaining this initiative!
CSM has built up great momentum and CLI for sure is one of the reasons of it. It also matured and it seems that it’s a logical move to optimize the spending a bit, so you have my full support here.
Also confirming my rotation in the multisig in favor of @Stakesaurus.

3 Likes
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Thanks to all the previous members for their efforts for the CLI. I support the proposed transition and confirm my participation moving forward as a committee member, replacing Izzy.

and public signature:

2 Likes
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Thank you for supporting the Community Lifeguards Initiative with your time, effort, and expertise over the past 2 years @Alex_L and @Izzy.

I support the proposed transition and confirm my participation moving forward as a committee member, replacing @Alex_L.