Circles Improvement Proposal #1: Roles + Snowflake Model

[drgoemon]

TLDR

To maintain the consistency and cohesion of the movement while growing, we should adopt the snowflake model with the following Core roles and other optional ones. This means asking all Stewards to identify and ask other members to accept these roles.

Goals

To maintain positive momentum into the launch of the Logos devnet, we must create a virtuous circle of impact and legitimacy, bringing organic growth. To do this, Circles must be geared towards impactful, documented and highlighted winnable issues while also maintaining a healthy internal culture that is local yet cohesive globally.

Snowflake Model

The snowflake model is an organizing framework widely used in grassroots activism to build scalable, resilient movements through distributed leadership. It emphasizes small, autonomous teams (or “snowflakes”) where leaders focus on developing others’ skills, fostering ownership, and enabling organic growth bottom up.

Each snowflake is interconnected yet independent - promoting accountability, diversity in leadership, and scalability by replicating structures locally while aligning with a shared vision.

Circle Roles & Responsibilities

Core:

• Technical Lead (Output/Mentorship): Oversees Logos stack integrations, trains others on Logos’ tech. Ensures tech reliability for winnable issues and mentors devs.
• Growth Lead (Growth): Handles recruitment via outreach. Expands membership for sustained scaling.
• Comms Lead (Output/Growth): Amplifies impact for broader reach, guides content sharing (e.g., updates on victories, documentation) in sync with CCs.
• Project Lead (Output): Coordinates winnable issues (e.g., education pilots), tracks progress, and drives tangible wins.

Optional:

• Operations Lead (Stability): Manages logistics (e.g., meetups, basic data tracking).
• Community Lead (Stability/Long-Term Growth): Monitors group dynamics and organizes check-ins to reduce churn and build trust.
• Partnership Lead (Growth): Guides coalition building and partnerships for output and growth.
• Finance Lead (Sustainability): When needed, ensures sustainability by overseeing basic accounting and funding (e.g., grants, donations) for issues.

How to Implement Roles

• Request Stewards to discuss and make the hard ask to those they find best suited or volunteer
• Tracking and highlighting those who have taken the roles and organizing internally in groups
• Map Circle roles to access and badges on community servers.

Conclusion

This is an experiment in creating some early form of governance across the network. These roles and the structure of the snowflake model was already highlighted as part of Circles onboarding guide, which now needs to be implemented. The choice is backed by lot’s of research into civil organizing and grassroots orgs, presented by Jarrad to the org, making it a natural choice for us as it’s where the idea of Circles is coming from.

Happy to discuss here or in any other place that might seem fit.

[krrisis]

Makes sense, project lead = the circle steward, right? Or do you see this as a separate role?

To get the conversation going, some random things that pop into my mind

• how can we get people to commit long(er) term to one of these roles
• should Circles wait until the core roles are filled before they start executing on winnable issues
• maybe at some point we can have levels or stages (could even be a color) to indicate where Circles are on the ‘engagement ladder’ (see circles guide)

[Bitzu]

Thanks for sharing this. I agree with the direction and the intent behind further adopting the snowflake model and formalising roles across Circles.

I wanted to share some practical feedback from trying to discuss and begin rolling this out with the Lisbon Circle this week.

In Lisbon, we’ve been volunteering on winnable issues together since last August. Because of that, many people were already functionally stepping into roles along the engagement ladder (outreach, coordination, comms, etc) even if they weren’t formally named. Framing the roles within that existing context made them easier to understand and less abstract.

Language and framing of roles.
One clear piece of feedback was around terminology. People were uncomfortable with being called “leads.” There was a strong preference for language that signals responsibility without hierarchy or ownership. Terms like:

• Steward
• Point of contact
• Coordinator
• Facilitator

felt more aligned with how people see themselves, as contributors and connectors rather than managers / leaders.

Technical Lead feedback.
The proposed Technical Lead was open to the role in principle but is currently stretched across other commitments. A key blocker here is confidence and enablement rather than willingness. I think we need to formalise a lightweight onboarding path for technical stewards.
As discussed previously (cc @Vaclav), even a 1 hour intro session to Logos tech + a *clear resource list, would go a long way in helping people feel equipped to:

• talk to newcomers about the stack
• suggest realistic implementations for winnable issues
• act as credible technical points of contact

Without this, the role can feel too heavy or risky to accept.

Community role observations.
We also floated the Community role to someone who has consistently brought in new members through their own network. Their response was thoughtful, in that they wanted time to consider it, citing reputational responsibility. This felt like a healthy signal, people are taking these roles seriously rather than treating them as symbolic titles.

Timing and emergence of roles.
My overall takeaway is that it’s likely best to:

• introduce these roles early and repeatedly as available pathways
• normalise them as part of Circle culture / how each Circles operate globally
• but allow them to emerge more organically once a winnable issue is defined

In practice, people seem more comfortable accepting a role once:

• they’ve worked together for a bit and trust has formed
• their skills and motivations are visible and understood by the group
• the role feels concrete and connected to real output (aka the winnable issue)

Making such a big, hard ask too early risks overwhelming people or asking them to formally align their personal profile with an organisation before sufficient trust is built, which feels especially sensitive in privacy and values aligned communities.

Happy to continue iterating on this together or share more detailed notes from Lisbon as we progress.

[vpavlin]

Circle Beat (aka Wallet Beat:) https://beta.walletbeat.eth.limo/ ?