I actually think that a "mentor" should be a fix role assigned to someone inside the DACP (industry) or inside a DAC. So if a newcomer is convinced of the ecosystem and has past experience in the movie industry, he joins a DAC and in the first maybe 60 - 90 days he is simply being shown around and taught how everything works. Then after this short learning process it gets to the "doing" part. The best about this all is that basically after 6 - 9 months of working in a DAC, anyone can take a new apprentice and teach them the in's and out's of a DAC.
I think you're focused more on the teaching aspect of it while I'm focused more on the economic allegiance aspect of it. The economic allegiance allows for a guild to form where members pay dues. It also allows for mentorship to form where members pay for leadership. It's not just about teaching because some things cannot be taught. It's also about social organization which always starts with mentors and apprentices and progressively gets more complex from there.
The mentor is someone who is more knowledgeable, experienced, and can teach, that is part of it. The other part of it is something a lot more simple where you have people who share a mission or set of moral or political principles which they want to act out through how they invest. So if a person is an environmentalist they might not want to invest in certain kinds of DACs.
In the real world when you have an economic allegiance between family members such as father and son then the father is expected to protect the son for a period of time until the son becomes strong enough to protect himself. In the world we live in where people expect the government to be their parents they have the instinct to seek protection from some other more experienced stronger individual.
In my opinion they must pay for this. Leadership should not be a free service. If someone feels they need the protection of another they should be willing to pay the price in the form of a commission, a fee, a percentage. Otherwise it is wild west and everyone for themselves.
Therefor, a mentor does not need to be paid or an apprentice does not need to pledge to give a % of his earnings to his assigned mentor. A mentor is simply someone that acts on behalf of the DAC/DACP, and by teaching the newcomer about what they exactly do, he and his DAC will benefit as they have a new participant that is working collectively with the others on creating a greater output for everyone involved.
But then it's not an economic allegiance. It's just a friendship. An economic allegiance is contractually binding where you pledge allegiance to a particular individual, guild, ideology or whatever. If you pledge economic allegiance to anything then you're agreeing to pay the %. It is that due paying process which creates social structure in society on the most basic level. It can also be a donation to a particular non-profit, a commission, but in the code it would be described as paying the % to the (placeholder).
The direct compensation for the mentor could be points or a badge that indicates that he had taught people in the past.
But once again you're now making a mentor nothing more than a buddy. A buddy is not an economic allegiance and makes no real economic difference or social difference. Friendships without contractual allegiance cannot form a social entity or institution. A corporation or firm exists because of the contractual allegiances and without it there is no real loyalty.
So how do you have loyalty or allegiances? You use contracts. You pledge allegiance to a particular social order which could be whatever you choose. This is sealed economically into the blockchain. At any time you can break allegiance, but there would be some cost associated with breaking allegiance.
If we look in the real world we see allegiances all the time. Look at marriage for example where you have two adults forming a union and an economic tie to each other. This is a form of economic allegiance to the family structure. You also see economic allegiances in gangs when you have different gangs following their own form of order within the wider system. You see it in corporations as well when corporations form alliances. You see it with brokerage firm, where brokers get commissions. You see it in professional organizations where people pay dues for membership.
All of this becomes possible with an economic allegiance system and more. The power of the economic allegiance system is specifically in the ability to pledge allegiance to an entity, policies, or set of principles. In my opinion the ability to do so is critically important in society because it exists in nearly every culture on the earth in some form or another.
So it's not really about receiving the badge or symbolic medals. It's a way to form economically allied groups and factions within DAC space. So for example say one group within the DAC ecosystem supports a certain political principle but then later on another group does not support that particular political principle. At this point they are going to want to form distinct political factions. This would mean certain DACs would be favored over other DACs based upon whether or not those DACs support the principles of each of these particular factions. A mentor would be someone who has been around long enough to have an understanding of the political factions within the larger DAC ecosystem.
To take it further, assume in the future that the demographics of DAC participants we have now isn't the norm anymore. Right now the demographic is majorly anarcho-capitalist and fairly radical. In a few years that won't be the case anymore and you will have some DACs which have anarcho-capitalist designs and some which don't. This is guaranteed to happen and by having the economic allegiance system you can set it up so that if someone arrives into the ecosystem from their particular political views they can connect with their guild which represents their political faction in the economic ecosystem.
They can then invest only in the DACs which the guide decides is in support of their principles. They can work only for the DACs which fit with their particular political principles. They would be able to find a mentor immediately who shares their concerns and their political principles. Because you have to remember that crowd funding DACs is about money and eventually its going to become a political debate as to which DACs to invest in and which not.
Now let me go into some details of the intricate possible features of the economic allegiance system.
1. If you're a mentor you can also be an apprentice to someone higher than you.
2. If you're an apprentice and you break allegiance with your mentor then anyone underneath you is also broken from your mentor. Your apprentices go with you.
To put 2. into context, if you're a mentor with 100 apprentices in an allegiance to make you the apprentice of a mentor with 10 apprentices, then that mentor definitely wants you to keep your allegiance and will give you every possible incentive to keep allegiance to him because he will be receiving a % from 110 apprentices. But if you break allegiance then he goes back down to 10 apprentices, and if he's totally corrupt he could end up with 0 apprentices as they could all break allegiance with him to side with a better mentor.
That is the power of the economic allegiance system. You have non-coercive decentralized leadership. You have the incentive for people to want to be good leaders built in. Anyone can change their allegiance at any time and being a mentor is a privilege not a fixed status. You become a mentor with thousands of apprentices below you only if you're a great leader.