Grants Committee End of Season Project Funding

Written by Icedcool, regarding the Grants Committee Meeting on 12/14/21

This forum post is to clarify and distribute information on the recent BanklessDAO Grants Committee meeting, and to seek consensus from the DAO as to how to move forward.

Grants Committee Attendance:

Above Average Joe (L)
0xLucas
Grendel
Kouros (L)
Icedcool
Nonsense

Challenge

As of the start of the last Grants Committee (hereafter “GC”) Meeting, the GC had 76,234 BANK to distribute to projects. The requirements for projects submitted was 745,329 BANK with a shortfall of 669,095 BANK.

Grants Committee Agenda

At the 12/14/21 GC Meeting, the committee had 4 project proposals to review and vote on, 2 of which were previously viewed by the GC: Mobile App and Bankless Index Growth Squad. All projects had forum approval, met forum requirements, and were approved by the GC.

It was discussed that the GC would have a shortfall of 669,065 BANK. Per this shortfall, the GC wants to ensure that the projects are funded to compensate for work, and also wants to respect the seasonal budget as a constraint.

The GC discussed different options and ultimately decided to appeal to the DAO as to next steps on how to proceed. The options are as follows:

  • GC Request funding from Snapshot in order to fund the projects
  • Projects should roll this funding request into their S3 Budget funding
  • Projects to be funded from the GC allocation for Season 3

0 voters

Please take some time to consider the implications of your vote as this has the potential to set a precedent. And make your voice heard! The pool will run for seven days, the standard time for a project forum post to gain visibility and traction.

I would like to take an educated decision on this vote. However, it seems to me I am lacking sufficient background on the treasury and GC processes to do so. Since you are mentioning that we will set precedent by the vote, would it be possible to get your lines of thought on the three options and what implications they would have?

My understanding from the first bullet is that we ask the GC to delegate the decision on funding of the budget ask to the DAO via Snapshot.
If someone could help me to understand bullet 2 and 3 that would be a great start.

Thanks so much!

3 Likes

Can anyone clarify: The 4 proposals are for upcoming projects that have been approved to some degree during Season 2, but on which no work has been done? In other words, the 669k shortfall is to forward-fund these projects?

2 Likes

I’m wondering this also. Are these retroactive funding requests? Or proactive funding requests?

Good question! The 3 projects that didn’t receive GC grants:

  1. Bankless Mobile App (368K BANK)
  2. Bankless Indices (150K BANK)
  3. Ombudsman (222K BANK)

All of these are retroactive rewards from previous work.

Is this for S2 retroactive funding? If so, should it not include Crypto Sapiens too?

I am familiar with the term SOL until Season which is an ok DAO wide answer but am not thrilled if that is the decision of the GC doing the hard job that they were elected to do. I also believe that the approved requests are in both condition for previous work already accomplished and work scheduled to be done. Further, the whole design of remuneration coupling bank to an arbitrary number of 1,000 bank per hours while necessary now seems to have created some burn rate issues that need adjusting. Wow! What challenges for fairness. I think it best to ask via snapshot in a DAO wide effort to minimize the ruffled feathers. If 7 million wasn’t enough to make it until Season 3 because of growth and inability to know when to say no or get a better handle on the burn rate what is wrong with 8. Live in peace and retain the talent to fight future battles. Of course is Season 3 starting, sometime in January too long to wait? Thanks GC a and IcedCool for getting this up for consensus.

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Not this absolutely will set a precedent, but it has the potential to do so. Meaning that as a DAO, we may create a better way of operating should this situation occur again, but if that work isn’t done, future Grants Committees may lean on this decision as a way forward.

I think this issue shows why the grants committee should be more than a rubber stamp for forum consensus. Essentially we’re spending more than we have. If this continues we will shorten our runway.

Assuming the amount of funds the GC has to disburse each season is appropriate (big assumption), then we should have rejected some of the projects we’ve taken on. I.e we can’t afford all projects, so some of the projects we’ve taken on shouldn’t be funded, even with forum consensus.

I’d like to see funding happen in a more competitive way. Perhaps instead of a weekly disbursement of any amount, it could be a monthly disbursement of a fixed amount. Proposals that have consensus can then be weighed against each other for merit. If a proposal doesn’t get picked, it can be resubmitted the following month. This would force us to weigh priorities.

The downside to this is that we’re less nimble and exploratory, so it could be too soon for such a change.

4 Likes

It would be nice to have the GC submit a BANK token supply report of some kind. What I don’t know?
I don’t know what is the Target Rate of Token distribution over time. We have a max supply of 1 billion, but how much are we “minting/distributing” each season compared to an the Ideal Token Distribution model.
I don’t know if there is a BANK Token Distribution Model, are there discussions on a Model.
I also can’t easily compare our historical rate of distribution very well. I also don’t know what the rate of DAO Fixed Costs are so it is difficult to also then see what variable and proposed costs are. Some of this maybe Operations Guild questions?

Also the 2nd and third options i feel don’t have any context and so I don’t even understand what the option is.

ya, i don’t even understand the options context myself

Given that these are retroactive funding requests I believe this should go to Snapshot and not be delayed/rolled into S3 budgets.

I recognize this adds to voter fatigue, but this is an issue that deserves the attention a Snapshot vote incurs. As others have stated, this indicates our burn rate is higher than expected. This is something that should be well understood before voting on S3 Budgets.

1 Like