by 0x153b2252eddcb3690ae6f5e9f38be13779e1364d (CredibleSource)
People have brought up the idea of a grant freeze. Some have suggested time-based freezes (1 quarter), while others have suggested freezing until MANA hits a certain price threshold.
This poll is just to see if people like the idea of freezing grant spending overall.
If you are in support of freezing grants, it would be good to leave a comment about what kind of freeze you would support.
If you would want to do a time based freeze, how long would you want to freeze spending? 1 Quarter, more? Until a prop to unfreeze is passed?
If you would like to freeze spending until MANA reaches a certain price, what price would you like?
As I stated in Discord, I think we should pause any new grant applications for Q4, unless they are related to enhancing our platform or supporting small wearable makers.
Lets stop content creation, and meanwhile everyone is going to hyperfy and others, cool. I think the grant system can be reviewed in terms of limits, quality assurance, productivity, etc. but not to freeze, it is not the best option for sure, or what is the same: let decentraland be a “dead mall” for some time while other platform is the cool one to use.
I am all for it, too many issues with the current grant system. Stop all grants including for platform category, although I would like for platform improvements to continue, but unfortunately people would find a way to abuse it.
@pablo Those who are asking for grants won’t go to Hyperfy since they are not giving out free money like Decentraland DAO currently does.
I think we should go for a 6 month period of only giving grants for improvements on the platform. e.g. improvements to clients, the chat systems, hosting, connectivity. There should be a hold for 6 months on funding any marketing, content creation or anything that does not directly improve on the current system
We need to concentrate on getting the platform to a level that it can actually keep users active, currently we are only giving grants to “bring users to the platform”, which may or may not work but the main issue is retaining the new users. without a fully functional platform, as it stands now, we are struggling to achieve this.
If we just stop all grants again we are stuck in a cycle of doing the same things expecting different results. we have been here before so we need another solution than one that we have already tried.
Im not talking about people asking for grants, those are few, Im talking about all users in general that can spend time in decentraland with enjoyable experiences.
Both, core components and content should grow in parallel in order to success IMO.
I am voting yes for this proposal, but I will only support the next stage if the following exception and focus will be included.
Let’s temporarily suspend funding for all grant categories, with the exception of platform development. Make the primary objective to substantial improvement DCL’s platform, with a focus on attracting developers that can contribute to the platform’s capabilities. Once the platform has matured with many added features, we can then resume funding for the other grant categories. Strengthening the platform will enable content creators to produce way higher quality content, which will enhance the overall user experience. I think that this approach has the potential for significantly improving returns on investment across all grant categories in the future once the platform reaches its full potential.
Possible platform improvements could include reducing lag for users, enhancing graphics quality, expanding SDK capabilities to enable more interactive and engaging user experiences, developing a fully functional mobile version, and anything else that enhances the platform’s overall performance and accessibility.
Refer to the chart below to see how the amount of MANA that gets vested when the DAO Committee sells off MANA from the treasury and into the exchanges to pay grants.
The shaded blue cells represent monthly grant payments ranging from a “one time payment” of $500 to a 3 month 80K payment for a $240,000 grant. This gives you an idea of how much MANA is leaving our treasury. The shaded nude cells represent the price range of MANA in August.
i.e. If a 140,000 grant, vested at $0.35 for 6 months, that equates to 400K MANA a month for 2,400,000MANA over the grant period (Assuming MANA stays at 0.35 those 6 months).
That same grant at $0.30 for the same duration is 2,800,000 MANA.
Now imagine if we calculated all the MANA lost from proposals that at this time, are “written off”.
With Mana continuously crashing upon each Mana sale to fund the grants, and in accordance with Maryana’s schedule, the 1.85 million Mana that vests monthly would be valued at $185,000 if Mana reaches 10 cents – and we are close to those levels. at that amount we will barely fund one grant because usually grantees ask for dollars and not Mana payments.
I support a total freeze or even a partial one that exempts platform grants. Any form of freeze could contribute to sustain the Dao treasure health. Taking in consideration that I know the importance of consistent platform development under all circumstances, BUT it’s essential to prioritize the health of the Dao treasury as it connected to Decentraland general sustained progress and health.
I agree with much of the concerns individuals have raised and advise switching to Semi-Annually for all grant categories. If individuals would like to continue quarterly, then we can potentially limit it too only Core Unit & Platform would be beneficial. Voted Yes, and believe all grants should remain frozen at least until the beginning of next year, which would permit us some time to have deeper conversations and reassess our focuses on the longevity of Decentraland.
I’m happy to see this conversation happening. I supported the budgetary increase for the platform category, but increasing the budget alone will not necessarily yield the results we are looking for. I would support a pause of all grants except platform, but there should also be a plan to reach out to those whom would contribute in that area instead of waiting for applications.
I think there is a decent financial argument for freezing grants that aren’t related to platform development. But I feel like as a developer and grantee in the Platform category, I have a potential to be biased in that direction, so I am voting for things to remain as they are. Without people throwing events and hanging out in Decentraland, nobody will have a reason to use the tools we build. It truly is a chicken and egg problem.
I support the idea of a 6month/ perpetual freeze until we have our shop in order and until MANA is at a higher price, which at the very least should be above 50 cents, and to exclude the platform category.
It is counter productive from a DAO treasury standpoint to keep funding projects and add to the downward pressure of MANA’s price. It’s almost as if we want MANA to go down more so that we can pay more to get the same content we have. If you are infuriated with the inflation that you are experiencing IRL, this is the same, paying more for the same amount of stuff consumed.
I’m voting no because the last grant freeze was came with a lot of turmoil and frustration within our community. I voted to pause grants last time because I believed it would let us find a solution for long term sustainability. I received pushback in my DM’s from creators that those of us who voted to pause the grants were “suppressing creativity” on the platform. I’m surprised and frustrated that 8 months later, we are having the same conversation again. Did we not have a plan in place to compensate for the possible drop in price of mana???
One way to stymie the flow of funds out of the DAO is to freeze new grants being approved, but let’s also have the difficult conversation around the grants that are already being paid out… Are these grants shipping their deliverables? Are they really bringing in the numbers of new DAU they indicated they would in their proposal? Are grants getting passed at a high frequency with one or two large whale votes? Are grants that are not following their roadmaps being revoked? We may need to consider that we need more “teeth” in our committee that checks in with grantees.
For anyone active in the DAO 8 months ago, you remember what a battle it was to pause grants in the first place. If a group wants to come up with a solution to the DAO spending…do it…but this time, I say do it while the clock is ticking. Pressure has a way of getting results that actually work.
I do agree with you there, jar0d. Ideally DCL will become a place where businesses want to come and hold events out of FOMO, because we have a thriving decentralized economy they can benefit from. We should probably start favoring efforts that promote any long-term economic growth, not just platform enhancement necessarily. But I think the hard part is determining what contributes to long-term economic growth. Consistent events, consistent creation, and consistent platform stability are all contributions in my eyes.
I think it makes sense to pause every once in a while to reevaluate how the DAO should prioritize its funding, especially in times when MANA is less valuable. But to address @pablo 's point with @jar0d 's point here - if people are going to hold events and create things in the metaverse anyway, what’s going to bring them here as opposed to other platforms where it’s cheaper and easier to build large, complex, or expansive experiences?
Do we have any workgroups on economic stimulus? I think that may be a better way to think of the grant funds. They’re meant to stimulate the economic growth of Decentraland, not of just one group or individual.
Having gone through the grant process for the first time recently, I’ve been pretty happy with the Grant Support Squad’s role in keeping me accountable and making sure the health of the project remains on target.
I’ve mostly been working with @fifitango on that, who has really made it feel like I’m being supported in building my project and communicating my progress. Fifi also did a great job of setting expectations for what the DAO framework required for my grant category, and what kind of behavior from grantees generally rubbed the community the wrong way. All this was done even for a grant which was pretty uncontroversial and supported by the community.
I know DAU wasn’t the main point of your comment, but some thoughts on DAU - I think it is a really hard metric to estimate in advance (as far as saying “I will build X and it will bring in Y new users”). It may be hard to even reliably calculate, as we found out in the process of making the number 38 into a community meme, and in discussing the idea of rewarding high-traffic scenes.
For a platform like mine (Virtual Land Manager), DAU gets complicated too.
Is Virtual Land Manager’s DAU based on the number of people who log in and manage their scenes in a day? Or the number of people who visit VLM-enabled scenes in a day?
I guess it could be both. But that gives my platform a pretty unfair advantage, because by convincing all the large event hubs to install my tool, I get to absorb all of their DAU and portray my platform as the most successful project in DCL, despite the fact that I’m just making life easier for the people who are actually bringing in those users with their builds.
Expanding on the point I keep going back to about stimulating economic growth - maybe we could develop some formula that combines a number of different KPIs to do predictive analysis of the economic impact of a project on our economy, as well as retrospective analysis?
