[DAO:48b5171] Update #4 for proposal "Renewal Grant Support Squad 2023H2"

Governance
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Author: 0xe6af22b8fd4a2fdfec9a0b18c6be9683882d70e6
Update Status: On Time
Project Health: :green_circle: On Track

Introduction

Hi folks! This month we are focused on making the raising of concerns about grantees more transparent, based on your feedback. The landing page for the grants program is on Alpha version and you can already explore it, and we are eager to host it in Decentraland’s domain. The Community Experiences category has passed a binding governance proposal, and we have hosted an open session with the community to talk about budgetary distribution, plus executed our activities to lead grantees to success.

Highlights

Here is a status update on activities of month 4, along with the impact metrics on our proposal based on our three main goals.

Goal 1: Support the grantees

This month, we welcomed 7 new grantees, adding a total of 30 onboarded these 4 months, and a total of grantees being onboarded of 48 since the new framework was put in place.

  • We allocated a total of 115 hours to interact with grantees, and provide support.

  • We have identified 11 problems and requests, 7 were solved, and the others are being addressed by our team. Besides, this month we are still working with 6 grantees from legacy (grants that passed before March the 1st 2023). From those, 2 finished their grants during this month.

Goal 2: Foster transparency

  • We have identified that there is a need for the community to be able to raise concerns to the Revocations Committee without us being the only ones reviewing these cases. We are gathering with the Revocations Committee and DAO Committee to see how we can make a better process. So far, we have made Formal Requests Public, to provide transparency on the concerns raised, the status of the process and arguments. This is the first version, and we will work on its implementation next weeks.

  • Regarding Grant Support Squad’s manual of operations, we are currently peer reviewing each process for accuracy.

  • We are making public roadmaps with the main goal of opening our reviewing process. This month we have updated 37 public roadmaps with our grantees.

  • We’ve updated the GSS Public Roadmap.

  • We are always encouraging grantees to make their monthly updates, and you can check those out in the dAPP.

  • Every Monday the GSS is sharing the planned tasks for the week in our Discord Channel.

Goal 3: Guarantee an efficient use of the DAO treasury.

This month, we analyzed 9 concerns from grantees, one of them decided to step down from their grant, and none of them were elevated to the Revocations Committee or revoked so far.

Please continue reading our highlights in the additional notes section

Blockers

For deploying the Grants Program landing page, we need to have a decentraland.org domain, but this depends on some technical issues that our developers are currently working on with Decentraland Foundation. For this reason, our alpha version is still being hosted on a testing domain.

Next steps

  • Upload governance proposals for budget distribution.
  • Landing page: waiting for blocker to be solved.
  • Documentation of the Grants Support Squad DAO program: We’ll continue writing processes of Onboardings, Support with promotion, Support with blockers and requests, Organizing community activities, Creation of a revocations committee, and How to make improvements to a grants program.
  • Onboarding Marketing kit: gather addresses from our grantees, receive production.
  • #TestingTuesdays will continue to be held, adapting changes needed. We have already planned 6 sessions for October.
  • Promotions for grantees in the Decentraland Blog will continue to be produced.
  • Continue onboarding new grantees, assigning PMs and analyze the feasibility of their roadmaps
  • Provide support to the current grantees with their problems and requests,
  • Analyze cases that raise concerns and elevate them to the revocations committee,
  • Contribute to the DAO strategic planning,
  • Support grantees for presenting in DAO Townhalls
  • Keep on building bridges between the Decentraland Foundation and our DAO community <3

Additional notes and links

Improvements to the Grants Program

  • Governance Proposals: We have created three proposals to make a better grants program based on community needs:

– Compatibility with the latest Decentraland SDK: We have posted a binding governance proposal to make a requirement that all grants proposals must be compatible with the last stable version of the SDK (now SDK7). Voting ends on October 2nd.

– Community Experiences new category: a binding governance proposal passed. We still need to define budgetary assignment to apply it to the Grants Program.

– Budgetary Distribution: We have held an open session to the community to gather insights on this topic. We will upload a governance proposal soon.

  • Landing Page: We have reached an Alpha version of the Home - Landing Page. By next month we think we will have it ready :slight_smile:

  • Onboarding kit: Production is on! We have started collecting addresses from our grantees, being mindful of the data handling and using an end-to-end encrypted form to gather that data. Bythe end of the month first shipping we think will be done.

  • AGILE: This month we started applying agile methodologies to improve our work processes. So far we have reorganized our meetings, roles and backlog that we’ll be testing during September.

  • Grantees Metrics: We are gathering impact metrics along with the grantees, in compliance to the new requirements of the grant program framework voted earlier this year. However, each grant and category has its own unique characteristics that we are addressing in order to improve them.
    It has been a great month! Thank you for reading and supporting our work. Please stay in touch with us via our Discord Channel.

Constructive comments are always welcome :slight_smile:

Best regards,

Gia, Fifi, Pablo & Zino

View this update on the Governance dApp

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Where does the process require you to review the cases prior to submitting it to the Revocations Committee?

You don’t follow the current process? Why isnt this a community discussion? More behind closed door policy? More behind closed door interviews?

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Chapter Two - Procedure

Steps 2 & 3.

Please just admit this is because you didn’t get selected for the committee.

4

Stop making this personal. The job is irrelevant anyways. They aren’t passing any concerns to the Revocations Committee and they are acting as their own judge rather than being liaisons to the DAO Communities Concerns.

5

Thank you GSS for your work so far… Looking forward to seeing improvements in the revocation process, the documentation of the GSS program, and really enjoying the Testing Tuesday sessions with Fifi… great way to showcase progress and involve the community.

I have one concern:

In the midst of heavy discussion around grantee accountability and responsible use of our treasury, it is discouraging to see that this short sentence is the only attention you have given to what has risen as the #1 topic of concern in the community. Many have voiced their discontent with the obvious pilfering, misuse, fraud, waste, abuse and lack of transparency from some grantees, and the lack of data that we have at our disposal to objectively evaluate grant projects in an open and community-driven fashion.

A good amount of active builders have left the DAO community, and those that are left are discouraged to see the continuing manipulation of our grant funds and voting process. The GSS should take a lead role in “guaranteeing efficient use of DAO funds”, especially when you repeatedly emphasize this as one of your 3 main goals.

I am ready and willing to work with the GSS to increase the level of community-driven accountability, provide more open data, improve the communication channels between grantees and the community, establish basic accountability measures, and continue to build a framework for accurate and complete reporting of metrics, expenses and deliverables.

I have proposed two governance measures to help in these areas, linked here:

We need a GSS and supporting grantees is of great importance, but when grant projects receive huge amounts of funding (over 100K worth of “support”), we should place an equal amount of weight on accounting for, and ensuring proper use of the funds, as dictated in each grant proposal.

I feel there is a disconnect between the focus of the GSS and the community, and would like to see more active involvement on the issues that affect us most. Grant accountability, reporting, and open data are far more important than deciding new budgets for grant categories.

Thank you again for your hard work and dedication.