[DAO:62df462] DAO grants program - New Category: Community Experiences

Governance
1

by 0xe6af22b8fd4a2fdfec9a0b18c6be9683882d70e6 (Yararasita)

Linked Pre-Proposal

DAO grants program - create the Community Building category

Summary

Create a Community Experiences category for the Decentraland DAO Grants Program, to serve the needs of our community of creators who bring people together in the reference client, generating value in community engagement.

Abstract

After an analysis from the Grant Support Squad on Q2 funded grants, an open session with the community, hearing thoughts from the DAO on the previous governance poll, among other conversations with several stakeholders, grantees and advisors, we are submitting this Draft Governance Proposal to create the Community Experiences (in the previous poll referenced as Community Builders) category.

If the proposal passes, some changes in the existing Grants Framework must be done along with its creation. This includes the proper definition of the categories to avoid overlapping in objectives, and changes in the percentages of allocation of budget in current categories.

We have decided to pursue both in different draft governance proposals. This one will address the details of the Community Experiences category, including its requirements, impact metrics and the delimitations of scope of existing categories. Another draft governance proposal with the name “DAO GRANTS PROGRAM - BUDGETARY REDISTRIBUTION” will address the percentages of allocation of budget.

From the Categories definition and scope, we suggest to make the following specifications:

In world building (current In-world content): Aims to build architecture to populate Land. The experiences can be scenes and games for Decentraland users through the reference client.

Community experiences (this proposal): Aims to bring people together in the reference client and generate community engagement. This can include creating wearables and emotes, or organizing events to gather with others and ignite fun community interactions.

Social Media (currently has the same name): Aims to generate social media content to bring new audiences to Decentraland.

The other categories (Documentation, Platform, Core Units, Sponsorship and Accelerator) will remain the same.

Motivation

As stated in the poll, During Q2 which finished in June 2023, we detected grant proposals that could fit into two or more categories, and that there are great projects that are not addressed by our program.
One example is the type of grant that aims to onboard new members to Decentraland for specific target audiences, like DCL Brazil. In this case, the grantee requested a Documentation Grant, which was not compliant with the Category, but the proposal was valuable for community building and onboarding new members.
There are also valuable DAO members that make community-building experiences and events, like ABC Decentraland, or CBD - Community Building Decentraland who share knowledge with newcomers and ignite interaction among Decentraland users and DAO members.
On the other hand, in the near past, the community has voted YES for the Ambassadors Program, and one of the principal objectives was to empower community members. We strongly agree with the spirit of the proposal, and think it would be a good investment to support these valuable community stewards that make the experience in Decentraland more exciting and fun.
With these inputs, we hosted an open session with the community to discuss the creation of a new category in the Grants program, named Community Experiences, and we created a poll. We also consulted with several stakeholders, grantees and advisors to gather valuable insights in building this proposal.

Concerns so far that have been taken into account:

  • The community has expressed the concerns of not closing the possibility of newcomers to be able to submit proposals, so we have deleted the requirement posted in the poll regarding the “Demonstrated commitment to community building within Decentraland: Proven track record of organizing and facilitating community events, initiatives, or educational programs” as we agree that we don’t want to close the possibility of new creators to join us in building a metaverse owned and created by its users. We want to be open, welcoming and friendly to our fellow creators who want to join us in this quest. We have added track record as something that is valuable in the brief description, and not as a requirement.

Specification

Name of new category: Community Experiences

Brief description: Aims to bring people together in the reference client to generate community engagement. This can include creating wearables and emotes, or organizing events to gather with others and ignite fun community interactions. A proven track record of organizing and facilitating community events, initiatives, or educational programs is highly valuable.

Category Requirements:

  • Define how your project will contribute to community building in the Decentraland Ecosystem.
  • Development of attractive experiences in Decentraland that generate retention of users in the form of events, exchanges of wearables, emotes or other interactions consumed by players through the reference client.
  • The proposal should include how you will collaborate with other community builders, Core Units, or projects to foster cross-community partnerships.
  • The proposal should include the development of resources, tutorials, or guides that help explore the referent client or onboarding new community members for these experiences.

Impact metrics:

  • Number of community members engaged or impacted through Community Experiences initiatives. This can be measured by event attendees, wearables minted, or other pertinent metrics based on the specific proposal.
  • Feedback and testimonials from community members regarding the value and impact of the proposal’s contributions. This can be shown in the monthly updates of the grant as quotes from users who come to the community building experiences or other stakeholders.
  • Growth and activity metrics of the community platforms, scenes in the reference client, forums, or social media groups facilitated by these Community Builders.

Conclusion

The implementation of the Community Experiences category would help the Decentraland Grants Program by covering the needs of the Decentraland members who make an outstanding work building community, and generating fun experiences in our Reference Client, igniting valuable engagement.

In the past, this type of creators haven’t been able to successfully apply to grants under the current categories as their activities and impact metrics would fall under two or more categories, or were not covered by our current categories.

It would also help us better define the categories objectives, like Social Media (which would aim to to bring people from other communities to Decentraland) and In-world Content (which would aim to build architecture to populate land with games and builds) and add this Community Experiences category (which would aim to generate engagement), allowing each of these categories to cover specific needs.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like
3

I agree with having more defined categories but I do not think in world content should be allocated a majority of the budget

4

I don’t see why DCL Brazil is being used as example here, the social media category already exist and already fit what they want to do.
I also don’t like that the “opensourceness” requirement is removed for the Community Experiences category, and I still don’t understand why it’s needed, I don’t feel it’s beneficial to split the budget once again, we might need to look into sharing a budget between different categories.

1 Like
5

Really? Have you not paid attention to several of these little grants that are turned down left and right because “We” don’t know who they are. I don’t know who made those statements but they sure were not voting that way. Just my observation. I like the idea but I think this should be on the low end of the budget and be restricted to $5,000 - $10,000/grant maximum possibly. The ones i’ve seen were usually $3000 or less.

6

In the meeting on the topic, it was Chris i saw raise this concern.

7

I quite like this one, but I think the community experiences are a great example of a category that should have much lower limits per grant, ideally people should be able to make a small amount of $$$ go far, because as a community, they are in a position to leverage their own value to make that happen.

Going to abstain for now, but I like the concept of more specific grant categories with more specific usecase limits.

8

someone who did not vote on them

9

Hey! Thank you so much for the comments and your support so far in these changes.

To @dogman, @morph and @existential14 about budgeting,

So far, our spirit is to contribute to a creators economy that is healthy and can have a space to think about projects in longer terms and provide sustained contributions, being paid fairly for the value they bring to Decentraland’s ecosystem. That’s also why we have supported the initiative of having 12-month grants instead of 6-month grants. Limiting grants to short amounts of money prevents teams that are built to think of longer term contributions, more robust infrastructures, and to be continuous over time. As they are today, we have the chance to support both types of contributions.

And to @hprivakos,
DCL Brazil is being used as an example because their contribution could go way beyond social media, but they can’t now based on the categories we have. This category is needed because we have seen how events and different communities generate engagement by bringing people together, to have fun and explore. We want to support that by generating a category where the objective is towards creating community and experiences inside the reference client.

Hope this helps understand the willingness behind the proposal more clearly.

10

I like the proposal but some Community Experiences might need new architecture to populate LAND.

From the grant description, I understand that these experiences must be created from existing infrastructure.

But sometimes, especially for larger experiences, you need to invest (at least some %) in building the infrastructure aka something in DCL.

11

100%, communities don’t need that much money to leverage more value.

12

Voting No,
this change is actively discouraging the development, promotion and use of other clients being developed by the DAO in favor of the client developed primarily by the foundation (the “reference client”)

The DAO currently has 5 clients in development that should also be supported:

  • Babylon client (info)
  • Godot client
  • Rust client
  • 2D client (info)
  • VR client (info)
14

Grants should be agnostic to the client, shouldn’t be?

I think the reference client is not a key component for this proposal

1 Like
15

DAO grants program - New Category: Community Experiences

This proposal is now in status: PASSED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 87% 6,821,645 VP (66 votes)
  • No 13% 1,036,179 VP (12 votes)
  • Abstain 0% 0 VP (0 votes)