[DAO:64c4924] Should the character limit be increased for grant proposals?

by 0xc2877b05cfe462e585fe3de8046f7528998af6f1 (Unknower)

The problem:

For regular proposals, the description has a limit of 7000 characters.
For grant proposals, there is a similar limit, but it is arbitrarily broken up as follows:

Abstract - 750 characters
Description - 3500 characters
Roadmap & Milestones - 1500 characters
Impact metrics - 750 characters
Team Members - 750 characters per team member

A proposed solution:

Double the character limit for “Description” to 7000 characters.
Double the character limit for “Roadmap & Milestones” to 3000 characters.

An anecdote demonstrating the need for this change:

When I submitted my grant proposal for Virtual Land Manager, I ended up creating a PDF to present the proposal in a way that made sense and broke up the proposal into organized chunks. Translating this document into an actual proposal proved to be a frustrating hinderance to my ability to represent the spirit and objectives of my proposal.

Because of the character limitation, I had to summarize certain parts of the proposal that led to misunderstandings around what was being offered.

For example, one part of the budget would cover the transaction fees to allow 1,000,000 transactions on the Polygon network, to help creators easily distribute free wearables and emotes at events without the technical skills to set up a server and write the code to do so. Due to the character limitation, at least one person who was not comfortable opening the PDF link boiled this offering down to “25k USD to do a potential airdrop in the future”.

I understand that we can’t force people to read longer proposals either way and there will always be misunderstandings. But something I had not considered was the reasonable distrust for any external links within DAO proposals. I have since heard a few people say that they were told never to click links in the DAO, which is probably not bad advice.

By increasing the character limitation for grant proposals, we will reduce any need for proposals to direct people to supplementary websites or documents. It’s not unreasonable to expect that projects asking for 6-figure budgets would have more than a few pages to write about their plan, and we should encourage as much information as possible being added directly to the text of the proposal.

  • Yes, double the character restrictions for Description and Roadmap
  • Yes, raise the character restriction, but not by that much.
  • Yes, raise the character restriction as high as possible
  • No, don’t change anything
  • Invalid question/options

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like

Hi, you can also suggest this solution in Canny: https://decentraland.canny.io/governance

Recently I submitted similar.

Increase characters limit in the DAO proposal form.


1 Like

Could we also increase the character limit for the personnel area? It’s currently at 750 characters. I feel like hearing what experiences of team members’ have is one of the most vital pieces of information of the entire proposal. I want to know who people are, especially as grants are beginning to get scrutinized more and more. It seems like a very preventative action.

2 Likes

Ah, I was afraid there might be a technical limitation like this. I wonder if there’s some other way we could address this without relying on Snapshot, that could be deemed more trustworthy than random links to whatever.

1 Like

I agree, ideally we’d raise them all, but it sounds like there’s a technical limitation at play that’s out of our control :frowning:

Should the character limit be increased for grant proposals?

This proposal is now in status: FINISHED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes, double the character restrictions for description and roadmap 84% 5,760,096 VP (83 votes)
  • Yes, raise the character restriction, but not by that much. 7% 504,787 VP (8 votes)
  • Yes, raise the character restriction as high as possible 1% 3,367 VP (7 votes)
  • No, don’t change anything 1% 3 VP (1 votes)
  • Invalid question/options 7% 505,360 VP (4 votes)

Should the character limit be increased for grant proposals?

This proposal has been PASSED by a DAO Committee Member (0xfb1afa4dc069ffb47b19dbee196045d508fcd5a2)