[DAO:84cb556] DAO GRANTS PROGRAM - BUDGETARY REDISTRIBUTION

Governance
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by 0x858343382132b9ab46c857a7d52fdbafc039f784 (Zino)

Linked Pre-Proposal

DAO grants program - create the Community Building category

Summary

Define a budgeting strategy for the DAO’s Grants Program to secure the good standing of the treasury and long-term operations of the DAO.

Abstract

The Decentraland DAO has been granted a 10-year vesting contract worth 222M MANA starting Feb 19, 2020. The MANA in this contract vests every second, thus gradually increasing the size of the DAO’s fund at a rate of 1.8M MANA per month. Also, the DAO has its revenue streams, such as marketplace fees and wearable curation fees.

During the Q4 of 2022, the DAO decides through the governance process to define a strategy to limit the maximum amount of funds that can be allocated quarterly via the Grants Program.

Motivation

After an analysis from the Grant Support Squad on Q2 funded grants, an open session with the community, and hearing thoughts on the previous pre-poll governance, we have understood the following insights, aligned with the proposed new categorizations of grants:

  • In World content (In world Building)= As this category was used fully and grants under this category have passed but due to lack of funding they were not granted, we propose to increase this category from 20% to 35%.
  • Platform = As in Q2 this category was used by 19.83%, we are proposing to decrease this category from 40% to 20.
  • Core Unit 15% = Left as it was as it was enough to cover its needs and fund new proposals under the category.
    Sponsorship = as in Q2 the usage of this category was 0%, we are decreasing this category from 10 to 2 %.
  • Documentation = As in Q2 the usage of this category was 0% as the only grant that passed was nos compliant with the grantees proposal for this category, we are adding a new category that can cover our community’s needs (Community Experiences) and we are decreasing from 3% to 1% (which for Q3 would have represented $14630 DAI)
  • Social Media Content = In Q2, the usage of this category was 0%. We are decreasing this category from 5% to 2%. We are aware that the total 5% of the budget for this category was used, but we’d like to encourage the social media content creators to be able to bring their communities to experiences in the Reference Client, and they would be covered in the Community Experiences category.
  • Accelerator = From 7 to 10% because it was a short budget for the requested grants in Q2.
  • Community Experience (new category) = assigning 15% (this category 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. Please check out the governance proposal named “DAO GRANTS PROGRAM - NEW CATEGORY: COMMUNITY EXPERIENCES” for more information.

Specification

The Grants Program is divided into four periods (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4). At the beginning of each quarter the maximum amount of money that can be allocated through the Grants Program will be defined using the formula: 5,500,000 * MANA_PRICE * 0.7

Below is the proposed distribution for the next quarter (Q4, 2023) aligned with the proposed new categorizations of grants, including the quarter budgets using the previous example of a MANA price of $0.38:

  • In World Building 35% = $512,050 USD
  • Community Experiences 15% = 219,450 USD
  • Platform 20% = $ 292,600 USD
  • Core Unit 15% = $ 219,450 USD
  • Sponsorship 2% = $ 29,260 USD
  • Documentation 1% = $ 14,630 USD
  • Social Media Content 2% = $ 29,260 USD
  • Accelerator 10% = $ 146,300 USD

foto

Conclusion

The DAO has an income of 1.8M MANA every month and should set up a limit control to spend at most 70% of such a stream. This will mitigate the risk of running out of funds in the next 7 years.
The DAO should agree on limits for each category to distribute the funds based on a targeted strategy. This will encourage initiatives in underfunded categories.
This approach aims to foster growth and development within the Decentraland ecosystem while ensuring fair allocation across different categories of projects, increasing those which aim to build architecture to populate Land In world building (current In-world content) and bring people together in the reference client to generate community engagement Community experiences (In poll named Community Builders).

Also, The DAO can change this distribution in the future via a Governance Proposal.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2

voting no. We need platform improves before anything else. There is no point in increasing the budget for in world content while we cannot support/ do not have large amounts of users. I would also say just bc a category is not being used does not mean it is not needed. If anything we should be encouraging for platform focused development rather than reducing the budget. I do believe the budgets should be reformed but I do not think these are the ideal numbers

3 Likes
3

I don’t think the goal should be to encourage people to use a single category, but to encourage grants in different areas.
You are basically killing Sponsorship (or allowing 3-4 big events per Q) and Documentation (Malloy got 10k in a single Doc grant).

3 Likes
4

I agree with what @dogman wrote above

If anything I think that the budget for the Platform category should be increased even more and the other categories reduced and we should figure out how to attract more developers to DCL to help improve the platform itself. DAO grants spent on platform improvements at this point have a lot bigger chance at bringing real long term value in my opinion compared to the In World Content category.

3 Likes
5

Voting no as I think the majority of the budget should go towards improving the platform. The ROI of improving the platform will be much higher than In-World Building and Community Experiences as seen by minimal results (i.e. user acquisition and retention) of previous grants awarded.

2 Likes
6

Before voting, I would like to review the grants passed over the last quarter and their level of success. It is ok to ensure that grants deliver on their roadmap, but I believe we are missing a critical piece of the grant process which is to review, and decide, as a community, the benefit, or lack thereof, of each grant, or each category. We are lacking a widely disseminated and organized review process that involves the entire community. Do most of us know what happened at the end of each grant? What was delivered in the end and what was missing? Do we as a community really have a clear picture of the impact of each grant? Just because we spent so much dollars on something doesn’t mean that it’s the most effective use of our money. Instead of using past expenditures to measure future budgets, we should, together as a community, have a clearer picture of where the money went, how it was spent, and what the benefit was.

1 Like
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Voting NO. I am agree with @dogman. Regardless as to what was utilized it is the one category that it is needed in the most. hopefully we can change that and get more people to create and improve the platform.

Also, the new Community one, far too high in my opinion. maybe 5-7%. I think there should also be a low max amount for request. Like $3,000 - $5,000/grant. Most of the ones that might have fallen into this category were voted down anyway and they were all below $3,000. People think it’s money request to have an IRL party so good luck getting one to pass. I do hope to try one of these days those. Meetup in L.A. your ticket in is a new person to show them DCL.

I’d like to add, the information you gathered on the past grants is great. Thank you for doing this.

2 Likes
8

Sponsorship ~10%

Budget 100 ETH :wink:

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@zino @yararasita
What about defining limits per proposal depending on the category? So, for example, if there is 100K for category A, defining a limit of 10K per proposal, would allow 10 proposals to be enacted in the quarter.

Besides that, at this point in time, I think Platform & Core Units should be the ones with more importance here rather than in-world content. Also agree with @HPrivakos Sponsorship and Social Media are too limited and I think is so important at this moment, and although I think it’s really important I see community Experiences too big for a new category.

My own example of proposal:

Total 100% : 1 463 000
(I remove bigger than 3 months requests and there will be renewals)

  • Platform 30% = 438 900 → limit to 4 proposals for the 3 months, 109 725 per proposal (they can renew afterwards based on work, community votes)
  • Core Unit 18% = 65 835 → no limit for proposals
  • In World Building 20% = 292 600 → limit to 3 proposals of 97 533 for 3 months (can renew after 3 months with new voting)
  • Community Experiences 15%
  • Social Media Content 7%
  • Documentation 5%
  • Sponsorship 5%
  • Accelerator 0%
2 Likes
10

This feels like the opposite of what we need.

Our limits are not ‘goals’ or ‘targets’ to spend, they are limitations to prevent us from decimating our treasury while we figure out good oversight and accountability.

Right now, the best ROI has clearly been on platform improvements that benefit everyone on the platform, as opposed to content grants that so far have been used to pilfer, and often have no accountability, oversight, or tangible ROI provided.

If anything, hitting the limits of a category should show that it is not only easily abusable, but it is likely a category we need more oversight and harsher requirements for.

3 Likes
11

"In response to @dogman , @szjanko , @amanda_mod , and @Existential14

Thank you for your interest in the proposal and your feedback. We agree that the Decentraland platform should be improved, just as the Protocol Squad is doing. However, the Platform category covers more, and there are additional projects that could contribute to this improvement, such as Decentraland Studio or the Catalyst node. That being said, allocating 40% of the budget to this category may not be the most effective way to encourage these enhancements. What we need are more specific projects capable of addressing the issues and blockers that the Decentraland Platform faces. For instance, going through the tender initiative will validate the idea needed, address these improvements, foster competition among teams capable of addressing them, attract more developers to DCL, and ultimately enhance performance. Also, this initiative has its own budget.

On a related note, the DAO has only utilized 20% of this budget category (the same percentage we are proposing), which is sufficient to cover projects during Q3 and Q4 (considering the mana price from Q3 is nearly 600,000 USD) that could address current issues, along with the potential for new ones to emerge during the tender process.

If, in the future, there is a specific focus from the DAO strategy of developing in the platform, we will adapt the budget to cover those needs. But in the meantime, we are trying to be as agile as we can in implementing the changes to the needs our community of creators has today.

In response to @CheddarQueso

Since the initiation of the new framework and the implementation of impact metrics, only a few projects have concluded. Among them, 2 projects fall under the platform category: the DAO-Owned Catalyst Archival Node and the Refund smart contract audit of DCLControllerV2 (NAME minting). The former has successfully introduced a new way to access historical data, while the latter involved a smart contract audit. Additionally, 2 projects within the in-world content category have resulted in the creation of 2 games: Meeple Madness MVFW and Second Escape Room. We are eager to see how the rest of the community contributors under the grants program finish, so we can have a broader analysis, but this is what we have so far. Hope it answers your question.

In response to @pablo and @HPrivakos ,
We agree that promotion is indeed necessary. It’s important to note that the sponsorship aspect is to real-world events, which haven’t yet been requested. Nevertheless, the proposed percentage is sufficient to facilitate these events if they emerge, based on what has been requested for this type of support in the grants program. Also, the allocation for social media involves creating content for various platforms. While it’s open for discussion whether this allocation should be increased, based on the historical data, a 2% allocation should adequately cover video creation for social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube."

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1 Like
13

I am proposing allocating even more than 40% to the platform category, reducing the in world category, and instead coming up with ideas on how we can attract more developers that can make significant contributions to this category. We are over funding in world content already, increasing that category will just make the problem worse. Putting both building efforts towards the platform category, as well as marketing efforts targeting developers that can contribute to the platform category will be a way better use of our DAO funds at this stage. In the future once the platform’s capabilities are improved, then lets come back to this and at that point increase the in world content category.
If anything, setup a separate budget that will create targeted marketing to attract more developers to come join Decentraland.

2 Likes
14

having a large % allocation to the platform category can be part of the marketing that will attract the much needed developers interest

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Platform improvements require real initiative and massive amounts of architecture that must be met not just in theory, but succeed in reality to accountably receive the grants.

Because of this, it entirely makes sense that these categories would be underutilized even when they are the most important, we could blow through millions for community events in a quarter if we wanted to, that doesn’t make it a necessity or something that benefits us for the $ spent.

So far, the categories getting an increase in spend have only proven to be a net loss, while the platform categories continue to provide value to all and require real implementations to both succeed and get the funding requested.

Perhaps instead of altering the buckets, we should be reserving the unspent funds for that category, I’d care much more about instilling confidence the platform has sufficient funding when we blow through all of our vested MANA to throw meetups or parties with little proven ROI.

Of course, still nice to have these things, but the $$$ amount spent for return is ridiculous, and does not instill confidence there’s any reason to waste more MANA per quarter on the most abused categories.

1 Like
16

It hurts my heart to vote no, because I would love to see funds allocated towards community experiences. But I’m afraid of decreasing the platform budget by half to get there.

1 Like
17

The DAO has an income of 1.8M MANA every month

Can I ask a different angle of question to the community? DAO should try to incubate more ways to increase income to DAO from protocol/any fees from activities. As a meaning of treasury management, we should promote $MANA to more DeFi protocols or another type of utility as a collateral asset. The problem means if DAO gets a big number of $MANA, a market can’t undertake the same value.

Is there any budget to increase such activities from this proposal?

Could you analyze which percentage of tokens (MANA or DAI) we used as grants until now?

I know about the priority is not high in the community, we should develop more on DCL. But I think the monthly incoming 1.8M MANA is too big for us. It’s not a current problem, but I guess it will be a future problem we should find a good idea from now.

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DAO GRANTS PROGRAM - BUDGETARY REDISTRIBUTION

This proposal is now in status: REJECTED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 7% 532,519 VP (17 votes)
  • No 78% 5,595,444 VP (68 votes)
  • Abstain 15% 1,131,448 VP (7 votes)