Author: 0xf0480e7b09edb7229d4f7b3b25ef77429c5754cf
Update Status: Late
Project Health: 
On Track
Introduction
With great enthusiasm, activities continue; we have made several formal proposals to improve the Grants Program and we also want to tell you about several very interesting news and developments!
This update covers the period from Dec16 to Jan15. Remember that the period for this grant is from Dec1 to Apr30. You can review the first update here.
Update is one day late due to the timezone.
Thanks!
Highlights
Although the first update of this grant period (which began on December 1, 2023) is reflected in the previous proposal (the updates feature is enabled from the 15th of the month since our grant was approved later), this is the first update that we are posting in this proposal. Some minor tasks and meetings were postponed to late January and February due to the holiday season and vacations, however, all the important aspects have been completed. We have also worked on optimizing time and tasks since the team has reduced its capacity in this grant.
That said, we are very pleased with the progress made this month, both by our team and by some projects that are creating very good practices for the Grants Program.
Here are the most important highlights of the month and you can find at the bottom our metrics based on our main goals.
- Grants program is included in the Landing DAO page and in the Navbar of the Decentraland page.
- Testing Tuesday will be now on Discord Stage!
- Monthly Financial report for grantees is implemented! The GovApp team created the instructions.
- Vesting contracts will be created 2 weeks after the Proposal passes, this will give a time to each grantee to double check with the GSS if their roadmap matches with the vesting contract duration.
- The DAO Grants Github REPO is updated.
- 4th Shipping of the Onboarding Swag is done and 25 more grantees are receiving it!
- The DAO Grants program is listed in Deepdao
- We are working on Proposals to improve the DAO Grants Program. We have made progress in Stages A and B. Stage A has not passed, and STAGE B is published: Refine Grant Categories and percentage of budget (Stage B)
- Vesting Contract Pauses: How long can a vesting contract be paused? This question arose internally within the GSS, so we decided to seek the community’s input through a poll titled: 'Determining Maximum Pause Duration for Delayed Projects. Governance stage here
It has been a great month! Thank you for reading and supporting our work. Please stay in touch with us via our Discord Channel.
Please continue reading our metrics in the additional notes section
Constructive comments are always welcome 
Best regards,
Gia, Fifi, Zino & Pablo
Blockers
We have a bug on the Grants Program landing page due to the document from which we incorporate the metrics. The devs will resolve it within the next month.
Next steps
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Continue restructuring tasks and working to improve the Grants Program framework.
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#TestingTuesdays will continue to be held, adapting changes as needed.
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Promotions for grantees in the Decentraland Blog will continue to be produced.
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Continue onboarding new grantees, assigning grant managers and analyze the feasibility of their roadmaps
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Provide support to the current grantees with their problems and requests.
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Landing page: Solve the bug in the Grants Program landing page.
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Analyze cases that raise concerns and elevate them to the revocations committee if needed.
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Contribute to the DAO strategic planning
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Support grantees for presenting in DAO Townhalls
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Keep on building bridges between the Decentraland Foundation and our DAO community.
Additional notes and links
Here is the status update on activities of the month, along with the impact metrics on our proposal based on our three main goals.
Goal 1: Support the grantees
This month, we welcomed 5 new grantees. Besides, this month, all legacy grants (projects that passed before March the 1st 2023) have finished! We are actively working with 38 projects nowadays (2 projects onboarding, 23 active grants, 5 projects within pause periods and 8 are ending their grant journey).
- We allocated a total of 71 hours to interact with grantees, and provide support during this month.
- This month we have identified 9 problems and requests from grantees and all of them were solved by our team.
- Testing Tuesdays: We have opened a Public Notion Page of our Testing Sessions to provide transparency on the actions of this initiative. This month we had 1 grant. If you want to join future sessions, fill out this form, and we’ll contact you.
Goal 2: Foster transparency
- We have made Formal Requests Public, to provide transparency on the concerns raised, the status of the process and arguments.
- We are making public roadmaps with the main goal of opening our reviewing process. This month we have updated 26 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 1 concern from grants, 1 is being analyzed and 0 grants were elevated to the Revocations Committee.
Improvements to the Grants Program
- Proposals: See the highlights above on this update report.
- 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.
Note regarding the financial report
As mentioned in the proposal, since the proposal was approved 15 days later than expected (resubmission), the monthly payments have been made with the remaining funds from the previous grant.