[DAO:fd597c1] DAO Grants Program - New Categories & Requirements

Governance
1

by 0xd11a019a70986bd607cbc1c1f9ae221c78581f49 (Yemel)

Linked Pre-Proposal

Restructuring the Community Grants Program

Summary

Redefine the categories of the DAO’s Grant Program, and set up clear requirements that can be translated to questions in the application form and KPIs to measure the performance of the project along the way.

Abstract

Currently, the grants program defines the scope of 4 different categories, representing areas of Decentraland that benefit most from community contributions:

  • Community: Education, outreach, events, and moderation.
  • Content Creator: Scenes and models for Decentraland.
  • Platform Contributor: New features and improvements to existing code.
  • Gaming: Complete games for Decentraland.

This proposal aims to redefine the categories and set requirements for each of them.

Motivation

The DAO’s grant program is one of the best vehicles to help grow the Decentraland ecosystem. A community vote approved the current categories, more than a year ago, and now is a good time to review the results and propose improvements.

By reviewing the results of one-year operations , some conclusions can be drawn:

  • The Grant Program has allocated funds to a diversity of projects.
  • The current categories are too broad and sometimes misused.
  • Each category should have clear requirements and impact measurements.

Specification

Every grant must:

  • Comply with Decentraland’s Content Policy, Terms of Use, and Code of Ethics.
  • Declare personnel, budget breakdown, and roadmap.
  • Provide monthly updates on the Governance dApp.
  • Provide a presentation in a video format to be shared publicly.
  • Be responsive to DAO Committee and Core Unit communications.

The proposed categories are:

1- Core Unit

Provide core infrastructure and operations for the DAO. The work done is essential for the organization and grantees may be considered official representatives of the DAO.

  • Requirements:
    • Provide an essential or strategic value to the DAO.
    • Build in the public, publishing open source code and documentation.
  • Performance Metrics:
    • Participation in Governance dApp, DAO Town Halls, and Discord server.

2- Platform
Creation of tools and applications that extend the power of the Decentraland platform or provide alternative ways to explore Decentraland’s ecosystem.

  • Requirements:
    • Build in the public, publishing open source code and documentation.
  • Performance Metrics:
    • The number of contributions made to the main repository of code.
    • Publish the tool or application to production and provide usage metrics.

3- Documentation
Creation of free educational content about how to contribute, build and play on Decentraland. The content should be published on official mediums to be found and preserved for posterity.

  • Requirements:
    • The topic shouldn’t be already well-covered in the official documentation.
    • Provide examples of documentation done in the past.
    • Describe the format of documentation to be produced.
    • To be published in official mediums.
  • Performance Metrics:
    • The number of contributions to Decentraland Documentation
    • The number of contributions to the Awesome Repository.

4- In-World Content
Development of attractive experiences in Decentraland that generate retention of users. The experiences can be in the form of scenes, games, and events, in any case, consumed by players through the reference client.

  • Requirements:
    • Deploy content or host events in Decentraland.
  • Performance Metrics:
    • Newley populated land, Active Users, Returning Users, Time on Scene.
    • Events created and # of attendees to the event.

5- Social Media Content
Projects to create content on social media platforms such as Twitch, Twitter, Youtube, Tik Tok, and Discord. The project aims to reach new users and keep them engaged.

  • Requirements:
    • Explain audience size and relevancy to Decentraland.
  • Performance Metrics:
    • Number of pieces to be produced
    • Total of views and interactions of the created content.
    • Engagement metrics (likes, retweets, reach, retention)
    • Mentions in other media outlets.

6- Sponsorship
Supporting conferences, side events, community meetups, hackathons, and contest prices that target audiences relevant to Decentraland.

  • Requirements:
    • The event is happening IRL or online but outside of Decentraland.
    • Ensure Decentraland DAO brand awareness during the event.
  • Performance Metrics:
    • Number of attendees and level of brand awareness.
    • Evidence of the project execution (photos, videos, publications).
    • Mentions in media outlets.

7- Accelerator
A private company or revenue-generating initiative looking forward to receiving an investment from the DAO.

  • Requirement:
    • Revenue share with the DAO or alternative value proposition.
  • Performance Metrics:
    • Returns of Investment.

Conclusion

This proposal redefines the previous four categories into a new set of seven categories, each of them with a clear scope, requirements, and key performance indicators to measure its impact.

The application form to request a grant should make the requester acknowledge the requirements for the grant category. Grants that do not pass the requirements or are badly categorized should be rejected by community vote.

It’s important for the community and the grantee to agree on the goal of the project and the performance metrics that will be used to measure the impact of the project. Failing to demonstrate results on these performance metrics may result in revoking the grant funding.

Having well-defined categories is a prerequisite for doing proper budgeting, based on these categories the DAO will be able to vote on how to allocate the resources to each category.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like
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Thanks for all the comments and feedback shared on the forum post.

Below are some examples of grants for each category:

1- Core Unit
DAO Governance Squad , DAO Facilitation Squad , DAO Grant Support Squad , Verified Partners Registry , Financial Statements

2- Platform
DCL Edit , VR Client , Genesis City Top-Down Map , 2D Client , DCL Metrics , DCL Closet , Mobile App , Low Latency Streaming .

3- Documentation
Wearable creation and submission tutorials , Community Module: Solitare , Community Module: Checkers , Community Module: Parkour Creation Kit

4- In-World Content
Vroomway , Dice Masters , 8MetaBalls , WonderZone , Wilderness , Vueltta , MoCDA , Filmrare , Mental Health Support

5- Social Media Content
SinfulMeatStick , Chinese speaking community , Portuguese speaking community , The Decentraland Report , Decentraland NOW

6- Sponsorship
IRL Meetup MCON2022 , Builder Competitions , Join the Blender Development Fund , Metaverse Journalism Hackathon , IRL.LAND ETHDenver 2022

7- Accelerator
DCL Real Estate , WeMeta , Fanz .

1 Like
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Voting No on this one. I feel the following section needs way more detail:

Every grant must:

  1. Comply with Decentraland’s Content Policy, Terms of Use, and Code of Ethics.
  2. Declare personnel, budget breakdown, and roadmap.
  3. Provide monthly updates on the Governance dApp.
  4. Provide a presentation in a video format to be shared publicly.
  5. Be responsive to DAO Committee and Core Unit communications.

First, is not clear what this points are conditioning.

  • In order to receive the grant in the first place?
  • In order to take the proposal as valid?
  • In order to keep receiving funds once the grant is enacted? (prevent a revocation or pause)

Second, I think if this points are a Must, and the fate of a grant could depend on them, they should be more explicit.

  • How is the personnel declared? What information is needed?
  • What elements should the budget breakdown include? What is the level of detail needed?
  • How should be readmap expressed? With what level of detail?
  • What should de monthly updates include?
  • When should be de video provided? What information should it include? Some technical requirements? (language, duration)

Some ideas
Personnel:
Must include: Name or Nickname, Link to social media or portfolio, short bio
Example: Ana, twitter/ana, 10 years of experience with SD7

Budget breakdown:
Cashflow detailed month by month, including amount expected to take from the Vesting Contract on that month (this will be fixed in most cases), and approximated amount spent on different categories (personnel, services, fees, taxes, honoraries).

Example

Month 1 Month 2 Month 3
In:
DAO: $10000 DAO: $10000 DAO: $10000
Out:
Personnel: $4000 Personnel: $4000 Personnel: $5000
Fees: $500 Fees: $500 Fees: $0
Prizes: $0 Prizes: $0 Prizes: $15000
Total: $4500 Total: $4500 Total: $21000

Roadmap:
The roadmap should include the list of tasks to complete, by Month, including information about how critical is the task (some tasks must be completed, and others can be completed) and how flexible is the timeline for that task.

Example

Tasks Is Critical Schedule
Month 1
Create building Yes Can be completed next month
Month 2
Publish wearables Yes Must be completed this month
Month 3
Competition Event Yes
Distribute POAP No We can use wearables instead of POAPs

Video:

  • Must be provided half way the development, min duration 2 minutes, max 5 minutes.
  • Must include information about the progress, showing images backing it up.
  • Should include at least 1 person speaking (no need to show the face)
  • Must be in English (spoken or subtitles)
4 Likes
4

Declaring personnel:

  1. Puts members of the team in the spotlight that may not wish to have the exposure
  2. Encourages poaching. Business owners like myself spend a lot of time and money in vetting out freelancers
  3. Isnt always possible because some personnel may not commit to the project until AFTER the proposal is passed
  4. Takes away freedom to make personnel decisions during the course of the grant.

@yemel Maybe I’m overthinking this. If declaring personnel as “NFT World” is acceptable then I’m on board. Is this the case? Or are you proposing that the names of every individual team member be declared? (in which case I’m against for all the reasons above)

5

Return on Investment is extremely hard to predict for early stage projects. Requiring this will encourage pie-in-the-sky estimates that will mostly be wrong when compared against actual results afterward.

6

Participation in DAO Town Halls and Discord server should not be required given the hostility that has taken root in these places. Monthly updates via the forum, monthly meetings with DAO Committee, and a video presentation at the halfway point is sufficient.

1 Like
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DAO Grants Program - New Categories & Requirements

This proposal is now in status: PASSED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 94% 5,432,209 VP (41 votes)
  • No 6% 362,048 VP (5 votes)
8

I agree with this. I also would like to see pre-emptive questions for these topics to have less friction from the community, including myself. If we can have the grant proposer answer these questions more clearly, and it is a standard on the submission form. It will make it less of a big deal to answer. However, there are some community members who are intimidated and fearful of asking the grant proposers they know these types of questions. It will release unnecessary tension.

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Thanks for pointing this out, I’ll clarify this on the Governance Proposal. There should be a new question in the aplication form inquiring about the budget breakdown.

In order to keep receiving funds the grantee should follow all the points in the mentioned list, such as following the code of ethics, terms of use, content policy; providing regular updates and be responsive to official communications.

At the moment I imagine the questions about personnel, budget and roadmap as textareas in the application form. The designers of the governance squad might came up with a better interface to load such information.

I like the suggestions you proposed, they can be included in the documentation and also a helper text on the application form. I also agree with the recomended video specs, I’ll add it to the proposal.

The personnel question will stay as is right now, an open question in the application form and a suggested format to follow. It might evolve to a better UI, but you could still just put the name of one company. It will be up to the community to decide what is enough, case by case.

The Accelerator category aims to give funding to private companies or revenue-generating initiatives asking for funding from the DAO in exchange of something. There will be a question in the application form addressing the revenue share scheme or value proposition for the DAO.

The performance metric should be value generated back to the DAO. The return of the investment is the metric that must be measured, an objective value delivered to the DAO. For example, $$ generated back to the DAO.

Agree. If the video update is mandatory, it can be casted on the Town Hall and it would be optional for the grantee to join and answer question. It’s a must to update progress monthly and be responsible to official communications.

Agree, the form questions and helper text should be revisited to encourage more clarity in their answers. The task to improve the questions and input format should be delegated to the governance squad.

1 Like