Happy New Years to you, the Grant support squad, and the whole DCL Community.
Thank you for your due diligence and hard work and investigation over this matter. Even though there are some things I don’t necessarily agree with and see things completely different, I respect your decision and know you have the community’s best interest at hand, as do I. I am willing to oblige to the terms you set forth.
Our team will vigorously prepare all the information you requested while trying to stay afloat and get back to you for review once prepared. We will hold off on all future events and activities except New Years and possibly the Chinese New Year concert since they’ve already been planned.
Thank you, again, so much for what your team does for the community and hope the community continues to see success over your supervision and great efforts. Happy New Years and hope everyone has a beautiful new start to 2023.
Kudos to @yemel and the DAO team for their commitment and dedication to ensuring this community remains on the up and up. Let’s tackle the other projects that have been slow to deliver or questionable rugs, so we can continue living our best experience in DCL.
Let’s make sure everyone is getting paid for their work on the Beattrekers events. The 60k already collected by @MetaTrekkers should pay the venue owners and DJs the remaining balance owed in USDC on the blockchain * trackable reasons*, not USD. The remaining community funds should be returned to Decentraland DAO for future approved grants.
If you worked on this project or a venue or a DJ who got a partial payment or no payment at all from [metatrekkers] https://metatrekkers.io/ please reach out to one of the DAO facilitators or one of the community members who can better further assist you in recovering what is owed.
Final Report: Concerns and Analysis of the BeatTrekkers Grant
Introduction:
In this report, we want to address the concerns raised by the formal request and through different messages on the Forum about the BeatTrekkers Grant. We analyzed the objective concerns raised in the previous report and checked the information. Then, we asked the grantee to clarify different points, and we made a report with evidence recommending to the DAO Committee that their vesting contract should have been paused.
Later, a back-and-forth of questions, clarifications, and different documents started with the grantee. This was constructive for the grantee and for us because we had the opportunity to clarify the concerns of the proposal, which was their main goal, know the details of the events and for which ones they should be accountable, where were being allocated the funds and principally to know the team behind the project.
Project Analysis:
In the proposal, it stated that the grantee was working with 36 venues, and it was mentioned in the budget section. However, the grantee explained that instead of a total of 36 venues, it is 36 events per series. They proposed to execute two series of Beat Trekkers, so the total will be 72 events to be held at various venues. This clarification was helpful in understanding the project’s scope.
The grantee also explained that when the proposal was submitted, they had only secured 20 venues. It was not until after the submission of the grant that they were able to secure the remaining 16 venues for BeatTrekkers Series 1. It looks like they have been negligent because they have been speculating with the funds.
Additionally, the grantee mentioned extra events (Pre and post), which were not mentioned in the original proposal. The grantee explained these were extra events because the proposal said four monthly events correspond to the BeatTrekkers (Dj Events). The grantee proved the payments done regarding those extra events. However, the grantee recognized some confusion caused by how the topic of venues was written and described in the proposal, primarily with the adjective “extra.”
The grantee also mentioned that certain venues showcased two or more BeatTrekkers events. To make it fair, they paid those venue partners a set amount for the first show, then agreed to pay a reduced amount for any subsequent showcasing. However, they should not have been paid for all the venue partners where the events happened.
Regarding the “venue Twitter space host,” the grantee mentioned that they were paying for the host who does not represent one entity or venue but was hired to represent the entire BeatTrekkers series. But before this, they had told us that this topic was part of the venue payments. The grantee recognized the ambiguity or confusion regarding the Venue Twitter Space Host classification caused.
The grantee explained that the primary objective of this grant was always to collaborate with at least 142 individuals, which remains unchanged. However, this looks like speculation and not a clear goal. Additionally, the grantee gave an excuse that they didn’t know about the cliff of the vesting contract, so at the beginning of the grant, they couldn’t be available to make some payments. This looks negligent because the rules are clear regarding that, and nobody could use an excuse for not knowing the pathway of the grant program, especially if they request one and have more than 1M of Voting power.
The big goal of this proposal is to become a platform for Decentraland to onboard big names in the music industry, but they still couldn’t give enough reasons to prove this.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the grantee’s project has faced significant concerns about the transparency and accountability of the grantee’s actions that have been able to be answered after several back-and-forths. While we are aware of all the efforts that the grantee and their team are making, however, those actions do not mitigate the raised concerns.
We recommend that the DAO Committee (@yemel@HPrivakos ) shouldn’t re-enact this grant for all the reasons exposed and the analysis presented in the past. If the grantee (@MetaTrekkers) wants to keep going with the second part of BeatTrekers, they should request a new grant with clear goals and without ambiguous language.
These were the points that were summarised and used as a means of justifying this revocation:
Just to be clear: were these action points worked upon?
In your message above, I’m not really seeing anything concrete relating to the misuse of funds, and gaps in recorded expenditure. Was @MetaTrekkers misusing grant funds? Did they clarify the exact expenditure of funds to date? Do we know how much is being allocated to marketing? Was the roadmap redefined and made clear?
It is this part that worries me. Why should we push for this grant to be re-submitted, if it is being revoked? I feel the final report can make more reference to the questions brought up by the community, especially in relation to the misuse of funds.
If everything is accounted for, as a community member, I’d like to actually know.
I’m also worried about how frequently we’re using speculation as a means to develop this final stance. When taking our decisions, we should not ‘perceive’ negligence, but rather we must strive to ‘identify’ it.
For example:
We must be careful here, as even if this may ‘look’ like negligence to one party, this is not a valid argument to use in proving gross negligence when running a project. In truth, having 20/36 venues is over 50% of the required partnerships they needed to secure prior to the grant. Building the rest of the pricing model around that estimate is not speculation, but is rather a good place to start when estimating the costs.
We must also keep in mind that grantees can, and should, be hesitant about agreeing on partnerships before the grant is passed. If a grantee were to close a partnership prior to submitting the grant, they may run the risk of alienating community members from being able to participate in the voting process (ie; questions will be raised about individuals who benefit from the proposal also voting on it).
I think, as a community, we need more transparency on what this back-and-forth entailed. @MetaTrekkers was publicly lambasted by the community on several occasions, and it is already known that I was one of the individuals that were directly critical with them about the situation.
However, this final report, unfortunately, does not close many of the questions the community had about the use of funds. It would be helpful if we can be made aware of the efforts that the grantee and their team were making, and why those efforts fall short of mitigating the raised concerns.
Once again, from my end, my main concerns were related to the misuse of funds, the exact expenditure of funds, the planned expenditure for phase 2, and the ultimate assurance that money was not being stolen from the DAO.
Ensuring that these worries are addressed will go a long way in allowing us to understand exactly what happened.
If we do not clarify these issues, we cannot (in good conscience) have another vote for this proposal’s phase 2.
Ryan (Decentral Games) here. I agree completely with @Seanny here, @Zino, and I can attest that MetaTrekkers was professional to work with and paid us and the artists for our event on time… but I’m mostly commenting on this because the the Grant Support Squad is setting an extremely dangerous precedent by abusing their authority in this way. Refusing to pay on this passed proposal goes directly against the purpose and mandate of the DAO. This grant was approved with 7M votes in favor (99% approval rate) and the remainder of the funds should be distributed to MetaTrekkers on that basis on given they’ve proven that they’ve held to the specific of the proposal.
On February 22, Zino, acting on behalf of the Grant Support Squad (GSS), recommended the MetaTrekkers grant not be re-enacted.
Ultimately, the recommendation was made due to the GSS’s failure to understand the MetaTrekkers project and multiple instances of communication gaps and constraints. Basic communication and comprehension of grants and project details are imperative and considered rudimentary for someone in that role. This is a grave concern to me not just because of my project, but also because of other members of the community that may become a victim to similar situations.
Below I have outlined my concerns as well as their impact on the recommendation made
1.Overall Failure to Understand the Project
Zino was my main point of contact throughout the investigation period. Every document, receipt, flyer, ad, etc. related to the activities outlined in the grant was provided as part of the process. I sent thorough emails, attended meetings, exchanged messages via Discord. Overall, I exhausted every communication channel afforded to me to help walk through the project.
Many times, Zino would mention that he did not understand some of the topics being discussed. Even today, Zino does not comprehend what the “pre, main, and post shows” are, albeit the topic was addressed many times over in spoken and written forums. He continuously confused the term “extra” stating we should only have 36 venues in total. Even though I specifically explained that there are two Beattrekkers series, and each series has 36 venues for 36 shows (totaling 72 shows and venues).
Below I have included several examples (screenshots and Google Doc links) where I had to explain the venues and show breakouts on various dates using various documents, posters, etc. in order for Zino to understand the competition.
Screenshots and Google Docs:
Screenshot: Here you will see on September 19,2022 Cyrpto Sannin, a DCL Community Member, asked about the BeatTrekkers events, and we explained.
Issue: The community asked, we clarified, and then the GSS still failed to understand the event structure.
Screenshot of the table shared as part of our monthly grant report and during all 3 monthly updates
with the GSS. This file contains the BeatTrekkers events calendar, venues, and artists. Monthly
Updates: October 2022, November 2022, and December 2022.
Screenshot of a meeting on December 15, 2022 where Zino created a document of all BeatTrekkers events and shared via Zoom. Here you see he recorded pre, main, and post events. He would not share the document after we requested to review it; instead, we had to take a screenshot of it when displayed
Google Doc sent on January 16, 2023 showing a breakdown of all the artists, events, and venues - BeatTrekkers Events Table
Screenshot of email Zino sent on January 25, 2023 with a miscalculation of event totals even after discussions and communications had been exchanged regarding the BeatTrekkers Series
Google Doc sent on February 3, 2023 showing a breakdown of all the artists, events, and venues - Posters of BeatTrekkers Venue
Issue: The same concept had to be explained multiple times, and Zino and the GSS never fully comprehended the concept. We never changed anything and had already met with the GSS at least 3 times prior.
2.Multiple Instances of Communication Gaps and Constraints
On multiple occasions, the GSS sent questions regarding the same topic, and we repeatedly answered using different charts, methods of communication, and verbiage. Each time, Zino mentioned he did not understand. Comprehension of grant projects is extremely important for someone in this role. Beyond revocations, how can someone that is supposed to support grants do so if simple ideals have to be explained several times over? This is quite alarming.
Additionally, as you will see in Zino’s response under Project Analysis (screenshot below), his responses are hard to follow and, again, do not address concerns brought forth for MetaTrekkers to respond to. He mentions our goal of collaborating with 142 individuals as being “unclear”. This goal is clear. Although our main focus was to bring an interactive, entertaining event for the DCL community to enjoy, one of our secondary goals was for as many members of the community to benefit as possible. We executed upon that goal and did not use speculation to meet it. BeatTrekkers Series 1 alone has collaborated with 74 DCL community members, exceeding the mid-way point of our goal of 142.
Zino’s response in the Project Analysis section
Issue: Communication is unclear and reasoning does not use logic
3.MetaTrekkers has been 100% Transparent with the GSS
The MetaTrekkers team attended every monthly update meeting with the GSS and provided our updates to the community via the monthly reports and answered all questions and concerns presented by the GSS team. Not only did my team answer any and all questions or concerns posed, we also made ourselves available for ad hoc calls, meetings, emails, etc.
We noticed the comprehension issues upfront and intended to resolve said issues via direct calls for communication. Each time the GSS team pushed away. They used ambiguous language such as “reduce use of adjectives” and encouraged us to “be as detailed as possible”. We did both and followed up to see if there was any further guidance that could be given to help them - they did not ask for any other help. And still, the recommendation is to not re-enact the grant due to failure to understand.
This is not a logical approach and has hurt the MetaTrekkers project. This approach to making recommendations without understanding what is being striked down will have a downstream impact on other community members and their projects.
We cannot continue this approach.
4. No Proof of Misuse of Funds
One of the concerns brought forth was suspicion of misuse of funds. I provided the GSS as well as shared with other DCL leadership team members the financial tracker used to manage the project.
This document shows every artist that provided their payment information (e.g., Etherscan links, Zelle details, wallet information, etc.) was compensated for the amounts promised as part of BeatTrekkers Series 1.
Due to the pausing of the grant, the competition winners are still awaiting payment. I reached out to Zino and Yararasita to discuss this issue as I want the winners to get the prizes they won and deserve. I was told the GSS would consider releasing the funds for these remaining BeatTrekkers Series 1 payments (for all those who provided payment details and wanted compensation). I was never provided an update on this decision nor have they sent payment.
Below I have included the names of the competition winners for reference:
First Place - Steve Saiko (Prize: $1000 USD)
Second Place - Mr. Big Mouth (Prize: $750 USD)
Third Place - GucciToe (Prize: $500 USD)
In Zino’s response on the forum (screenshot below), he mentions that some payments were not available to be made. This is false. As mentioned previously, all payments have been made to those who provided their services during BeatTrekkers Series 1 as well as provided their payment information (and opted for compensation). Again, the only outstanding payments are those to the competition winners, which we have highlighted above.
Zino’s mention of payment delays
Issue: This is false as all payments have been made. Proof was shown in the financial tracker (private document shared only to GSS due to compensation details of the participating artists)
Furthermore, my team sent contracts on December 21, 2022 to the finalists (i.e., the top 3 remaining Series 1 artists) to outline prize money payments and timeline details to ensure all parties were aligned on expectations. Everything was captured and recorded, and signatures were received from all 3 finalists.
On December 30, 2022, the grant was paused, impacting the payment to the finalists.
In addition, in one of the emails exchanged with Zino, I was questioned as to my team’s costs and told I was spending “too little”. I’m not sure why this was brought up. I am using the DAO funds to create experiences in DCL for the community. I take this responsibility seriously and manage finances and budgets as fiscally responsible as possible. It was odd that a member of the GSS would question good budget practices and state I needed to spend more.
This approach is not good for someone in this role nor should grantees be encouraged to spend more.
Excerpt of an email sent by Zino mentioning my team’s expenses were “too little:
Issue: It shows that grantees are being questioned when being fiscally responsible and adhering to good budgetary practices
5. No Support Received from GSS
The Grant Support Squad (GSS) is supposed to do just that - support those community members who receive grants.
Throughout this process, they have been minimally helpful and, at times, not helpful at all. It was as though I was going into a trial, and instead of being treated as innocent until proven guilty, I was treated as guilty until proven innocent.
If you read Zino’s Conclusion posted on February 22, 2023 in the forum, you see he mentions “those actions do not mitigate the raised concerns”. In other words, he is saying that we, the GSS, assumed guilt, we, the GSS, could not understand the project even after evaluating for 2 months, so let’s treat Chris and the MetaTrekkers project as guilty and recommend not re-enacting the grant.
Shows Zino’s Conclusion message where he is alluding to a guilty thought process where innocence was to be proven
Issue: Zino and the GSS should have come into this investigation with an unbiased view on the events and make a decision as opposed to having these preconceived notions
This is a TERRIBLE approach. It shows that the GSS was swayed by a small group of loud actors in the DCL community and took on a biased approach to analyzing the situation.
6. MetaTrekkers is Held to Different Standards
I have complied with all meetings and reporting requests. Some bad actors have tried to publicly question my every move. Any time I had a revision of any sort, I would reach out ahead of time to the GSS before making any changes. I made sure I was taking care of all necessary delivery obligations.
I have seen on several occasions grantees who have not complied with their grant requirements or have changed how they have used the grant funds without first getting permission. How is this okay? I have used the funding as I outlined in the grant proposal yet am being scrutinized because of an oversight committee’s failure to comprehend.
A DCL community grantee missed their 1st and 3rd monthly grant update
Issue: This grantee’s grant has not been paused nor questioned - different than what I have experienced
Below I have provided an example of another amazing community project that, rightfully so, made updates to the allocation of their grant funding without issue or concerns.
This grantee changed how grant funds were to be used AFTER the grant had passed
Issue: I am being questioned because the GSS does not understand that the 72 venues and events were always part of the plan. They believe it was changed after the fact, however, even if that were the case, according to what’s been done for other projects, it should not be questioned nor an issue.
One other topic brought up was my misunderstanding of the vesting period. I am not the only one that had this issue. I have provided 3 examples of other DCL grantees who also had the same misunderstanding
Show the 3 DCL community members who also applied for and obtained a grant yet did not understand the vesting period
Issue: MetaTrekkers was held to a different standard. We are expected to know things that others get a pass on
This is another flaw in this process! We must have the same standards for all projects.
7. Community Understood and Voted for this Project
This project has always been FOR THE COMMUNITY. I held that as a high standard to uphold. I did not take lightly the community’s trust and desire for this project. Our grant was passed with a 99% approval rating. We received 7.4M VPs consisting of 169 total votes to create this project surpassing the threshold of 4M VPs by nearly double (not using our 1M VPs). This is unprecedented!
What matters most is that the community, who asked for this project, understands and truly enjoyed the experience. We are a decentralized community and do not need to make centralized decisions based on our own understanding or lack thereof. This is not what DCL is about!
The GSS cannot take away funding for something the community asked for without wrongdoing or malice intent. This is a decentralized platform. We cannot allow the shut down of beloved projects be shut down due to a small group of individuals’ failure to understand them.
Below is a screenshot of metrics we were able to obtain from one of our events. Here you will see the large number of DCL community members that attend our events, one of which was also featured in Coindesk (Coindesk Article)
Report obtained from DCL that shows 125+ community members attended our BeatTrekkers event
Issue: We are essentially shutting down a project that the community loves and supports
8.Tangential Topics Brought Up As Part of GSS’s Recommendation
There were specific concerns I was to address as part of this review process. And I made sure to do so. When reviewing claims brought forth by the GSS, I noticed that they started going on tangents (screenshot below).
On of the many instances Zino brings up vesting period and VP (irrelevant topic)
Issue: This has no relevance to the topic of misuse of grant funds nor is it proof of negligence.
If you notice, Zino starts speaking about speculation and negligence because 20 venues had been secured as of the proposal’s submission (screenshot below). What is the relevance of this topic given the concerns raised?
Zino is going off on a tangential topic that has no impact to how funds were used
Issue: He is not truly addressing the concerns brought forth by the report. He is drawing broad conclusions using irrelevant information
Internally, we built out our own milestones for when we planned to acquire all 36 venues, and no where did we say it would be before the proposal was submitted. Where we stood on the date of the proposal’s submission (submission date: September 19, 2022) and when BeatTrekkers kicked off (kickoff date: August 24, 2022), securing 20 venues actually exceeded our milestone plan.
BeatTrekkers Series 1 ended on November 30, 2022. Some venues needed time and did not want to 100% commit to a date too far in advance. We wanted to allow for flexibility and, therefore, were understanding in their approach.
Another tangential topic brought forth was events MetaTrekkers hosted as part of Metaverse Miami in November 2022. Zino wrote slandering comments questioning my integrity and bringing down my reputation. He spun his own story just from promotional photos and videos he found on social media. I reached out to him about postponing a concert slated for November to ensure we had the highest number of attendees in the audience since I noticed there were many DCL community members in Miami. He asked me to update the Discord group, which I did, and did not raise any concerns. Then, in this note, he not only slanders me, but also states that my Miami events were “dishonest”.
Additionally, events hosted for MetaTrekker NFT holders are separate from any of the BeatTrekkers funding or events. Questioning me or other events hosted for MetaTrekkers community members is appalling.
An excerpt of the email received from Zino containing slandering comments
Issues: He wrongfully bashes and undermines my character referring to events that have nothing to do with BeatTrekkers or the grant
Again, this topic IS NOT relevant to whether my team or I misused funds and does not showcase any speculation or negligence in the project
Conclusion
Zino and the GSS have shown no instances of malice intent, misuse of funds, or MetaTrekkers breaking any rules, terms of use, code of ethics, or content policy for DCL. Even Zino agrees there has been ill intent or actions from my project, MetaTrekkers (see screenshot below from February 24, 2023).
The basis of Zino’s recommendation is flawed. His recommendation is based on failure to understand the overall project and bias from a small group of DCL members.
The approach has been guilty-until-proven innocent, and it appears that his recommendation may be an impact of the pressure of those community members. With his role being based on the votes and support of the community, Zino has to ensure he is meeting the expectations of those that have the most impact.
This approach leads to bias and unfair treatment to those who, like me, may have experienced bullying or backlash from bad actors in the community.
I’ve highlighted 8 major issues in this recommendation and stand firmly behind them.
Call to Action: I recommend @yemel and @HPrivakos disregard the recommendation of Zino and the GSS and reinstate the grant in order to follow through with the BeatTrekkers Series.
Furthermore, if HP and Yemel prefer a different route, I recommend a poll be open on the DCL community forum to allow the community to vote on whether the grant should be reinstated or not. I am confident that if a poll were to be available for the community to vote on, they would be inclined to support my position against Zino’s recommendation to not re-enact my grant. I will also be sure not to partake in the voting process.
I am willing to meet with @yemel and @HPrivakos directly, if needed, and present my case and further details of this project to further illustrate why this project’s funding should be reinstated.
At minimum, I request that the GSS and DCL DAO release the funds to complete payment of the competition prize money to the BeatTrekkers Series 1 winners as soon as possible until we are able to further discuss.
As I understand it, the primary objective of this investigation was to identify areas of misuse of funds. However, if the project has accomplished all of its goals, with no evidence of misuse of funds, it’s a little confusing to suggest a recommendation to keep the project suspended.
If there was confusion in the beginning how did the health of the project remain in good standing? Sounds to me like either some one did not do their job properly or something very suspicious is going on. I could speculate and accuse some of trying to sabotage this project from the beginning because they felt threatened or left out of the project so wanted to see it fail. Would this be invetigated? Should there be an investigation into the standards and practices being used throughout the GSS review process?
Metatrekkers has proven themselves, clarified everything repeatedly, delivered what they set out to provide for the community and still the accusations and speculations and double standards abound. The community received numerous events and those venues and performers were all paid. No one has come forward to say otherwise. Metatrkkers should be commended for their efforts, apologies made and the grant reinstated so they can continue to help grow Decentraland.
Do we need to start a witch hunt on all grantees and the review squad @Zino? Sounds like it to me. Just to be fair and unbiased and non-discriminatory. People did shady things which shows their character and brought us to this point. Metatrekkers made every attempt to clear everything up and did so. What exactly needs clarified now or do you still have 0 knowledge of how this event went down? If you can’t understand the basics how can you properly review other grantees? What events if any do you attend for that matter? What qualifies you to ignore the facts presented? What needs to be done to remove you from your position of corruption? You need to show facts and intent of wrong doing if you are to go against what the community almost unanimously voted YES for. Speculative news is my favorite thing to watch on TV not here in DCL. I recommend you also go back and look at all the grants that have been reviewed. There’s at least one that really stands out where you give them a lot of leniency and one person in particular that stands out, comments on it questioning you and you then your mind is changed suddenly. Why is that? That makes that decision highly suspicious if you ask me. So I will ask, where are the procedures and policies that you follow listed so that all may see what your job is and whether you are accurately following those guidelines or making exceptions where you feel fit.
I fully support reinstating the MetaTrekkers’ grant. 100%
As others have stated, this sets a dangerous precedent. I believe in accountability, but this trend of pausing proposals and demanding projects defend themselves is unacceptable.
Once a grant proposal has been passed by community vote, there really should be no reason to deny the project the awarded funds without indisputable evidence that terms of the grant have been violated.
I think the GSS should reactivate the vesting contract as this start to don’t have any sense. If the grantee can prove they are following their roadmap with so much evidence, I think we should let it keep going. We are not supermen that can foresee all the challenges along with the project, but as long as the project is fulfilling most of its promises, I don’t see a reason to stop it. And maybe engage the community in the investigation process, which will help to improve transparency and cause less dispute that makes everybody happy, together we contributing to Decentraland.
It wouldn’t be speculation if Metatrekkers would provide evidence. Metatrekkers is at the whim of the DAO who is giving them money. He won’t provide evidence of where the funds went. @Seanny clearly you haven’t tried speaking with him or asking him any questions about the use of the funds, he avoids saying anything. The DAO who he has a contract with is requesting evidence. Failure to provide evidence = failure to continue the Vesting Contract. This is how it works. None of this would be speculative if he would provide receipts of the funds.
This is not a criminal trial. You are obligated to provide the full evidence as you are recieving money. Any reasonable loan or grant has conditions and you avoid questions when people ask you. A good example is How much did you pay EACH DJ? How much did you pay each Venue? Show proof of payment? As far as I can see you took the money out in Coinbase which is not transparent.
But it didnt. And Yes DJ’s were not paid in equal amounts that would equal the total allocated to it. So if it was a fair competition, wouldn’t they be paid the same?
The policies and procedures are the Grantee is supposed to provide full evidence of how much is paid to whom. Which Metatrekkers for all I know could have paid you to be saying this because he withdrew most of his money on coinbase. He could be paying all of you in support of him.
Yes this is speculatory, but there is no transparency of how much he sent to whom. Why not pay everyone on the blockchain? Until you can answer that question. Everyone here in favor of the Metatrekkers in my opinion could be paid off. I am not claiming you are, but there is a strong possibility as none of this is on the blockchain. He definitely paid DJ’s unequal amounts. Because if you divide how much he paid each by the total allocation, it doesnt add up. He also didnt pay all venues. Where is these extra funds? For the lack of transparency alone due to not having funds on the blockchain, I think this was extremely reasonable. He has yet to show receipts for the ones off the blockchain.
We at Metancy don’t understand, why did you all pause MetaTrekkers Grant? We worked with them on BeatTrekkers and we’re excellent partners. Our collab was a one of BT parties at our club Metancy Pool at its start and that was great to begin, now parties in that place engaged lot of people and we pretend for POI at moment
Metatrekkers is a strong, large and friendly community which is literally one of who develops Decentraland socials, events, produce artists, attract people and handle solid DAO. MT is helping people to jump in and adopt in the Metaverse. MT also has a venue for dcl creators, artists and even developers which we personaly are. Decentraland needs more adoption for people and we believe in the way of MT to make it so than voted YES)))
There are a few things I’d like to clarify regarding how the Grant Support Squad works to make revocation suggestions.
First of all, our main goal is to have successful grants. We do and will continue doing anything on our behalf to achieve this goal, and to give a nurturing experience for the grantees by providing support along the way. We would never bring a grantee down with speculations or taking a case lightly. We have talked several times with the Metatrekkers team over video calls, emails and Discord messages to try to fully understand all the inconsistencies between the proposal, a PDF, a canva presentation and updates to understand how the funds were used. On a general basis, an investigation with a grant takes between 6 and 8 hours of capacity from our team. This grant in question took us 3 times the regular process would take, and most of this was because we were extremely responsible and careful towards the complexity and ambiguity of the language from the grantee to try to understand how the grant scope changed, and how the funds were allocated, to follow what they have been delivering along the way, and if they were honoring what the community had voted for or not.
An example of this is that in their original proposal (specifically in the canva section) they wrote that 24K would be allocated to pay for 36 venues. After a few back and forths, the team told us that this corresponded to 36 events, which would have a pre event, the main event and the post event. And later we have been told by the grantee’s team that this corresponded for only one BeatTrekkers Series, and if we compared this with the original proposal that stated that two series would be produced, then those 24K would cover not 36 venues, but 72 events, that had pre, main and post events, changing the initial budget voted by the community. This is the type of ambiguity in the language, and proposals that we have dealt with during the analysis of this particular grant. It has been really hard to see transparency from the beginning and up to date we still do not have clarity of the deliverables and expectations.
The argument of misuse of funds comes from the fact that the initial proposal did not specify how many stakeholders would be involved. The significant increase of these actors changes how the funds are being distributed. This took 2 months to be understood, and even now we have a hard time understanding what the impact of this proposal has been as the initial proposal stated that the grantee believes this grant will pay off in the form of increased awareness and adoption of Decentraland, as well as providing a fun and immersive experience for art and music fans.
As the advisor of the Grant Support Squad I have seen how @Zino has worked in this case, being open to discuss with the grantee on video calls and emails to talk about the concerns raised and he was committed since the beginning of this investigation to be a steward on the side of the grantee along the process. Nevertheless, the changes in the proposal and the hard time the team has had to understand basic information to measure the effectiveness of the delivery of the grantee, have been key reasons to pause this grant and not be re-enacted.
This being said, I would recommend the DAO committee (@yemel , @HPrivakos ) to make a one-time payment of $2250 USD to the beneficiary address of this grant, for the grantee to pay the prizes corresponding to the winners of this first competition, as this is a deliverable already been achieved.
These would be for:
First Place - Steve Saiko (Prize: $1000 USD)
Second Place - Mr. Big Mouth (Prize: $750 USD)
Third Place - GucciToe (Prize: $500 USD)
We encourage the Metatrekkers team to request a new grant for their second series, being clear about the events to be produced, to talk about pre events, main events and post events, to be clear on how many venues will be involved, how many artists are being paid to perform, and to add key impact metrics along the way to understand the development and impact of their grant. All these specifications will help them make a robust proposal, reducing the ambiguity and preparing them for success.
This grant has taught our team some valuable lessons, among them are:
The importance of having clarity on the deliverables from the beginning, and instead of waiting for the grantee and understanding it along the way, to make these questions beforehand during the onboarding meeting.
Reinforce the importance of having a third party that can debate if a grant needs to be revoked, as we are the ones who investigate and judge at the same time, not giving a space for separating these two processes, providing objective resolutions. These issues are addressed on the onboarding of new grantees and the launch of the new form to request a grant, as well as the creation of the Revocations Committee.
