PoolGrants committee open applications

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Summary

The Pooltogether grants committee was formed through PTIP-14.

The grants program’s pilot program of 6 months will be coming to an end on 18. November.

The current committee members were elected for the duration of the pilot program.
Now there will be an open application process for all of the spots on the committee.

Once the new committee members are selected, there will be a PTIP for the continuation of the grants program for an additional 6 months.

What to expect

The current committee structure is as follows:

1 Lead: Primary correspondent with grantees, management of internal processes/operations

1 Deputy Lead: Correspondent with grantees, focus on outreach and marketing

4-5 Reviewers: Reviews grants, gives input/feedback

During the pilot program, the average time investment has been approximately:

Lead: 12h/week

Deputy Lead: 6h/week

Reviewer: 2h/week

Will the structure and scope be the same moving forward?

This is an open question and we are very happy to have an open discussion.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for how the grants committee should look going forward, drop them in the PoolGrants open feedback thread.

How to apply

If you are interested in having a role on the PoolGrants committee, pitch yourself on this post. Explain why you think you would be a good fit and maybe even what you bring to the table that has been missing in the current team.

If you need inspiration, you can find the applications from the first round here and here.

For more information on what the Pooltogether grants committee is, check out:
Initial PTIP
Renewal PTIP
Poolgrants.org

Deadline for applications: Sunday 7. November 2021

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I’m interested to join as a reviewer. PoolGrants is a great initiative that can help grow the PoolTogether ecosystem and its features, and I’d be happy to help facilitate those efforts. I have a broad understanding of the DeFi/NFT/DAOs ecosystems, as well as the PoolTogether protocol, and think I can bring a valuable perspective to the team.

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I would like to apply for the role as lead (or) deputy lead of the Grants Committee. If someone else becomes lead or deputy lead, I would like to apply as reviewer.

Describe your involvement in the PoolTogether ecosystem:
I made my first investment in PT in early 2020, and have been in discord community for the last 1 year.

Quick background - I am an extremely experienced defi user (started with compound in 2018 as one of its first users), been involved in every major defi community ever since. Personally, I like PT a lot and is my favorite for 2 reasons - (1) as a protocol, for its potential in gamifying rewards, (2) as a community, that values its members over anything else. Token airdrop distribution was fairest in entire space. Core team values protocol and community more than short term profits which is a rarity in the space. For these reasons i love PT community and am one of its biggest supporters. Also, as a recipient of largest PT airdrop and a big prize winner (in v3), i feel its my responsibility to contribute to the protocol in best way possible.

As to my specific contributions, I encouraged 10+ new community members to explore protocol, put forward gov proposals (such as spending time with bancor team to enable single sided staking for POOL tokens), shared opinions on LM rewards distribution, ideated on ways to help migrate users from v3 to v4. I am pretty active and engaged on governance forums and discord posts. Lastly, i am sceptical of coordinape and hence do not have the POOL holder tag on discord, but i am a very big POOL holder.

What skills/experience do you bring to the committee?

I have a background in Computer Science and a lead product manager at a bay area tech unicorn . I am very familiar with ethereum ecosystem and defi space (starting from compound in 2018 to the latest developments as of today). I have basic smart contract knowledge and fully understand pooltogether protocol and the ecosystem needs. I am also pretty familiar with NFT and metaverse space and as a grant committee member can identify potential opportunities (either from individual contributors or collaborative communities) to help advance pooltogether

Can you commit ~2/6/12 hours a week as a reviewer/deputy lead/lead?
I can easily commit 2-12 hours every week (and possibly more). If there are some weeks with more work every now and then, I can put more time in. I don’t anticipate this to be a problem.

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I am applying as a Reviewer/Deputy Lead

General Info

I am an average DEFI user? I aped hard into polygon ecosystem since the gas was cheap, so most of my practical experience is there. I do own my ENS

Describe your involvement in the PoolTogether ecosystem:

  • I have been involved in doing the PoolTogether x Aavegotchi

  • I am the scribe that updates PoolTogethers weekly updates and calendar on (Used to do community call updates)

  • I am on the coordinape team

What skills/experience do you bring to the committee?

  • Connections to other organizations through my role at Boardroom
  • Friends that can translate Spanish and Korean for ESL grants
  • Coding knowledge (Does not extend to solidity but working on it atm)

Can you commit ~2/6/12 hours a week as a reviewer/deputy lead/lead

Yes, I can commit 2-6 hours weekly for both of the roles I am applying for.

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I would like to re-apply for the role as lead of the Grants Committee. If someone else becomes lead, I would like to apply as deputy lead/reviewer.

Experience:

I am the current lead of the grants committee and have been running its operations for the last 6 months. I have gathered valuable experience during this time, which I would like to continue applying in the next iteration of the grants program. The program is still very young and while I think all positions should be open for applications, I also think it is important that there is significant carry-over from the previous committee to the future one, to preserve the know-how that has been built.
The feedback I have received so far for my work as lead has been overwhelmingly positive.

Involvement

I have good relationships with most active contributors within the Pooltogether community, which is very helpful for getting input on their respective areas of expertise. I am also well-acquainted with the members of PT Inc.

I am one of the most active users of the Discord, where I have answered the questions of hundreds of users and built many friendships. I have also gathered the second-most amount of “likes” in the governance forum, as shown in the user statistics.
I am one of the top POOL delegates, having earned the delegation of 22 token holders.

Skills

I have a background in Computer Science and have spent the last year fully immersed in DeFi.
I know how everything in and around Pooltogether works, including the inner workings of the smart contracts.

Can you commit ~12 hours a week as a lead?
Yes.

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I would like to apply for the role of reviewer. If there is an excess of reviewer applications I will gladly step aside as I have already had a short stint as a reviewer and new opinions are highly valued in the grants committee.

Experience

My previous experience is limited to the one quarter that I have been on the grants committee. I was brought into the grants committee as an extra role through Pooltogether grants program renewal (thanks for the overwhelming support everyone) and PTIP-34 Grants Program Q2 Funding.

Involvement

I’ve been in PoolTogether for about 9 crypto years, it’s 1.5 years to a quarter right? I became increasingly active in the discord and am generally an archeologist of ideas and links. I’ve helped with the “swim meets”, the knowledge base, drafting of grants, tossing ideas around discord and seeing where they stick, and generally just trying to a cool, friendly, helpful person on discord and elsewhere. Inspo from rliriano and oops ofc.

Background

Outside of PoolTogether:
IRL, I spent a decade in the financial industry as a business/process analyst. Then I moved into project management and have been there for a couple years. Ready to convert to full-time crypto.
In Crypto, I lurk in way too many discords and am constantly trying to find where different protocols can benefit from helping each other. Things slowly moving like further work with Rabbithole, Sushiswap integrations, no-loss lending (Rari+Alchemix+PoolTogether), charitable giving (endaoment), NFTs with a charged particles spin…

Time Commitment

Reviewer: 2 hours
Totally able to commit 2 hours a week.

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I would like to apply for a role as a reviewer.

Previous experience:
Heads up - I haven’t been on a grants committee before and I’m relatively new to the whole DAO world. I read every content of the PoolGrants website & the committee blog at least 3 times, and studied the gov forum for more than 4 hours on 36 days (since I’ve joined it on August 26th).

Describe your involvement in the PoolTogether ecosystem:
Things I value most in the crypto space are fair government, redefining value, creating a level playing field and the decentralization of centralized systems. I liked the protocol from the moment when I first stumbled upon it on Kris Kay’s twitter. Seeing all those positive values being reflected got me into writing a blog post about it: Pool Together - No Loss DeFi Lottery explained. I’ve joined the Discord server to get it fact-checked, and felt welcome from day 1:
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Since then I’m an active participant on the discord, reddit and sometimes the telegram groups. I generally try to help, give feedback and add my ideas where I can. On October 11th I’ve started writing a weekly community newsletter to help people navigate the ecosystem and showcase community contributions. I’m afraid I’ve missed some of the swim meets as I’m sometimes out on Fridays to set up events. I’m already working on my schedule to better accommodate the calls in future.

What skills/experience do you bring to the committee?
Due to my background as a logistics specialist and transport manager I have experience in project management and coordination. I’m also certified as Professional Scrum Master and recently finished a course about Sustainable Development & Post-Capitalism.

I’m a highly motivated and committed learner and would describe myself more as a generalist, than a specialist. I like to support and empower others and one of my highest priories is always fairness.

As part of the grants committee I could offer my help to keep the notion pages updated, enliven the twitter feed, write blog posts & explainers, support grantees in manifesting their ideas and guiding the community into leveraging the grants program.

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Who’s this Andy Guy?
Andy has been active in the PoolTogether discord ever since the original airdrop. I saw how welcoming & informative the community was and decided to dig in my heels and take part in what was being built. Initial governance discussions is what I enjoyed participating in most.
See PTIP-8 NFT Pool where @gabor & @RegisIsland and myself operated a NFT prize pool project.
As governance topics have shifted to more high level analytics & financials (such as the Olympus bonding curve) I’ve been less active in this front due to my knowledge being exceeded by our talented community :sweat_smile:

I have also been on the Grants committee since it’s start. I mostly have focused on general feedback and being our note taker during meetings, haven’t missed one yet :wink:
My role has been more reactive than pro-active.

Time Commitment
Reviewer: 2 hours
I have been able to commit this so far. However the last 2 weeks I have not been as active in the committee.

Although this application is to show my interest in continuing on the committee I have a strong suspicion that some of the current applicants here will be able to contribute as much or even more than I have so far!

If there is an opportunity for a new member that has great interest and ability for the reviewer role I will very gladly withdraw my application. I would rather have the slot occupied by a more active community member as I have not been as active as I was at the start!

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Being part of the PoolGrants Committee for the past two quarters has been a great pleasure and I am really proud about what the team has achieved so far. We have established effective and efficient processes and to my mind at least some continuity would be highly beneficial for the future development of grants. Therefore I am also stepping up and would be thrilled to continue working in the grants committee for the next term, preferably in my current role as deputy lead (and preferably with @Torgin as lead!).

During my involvement, the focus areas of my work have been around marketing campaigns and research initiatives. Notable projects with external parties have been the Bankless media campaigns as well as the Layer3 campaign around the v4 launch; on the research side the extensive research activities performed by Llama and otherinter.net. In these grants I have taken an active role in terms of negotiating, getting the deal closed and follow up closely to make the projects a success. Some grant applications can be controversial for various reasons, such as price expectations or scope, and I am convinced that I have in many cases facilitated alignment among parties in order to get things done fast by being a pragmatic negotiator/project manager.

To me it has also been of utmost importance to proactively identify opportunities and active community members and pull them into a grants-related project. I am of the opinion that grants is an essential element to create stickiness with community contributors and is an integral part of compensation of them alongside coordinape. Being a scout for talent thus is crucial and I consider myself to having excelled in this.

Besides grants, I have been a long-term community member and am according to Tally (withtally.com/governance/pooltogether) the governance delegate with the most on-chain votes overall - only missed 1 out of 24 on-chain votes! Participating actively in PoolTogether governance is very important to me and gas prices have so far not managed to stop me.

Outside of PoolTogether, I have been working in investment banking for 10 years at daytime with responsibility for investments and active committee participation. The type of work is very similar to PoolGrants. At night, I turn into a defi degen and I am an active contributor to Maple.finance in capacity of being a Pool Delegate with Maven11. This collaboration was actually born during the PoolTogether treasury diversification initiative where I reached out to them to table an improved offer to the community that ultimately even got featured in the Financial Times.

In terms of time, there clearly have been weeks where my bandwidth was limited and I was not able to listen in to the richard show or attend every community call which I regret. However, I have always prioritised grants work and will continue to be able to allocate any amount of time that may be required. In fact, the hours logged have for most of the time been significantly below the initial budget. I am against changing the budget actually and think that there should be boundaries that allow billing more if there is more work; I believe that any grants community member has a duty towards the community to treat the trusted funds with respect and humility. I personally have had the tendency to underestimate logged hours.

I want to see PoolTogether to grow to more than one million users and am highly motivated and committed to support achievement of this goal by contributing to PoolGrants.

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I would like to re-apply for the role of Reviewer.

I have been a continuous depositor into PoolTogether DAI pool since October 2019. I have been an active member of the PoolTogether community this year in several areas including active on the Grants Team, Eth ops team, Executive team, Community calls, and discord love :slight_smile:

Some of the work I did for the greater PoolTogether have been: getting the Amended Retro Airdrop deployed and developed SmallFish.Win

I have a Masters in Computer Science and had a cushy job as Senior Software Engineer in the corporate world until this year. I resigned from that position to focus on a NFT gaming project I co-founded this year.

Also, because of this, I have been more busy than earlier in this year. I have found a pattern where I can offer 2 hours a week of time commitment to the Grants Committee. I would only be able to continue to offer 2 hours a week if I was selected to continue as Reviewer.

I believe my experience aligns greatly with the role of Reviewer and I would love to help PoolTogether continue to grow!!

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I would like to apply for the role of reviewer. I have a sales background and have been immersed in the crypto world for nearly 5 years(much of it in Defi). I have been involved in several negotiations for Pooltogether including bringing in KPI options and forming Badger pool. I have deep connections to many Defi communities and can use my connections to ensure we are getting the best deals possible. I have time to work 2 or more hours per week.

I think I can provide valuable insight in helping grow the protocol.

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I would like to re-apply for the role as lead of the Grants Committee. If someone else becomes lead, I would like to apply as deputy lead/reviewer.

Previous experience:
Was part of them team who wrote the proposal for this grants initiative and was the co-lead along with Torgin for the majority of our first 6 months active.
Pre-pandemic I worked in print and digital marketing, post-pandemic I’ve been allowed the freedom to turn my crypto hobbies into something more. I’ve been involved in DAO work since, mostly in B.D. positions and community design.

Describe your involvement in the PoolTogether ecosystem:
Prior to the managing the grants committee I was part of the “swim teams” group and the early community calls. Since then my involvement has been mainly focused on the grants group specifically and managing the workflow of applications, consideration, and communication with funded projects.

What skills/experience do you bring to the committee?
Defi grants attract all types of proposals that require people with different skillsets to handle them effectively. We have members with computer science backgrounds, financial expertise, developer skills, and more. We lean on those members to handle proposals that match their individual talents.
The nature of the lead role for this group requires someone who is able to effectively manage the group, attract proposals with active outreach, and nurture relationships with grantees. In my view, and as shown by the number of proposals we received in first 3 months over the activity in the last quarter, I believe I can deliver to the community a robust and beneficial set of funded proposals.

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Over the last 3 months with myself transitioning to a reviewer role, I was still directly responsible for almost 25% of incoming grants. I counted 2 each month (out of 9 in month 1 and 8 each month since) that were a result of my outreach, and gabor accounting for 2 as well over that time.

Can you commit 12/6 hours a week as a lead/reviewer?
Yes. When we began in May and I found out that I had been entrusted as a co-lead PoolGrants became my primary concern so I’ve made myself available for this committment.

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I would like to be involved with the Grants committee so that I can participate and highlight good things within the community and be more aware of what is going on as a whole. I feel comfortable in saying that although I am unwilling to give strict time commitments, I will always provide more value than the expectations set in front of me. I would prefer no formality or expectations, and I will slot wherever makes sense and help however I deem I would like to. I could contribute a lot of value here so I look forward to being able to help the grants committee help the community.

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Applications are now closed and the elections are live.
GO VOTE!

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Seeing the amount of viable & excited talent that has applied here I’d like to withdraw my application for grant reviewer. Best of luck to any new members!

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Passing on the torch!

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The new grants committee has been chosen!
Lead: @Torgin
Deputy Lead: @gabor
Reviewers: @Taliskye @McOso @Oops @Gio.eth @TangFeng

PTIP to make it official coming soon!

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