TBR-Q1-2023 - Grants Team

Team Name Grants Team
Quarter and Year Q1 2023
Payout Address 0xd605bB8A3DA1f7f777276D3c97c828aAc3Dd4252
Total USD Value Requested $18000 USD

Purpose

The grants team serves as a community-led program to fund ideas submitted by both PoolTogether community members as well as third-party applicants, with a focus on empowering a wider network of developers and contributors and increase adoption of the PoolTogether protocol. There are many great ideas for improving the protocol and grants plays a key role in evaluating and equipping those contributors with resources needed to go from idea to funded development.

Goals

  1. Be a supportive, reliable and transparent partner

Grants represents a funding source of relatively low resistance for instance compared to a fully fledged governance proposal to obtain funding. The grants team commits to be accessible, responsive and supportive of grant requests regardless of their achievability to ensure that all applicants that put in the effort to engage with the PoolTogether protocol feel respected and taken seriously. Grants will continue to track and publish the funded Grants via the Notion and Medium articles and at the end of the quarter Grants will publish a review about the funded grants of that quarter.

  1. Emphasize initiatives that benefit the adoption of PoolTogether on Optimism

Optimism has been elemental for PoolTogether to drive L2 user adoption. The grants team shall but an emphasis on initiatives that improve the Optimism user adoption, experience or create additional features / layers utilizing PoolTogether on Optimism. Grants aims to fund at least 3 applications related to Optimism to grow PoolTogether on Optimism.

Last Season Review

Last season Grants received a total of 91 applications. We reviewed them and approved 28 for a Grant. Total USD spend on Grants last Season was 106k USDC and 70k POOL Tokens. A total overview about all funded Grants can be found on https://poolgrants.org/.

Some Grants I want to highlight here especially are:

Chance Cards - 25,000 USD
Grants received and approved a Grant from @kames regarding the development of Chance Cards. Chance Cards are a great way to visualize Delegations and make them more aware to users as a mintable NFT.
See: https://web3savings.network/

Merch Store - 2600 USD
Grants received and approved a Grant from @noxe regarding the developing of a PoolTogether Merch Store. The Grant was a great success and already delivered Merch to multiple Community members.
See: https://pooly.me/

DevCon Bogota Onboarding Event - 3020 USD
Grants received and approved a Grant from @oops for hosting an onboarding event during Devcon in Bogota. This Grant was also cofunded by other DAOs including WGMI and MetaCartel which shows that also just partially funding a Grant can lead to great success in cooperation with others.

Mon Philippine BlockChain Event - 2000 USD
Grants received and approved a Grant from @mon for presenting and promoting PoolTogether at the Philippines Blockchain week. He handed out fliers and explained to new users what PoolTogether is and how they can use the protocol.

Prize Notifications Maintenance - 3000 USD
Grants received and approved a Grant from @underthesea, @max and @drcpu for maintaining the current Prize Notifications infrastructure and adapting them to all changes necessary to keep them running. Prize Notifications are a very important part of the protocol so people don’t have to check their prizes every day and avoid that their prizes expire.
See: Setting up Prize Notifications - PoolTogether User Guide

Polygon POOL Pool - 600 POOL
Grants received and approved a Grant from @lonser to fund the Polygon POOL Pool with a weekly prize of 50 POOL Tokens. The Polygon POOL Pool is a great way to hold on to POOL Tokens while having the chance to win more POOL as prizes.
See: https://polygonpool.win/

PlayTogether - 30,000 Delegation
Grants received and approved a Grant from @noxe for organizing the monthly PlayTogether events. PlayTogether is a fun and engaging way to bring the Community together.
Check #PlayTogether in Discord.

PoolStreaks - 12,000 Delegation
Grants received and approved a Grant from @daboom so the winner can have a delegation as a prize. I want to highlight that DaBoom never asked for compensation for running PoolStreaks but just the Delegation for the winner.
Although PoolStreaks has ended now, at least in the Discord Channel, I want to thank @daboom here for all the work he put into it and thank him for running it for so long! Also check out the PoolStreaks questions in Lenster!
Check #PoolStreaks in Discord.

Fantasy Football with Thales - 10,000 Delegation
Grants received and approved a Grant from @daboom so the winner of the Fantasy Football Tournament can receive the prizes the delegation accured during the football season. He also didnt ask for any further compensation for organizing this event. The delegation was matched by Thales and the players also deposited into PoolTogether as an entry proof and all stay deposited during the Football Season and the deposit gets delegated to a multi sig which accures the prizes the winner gets.
See: Pooltogether Thales | Fantasy Football | Yahoo! Sports

SettleTogether - 20,000 Delegation
Grants received and approved a Grant from @illpo so the winner of the Settlers of Catan tournament can receive a delegation! I want to highlight that DaBoom never asked for compensation for running PoolStreaks but just the Delegation for the winner. Thx @illpo for all the work you put into it
See: SettleTogether Tournament!!!! — Illpo

Budget

Requested Amount

Amount Token
18000 USDC

Budget Breakdown

Team Members

Role Yearly USD Compensation Commitment Percentage Quarterly USDC Quarterly POOL Contributor Contributor Discord
Lead $90,000 35% 6615 1880 Lonser Lonser#7584
Reviewer $50,000 16% 1800 299 TBD
Reviewer $50,000 16% 1800 299 TBD

The reviewers are still to be determined but at least one Reviewer will stay the same as last quarter (mcoso, gabor taliskye or tangfeng).
The Grants Multi sig will stay a 3/5 Multi Sig with the same signers if possible or if need with voluntary members of the community.

Additionally starting with the new Quarter Grants will initiate a snapshot vote for any Grant above 15,000 USD. Only if this snapshot vote passes, Grants will approve a Grant application.

Previous Budget Surplus

Description Amount Token
Ethereum 15,000 POOL
Ethereum 4,500 USDC
Polygon 78,000 POOL
Polygon 7,300 USDC
Optimism 20,600 USDC

The grants team inherits the existing budget kept safely in the gnosis safe.
Deviating from practices in the past, the grants team shall prioritize payments in USDC and spend POOL in accordance with the ratios set forth in the newly established contributor guidelines. Therefore, the grants team aims to continue its work with a lump-sum of [50,000] USDC, [50,000] POOL and in addition [100,000] USDC for delegation campaigns that are not to be spent and will be held in custody of the Executive Team.
The excess funds amounting to 43,000 POOL will be sent back to the treasury.

Changes from the last TBR

I want to summarize the changes compared to the last Team Budget Request here, so people have a better overview.
The Total Grants budget is reduced to 50k USDC and 50k POOL instead of 75k USDC and 75k POOL. The Team now has a Lead with 35% time commitment and 2 Reviewers with 16% Time commitment instead of a Lead with 50% and 4 Reviewers with 20%. Also every Grant above 15,000 USD now requires a snapshot vote.
These changes were made after some great feedback from other Community and Council members, including the Finance Team!
Also like most/all other TBRs updated the POOL price and adjusted the compensation based on the PoolTogether Compensation Formula - Google Sheets and added a last Season Review.

Appendix

Token Pricing

Token USD
ETH $TBD
USDC $1
POOL 0.67
3 Likes

Hey there, grant team!
Your work is truly impressive.
I have an idea for how to handle grants over $10,000 in the future:
Let’s fund 50% upfront and the rest upon delivery and review, just like it’s done in many traditional industries.
Can we do something like that? Could be adjusted for each project.

3 Likes

I like this for Requester being the representative can somehow manage the delegation same time/on spot as when the campaign is concluded…

We introduced a similar concept in BanklessDAO grants committee and it saved us a lot of BANK!

The real trick is how you define « complete ». Too strict and you could be pigeonholing your projects. Too lose and there is waste. This is a fun problem, though :wink:

2 Likes

Thx for the comments!
Yeah, good idea with splitting the funds for Grants over X! In some/most cases we are already doing that but in the current market conditions it definitely makes lot of sense!

The Grants Team TBR is live for voting:
Onchain: PoolTogether Governance
Snapshot: Snapshot