[RFC] TBR-Q2-2023 - Grants Team
| Team Name | Grants Team |
| Quarter and Year | Q2 2023 |
| Payout Address | 0xd605bB8A3DA1f7f777276D3c97c828aAc3Dd4252 |
| Total USD Value Requested | $43000 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
- 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 at the end of the quarter Grants will publish a review about the funded grants of that quarter.
- 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.
- Continue the growth of V4 but also preparing the Hyperstructure launch
The Hyperstructure launch is coming nearer and everyone in the Community is preparing for that. During the phase of transition Grants will provide support for everyone that wants to build on the existing V4 structure but also for people that already plan to build and spread awareness about the upcoming Hyperstructure.
Last Season Review
Last quarter Grants received a total of 50 applications. We reviewed them and approved 15 for a Grant. Total USD spend on Grants last Season was 48k USDC and 6k 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:
Phi X PoolTogether - 10000 USD
Grants received and approved a Grant from Shugo to to launch a Phi X PoolTogether campaign where people can try to complete the on-chain activity Quests dedicated to the PoolTogether protocol to get special PoolTogether collab objects designed by eBoy. This will encourage more people to interact with PoolTogether and 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
Poolers NFT Project - 10000 USD
Grants received and approved a Grant from @mcoso for Milestone 1 and the start of Milestone 2 of the Poolers NFT Project RFC: Poolers NFT Project.
Poolers is an NFT project that will launch alongside the PoolTogether Hyperstructure. Users will be able to mint Poolers, choose attributes, and unlock the attributes over time by holding a deposit in PoolTogether. Swim Points ($SWIM) will be the basis token of Poolers, needed to mint and level up Poolers.
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.
Retroactive Public Goods Pooling - Tool by PoolTogether x CANDIDE
Grants received and approved a Grant from @marcopolo for sponsoring gas fees to allow users to deposit and delegate their chances of winning to Optimism RetroPGF round 2 in a one click gasless no loss donation; helping fund public goods that support development and usage of the OP Stack.
Content Booster Bot - 100 USD
Grants received and approved a Grant from @shivansh for developing a Discord Bot to support the Content Booster campaign. This Bot helps with keeping an overview about what content currently has the most votes and makes the Content Booster program much easier to use and helps people voting for their favourite submitted content.
Budget
Requested Amount
| Amount | Token |
|---|---|
| 43000 | USDC |
Budget Breakdown
Team Members
| Role | Yearly USD Compensation | Commitment Percentage | Quarterly USDC | Quarterly POOL | Contributor | Contributor Discord |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lead | $120,000 | 35% | 8348 | 2110 | Lonser | Lonser#7584 |
| Reviewer | $50,000 | 14% | 1575 | 171 | Gabor | gabor#4738 |
| Reviewer | $50,000 | 14% | 1575 | 171 | McOso | McOso#7958 |
The reviewers are the same as last quarter (mcoso, gabor).
The Grants Multi sig will stay a 3/5 Multi Sig with the same signers and also with some voluntary members as back up (TangFeng, Taliskye).
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 | 21,000 | POOL |
| Polygon | 23,000 | POOL |
| Polygon | 2,000 | 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 [45,000] USDC, [30,000] 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 14,000 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 45k USDC and 30k POOL instead of 50k USDC and 50k POOL. The Team now has a Lead with 35% time commitment (and $120k Total Comp instead of $90k per year) and 2 Reviewers with 14% Time commitment instead of a Lead with 35% and 2 Reviewers with 16%. 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 |
|---|---|
| USDC | $1 |
| POOL | 1.02 |
