eIP 37: Encode Club Grant Proposal

[eIP] Euler Improvement Proposals Voted Proposals
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Title: EncodeClub Grant Proposal

Author(s): @encodeclub

Related Discussions: RFC & temp check poll

Submission Date: December 8, 2022

Simple Summary:

Encode suggests to receive $30K USD from Euler and allocate to grant projects as it sees fit, whilst engaging, consulting and involving the community in decisions.

Abstract:

Encode Club will organise a pilot grants programme that will aim to familiarise their community with the Euler DAO’s bounties. Their team will be entrusted with their promotion and furthermore tasked with evaluation of the best projects submissions, making sure that each is up to the standards set by the DAO.

The programme will closely resemble the previously successful “Bounties4Bandits” grants that Encode ran for Saddle. A summary of its execution and results can be found here.

Encode Club is a web3 education community. We help people learn, build and launch their web3 careers. We do this through high quality events such as educate series, hackathons, accelerators and bootcamps. 1000s graduate from Encode programmes each month with many getting jobs and starting companies (Euler itself won an Encode hackathon).

Motivation:

Encode Club will crowdsource ideas for bounties from the community and will decide what bounty size to allocate for each. Each of the bounties should consist of:

  1. Brief summary and explanation

  2. Clearly outlined deliverables

  3. Execution and delivery within the timeline of the programme

  4. Amount of funding attached

There will be two types of bounties:

  1. Competitions → several projects compete and the best gets the bounty award at the end of the programme.

  2. Award → a single team is selected to answer the bounty, and receives the award upon completion by the end of the programme.

Bounties will be listed on the Encode website and a public call for participants will be made. Encode Club will take care of promoting and marketing the initiative as well as organise several education events with community members and investors from the Euler community throughout the bounty period.

Teams then build by the deadline and the best are given bounties as judged by Encode, with a show and tell finale. The total value of the funds distributed by EncodeClub is $30K USD. For the pilot, Encode will not charge any operational fee and run the programme pro bono for the benefit of the Euler ecosystem.

If the programme proves successful, Encode would iterate and apply again from Q2 2023 for a follow up grants programme and will charge its standard operational fee at the time.

Snapshot:

https://snapshot.org/#/eulerdao.eth/proposal/0x76fb2890629949ed78e2bb595f55509d07812675056d962ebebd992024f8f16f

3 Likes
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@encodeclub So the grants are awarded retroactively? Just curious why 30k was asked for; where did you guys get this number?

On the same topic, has Euler thought about spinning up their own Grants DAO with 3 members? I know its been discussed before.

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it’s a 3rd party?to organize event？

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By successful, is there any yardstick that would make the program successful? Any criteria?

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i am inclined to take a stand against this proposal for the following reasons.

  1. Lack of clarity
    The proposer fails to explain the exact use of funds, its allocation across different bounties, who the exact focus group are etc. It seems the proposal doesn’t have any idea of the specs of the bounties they want to fund.
  1. Lack of milestones or KPIs
    The proposer fails to explain the criteria to consider the program a success. No clear milestones are described in the proposal that would keep the proposer accountable for or to know if it’s a success.
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So the grants are awarded retroactively? Just curious why 30k was asked for; where did you guys get this number?

@MasterMojo Not necessarily. However, teams that have done work in the past and fall under a future grant track will be able to apply for one. Regarding the number itself - we suggested $30k as high enough to generate interest, but also keep it reasonable since this will be the very first edition and will surely need finetuning and iteration in the future.

By successful, is there any yardstick that would make the program successful? Any criteria?

@Beckleys We believe that the engagement generated via the event, the number of teams participating and the quality of the projects will be a good barometer.

  1. Lack of clarity
    The proposer fails to explain the exact use of funds, its allocation across different bounties, who the exact forcuse group are etc. It seems the proposal dont have any idea on the specs of Bounties they want to fund.

@0xBaer Bounty types have been generally outlined in the RFC, but will be specified further if the programme is to be approved. We believe the community should be involved and have a say in these, so we’re looking forward to shaping the bounty tracks with you all. We believe that fund allocation before that does not make sense, so we’ve left this for after the bounty tracks are clear.

  1. Lack of milestone or KPIs
    The proposer fails to explain the criteria to consider the program a success. No clear milestone are described in the proposal that would keep the proposer accountable for or to know if its a success.

Repeating ourselves a bit here, but as a pilot grant programme, the goal is to maximize developer engagement and make sure the output ends up benefitting the Euler community. Encode has a proven track record of executing programmes like these and we plan to uphold our high standards for this iteration as well.

I have a strong feeling that Euler DAO is paying 30K for the marketing budgets of @encodeclub without any clear returns.

  • Euler DAO will not be paying anything to Encode Club.
  • Grant funds will be allocated, but not necessarily spent. Any unspent funds will be returned back to the DAO.
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Hi EncodeClub, thanks again for this.

To reiterate my point from the other thread; I think this is a great initiative.

With your proven track record to organise, nurture and ultimately find gems of teams/developers; this is a superb opportunity for the Euler DAO!

Funding the grassroots of DeFi like this can lead to new ideas, new products built on Euler, and maybe even new team members.

I am in full support.

1 Like
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I wish this proposal were structured differently and conveyed that @encodeclub wants EulerDAO to earmark 30K for bounties, and you are responsible for organising these bounties!

from the abstract, I got the idea that @encodeclub will receive 30K without proper reporting and accountability mechanics.

I know this proposal is part editing stage!
so If this gets approved, I wish to see a detailed action plan with the KPIs you have mentioned and how the Euler Community involvement might be.

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Hi Encode Club! You are doing great things for everyone, thank you for the proposal.
But I would like to express my concern about the details.

  1. There’s no clear bounty programme. So I’m not sure that requested budget should be allocated to the program which isn’t evaluated by stakeholders.
    As I know, you’ve run Dev programs with the same or less budget for L1 protocols.

  2. It would be great to see alignment between participants and Euler. So it would be better to start with EUL as rewards that way we could get a better conversion rate to Eulerians.

At this point I will vote against it, but I like the direction given.

10

Interesting proposal @encodeclub. We’re generally in favour of Euler setting up some sort of grant program. Given the lack of clear KPIs for this particular proposal, we will vote against it for now.

Just like @nikita, we like the direction of the proposal and think a future collaboration with Euler makes sense. Happy to revisit this and change our vote if applicable.