In order to categorize the grant program as successful, do we have any benchmark on number?
How many grants coming to compound on the first quarter or maybe we just take the initial euler grant request and double the number?
The Encode grants program slipped my mind, but is it worth running two grant programs at the same time? I don’t believe so. Encode is currently piloting an external grants program with no admin costs in their current proposal.
They’ve already expressed an interest in potentially running another Grants program based on its success, with an operational fee this time.
I think it makes sense to let Encode finish its current grant program and then both providers (Encode & Questbook) can submit a proposal. Euler DAO can evaluate both instead of running two programs alongside each other before the community even evaluates what we aim to achieve from these grant programs.
Bounty Ideas are collected until March 26th and the Encode Grants Program ends on June 18th.
Questbook should at least wait till March 26th and see what bounties Encode has created to reduce redundancy and tackle other domains. Or wait till June 18th, for the community to evaluate the impact of the Encode Grants Program and see if the DAO would prefer to move forward with Questbook or Encode.
Some of the domains such as Multichain deployment & Content education, are valid even without encode so they could progress forward, but to make an informed decision, it would be better to wait until march 26th to move forward with other domains
I completely agree with you that these two programs may not be able to run concurrently. The only plausible solution I see is if Encode Club agrees to be a domain allocator for one or multiple categories.
I don’t think these are competing proposals.
Questbook provides on-chain tooling for daos to manage their respective grants program. They don’t run the grants themselves and I don’t think they even want to do that. Under this structure, it is the allocators who run the grants and deploy the capital.
Encode is more akin to an allocator in this format. They actually run the grants and are one of the best at it and I have personally nudged them to apply for the allocator selection vote for one of the domains.
We have had more grants pass after encode’s grants and it is debatable to the effectiveness and cost efficiency of the grants process as it currently stands. This is why in our view, a comprehensive onchain tool tailored for processing and managing grants is imperative and urgent for the dao.
Lastly, I think in general it’s good to have competition between allocators in the same domain as it allows the dao to make better assessments between allocators and also pushes allocators to perform better. Have suggested this to the Questbook team for future seasons of the program.
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It’s not that they are competing, as some of the suggested domains for QB are outside of Encode. I think both programs can run together since they tackle it in different ways, but we should be careful about throwing money around unless it will make an impact. I.e. avoid overlap in bounties and grants.
The selection process should continue since multichain/crosschain and education are outside of Encode, and I support Encode acting as a DDA for one of the other domains. By the time encode is aware of their bounties, it should be made publicly, so the relevant DDAs can prepare to adjust their domain documents for potential grantees.
As you suggest having two DDAs for a specific domain is a better move and promotes competition but also diverse experience which is something we should consider.
In the end, we are happy to support Questbooks DDA with $50k per domain, $1k cap per month as comp and would like to see Encode as one of DDAs.
1 Like
Title : [Grant Proposal 9] Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook
Author : ruchil
Submission date - 17/02/2023
Summary
- We propose the launch of Euler ecosystem growth fund of $222k (~0.26% of the treasury and ~0.8% of stables as on Feb 17th, 2023) spread across 1 quarter to fund a wide variety of teams building apps on top of Euler in a transparent manner. Questbook is leading Compound grants program through delegated domain capital allocation model, a community-run grants program
- We additionally propose that this budget be managed by 4 individuals called Domain Allocators - chosen from the community, by the community. These domain allocators would manage grants for a domain. These domains are strategic areas of focus for which the Euler DAO wants to disburse grants
- The performance of each of these domain allocators will be publicly viewable and auditable using rich dashboards. At the end of the quarter, the Euler community can vote to replace, continue domain allocators or increase budgets for each domain allocator.
- We (Questbook.xyz) will help facilitate setting up these domain allocators and provide the tooling to run the grants program in an efficient and transparent way. We have previously set up or currently setting up the grants process for Compound, Polygon, Solana, Celo, and Aave
Motivation
As we continue to experience the depth of the bear market, it is increasingly important for Euler to retain the mindshare of key ecosystem contributors and incentivize builders to build on top of it. Grants program is a great way to attract high-quality builders and grow the ecosystem more quickly. This proposal details the benefit to all the stakeholders involved - token holders, builders and DAO members.
Problems
Based on our experience of running grants programs for multiple ecosystems and after speaking to key ecosystem contributors of Euler DAO, we have identified the following key problems:
- Dearth of high-quality proposals - Since the submission of the first grant proposal (July ‘22), Euler DAO has received only 14 grant proposals till date. This is an average of 2 proposals per month. To contrast, the number of proposals received by Aave is more than 50 per month.
List of proposals
Multi chain and cross-chain Strategy
[RFC] Deploy Euler to Polygon
[eIP 49: Deploy Euler to BNB Chain]
RFC: Deploy Euler on Arbitrum
Deploy Euler on XDC Network
-
Tokenholder’s blind spots - It is unfair to expect any token holder and community member to have expertise across various domains. It becomes impossible or inefficient to judge projects that may lie outside their expertise and may still be valuable to the Euler ecosystem. By delegating capital and decision-making to experts, we can empower domain experts to make informed decisions within a certain domain
-
Lack of Impact Measurement - Measuring the impact of the grants program is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of the allocated capital and ensuring that the resources are being used effectively. In the absence of a thorough impact measurement, grants team is unable to identify the areas of improvement and is prone to repeat the same mistakes.
Screenshots of comments from Euler’s active community members
Solution
Giving domain allocators the capital and decision-making powers can increase the efficiency of the grants program, without compromising on accountability:
- Individual expertise instead of collective blindspots
- Distributed load instead of committee backlogs
- Accountability instead of diffusion of responsibility
The proposed structure will lead to the following outcomes:
- Increase in quality proposals - measured by the number of proposals received per month and % of proposals accepted by the domain allocators. Questbook (https://www.questbook.app) is a desired destination for 20,000+ builders each month. We also have a dedicated team who is responsible for builder engagement and reviewing draft proposals before they are submitted to ensure high quality
-
Delegate capital allocation - Identify, attract and fund projects/builders that the current grant structure would otherwise not have funded by delegating capital allocation to members of the community rather than a central disbursing committee or a large diverse community
-
Consistent and timely communication - between the domain allocators, builders and community members is a key part of any successful grants program. This will be measured by impact metrics such as turnaround time to give feedback on the proposal and make a final decision, the number of projects completing all the milestones. The data and performance across key metrics will be visible to the community
Specification & Implementation
The program structure focuses on having community members as domain allocators. Euler DAO will be required to set a budget of $222k to be disbursed by 4 domain allocators and for committee compensation. Each domain allocator will be elected by the community and will run their domain on-chain for full transparency. The data and performance across key metrics will be visible to the community in order to evaluate the domain allocator’s performance.
The disbursement of the grant will take place on-chain from a multi-sig wallet for each domain controlled by the program manager & the domain allocator. The domain allocators will approve or reject proposals based on their evaluation. The program manager will then coordinate with the Euler community to ensure that the proposal is aligned with Euler’s growth before making the disbursal. The sole purpose of the multi-sig is to make sure capital is not being siphoned. However, the allocators are encouraged to make independent decisions regarding the approval of the proposal based on their expertise.
The grants committee and the Euler community shall evaluate the performance of each domain and domain allocator using publicly available data. The outcomes could be as follows:
- Change the domain
- Change the allocator/program manager
- Change the budget
Active community members can also initiate a no-confidence motion to initiate a review off-cycle. This can be initiated by one of the active delegates on Snapshot. The program manager can coordinate this, if the situation arises, along with the active community members. The unused funds from every domain will be returned to the treasury at the end of the quarter.
Product Screens
Invite proposals to your grants program
Anyone from the community can view and comment on the proposals
Invite community members to review proposals based on an evaluation rubric
Make milestone-based payouts directly from the multi-sig
Track the performance of the grants program
Euler Grants Committee
The program will consist of
- A Program Manager
- 4 Domain Allocators
A Grants SAFE, with 3/5 multi-sig, between the program manager and 4 domain allocators will be setup. We will then have 4 SAFEs for each of the domains with a 2/2 between the program manager and the specific domain allocator.
The funds for the grants program will flow from the treasury into the Grants SAFE. This SAFE will hold the funds related to the grants budget and committee compensation. Funds that will be disbursed to the proposers will reside in the domain-level SAFEs. The program manager will be responsible to update the community about approved proposals and their details through bi-weekly community calls and reports over discord.
We have identified the following domains based on the feedback of the community and welcome the community members to self-nominate themselves for becoming domain allocators.
- Developer Tooling
- Multichain and Crosschain Strategy
- New Protocol Ideas
- Content Marketing and New User Acquisition
Domain Allocator Roles & Responsibilities:
The following will be the roles and responsibilities of the selected domain allocators.
- Time commitment per week: Maximum of 25 hours per week for the program manager and 15 hours per week for the domain allocator, which might vary based on the number of applications. The program manager will ensure that the workload is evenly distributed
- Program Manager:
- Communication:
- Work with the Euler team and the elected domain allocators to create and list out the necessary RFPs
- Create marketing content for communicating RPFs to the builders
- Coordinate between Euler team and the community regarding funding requirements
- Communicate the information regarding approval/rejection of proposals to the Euler community regularly
- Attend community calls, actively participate in the community forum, and keep the community updated and take their feedback on the program
- Regularly update the progress of the grants program to the Euler community over Discord and community calls
- Grants Program:
- Source good-quality proposals from developer communities
- Sign the transactions for the approved projects
- Ensure a quick turnaround time for proposers regarding their proposal decision
- Coordinate between the domain allocators to ensure that the workload is evenly distributed and take their feedback consistently
- Communication:
- Domain Allocator:
- Review proposals received for their domains based on the rubrics set by the domain allocator
- Reject/Approve proposals and coordinate consistently with the program manager
- Source applications by reaching out to developer communities in their network
- Discuss program improvements with the other domain allocators and program manager during scheduled meetings
Compensation:
- Domain Allocator: $80/hr capped at $1000/month
- Program Manager: A dedicated program manager from Questbook will work with the domain allocators free of cost
- Questbook : 5% fee for each disbursal
Conclusion
What does success look like?
-
Objective
- The prime objective of this model is to have domains that align with Euler’s priorities. This way the contribution of the projects as part of the grants program is directly adding value to the DAO and the token holders.
- Increase in the number of builders, proposals, and funded projects
- Increase in the homegrown leadership to run grant programs (measured by the number of people running grant programs)
- Increase in the community members’ participation to keep grant programs accountable (measured by the number of people looking at the dashboard and participating in the program)
- Diversity in projects being funded across technologies, geographies, and demographics, to name a few. We encourage the community to regularly review the project domains during Euler’s community call
- Increased engagement in builder community’s
- Discourse
- Discord, Telegram
- Social media (Twitter, Reddit)
- GitHub
-
Subjective
- Improved community involvement in the grants program
- Strengthened builders’ sentiment towards Euler
- Enhanced Euler’s brand recognition in builder circles
KPIs
- Each domain allocator is required to come up with domain-specific rubrics similar to the following in order to evaluate the proposals. If the identified rubrics are not in line with the domain or Euler’s roadmap, anyone from the community can openly suggest changes or question them on the forum
| Score | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Developer Reach | No project developer team. No developer attraction. | No dev team. Small attraction plan (1 to 5 devs). | Yes team dev. | Yes team dev. Small attraction plan (1 to 5 more devs). | Yes team dev. Big attraction plan (+5 more devs). |
| Developer Commitment | No commitment attraction | Mercenary commitment attraction (stays until benefits end) | Commitment attraction (1 to 3 months ) | Commitment attraction (1 year) | Commitment attraction (3 year) |
| Developer Quality* | Project does not have a reasonable chance to attract high-quality devs | Project has a possibility of attracting high-quality devs | Project has a reasonable possibility of attracting high-quality devs and/or has high-quality devs | Project is likely to attract high-quality devs | Project is highly likely to attract high-quality devs |
| Likelihood of success | Clear flaw in design that cannot be easily remedied | Difficult to see the project continuing for more than a year | Reasonable chance that the project has intermediate-to-long-term success (+1 Year) | Project is likely to generate long-term, sustainable value for the ecosystem | Project has substantial likelihood to generate long-term, sustainable value for the ecosystem |
| Grant size | Grant size significantly outweighs projected benefit | Grant size is considerably larger than expected benefit | Grant size is proportional to expected benefit | Expected benefit outweighs grant size | Expected benefit meaningfully exceeds grant size |
| Team assessment | Team does not substantiate ability to deliver on plan | Team does not show significant ability to deliver on plan | Team shows reasonable ability to deliver on plan | Team shows significant ability to deliver on plan | Team exceeds what is required to deliver on plan |
| Milestone Assessment | Milestones do not significantly hold proposer accountable | Milestones are unlikely to hold proposer accountable | Milestones are reasonably likely to hold proposer accountable | Milestones are significantly likely to hold proposer accountable | Milestones are very likely to hold proposer accountable |
| Demo included (binary yes/no) | No demo included | Demo included | |||
| Score | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Discretionary Factors (comment required)** |
- Total number of proposals received, number of proposals received for each domain, number of proposals funded, turn around time to take a decision and for disbursal, milestone and project completion rates
- The program manager will share reports and conduct AMAs once every two weeks to ensure transparency and accountability.
- We welcome any suggestions for additional qualitative or quantitative metrics not included above
- Questbook product is a decentralized on-chain grants orchestration tool. Anyone from the community can view the data and create custom dashboards using the on chain data relevant to Euler Grants Program in a permissionless manner.
Track the performance of the grants program
Anyone from the community can track the number of proposals, funding available for builders for a particular domain, and accepted proposals from the Homepage.
About Questbook:
Questbook’s role in Euler’s Grant Program
- Ruchil Sharma from Questbook will be the first program manager. Thereafter, the program manager will be elected from the community. Ruchil was the program manager for Polygon facilitating the disbursal of ~ $1M in grants. He works with the Solana foundation and ecosystems within Solana on a daily basis to help them design their grants program. He has received a grant of $250K from the Solana foundation for the same. He also works closely with Compound Grants Programs 2.0’s program manager. He has spoken to more than 100 builders and teams over the last 6-8 months and understands what it takes to make a grant program successful – from both program manager and builder perspectives
- Questbook Grants tool will make sure the workflows are systematic and transparent.
Product Flows
- Posting a grant - Link
- Reviewing and Funding Proposals - Link
- Settings - Link
- Communicating with Builders - Link
- Funding Builders - Link
Credentials
- Questbook (YC-W21) is a decentralized grant orchestration tool, currently being used by Compound, Polygon, AAVE, Celo & Solana Ecosystem
- Ruchil Sharma from Questbook will be the first program manager. Thereafter, the program manager will be elected from the community. Ruchil was the program manager for Polygon facilitating the disbursal of ~ $1M in grants. He works with Solana foundation and ecosystems within Solana on a daily basis to help them design their grants program. He has received a grant of $250K from the Solana foundation for the same. He also works closely with Compound Grants Programs 2.0 program manager. He has spoken to more than 100 builders and teams over the last 6-8 months and understands what it takes to make a grant program successful – from both program manager and builder perspectives
Next Steps
- Taking the formal submission for a Snapshot vote on 23:59 PST, 17th February 2023
- Launching and announcing the Grants Program after all of the following steps are executed:
- Voting on this formal submission
- Election of domain allocators for each domain
- RFP creation of each domain by taking inputs from the Euler team
2 Likes
Great to see all the activity and discussion around this proposal. I support most of the changes, including the DAO’s role in selecting its own domain allocators for the program.
I will offer one caveat from my vantage point as a current domain allocator for Compound’s program (also thru Questbook). Compensating domain allocators at $80/hr with a cap of $1000/hr is functionally placing a cap of less than 13 hours per month, after which the domain allocator will have to volunteer their time to keep the program running with an acceptable turnaround time.
For a domain with a handful of proposals, this may be just fine. However, a healthy program may receive (using my domain in CGP as a concrete example) over 20 quality proposals in less than one month. Between marketing, project research, calls with proposers, preparing reviews, exchanging info/feedback with other DAs, tracking teams’ progress, and coordinating milestone payouts, there is no way to do the work properly at less than 1 hour per month per quality proposal.
Based on this experience, I would suggest increasing the cap to $2000/month or, if the potential cost is too high, reducing the hourly rate to $40/hour (recognizing that it may influence who will/can apply for a DA role). A third alternative would be to make the cap dependent on the number of proposals received by the domain (e.g. cap of 3 hours/month at $80/hr per proposal managed per domain).
2 Likes
hey @ruchil another temp check poll should go up first since your proposal has undergone some major changes since its first post.
Your post made 4 days ago is the latest version, feel free to add the temp check poll there. Once it has passed the temp check poll, then it can move to the “Formal Submission” Stage for 2 days then move to a snapshot vote.
Here is the gov process
(Since this isn’t clear in the governance process, we can omit it for now and the current snapshot is fine)
1 Like
Hey @Bobbay_StableLab. The proposal has already been posted for voting and currently has 280% quorum with 140K Yes votes, 0 No votes and 0 Abstain votes.
You’re correct, ideally an additional temp check should have been asked for before the proposal went live on voting, but now this is already been put on voting with 2x quorum met and all Yes votes. Considering votes from EUL holders are the eventual arbiter, I don’t think it makes sense to go back for a temp check for this proposal at this stage.
Lastly, the temp check is primarily to ensure proposals are well discussed and only valid proposals make it for voting. I think we have managed to meet that objective.
1 Like
I already edited my comment to say it’s fine even though not ideal @shaishav0x
There is a process in place, and in the future, the process should be followed. In non-emergencies, we shouldn’t make exceptions.
2 Likes
Hi @Jack_Plante and @NOA , apologies for the delay in response. Out of the 37 votes, 24 votes are in favor, seven are against the proposal, and another six requested modifications. I have personally been in touch with 25 community members over Discord and Telegram and requested them to share their comments and feedback as soon as the proposal was live on the forum.
We have worked really hard to take inputs from as many community members as we could while drafting the proposal. I have been on 25 calls with Euler’s community members and delegates and have posted the proposal only after incorporating their feedback.
We have modified the proposal multiple times to incorporate the improvements suggested by the community members.
Hey @Raslambek , really appreciate your feedback throughout this process - it has made the proposal definitively better. I would love to take suggestions and answer all questions in the community call, before we officially launch the grants program.
Hi @patria , I will be actively working with the domain allocators and tracking the following key metrics:
- Number of proposals received
- Number of proposals funded
- Amount of funds disbursed
- Response and disbursal turnaround time
I’ll be personally accountable for these numbers to the community. I will be attending all the community calls to answer all questions.
Hey @allthecolors , thanks for sharing your comments and suggestions. I broadly agree with the suggestion. After speaking to the community, I have come to believe that it might be a good idea to start with a lower cap and revise if need be with compelling data and insights in the next iteration.
100% agreed. Thank you for your continued support, @Bobbay_StableLab . We really appreciate your critical feedback at every step of the process, and are thrilled to work with a community that holds itself to the highest standards.
We tried our best to comply with the governance process. We didn’t intend to cut any corners at any point. We hear your feedback and will be doubly careful going forward.
I will be voting no. I suggest others to follow. I suggest those that casted their votes in favour of this proposal to reconsider as well.
First of all, I agree that we need to formalize the grant process, if not anything that touches Euler gov on allocating funds. Past proposals successfully passing through Euler gov left a sour taste with many. The Messari proposal that @shaishav0x mentioned being one of them.
I appreciate that Questbook listened to some of the feedback in this thread and restructured its original proposal, as its original proposal did not constitute a level of granularity and detail that I would have appreciated to see when asking for a $2M contract.
Having said that, I yet do not like how rushed this proposal is being attempted to be voted through. And frankly, I do not like the general business etiquette put to light.
Thinking asking for $2M from the Euler DAO is fine is not a good look – in the real world, any contract of that size would be subject to through diligence.
I think it’s good that the compensation expectations were lowered. However, why were they set that high to begin with? I did not see any reasoning on the numbers. It shows a lack of thought was put into how much is fair for the work being done. It appeared more like a grab than a mature contract proposal. In fact, I may assume that some of those comp packages would have been likely higher than those of senior protocol engineers who’ve built the protocol to begin with.
Of course, even worse when realizing that DAO contributors are not under non-compete, and other clauses, allowing them to contribute to other DAOs and earning salaries there as well.
The fact that the initial proposals still had typos, further confirms my aforementioned doubts.
So, I am not fond of the way this proposal went ahead. Putting up a rushed, unreasonable proposal, to be as rushed adjusted after some push back by an individual, to then proceed straight to votes, is not a fine way to treat the Euler DAO imho.
DAO’s need to grow up. Money is not cheap. It’s a real thing and it’s capped. This is not targeted at this specific proposal, but to the space in general. We were spoilt the last few years, but realities have changed.
2 Likes
I appreciate what Questook done before posting this proposal. It’s solid work.
My main concerns were:
- budget
- selecting domain allocators
- conflict of interests.
This has been taken into account in the updated proposal, so I will vote for a test period.
1 Like
The changes that have been made have been significant and are a better way to kick off this Grant scheme from @ruchil and the Questbook team. Thank you for hearing the concerns of the community.
I would be voting in favor; however, I find the speed at which this has occurred a little unnerving. Some points from how I see things:
1 - There are ongoing grant developments with the Encode team. Different I know, but they are still spending significant amounts from the treasury.
2 - We didn’t have another poll as @Matt_StableLab mentioned, nor was the vote signaled like in the past. This is just good practice.
3 - Our friends at Lenmiscap managed to gather some extra votes (~200k EUL) before this proposal went live on Snapshot. These delegates have since been removed. Being the lead investor in Questbook’s latest raise they have an agenda to push.
This is fine and perfectly acceptable, but it seems like this vote was accelerated for no other reason than to catch other larger players off guard.
Euler DAO is such a young entity, with so much more developments (and decentralization) to come. I feel like we are moving in the direction of AAVE and Compound because they are larger than us and therefore must be doing things correctly. It’s worth considering whether this really is the case.
There are some very exciting developments to come within the next year, personally, I think we, as a DAO, should be patient and reassess as certain features are released, while monitoring the progress and outcomes from the Encode grants.
2 Likes
Thank you so much @batuX for the detailed feedback. I appreciate your recognition of the need for a formalized grants process. Please find the responses to specific questions as below:
Why was the grants budget set high to begin with? I did not see any reasoning on the numbers?
The initial proposed grants budget and the committee compensation was based on our ongoing engagement with Compound and to keep Euler competitive with rest of the market.
| Defi Protocol | Grants Budget | Committee Compensation | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aave | $3.25M per 2 Quarters | Grants Lead- $9k/month Review committee- $150/hr, capped at 10 hrs/week | Aave Grants |
| Compound | $1M per 2 quarters | Program Manager - $100/hr Domain Allocators - $80/hr | Compound Grants Program 2.0 |
Putting up a rushed, unreasonable proposal, to be as rushed adjusted after some push back by an individual
Based on the feedback of the community, we have updated the proposed amount and the proposal to ensure that it is run as a pilot. We’ve made best efforts to stick to the community’s recommended governance process here.
To make sure we launch the program with community’s best interests, I will be having a call for taking inputs on:
- What should definitely happen in this grants program
- What should definitely NOT happen in this grants program
- RFPs that should be listed for each domain
- Evaluation rubrics and proposal evaluation process
- KYC, legal, multi sig setup and other operational concerns
We don’t intend to cut any corners in the governance process and are incredibly sorry if that is how it has come out in this forum.