[RFC] DAO Global Hackathon Grant Proposal

Euler Grant Proposals RFC
1

Title: DAO Global Hackathon

Author(s): @capitulation, @rmac

Related Discussions: N/A

Submission Date: Jan 26, 2023

Simple Summary:

Aragon proposes that Euler joins the 2023 DAO Global Hackathon as a co-sponsor by providing bounty funds to incentivize developers to build on top of Euler protocol and/or solve specific challenges that Euler is facing as a DAO. We propose bounty funds totaling $12,000 USD, where Euler DAO would define and award the bounties across hack tracks, with 100% of funds going to winning projects (Aragon is covering all overhead costs related to running the 4-week virtual hackathon).

Abstract:

The proposal for Euler to provide bounty funds for the 2023 DAO Global Hackathon, organized by Aragon, presents a unique opportunity to drive developer engagement for Euler as a protocol and as a DAO. The hackathon, divided into four “Hack Tracks,” allows Euler to allocate funds across multiple bounties and tracks, providing developers with many opportunities to win bounties. This flexibility allows Euler to choose a specific track that aligns with its goals and objectives or to spread the funds across multiple tracks.

100% of the $12K in grant funds would go to the winning hackers and entirely for the benefit of the Euler ecosystem. There are 4 “Hack Tracks” to which partners may allocate their funds, including splitting funds across multiple bounties and tracks:

  1. Integration track (for partners looking to grow their partner universe): Two or more partners jointly offer a shared bounty that combines their products to address a user need or create a DAO process flow.
  2. Use case track (for partners looking to discover interesting applications of their product): Partners offer open-ended or specific bounties to extend their product’s functionality or to address a specific audience (i.e. drive protocol usage across DAOs).
  3. Solution track (for DAOs facing a specific organizational challenge): The sponsoring DAO creates a bounty to solve a specific problem they face (i.e. improve delegate activity transparency for a better token holder experience).
  4. Freestyle track (for partners who don’t want to manage bounties): The partner contributes to a prize pool that a panel of judges will distribute to selected submissions across the other 3 tracks.

Aragon, the organizer of the hackathon, is a leading provider of DAO infrastructure and has successfully run a DAO tooling hackathon in late 2021 with over 1000 participants, 23 partners, and 30+ bounties (see the site: https://hackforfreedom.org/). This year, Aragon is partnering with HackerEarth to ensure an outstanding hackathon experience from platform to marketing to community management/support. Aragon is covering all costs related to the organization of the 4-week virtual hackathon to allow co-sponsoring partners to direct 100% of the funds they dedicate directly to hackers.

Motivation:

By co-sponsoring the Hackathon, Euler will be able to draw developer attention to its protocol and its DAO. The unique format of the Hackathon provides Euler with the flexibility to direct resources towards improving token holder and contributor experience (e.g. track 3) or towards improving the accessibility and user-friendliness of its protocol (e.g. tracks 1 and 2). More specifically with respect to protocol growth, Euler can leverage the focus of the Hackathon on DAOs, to incentivize the introduction or streamlining of functionalities catering specifically to DAO treasuries as a vertical. If Euler DAO does not have the spare capacity to craft specific bounties track 4 is also a great option to promote the development of DAO infrastructure and support the growth of web3 developer community. Importantly all funds contributed by co-sponsors go directly toward the winning teams.

Bounties will be listed on the Hackathon website and a public call for participants leveraging HackerEarth’s global community of 8 million developers, as well as through Aragon and partner networks. Aragon will provide prompts and a communication schedule to make it easier for co-sponsors to amplify the Hackathon through their respective channels. Several educational and networking events throughout the Hackathon.

Specification & Implementation:

The Hackathon is currently in the planning stage, and we have already confirmed multiple partners, including ENS, Snapshot, Exponent, and others. We will run the Hackathon starting in April 2023 for four weeks, beginning marketing in February and registration by March. The Hackathon will be followed by a builder camp that supports participants in continuing with their projects.

Participating in tracks 1, 2, and 3 means that a contributor/s from Euler DAO will be responsible for drafting the bounty and evaluating submissions. For those bounties, Euler DAO will determine the winning submission and reward the bounty directly to the respective team. If Euler’s bounty receives no valid and complete submissions, Euler will not be spending the associated funds. Hackathon teams will develop and submit their projects by the deadline on the HackerEarth platform.

As a Governor level sponsor ($12,000 USD and above), Euler DAO will have the opportunity to hold two workshops/presentations as part of the Hackathon. We also recommend to co-sponsors holding weekly 30-min office hours to support developers working on their bounties.

The Hackathon will be hosted and promoted via the HackerEarth platform, with over a decade of experience hosting hackathons to their massive global community of professional devs, including directly to an estimated 25-30% of the total web3 developer community. Aragon will provide additional marketing, comms, support, and infrastructure before, during, and after the hackathon, working with partners to amplify its efforts.

Promo Deck: DocSend

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Hi @capitulation ! Since Euler was born out of a Hackaton I believe that it is a good way to spread the word about Euler in the devs community. Just got a few questions:

  1. The prize pool for the last year was 200 k, what is the prize pool expected this year?
  2. Do u have any examples of success stories from the previous hackaton, teams that transformed in big sturtups?
  3. U mentioned that ENS, Snapshot, Exponent have already confirmed their participation. Will they pay 12 000 as well?
  4. I have some concerns about the bounties. Here is see two options: ask the EulerLabs to deal with it or as someone from the DAO based on a grant. So maybe this question goes to the EulerLabs if they are ready to participate and allocate their time?
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Hey, @Raslambek thank you for the thoughtful questions. Answering as follows:

  1. We expect the current edition to be around $100k. Last time around, it was near the top of the market, so securing more significant contributions was easier. On the positive side, we believe that under current market conditions, dollars make it a lot further than back at the end of 2021.
  2. A few projects that started at the first hackathon are:
  1. Sponsors come at different levels. So far, ENS is coming in at the Steward tier ($9k). Others are coming in at the contributor tier ($3k) with BitDAO/Mantle joining at Governor ($12k).
  2. It would be a dream state to get someone from the EulerLabs team involved so that they can craft custom bounties that have the highest relevance for Euler DAO or the Euler protocol. If Euler DAO can help facilitate that, it would be great!
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As success from previous editions, I have missed:

Via Protocol, rebranded from then We Bill, provided a payment infrastructure and NFT minting solution with multichain support. Via now provides a one-stop bridge and DEX aggregator to move tokens across 25 networks efficiently.

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Thank you @capitulation for the post.

a. Aside from defining and awarding bounties, the Governor level sponsorship also involves workshops and presentations. Does the Euler Labs team have bandwidth for this?

b. [quote=“capitulation, post:3, topic:660”]
Sponsors come at different levels
[/quote]

Is it possible to poll these sponsorship levels in your proposal to test which one the community would lean towards?

c. Is it possible to know the benefits of other sponsorship levels?

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gm, and thank you for the questions!

  • We do hope the Euler community can help us get feedback from the Labs team on this as we don’t have a direct point of contact there

  • Awesome idea, definitely up for this. The sponsorship levels and the respective benefits are as follows (table copied from the deck shared in the original proposal):

Screenshot 2023-02-09 at 15.40.16
Screenshot 2023-02-09 at 15.40.161978Ă—1024 335 KB

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At what level should Euler DAO support the DAO Global Hackathon:

  • Summoner - $20k and above
  • Governor - $12k and above
  • Steward - $9k and above
  • Contributor - $3k and above
  • Do not participate

0 voters

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Thanks for the nudge on this, we’ve had so much on this slipped off our agenda. We’ll discuss internally and someone will respond with feedback on the proposal in the coming days.

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Hey Capitulation. I think it’s a bit unfortunate to omit an option of not participating. That is an important part of the temperature check and will ensure everyone gets to voice their opinion. Could you please edit the poll and include this option?

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Great point - added.

Ideally, this would be split into two questions - participate yes/no, and if yes, at what level. Should we go that route, or should we simply count all specific level votes as “yes”?

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Hey Capitulation. The Euler Labs team has discussed this a bit internally and we’ve come to the realisation that unfortunately we don’t have the resources to go forward with this at the moment.

While we are super excited to spur more development on Euler and grow the ecosystem, we’re currently laser focused on revamping the website. This is incurring significant costs and we’d like to have it all under wraps before moving onto something like this. Nonetheless we emphasise the importance of such activites and are hopeful to participate in these in the future.

That is not to say we speak on behalf of the DAO though, and other members will participate. This is DeFi and Euler is decentralising. We are sure other interested members will guide this process further. We look forward to seeing this proposal continue along DAO guidelines!