Grant Proposal 9 : Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook

2023-02-10T18:30:00Z2023-02-16T18:30:00Z

Title : RFC Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook

Author : ruchil

Submission date - 11/02/2023

Firstly, thank you @knightsemplar , @Raslambek , @BlockEnthusiast, @nikita , @vadym , @allthecolors , @Shippooor , @patria , @river0x and @Carebbear for reviewing the proposal. It would not have shaped this way, if not for your valuable inputs and feedback.

Summary

  • We propose the launch of Euler ecosystem growth fund of $2M (~2.16% of the treasury and ~7.3% of stables as on Feb 11th, 2023) spread across 2 quarters 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 5 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 every 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:

  1. 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
Proposal Domain Grant Amount Requested
Anthias x Euler Alert System Grant Proposal Developer Tooling $21,000
Grant request for Yacht Labs Inc. to improve native iOS interface for Euler Finance lending & borrowing Developer Tooling $18,000
Grant Proposal - Alternative Liquidation Bot Implementation Developer Tooling $17,000
[Grant Proposal] Euler Finance Integration In Texochat New Protocol Ideas $8,500
DAO Global Hackathon Grant Proposal Community growth and events $12,000
[RFC] Bankless Academy: Lending and borrowing lesson ft. Euler.finance Education for New User Onboarding $40,000
[RFC] Encode Club Grant Proposal Education for New User Onboarding] $30,000
Grant Proposal - Quarterly financial reporting Financial Reporting and Data Analytics $1,00,000
Grant for Defishy to create VaR simulation model with Euler Liquidation Health Graph View implemented in eGP1 Financial Reporting and Data Analytics $42,000
[Grant Proposal] [Euler Monthly Financial Reporting] Financial Reporting and Data Analytics $12,000
Grant Request for Defishy.xyz to build Euler-specific liquidation health dashboard Financial Reporting and Data Analytics $5,000
Warden Finance - Risk & Tooling Engagement Proposal Risk Tooling and Parameter Research $2,00,000
Grant Proposal - Risk Management Tools for Euler Risk Tooling and Parameter Research $85,000
Grant proposal - Euler risk tooling Risk Tooling and Parameter Research $80,000
Total $6,70,500

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

  1. 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

  2. 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

Link

Link

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:

  1. 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

  1. 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

  2. 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 $2M to be disbursed by 5 domain allocators. Each domain allocator will be an expert in their specific domain 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.

Every quarter, the grants committee and the Euler community shall evaluate the performance of each domain and domain allocator using the publicly available data. The outcomes could be as follows:

  1. Change the domain
  2. Change the allocator/program manager
  3. 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 2 quarters.

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

  1. A Program Manager
  2. 5 Domain Allocators

A Grants SAFE, with 4/6 multi-sig, between the program manager and 5 domain allocators will be setup. We will then have 5 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 operational costs, committee compensation, and the grants budget. 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 that are relevant to Euler and domain allocators who are best suited to evaluate proposals after evaluating them on axes such as community participation on forums, discord and social media.

We propose the following set of individuals to run one domain each. We are open to adding more domains and incorporating changes based on the feedback of the community.

Domain Credentials Needed Individual / Orgs Why it is relevant Examples of Proposals from Euler Discourse
Multichain and Crosschain Strategy Experience with managing multi-chain strategy for popular borrowing and lending protocols. Jun, Penn Blockchain (Franklin DAO) This will help Euler roll out to multiple chains and increase its market share eIP 49: Deploy Euler to BNB Chain
Developer tooling Core contributor to popular web3 Defi applications Inviting applications Apply Here This will help Euler ecosystem build essential tools, libraries, and dapps and streamline the development process Grant Proposal - Alternative Liquidation Bot Implementation - #2 by river0x
New Protocol Ideas Core contributor to Euler protocol allthecolors Encourage more people to propose and run experiments for improving the Euler protocol [Grant Proposal] Euler Finance Integration In Texochat
Community growth and events, Miscellaneous Experience in builder community growth and bootcamps Bobby, Stable Labs This will help Euler attract quality builders through community growth activities such as bootcamps, hackathons and sponsoring events [RFC] DAO Global Hackathon Grant Proposal
Education for new user onboarding Demonstrated experience in creating educational content, managing large communities, and new user onboarding jengajojo, DAOstewards This will help Euler onboard new users to its ecosystem and Defi primarily through educational content [RFC] Bankless Academy: Lending and borrowing lesson ft. Euler.finance - #2 by river0x

Domain Allocator Roles & Responsibilities:

The following will be the roles and responsibilities of the selected domain allocators.

  1. 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

  2. Program Manager:

    1. Communication:
      1. Coordinate between Euler team and the community regarding funding requirement
      2. Communicate the information regarding approval/rejection of proposals to the Euler community regularly
      3. Attend community calls, actively participate in the community forum, and keep the community updated and take their feedback on the program
      4. Regularly update the progress of the grants program to the Euler community over Discord and community calls
    2. Grants Program:
      1. Source good-quality proposals from developer communities
      2. Sign the transactions for the approved projects
      3. Ensure a quick turnaround time for proposers regarding their proposal decision
      4. Coordinate between the domain allocators to ensure that the workload is evenly distributed and take their feedback consistently
  3. Domain Allocator:

    1. Review proposals received for their domains based on the rubrics set by the domain allocator
    2. Reject/Approve proposals and coordinate consistently with the program manager
    3. Source applications by reaching out to developer communities in their network
    4. Discuss program improvements with the other domain allocators and program manager during scheduled meetings

Compensation:

The grant budget will be $1.7M with $340k for each domain. The compensation for the committee comprised of 5 domain allocators and 1 program manager will be paid on an hourly basis. The domain allocators and program manager are required to clock their hours and submit weekly reports which can be publicly viewed. The hourly rates for both roles are mentioned below:

Note: All unused funds will be returned to the treasury

P.S:

  1. We are inviting applications for dev tooling domain allocator. All interested community members and delegates can apply here https://forms.gle/PQSiAwGcP4JGX7rRA
  2. All payouts will be made in EUL

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

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

  1. Posting a grant - Link
  2. Reviewing and Funding Proposals - Link
  3. Settings - Link
  4. Communicating with Builders - Link
  5. 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

Product Compensation

  • We are happy to let Euler DAO use Questbook tool for free
  • However, for any specific asks from the grants team in order to run the process more smoothly, we charge for the additional features based on the development overhead. From our previous work experience: We propose a budget of $50K to be kept aside for specific features

Community buy-in and next steps

This proposal is to gather interest and invite comments from the community to figure out what should be the budget of such a grant program if it were to be set up.

What should be the budget for this grants program?

  • $2M
  • $1.5M
  • $1M
  • Others

0 voters

  • Yes, in favour of the proposal
  • Modify the proposal
  • No, against the proposal

0 voters

19 Likes

Strongly support this proposal, the Euler DAO requires a grants program.

3 Likes

Thanks for the post @ruchil. Appreciate the work the Questbook team has done here and we’re excited to see this started. We’re looking forward to seeing more multi-chain development for Euler and other domain work as well. Also, the ~2% of the treasury assets seem very appropriate for this scope!

5 Likes

I am a domain allocator for Compound’s grants program facilitated by Questbook. In my experience, Questbook walks the walk on transparency with an on-chain record of grant submission, discussion, review, and milestone-based disbursements. They have also been extremely responsive and professional when we (domain allocators for Compound’s program) run into new situations that need attention or have quality-of-life improvements to suggest for the platform.

Delegated domain allocation is especially well-suited for smaller grants that might not be a great fit for the full eGP process. If Euler DAO wants to increase the number of third-party contributors building on and improving Euler without overburdening governance and voting for every milestone of every small grant, this proposal is likely to achieve those objectives.

I appreciate the nomination for a domain allocator role in the proposed program and would be excited to take it on, though the community should feel free to (self)-nominate prospective allocators in this and other domains. Folks are welcome to check out the protocol ideas and dapps domain within Compound’s program to see what this could look like in action.

If the proposal moves to a vote with me as a domain allocator, I will abstain due to the conflict of interest. If are among my delegators and wish to see your voting power support or refute this proposal, please let me know; evidence that my delegators have a strong preference one way or the other would make me reconsider abstention.

5 Likes

Thank you for the post @ruchil and appreciate the thoughtful details which you have added here. I strongly support Delegated Domain Allocation since it offers more efficient allocation facilitated by domain experts as well as the transparency offered by the questbook tool.

I appreciate the nomination as domain allocator and I would be happy to take on this challenge. I am happy to help the Euler ecosystem grow with my extensive experience in building multi-lingual educational content in 15+ languages as well as several months of experience as a grants committiee member at BanklessDAO.

4 Likes

Hey,

Similar to allthecolors, we are a domain allocator for Compound Grants Program. I echo his comments about the work ethic of the Questbook team and we believe that both the team and their product is a great way to bring transparency to the program.

As of right now, the dydx grant program is receiving a lot of criticism for its lack of transparency, but QB tool helps tackle those issues. The issues mentioned in the dydx forum paint a clear picture of the issues that come from creating “traditional” grant programs in web3. QB use of blockchain and open forums, makes it easy for grantees to get better insight into their grant and the program itself.

We appreciate the nomination for our domain and with my experience in other grant programs (Optimism, Compound and currently setting up a grants program) we believe that we provide a lot of experience to help Euler.

We have been active participants in Euler DAO since we joined and look forward to helping them grow further.

3 Likes

Hi @ruchil ! Thanks for this thorough proposal! I remember the need for some grants distribution modifications was discussed during the first Governance call. So I would like to echo what guys have already said. At the same time, I feel obliged to play some devil’s advocate role.

  1. While I have full confidence in the nominated domain allocators, I agree with @allthecolors that nomination process should be more open and decentralised. I believe that the DAO needs elections for each domain allocator position with free (self) and transparent application process. Some competition is always good. In organising elections, we also need clear rules and criteria of nominees. No conflict of interest is possible.

  2. Financials.

  • Maybe Im too conservative, but ~2.16 for one programme seems too much. It is presumed that the programme for Euler will succeed based on the Compound and other project experience. However, I tend to look at each case particular and start with smaller amount in order to check how the programme works and proceed with bigger amount for further iterations.

  • The total amount of the programme is around 2 millions with domain allocators getting 6000$/month and project manager 12 000$/month. Im just reminded of the Euler story, that started as a 3 people team with just 700k in seed round. So with 2 mil for 5 people, a brand new start-up can be organised, hehe. Btw, what is the average salary for a full time position in EulerLabs? Is it above or below 6000?

  • As I have previously mentioned, I have concerns that decisions are adopted by 1 domain allocator. That does not seems very decentralised. Instead, (given that we want to have people focused on their domains only), I would suggest that we have Domain Councils comprised of 3 people at least. Thus some decentralisation is guaranteed and 2000$ (but I would recommend reduce it to 1000$) for each member of the domain council seem to be more reasonable rate of compensation.

PS. Im reminded of the Recognised Delegates programme having been rejected by Lemnicap, when it was about 1000$/month (at that time) for 10 people due to the lack of transparency, Im afraid that the story could repeat here

4 Likes

Thank you @ruchil and the Questbook team for putting across a well rounded proposal.

Considering Lemniscap’s investment in both Questbook and Euler, it is to our interest to have both the teams which we highly rate to be working together.

Also, considering my personal engagement with the leadership of both the teams, we would love to find a way to support the proposal.

But we have a few concerns about the RFC as it stands:

  1. Capital preservation and efficiency of capital deployed is a primary concern for us. Considering the uncertain market and macro environment we currently are in, we think it is imperative to be judicious with where the Dao spends its funds.

  2. Capital efficiency: Simply put, the Dao should looks to get maximum bang for every buck it spends.

Being frugal doesn’t mean slashing your spending or depriving yourself of things that you enjoy. It means knowing the value of a dollar and making every effort to spend it wisely.

We would like to propose the following changes to the proposal:

  1. Allocator’s salary be reduced to $1,000 per month.

  2. Questbook to provide initial Program Manager at no cost the Dao. This is a win-win for both Euler and Questbook.

  3. Reduce the scope of the proposal to one quarter. As we approach the end of the quarter, the Dao can reassess and vote to continue the program with similar or increased budget. Basically this gives everyone a good trial period to judge the success of this grants program.

  4. Change the compensation model for Questbook to charging a % of the capital deployed.

  5. Reduce the number of domains for the first quarter to 3, namely - Multichain and Crosschain Strategy, Developer Tooling, New Protocol Ideas.
    We believe responsibility for core marketing, events, hackathons, bootcamps, user-onboarding should reside with Euler Labs for the near future with the Dao assisting.

  6. The targeted budget for each domain for this quarter to be $50,000.

P.S: Speaking of efficiency, I still cannot get over with the $50,000 that was proposed by Messari team and passed using a sparingly thin voted snapshot EIP with extremely low participation (25k Yes votes and 19K No votes). Maybe someone from Messari reads this and does the decent thing of proposing to return some of the funds.

5 Likes

Hi @ruchil thx for the proposal. I think it’s in the DAO best interest to have a grant program in the future and definitely need to consider this.

However, as discussed in our chat, i have some several concern that i will just write here again for everyone to see.

  1. Budget → 300k for 6 months is quite a lot eventho it’s counted based on hourly cost. Also i think we shud reduce the total budget from 3M into much smaller number.
  2. Measurable KPI → to define success, we need Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based KPI. I personally don’t see the Measurable part. Compensation can be adjusted based on KPI.
  3. I personally don’t prefer any gatekeeping model where bunch of selected people decide to use the best way to spend money especially looking into how uniswap grant works. Unfortunately, I don’t know any better alternative yet.
  4. I also would prefer if we go with this program, we will do DAO wide selection for the allocator. Also would prefer someone who is not involved with other competitors to prevent potential conflict of interest.
6 Likes

On 3, I do like the allocator model as I have found it efficient and focused with deployment for grants as compared to a full dao vote for every grant. Allocators can be assessed at the end of every quarter by the dao and rotated/reselected. For allocators looking to build a good record and reputation, this provides good incentives to perform well.

1 Like

yeah i have no other alternative for this so can’t say much. However i prefer it not to be pre-selected and taking from current euler delegate

1 Like

Hi @ruchil, thanks for your in-depth post. I think it’s important to have a grants model like this in place.

On top of our private discussions, I have been thinking about this a lot over the last few days.

Some points I would like to make:

Conflicts of interest: especially those who have been recommended as Domain Allocators.
-If you are employed by a competing entity, is it in the best interests of the Euler DAO to also employ you?
-If you are actively running/promoting an education program, should you be deciding where the education budget should go?

I think full disclosure should be in order from all parties.

I am with the other guys in that there should be a democratic solution to selecting the Allocators.

Budget: I’m with @shaishav0x @Raslambek and @patria here. I think we should start small and build from there based on KPI’s. I understand the stated figure would stretch a long way, but I feel we shouldn’t set aside a large portion of the treasury for something that might not work as well as intended.

If there is huge demand, we can discuss and deploy more. In H2, when Euler has deployed their various new products there might be many more opportunities for external teams to build on Euler.

To @shaishav0x 's point re personal compensation:

This makes sense to me. Euler has a long way to go. It’s important to be frugal and spend wisely while assessing frequently and iterating. It also gives opportunities to “hungry” individuals to become DA’s.

I think this is a reasonable suggestion:

Although I would agree with @Raslambek here in that there could certainly be at least 2 Domain Allocators each in the Multichain section and New Protocol Ideas. These are complicated matters.

Dev tooling could potentially be taken on by the Euler Labs team. I feel we need technical individuals who know the dApp inside out.

Lastly, we had discussed in a recent community call the potential of a non-voting member of Euler Labs who could get involved in this. An observer who could provide valuable insight to the Manager and Allocators. Something I think could add a lot of value.

4 Likes

I want to seek clarification regarding the impartiality of this poll. A Sybil attack may have influenced the results. Is anyone else experiencing similar concerns?

6 Likes

I also have concerns about the large amount to be allocated toward grants. So far the DAO has only approved relatively small amounts to a few key contributors. I don’t see how a grant program could realistically allocate such a large amount in such a small amount of time. I also think the cost to run the program is unreasonable and that there could be far more productive ways of spending the DAOs capital.

Echoing what @NOA said, I also find it suspicious that the poll is so positive given how much pushback there is from the community.

I would be in favor of a $300K-$400K grant program with let’s say 10% of that being used to pay for the domain allocators.

2 Likes

We echo the communities sentiment and believe that Euler DAO should only ramp up its grant allocation if there is demand for effective grants. $50k per domain for the initial 3 months is fine, and we can review it at the next quarter to see whether it needs to be increased.

We should expect more grant requests once this program is set up since its much easier to apply via a grant program than a DAO wide vote.

To keep it more frugal, we suggest that per-hour compensation is reduced to $75 per hour and capped at around $1,000 per month. I don’t think a flat $1,000 is suitable since some individuals will have busier domains and should be compensated fairly.

We are fine to see “Community and Growth” etc. removed from the grants program too. As stated, Euler Labs wants to continue handling that.

4 Likes

Seeing a lot of the concerns here, we are in favor of 2 things:

  • Decreasing the domain and program manager fees to $1000/ month. The proposed rate by @Bobbay_StableLab is fine and reasonable.
  • Decreasing each domain to $100,000 total for this initial trial period (6 months), or prorated down as necessary. We believe this sets a nice ~25% of the original proposal and is appropriate for the trial.
1 Like

Hi All,

We’ve actually just announced an Euler Grants Programme (Announcing the Encode x Euler Grants Programme | by Neven Brlek | Encode Club | Feb, 2023 | Medium) which was voted by the community (eIP 37: Encode Club Grant Proposal)

With input from the community, we opted to start small and scale up.

3 Likes

Thanks @raslambek, @shaishav0x , @knightsemplar , @patria, @NOA and @Jack_Plante for sharing your comments and concerns with us. We have carefully considered all the feedback from the community members, and we’d like to respond to the comments as follows:

  1. Grants Budget and Domains : To start with, we propose a revised budget of $50,000 per domain for one quarter. We propose to launch with the following 4 domains:
  • Developer Tooling
  • Multichain and Crosschain Strategy
  • New Protocol Ideas
  • Education for New User Onboarding
  1. Compensation : We propose the following compensation structure:
  • 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
  1. Selection of domain allocators - We believe that the proposed domain allocators are best suited to evaluate proposals for the selected domains based on their expertise, and community participation on forums, discord and social media.
    If anyone from the community has concerns or is not aligned with the proposed domain allocators, they can self-nominate themselves as a reply to this post along with their interested domain name for the next 2 days. Based on the responses, we propose to put those nominations for vote on Snapshot along with the names proposed in the initial proposal for 3 days.

  2. 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 permission less 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.

Lastly, as per the revised governance process, we would like to extend the timeline for the RFC by 7 days in order to conduct the domain allocator selection process and submit the formal proposal based on community’s comments.

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Thank you @ruchil for incorporating a majority of the feedbacks in the revised proposal.

On domain allocators: we would suggest Questbook to not propose any domain allocators to begin with. Everyone including the proposed allocators should be able to nominate themselves and the selection process be handled in a separate RFC after this current RFC is voted upon.

This would serve two objectives: 1) make the selection process open and even 2) remove any notion of incentive being a factor in deciding allocators votes on this proposal.

Guidance for Allocators: we think for allocators to be able to successful and allocate to the right projects, it is also necessary for Euler Labs team to provide some guidance to allocators on what they would like to see built or what work they need to be done. This kind of guidance from Euler Labs team, and allocators working in tandem to meet these objectives, will go a long way in making the grants program fruitful and a big success.

On part of EulerLabs, they have agreed to work on identifying a list of things/projects/features they would like to use the grants program for and I think allocators would find this kind of guidance very helpful.

Lastly, our request to all future allocators is please emphasize on cost effectiveness as we think that is something hugely missed in our ecosystem. Spend the allocation as though you were paying for it from your pocket.

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Good comments @shaishav0x ! As a follow-up, I think members of the EulerLabs team could be part of each domain, that will help to increase efficiency and decentralise the process.

@ruchil First of all thanks for taking comments on board. Since this is quite a global proposal that is going to change drastically the grants allocation process, probably it would be wise to discuss it during the monthly Governance Call before proceeding to the next stage?

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