Our delegation voted AGAINST this proposal.
The reasons why this application did not receive a recommendation from the Council focused on two aspects: on the one hand, the grant size, given the lack of historical data, and on the other, the incentive mechanism (fee rebates).
Neither of these issues was adequately addressed by the applicant in their modification. On the one hand, they did reduce the ask by 70% as recommended by two out of three of the Council members who voted, but they justified this reduction in a peculiar way by calculating the need for the new ask (135K ARB) at a value of 2 USD, when the current market reality is much lower. This raises doubts about the effectiveness the applicant believes the requested amount will have on their objectives or if they reduced the ask to comply with the request without any real intention of justifying it.
On the other hand, nothing has been said about allocating 70% of the grant to fee rebates, which was a major concern of the Council. Since this was the main reason the application was initially rejected, and in support of the Council’s stance, we voted against this application.