Grant Framework Design Contest! Submissions live until 5/13

Governance
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Grants Framework Design Contest is LIVE!

What is it

A “Jokerace” contest designed to solicit bottoms-up input into a grants framework design process. During the submission period, people submit ideas on what a great grants framework might look like. Then during the voting period, the top 100 delegates will vote on which ideas they like the best. This will function as a “heatmapping” to showcase what ideas the DAO is most interested in seeing come to light.

Prizes

Top 3 submissions by votes will win:

1st place - 500 arb
2nd place - 200 arb
3rd place - 50 arb

Another 250 arb will be rewarded by the contest host at his discretion. (Yes that is me)

How to participate

Click on the Jokerace Contest Page Link

Submission Period (4/20 - 5/13)

During the submission period, anyone can submit a grant framework design. Those familiar with “Design Thinking” will recognize this as a DAO native version of the double diamond design framework where we are currently in the second diamond diverging to brainstorm every possible solution idea.

Please do not submit proposals for funding individual projects.

Voting Period

During the voting period, top 100 delegates will vote to heatmap the most interesting frameworks. This is a convergence stage where we now heatmap for the best ideas.

Tips for a great submission

Things you might want to include:

  • how the mechanism sets a total spending limit
  • distinguishing between low and high latency work (ie. discord support help vs algorithm research)
  • tools needed to make it work
  • how the design is “pluralistic” or could it be one part of a larger plurastic framework
  • how it maintains accountability
  • how it increases voter participation and decreases apathy
  • how it provides the arbitrum a healthy future (sustainability)

Other links & relevant info

Statement about purpose

This is not being put forward by the foundation, nor is it Offchain Labs. As a delegate in the Arbitrum ecosystem, I am helping to move things forward by showcasing innovative ways for the DAO to come to good decisions, avoid voter apathy over time, and sustain innovation and fun!

Design thinking for DAOs

Our next steps in the design process will be to have a small group of people engaged with the conversation gather to workshop the best proposal using the inputs from this experiment.

Links

Jokerace Contest Page Link

Transaction dropping 100 jkARB (Non-transferable Voting Tokens) to each of the top 100 delegates

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It’s great to see the community getting involved in the process and sharing their ideas. This contest could be an opportunity to develop a grant framework that aligns with the DAO’s values and goals. The proposals might be judged based on feasibility or effectiveness. The top 100 delegates will use their expertise to choose the most promising ideas. Overall, this contest has the potential to be a valuable learning experience.

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It is very important that the community is actively involved in the life of the DAO and expresses its ideas. Proposals from the grant competition can be the basis for developing a grant structure consistent with DAO’s values and goals. Ideas will be evaluated for feasibility and effectiveness. Hundreds of our best delegates will be involved in the process of selecting the most promising projects using their vast experience and expertise. We believe that this competition will be a valuable experience for all participants and help improve our DAO.

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Great idea!

A Great Grants Framework Design should have the ff:

  1. Total Spending Limit should be determined by the total ARB commited for the period divided by the number of stakers who committed for the said period or proposal.
  2. A good identifier for low and high latency work would be ideal - some stickers or emojis would do - a chain icon (yes) , a broken heart (no)
  3. Making it simpler , the better and would only make use of the available resources and updates will just be added as it progresses from time to time.
  4. Majority rules is the key in making a pluralistic framework.
  5. For accountability , we need to further stress on the value of reporting , sorting out real and valid reports only. Hard evidences like tx id and other pertinent information will always be necessary and should come from the ARB Ecosystem and if there are intstances in question of any loyalty as such should always be in favor of the Arbitrum Community.
  6. For voter participation, we can have weekly or monthly summary with top 10 - 20 of these proposals and this is subject for a governance voting. We will adopt what is likely what the community would like to participate in.
  7. All of these should be in parallel with Arbitrum’s ideals , vision and mission to achieve sustainability and progress!

Vote for my proposal! :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed: :heart_hands:

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Its a very great ideal ride on am with you :v::hugs:

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did you post it on the jokedao contest? JokeDAO 🃏 An open-source, collaborative decision-making platform.

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just submitted! tnx a lot for the reminder! lfg ARBITRUM!

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Couple questions for the DAO:

  1. Do you think that a grants program should receive its allocation from the DAO’s ARB or the Foundation’s? If the Foundation: Should they take lead on setting up the program?

  2. Would you rather see an established grants program run the show (a la Reverie / Questbook) or a custom solution specifically tailored for Arbitrum?

  3. What should the grants programs main prerogative be?

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Good idea @DisruptionJoe, excited to check out the submissions. Also, there’s some good discussion happening in other threads that those looking to design a framework should consider: Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook and Building better Grants Programs: A handbook.

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My opinion is that the DAO should run its own grants program separate from what the foundation does. We should give the foundation freedom to run a grants program of its own.

Perhaps the foundation should step in to help drive ideas forward, but the DAO needs to own its own processes or else voter apathy will happen. The best thing the DAO can do is create a grants framework that is so engaging, even to small holders, that people are buying ARB to participate in governing the DAO grants program.

I’d rather see a plurality of mechanisms as discussed here: Grants Funding Framework Discussion - How To Excel at Being a DAO

I’ve been thinking about this lately. A north star could be total active developers in the Arbitrum ecosystem as defined by the Electric Capital Developer Report. However, this would need a counter metric to ensure we aren’t sacrificing quality. Therefore, we could score the GitHub of the projects and find a quality metric to maintain.

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My initial reaction is that I am against the idea of allocating DAO resources toward a plethora of grants programs. Most of the grants programs we have seen thus far in other DAOs waste a ton of money and don’t end up benefiting the ecosystem or reducing voter apathy much (to a worthwhile extent.)

That said, I truly believe in grants programs. In an ideal world, we would have multiple trustworthy and well thought outs program submissions and I would be all for your strategy. I just don’t think this is the reality of it. Additionally, a lack of communication between programs could result in projects receiving funds multiple times. If we create a multitude of grants programs - I would highly suggest that each one specializes in a certain area similar to ENS (working groups) or Aave (AGD, Lens)

If our main goal with these programs is decreasing voter apathy, I would highly suggest looking toward MakerDAO, that has a substantially higher percentage of the circ supply regularly vote. Grants programs seem to bring developers more than increased participation.

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Thanks a lot for taking the initiative to kickstart the grants programme in such a nice manner @DisruptionJoe . A grants programme is pretty much inevitable for a DAO like Arbitrum, which is not dApp specific like many other DAOs, but rather works a level above that.

However, to echo what @MattOnChain has said above, we shouldn’t just do a grants programme for the sake of it. What kind of projects do we want to incentivise? Are these grants to incentivise ecosystem growth through dApp incentives? Are they to develop the DAO toolbox itself? Or are we taking a completely different direction?

Personally, I will share some of my ideas on my submission, and I look forward to seeing the discussions of the result after mid may :wink:

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:pray:t2::pray:t2::pray:t2: Nice!!! I like it, I’m going to find out.

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I think Optimism is doing a pretty good job with their program and they look ready to enact a new model for their upcoming season using something called “Intents” The purpose being, to align everybody involved in grants to point in a certain direction that guides their ecosystem going forward.
I think at the very high level stage of this framework design phase, it’s probably not too important to figure out what types of projects to incentivize but rather setting up systems to ensure there are incentives and the checks and balances are in place.

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I think it would be great to get everyone’s submissions posted in the forums as well and hopefully open up some discussion around them and perhaps some of the submitters can shill their submissions a bit. I imagine the final grant org will be some kind of combination of various ideas. The more these ideas are discussed the better the solution will be.

The submission I was part of was from the DAO Masons called Grant Ships

You can read a more details about the proposal here

Our idea is to gamify Grant operations in order to continually improve upon the process while not being tied down to any single “process.” Our proposal allows for many processes to exist as “Grant Ships” There is a small competition occurring throughout the game which incentivizes Grant Ships to provide quality services. Poor performing ships would have funding slashed and could result in a new crew taking charge of a Ship.

We hope you enjoy our proposal and look forward to answering any questions or concerns you may have.

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Yes! Voting is open until 5/20 eod. Anything people can do to spread the word and get some votes out would be great.

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