I can maybe bring a bit of an light in this.
There are problems currently in the several grant programs for one reason:
- there is no coordination between the program managers/organizers of different programs
- there are no clear rules.
On the former: I pinged, the other day, Nina from the AF specifying that more than once I have had projects applying both to Questbook and to AF (because either the project disclosed, or it was a direct question on my side). I can also so far say that nobody tried to game the current environment and, in a few occasion, I have personally explained the whole grant eco to the applicant up to the point in which they decided to withdraw the Questbook application in favour of an AF one.
I don’t think there is anything wrong in a project applying to more than 1 program, as long as they don’t apply to get capital to be utilized for the very same things (ie: grant K to build X through questbook, and grant Y to build X through the AF). It can have a “bad” optic in some cases, but again is a case by case scenario depending on how the whole thing developed. No hard rule. And so, to me, someone can apply to questbook AND to the stip/ltip being the scope different. Council, or committee, can always decide for a now due to also a previous grant, but in my opinion never because of a previous grant such as in this case. With a few exception of course, ie protocol pocketed the money without properly deliver.
On the latter, is a problem of overall framework + marketing. I think AF should be more explicit in term of what can and can’t be done by protocols through multiple grant. This also, in my opinion, should also be just an indication. If an independent council is elected, as long as the council follows the rules in their election/proposal, can technically guarantee a grant to an entity even if this goes against the reccomendation of the AF. I also see this as quite unlikely.
But, in general, we need an overall effort in term of creating rules for protocols applying in different grant programs, marketing in the sense of explaining what is out there as programs and what is the scope, and also general reccomendations from AF regarding multiple applications.
Which again, to me, are possible, as long as we clarify the scope.
For what it matters, a few times I evaluated with the project that them applying to questbook was not the best way, usually due to the size of max grant (25k), and so advised, and sometimes helped, creating a proposal directly for the AF, for the very same goals, while putting on pause the application in questbook. I have also killed a few cross application that were live both in questbook and in uniswap arbitrum grant program because they were a match, as well as applications that requested a grant for something already build through a grant from another chain. This requires a decent level of DD on the committee side tho… Not easy.
But I don’t know if most committee work this way just cause maybe they don’t know about all the programs out there.