Hi! I will vote against this proposal.
I believe the team is excellent, and the work you did during the hackathon was very interesting.
However, I honestly do not find the budget sufficiently justified to approve such a large expense for an event targeting 1,000 attendees.
If we look at the budgets approved by Questbook in Season 2 (which underwent much greater scrutiny by the Domain Allocator), we can find similar sponsorships for significantly less money.
I understand that the need to approach the DAO directly instead of going through the Domain Allocator stems from the timing of the event and the fact that Season 3 will only become active in mid-February.
However, this does not change the fact that, in my opinion, such a high budget is not sufficiently justified. Supporting documents could have been provided, such as a breakdown of the costs being covered (as seen in Questbook) or comparisons with other events, highlighting the cost-benefit ratio.
This elevated level of scrutiny stems from the fact that through the DDA program, the DAO has already set a precedent for the amount it is willing to allocate to this type of sponsorship (50k max).
Therefore, if a proposal of this nature is to be reviewed by the DAO instead of the Domain Allocator and seeks more funds than what is typically approved for such sponsorships, I expect the level of detail to be exceptionally high.
Additionally, the final report on last year’s hackathon revealed that a little over 50% of its total cost went toward paying the teams that worked on implementing the proposal, which I find excessively high. This proposal does not disclose any information regarding this aspect.
Nor were my questions convincingly answered:
The TLDR is that it remains unclear who will be responsible for executing everything that has been promised. I believe approving such a high budget without more precise details sets a poor precedent.
Finally, the fulfillment of milestones is not tied to the release of funds, meaning the DAO has no guarantees that all the promises will be executed at the quality level the sponsorship amount implies. This is particularly relevant to my questions about who is committed to delivering the talks, workshops, and ensuring the DAO’s presence at the booth.
That said, understanding that time constraints make it difficult to wait for the Domain Allocator, I am willing to reconsider my vote and support the proposal if the budget is either better justified or significantly reduced to align more closely with the amounts approved by the Events Domain Allocator.