Summer 2024 Blasted off with Grant Ships 
This summer 90K ARB was distributed to Web3 Gaming on Arbitrum projects through the Grant Ships platform
See our Pilot Round Overview video:
Want to see some of the games we funded?
Check out our teaser video that shows off some of the games and stats from the Pilot Round:
Reintroducing Grant Ships
This thread will re-introduce Grant Ships to Arbitrum DAO, and over the coming weeks, will highlight some of the gaming projects and Ship Operator teams that participated in the pilot round.
Ask us questions!
We’d like to answer your questions and show you how Grant Ships provides Arbitrum DAO with visibility, quality feedback loops and iterative improvement when funded and used as a grants platform. We’ll provide detail on the embedded game/governance loop, the funding mechanism and protocols and technologies used to build it.
What is Grant Ships?
Grant Ships is an onchain, competitive/gamified grants platform available for use by Arbitrum DAO, built by the DAO Masons through a grant from Thank ARB.
Grant Ships is solid decentralized tech ready to be used for any grant allocation initiative that values iteration, feedback and improvement over time. Arbitrum DAO paid for it, let’s use it!
Is there a live demo?
It is live and can be viewed here.
Round 1: round1.grantships.fun
Round 2: app.grantships.fun
Grant Ships funding is held in rounds, so we have a separate instance for each round. Future versions will have round history integrated into one comprehensive platform.
What is a Grant Ship Operator?
Grant Program Managers (aka Grant Ship Operators) award grants to a portfolio of selected projects. These are teams elected or selected by the DAO to compete at giving good grants within a particular funding domain (for our pilot this was Web3 Gaming on Arbitrum)
After each funding round the DAO votes on which Ship created the best portfolio by funding the best projects with the best outcomes.
How are Ship Operator funding levels determined?
When a DAO decides to run a grants program with Grant Ships, they allocate a grant funding pool to be distributed across multiple funding rounds. e.g. 300K tokens across 3 rounds of 100K each.
In the first round funding levels are usually split equally across ships to ensure a level playing field. e.g. 3 ships @ 33K each
After each funding round, the DAO votes on Ship performances, and Ship funding levels in the following round are given proportional to the vote received. e.g. if the 3 ships received 20, 30 and 50% of the vote, they would receive 20K, 30K and 50K to distribute in the following round
These voting algorithms can be tuned based on the needs of the DAO and what’s appropriate for the funding round. We have several available options for funding rubrics such as tiered funding levels or dropping ships that do not meet a certain vote threshold.
Could Grant Ships be used as part of a gaming incubator?
We believe Grant Ships has potential as a gaming incubator tool for the GCP. Grant Ship Operators would perform as “talent scouts” to find and fund promising games, and the vote could be held by the DAO, a GCP council or a combination.
What is an Evolutionary Grants Program?
The theory is that by repeating the perform->vote->feedback loop over and over Grant Ships will ‘evolve’ an ideal grants program over time.
Where did the term “Evolutionary Grants Program” come from?
This term was coined by Kevin Owocki to describe Grant Ships, and was featured in his Onchain Capital Allocation Handbook as the first Evolutionary Grants Framework.
Grant Ships is built on the premise that explicit and visible competition, accountability and selection pressure on grants programs will force them to mature into something that is both effective and aligned with the desires of the DAO.
How do we know it works?
We tested it! We hosted a 90K ARB pilot rounded themed on “Web3 Gaming on Arbitrum”. Three ‘Ship Operator’ teams competed to best allocate their portion of the funds to promising gaming projects building on Arbitrum.
You can learn more about the pilot in our retrospective document:
What is the tech stack for Grant Ships?
Grant Ships is built on Allo Protocol for grant allocation and Hats Protocol for capture resistance. It incorporates our in-house voting Chews (choose) Protocol formerly known as Stem.
Where did it come from?
Grant Ships was made possible through a grant from Arbitrum Foundation via Plurality Labs & Thrive through the Thank ARB program. It is being developed by a small builder guild known as The DAO Masons.
Grant Ships has since received a followup grant through the Thank Arb Firestarters program for additional development.
What’s next?
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing spotlights on the various web3 gaming projects that were funded during the pilot round and the Ship Operators themselves.
Want to see some of the games we funded?
Check out our teaser video that shows off some of the games and stats from the Pilot Round:
More coming soon!