Welcome to the Cartographer Syndicate’s Week 28 update. In our commitment to transparency, we’ve made our project plans publicly accessible, including our weekly progress. You can track our project updates in real-time at:
Project Progress:
RFP 1 Reputation Systems - Trustful (by Blockful): @danimim @zeugh and the team at Trustful is developing an on-chain reputation using Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) for grant program evaluation. Their approach allows grantees to evaluate grant programs through attestations and badges, opening up new forms of grant program accountability. The team’s background includes multiple hackathon wins and significant contributions to DAOs like ENS. They plan to implement a nomination system for organic network growth as part of their proposal. More details on their work is below:
RFP 2 Data & Analytics—Ecosystem Vision: @duckdegen and his team will create a grant information ecosystem with customized data collection and interactive dashboards. They will customize forms for data collection, integrate with OSO systems, and create visualizations of funding trends and project success rates. Their approach will include BigQuery integration and YAML files for efficient data processing to build a scalable solution for the Web3 Grant Registry.
RFP 3 News Aggregation System - @daveytea and the team at x23.ai: Building on their existing product aggregating data from numerous governance forums, x23 will develop Crypto Grant Wire 2.0 for grant discovery and analysis. They will create a dedicated Grant feed with advanced categorization and prioritization using ML, NLP, and generative AI for real-time information condensing, intelligent ranking, and precise data filtering. We’re looking forward to the instant search feature the team will implement. You can check out the work they have already done at their site below:
RFP 4 Grant Program Analysis— @ZER8 & @mashal: The duo will analyze Web3 grant programs, including Arbitrum Foundation and Thank ARB Milestone 1, to develop a maturity framework for grant programs. They plan to interview key ecosystem stakeholders and leverage their extensive experience in grant management and ecosystem building in their analysis. The insights from this analysis will be incorporated into the registry as part of the reputation system (RFP 1) being developed with Trustful.
In addition to the RFPs, other work is progressing:
Convex Voting Experiments: Syndicate Community member @ZER8 is experimenting with convex voting to rank impact in grant programs. This approach uses convex functions to emphasize diminishing returns and prioritize grants that show significant potential for impact even with smaller funding amounts. The experiment will be applied to ReFi in Arbitrum, Oasis Onchain, and Giv-Eth programs within Thank Arb Milestone 1B. What’s particularly noteworthy is the potential to use this as a prediction mechanism, allowing us to evaluate team performance and rank impact categories without distributing funding, adding an extra layer of credible neutrality to the grant evaluation process.
Direct Contributor Incentives: We launched a contributor program with four tracks to maintain and expand our grant registry:
- Registry Management: Engaging contributors to meticulously review and update the registry on KarmaGap, ensuring data accuracy and completeness.
- Logging Bugs/Improvements: Leveraging our community’s collective intelligence to identify areas for enhancement, from simple fixes to complex improvements like API integrations.
- Grant Ecosystems Check: Utilizing the expertise of grant program managers to ensure our data is comprehensive and up-to-date, particularly focusing on specific ecosystem information.
- Experimental Contributions: This is an open-ended track that encourages innovative ideas that could revolutionize how we manage and utilize the registry.
Challenges:
Our main challenge remains to curate a high-context community without relying on broad social media outreach. We’re focusing on direct invites and personal connections to maintain quality and focus in our group while still getting the word out and leaving the door open to new ideas and people.
Learnings:
We’re observing the value of diverse perspectives within our growing community. Members from various backgrounds contribute uniquely to the project, shaping the nature of our work. What started as a Telegram Group with a few members has grown to something we couldn’t have dreamed of, and it’s amazing to see it take shape!
As the Syndicate community collaborates, ideas are emerging that, while outside our immediate scope, point to future possibilities for our evolution 
Next Steps:
- Launch the QF Round by 7/15
- Continue targeted recruitment
- Kickoff work on approved RFPs
- Continue to drive contributor incentives
- Grow the group to 60+ members (currently at 50)
- Finalize the conviction voting plan
Lastly, @mmurthy and @Sov recently recorded a GreenPill episode with Kevin Owocki, providing an in-depth look at the registry’s background and vision. Stay tuned for its release!
Onward and upward! We’ll keep updates coming here with more details as our work continues!
Sov