Hi @jackanorak. Thank you for your query.
General Magic offers an operational service where we support teams in the grant application process. This service was created in the spirit of getting more public goods projects to apply for grants that would not have otherwise done so --either because they are unaware such grants existed or don’t have the time to apply to them as they are busy building great tools in support of public goods.
Since the grant process is very time-consuming and quite frankly most projects don’t have the bandwidth, we created an outsourced service where we research and write grants for public goods projects and are only compensated if we win a grant. You can find details of this service and the terms here.
We don’t believe this is against any rules that we have seen. We have read all the guidelines extensively and followed them competently.
Grant writing via General Magic is simply an operational service utilized by the project, e.g., even if a project researches and writes their grants in-house, they would need to dedicate dozens of team hours to the process, which they usually just account for in overhead costs and don’t include in the grant application.
You may have seen my own name, for example, posting proposals on behalf of a couple projects including Dappnode and DAOstar. These projects have zero connection to each other apart from their use of General Magic simply to support their grant writing.
As you know, General Magic is part of the Giveth Galaxy (for more info, see Griff’s explanation here), which is a vast community of gifted builders and creators focused on developing public goods across numerous independent DAOs and projects. I am honored and grateful to be part of such a community that truly believes in supporting the visions of other projects that are part of that inclusive, for-good mission. We are also grateful to Optimism for giving all of these DAOs and projects the opportunity to invest in that mission through requesting the much-needed support to help move them forward and become part of the Optimism vision.