1. What is your assessment of the impact KPIs that were set in your Budget Proposal at the start of the Season? Have you made progress towards, or achieved, these milestones or KPIs? If not, why?
We met 100% of the internal KPIs set in the Grants Council’s Season 7 budget proposal:
- Maintained review time below 2 weeks.
- Reviewed 100% of applications, as required.
- All applications were reviewed by 3 reviewers on intake and 4 on the final stage, with high consistency and coverage.
On Collective-wide KPIs:
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NPS Scores (based on 13 total replies: 6 rejected, 7 accepted):
- All applicants: 6.95/10 (target: 7)
- Rejected: 4.93/10 (target: 7)
- Approved: 8.80/10 (target: 9)
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We fell short of the rejection NPS target, which highlights a clear area for improved applicant experience and post-rejection feedback.
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TVL Growth (reported by grantees):
- May 7: $51M in direct TVL from OP incentives.
- June 7: $480M, including $400M from Spark and $80M from earlier projects.
Even just Spark’s verified on-chain TVL puts us beyond the Optimistic KPI of 98,857 ETH, which translates to ~$250M–$340M depending on OP price assumptions.
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Support Coverage:
- Only one eligible applicant (AAVE) was excluded due to budget constraints, and we had no operational limitations. Target: 5% of qualified applicants are unable to be supported due to budget constraints or operational limitations.
- This exclusion was intentional, as it allowed time for further alignment on interoperability commitments.
2. Impact assessment – how well did your team perform in relation to success metrics, impact per OP allocated, or other pre-defined measures that are relevant for your Council or Board?
Capital efficiency was strong, even in early stages of tracking.
As of today, approximately 10M OP has been granted. Grantees have reported using 356,000 OP so far, resulting in a combined $480M in direct TVL. While a large portion of this comes from Spark ($400M), removing that still leaves $80M in TVL driven by early-stage OP incentives, which is highly encouraging. That said, we invite caution when interpreting these numbers, it’s still early, and long-term outcomes will offer more clarity.
Incentive alignment was intentional and consistent.
The Council followed the Superchain registry closely:
- Green chains (aligned) were eligible without co-incentives if their grants supported interoperability.
- Orange chains were required to bring matching co-incentives from their own ecosystems.
This policy was a deliberate move to reward chains that had delivered on commitments to the upgradability of their OP Stack and the Superchain, setting a precedent that governance participation and technical alignment matter.
3. What are the major problems you ran into over the course of the Season?
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Charmverse limitations
The most common negative feedback received wasn’t about review quality, but rather about the platform itself. Improving the applicant experience and reducing friction here should be a top priority for Season 8. -
Long feedback cycles (3 weeks)
Applicants often waited too long to receive their first round of feedback, which delayed revisions and extended the time to approval. -
No buffer between GC formation and grant opening
Applications opened less than 24 hours after GC members were elected, leaving no time to align on grant requirements like interoperability and co-incentives. -
Drop in late-season applicant quality
During the final cycle, we observed both budget constraints and a noticeable decrease in strong, aligned applicants, likely a natural side effect of concentrated deal flow earlier in the season or a decrease in rachouts from the GC. -
OP Overlapping incentives
Some projects appeared across multiple funding streams (e.g. GC and Superstacks), raising the risk of duplicate OP allocations without proper coordination.
4. What are possible solutions that could be explored next Season?
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Launch our own tailored grant platform
Replacing Charmverse with a purpose-built tool would eliminate technical bottlenecks and introduce a unified dashboard for tracking proposals, feedback, and public metrics. The biggest blocker here is around liquid OP to cover expenses. -
Shorten the application-to-feedback cycle
Aim to deliver first feedback within 15 days of submission through rolling reviews or improved reviewer coordination, giving applicants more time to adapt within each round. -
Add a pre-season runway for GC setup
Build in a 1–2 week buffer post-election to align on strategic criteria and onboarding before opening grant submissions. -
Maintain continuous outreach
Avoid drop-offs in applicant quality by sustaining protocol outreach efforts even during active cycles or when submissions appear to slow. This could become a referral system in the future. -
Keep the Council lean and high-functioning
The reduction from 12 to 7 members improved coordination and output. We should continue optimizing for minimal size and maximal subject expertise. -
Prevent incentive overlap
Improve data sharing and coordination with programs like Superstacks to ensure projects don’t receive duplicative OP incentives for similar goals. -
Formalize the GrantNerd/Intake model
Codify the white-glove review layer that filtered and shaped applicant submissions before final reviews, ensuring high signal and consistency.
5. What improvements to the team’s mandate would you suggest for next Season?
We believe the Grants Council should continue evolving from a hands-on reviewer body into a strategic governance tool focused on defining what high-quality grants look like and empowering applicants to meet that bar independently.
As part of this transition, the Council approved and launched an MVP for an AI-powered grant application form, now live at:
https://opi.ethernautdao.io/seasons/season-8
This form integrates with OpenAI’s API using tailored prompts developed by the S7 Council. It delivers:
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Instant feedback to applicants based on GC prompting on whats good/bad answer.
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Automated scoring 0 to 10, allowing backend filtering and prioritization, this is not shown to public to avoid applicants trying to max score with their answers. We do hint if its bad or good answer.
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Faster reviewer workflows by reducing low-quality submissions.
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Lower costs for the Collective by automating repetitive review tasks.
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Fewer human errors, especially in form validation and scoring consistency.
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A foundation for future self-service application tooling.
If successful, this model could let the Grants Council focus its mandate on:
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Defining scoring logic and eligibility rules.
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Reviewing only edge cases or high-impact applications.
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Iterating on what “good” looks like, rather than manually reviewing every form.
We believe this shift would dramatically improve quality control, speed, and capital efficiency and aligns with the long-term vision of the Collective as a modular, upgradeable governance system.
6. If you don’t believe the team’s operations should continue next Season, please explain why here.
We believe the Grants Council remains a critical piece of the Collective’s governance stack and is operating with increasing clarity and effectiveness.
Personal reflection (Gonna)
Season 7 was a turning point for the Grants Council, not only in outcomes, but in how we delivered them.
This was the first season where the Council operated with measurable impact, allowing us to go deep rather than wide. The result was a level of review quality and domain expertise that pushed the standards truly high, a dynamic we want to preserve.
Most importantly, this was the season where the Council’s network of crypto-native members became one of its most powerful assets. By proactively mapping top protocols and personal connections, several of the most impactful applicants joined the program through direct outreach. This wasn’t luck. It was the result of having real builders and crypto operators in the room. Without them, many of the highest TVL projects would not have applied.
It’s worth reflecting on the scale of that impact: a single Council member, compensated with 30,000 OP over five months, helped onboard a grantee that now contributes 400 million dollars in on-chain TVL to the Superchain. This is a clear signal to the Collective. If we want outsized results, we must continue to empower crypto natives and reconsider how we value and support their contributions. Something I plan to add as a nominee filter for seasons 8 and 9.
Looking ahead, the Grants Council isn’t just a review body. It is becoming a curator of quality, a strategic signal, and an engine for aligned growth across the Collective.
Thank you to everyone who supported us and continues to do so. The sheer amount of talent within the Superchain is incredible, and it’s a privilege to help shape how that talent gets activated.