The Grants Council (GC) conducts a formal review of proposals submitted for grants to projects most likely to drive measurable growth in Total Value Locked (TVL) across the Superchain. This document outlines the operational framework for the GC during Season 7.
Communications
- Community members can contact the GC members via Discord (normally in the #mission-grants channel) and Telegram and tag them in their applications.
- Throughout the week, the GC Lead will hold daily ‘Office Hours’ to discuss anything related to the GC or the grant process (excluding specific application details). Office Hours will vary in timing to accommodate individuals in different time zones. Attendance to Office Hours is not mandatory for other GC Members.
- In Season 7, the GC Lead will set up the OP rewards at the end of each Cycle for approved Applications. However, Milestones and Metrics will manage the multisig for validation.
Community Feedback
- The primary source of feedback should be provided during Office Hours, in the forum during Cycle Roundups conducted at the end of each Cycle, and in the Final Retrospective at the end of the Season.
- Feedback is recollected and used to improve the design of subsequent Cycles and Seasons.
- A feedback thread will be created in the forum for the community’s general feedback
Cycle Management
Each Cycle lasts three weeks. GrantNerds and Final Reviewers have different responsibilities during each week:
GrantNerds:
- Week 1:
- Assist Applicants to ensure their Applications are complete for Intake Review.
- Complete Intake Reviews (approving or declining Applications for the second phase).
- Weeks 2 and 3:
- Contact Applicants during the Final Review Phase, providing support as needed to ensure the Applications contain all the information required for the Final Review process.
- Begin preliminary assessments for new applications.
Final Reviewers:
- Week 1:
- A light amount of workload is expected in the first week of each Cycle, to properly prepare for upcoming Final Reviews.
- Weeks 2 and 3:
- Conduct the Final Review of every Application approved by GrantNerds during Intake Review.
- Require clarifications or further information from Applicants.
- The final Review cutoff is 48 hours before the end of the third week to prepare reports and finalize decisions.
Note on the Developer Advisory Board (DAB):
- Weeks 2:
- At the beginning of the second week, the Developer Advisory Board receives the list of Applications that passed Intake and provides feedback within a week for Final Reviewers to consider. The exact procedure is completely at the DAB’s discretion.
Applications
- The submission period will remain open permanently throughout the Season, except for the final two weeks of the last cycle.
- Projects that have an average score lower than the required Intake or Final threshold (to be determined upon Form and Rubric design), will be considered Declined.
- Declined projects can be re-apply with improvements, as long as they have scored above 50% of the required threshold (threshold to be determined upon Form and Rubric design). This percentage may be updated in order to ensure the quality of re-applied projects.
- Intake and Final Review cut-off is 48 hours before the end of the Review, to allow for operational tasks (such as reports, reviewer assignments, and workspace preparation, etc.).
- Having a complete Application is no guarantee of being approved during Intake or Final Review.
- Support, guidance, feedback, or questions provided by GC members are not intended to address the design of the Application itself.
- GrantNerds and Final Reviewers may reject Applications based on any of the following criteria:
- The proposal has been marked ready for Intake or Final Review but has not been completed;
- The proposal lacks sufficient detail for the GrantNerd/Final Reviewer to address each item set forth on the relevant review rubric;
- The proposal breaches the Grant Policies or Rules of Engagement for the Optimism Collective;
- The proposal has a clear lack of clarity or effort that it would be premature to review for substance;
- The proposal is not aligned with Season 7 Intent or any of its metrics;
- The Applicant does not answer questions within 48 hours of Intake/Final Review’s deadline;
- The OP distribution is not clear or developed;
- The project is not deployed and deployment is a critical feature of assessing the merit of the project;
- The Application is trying to circumvent grant restrictions set forth by the Optimism Collective;
- The Application does not have, or plan to have, onchain contracts deployed on the elected OP Chains;
- The project contribution is not measurable onchain;
- The proposal can not be executed start-to-finish in less than 6 months.
- In addition, any Proposal that does not meet the scoring threshold (to be determined upon Form and Rubric design), will be Declined.
Workflow Management
- Ops must ensure workloads are delegated evenly among members. Task assignments are adjusted each cycle to maintain fairness throughout the Season.
- The Lead receives weekly dossiers from Operations to monitor Application statuses and provide support as needed.
- Any GC member who requires Time Off which may prevent the completion of their obligations, must communicate it to the Lead and Ops at least 72 hours before the deadline, in order to ensure their workload can be distributed and Applicants are not affected. Any reason that can be considered ‘force majeure’ is an explicit exception to this rule.
- If the workload proves to exceed the capacity of GrantNerds and/or Final Reviewers, the next candidate for the position with the most votes in the election will be recruited.
Internal Consensus and Voting
- Council-wide votes require at least one member of each Team to achieve Quorum.
- Decisions require a simple majority, though the Lead may require a higher threshold for significant issues.
- Tie votes are resolved by the Lead.
- If one or more team members abstain from a vote, the decision will pass with a simple majority of the remaining members, provided more than one member votes. If only one Team member votes, no action will be taken on the proposed matter. For instance, if the matter being voted on relates to whether or not to include an Application in the Final Review, the result will be not to include the Application in the Final Review.
- The Lead may correct any clear errors in the Internal Procedures or resolve any conflicting provisions. For resolving conflicts, the Lead may submit a question about the best resolution to a vote of the Team members, the results of which may be recorded on the Landing Page.
Conflict of Interest in Applications:
- GC members must publicly disclose Conflicts of Interest in any Application they have assigned.
- Members with conflicts will abstain from scoring or evaluating the affected Applications:
- For GrantNerds, another GrantNerd will assume responsibility for the Intake Review.
- For Final Reviewers, the scoring average will be calculated without the conflicted member’s input.
- If no GC member can evaluate an Application during Intake Review or Final Review due to Conflict of Interests, the Application is considered Declined.
Change Process
- On a weekly basis, the Council may review the effectiveness of its Internal Procedures and make proposals for improvement.
- The Council can amend the Internal Procedures by a simple majority vote of the members of the Council; and each Team may amend the internal procedures that pertain to the specific Team (insofar as the amendment does not conflict with the Season 7 Charter or these Internal Operating Procedures) by a simple majority vote of the Team.
- Any amendment to the Internal Operating Procedures must be recorded as a comment at the bottom of this page. It is recommended that the Team defer the effectiveness of an amendment until the next cycle, unless the amendment creates a critical immediate improvement to the current process.
Accountability
- Members may be removed for failing to uphold their responsibilities or acting without honesty, integrity, or transparency.
- Removal will follow procedures outlined here
- The performance of the GC as a whole and of individual GC members will be publicly reported at the end of the Season. Performance criteria will be defined and agreed upon between the GC members. Additionally, the selected platform will need to confirm the proposed metrics can be correctly measured. The Performance criteria must be publicly announced once defined.
Iteration and Evolution
- Adjustments to these IOPs will be reported publicly as part of the GC’s iterative improvement approach.
- The GrantNerd role may evolve into a contribution path in future Seasons.
Transparency and Reporting
- The GC must publish public reports after each Cycle, a mid-Season retrospective, and an end-of-season retrospective.
- Reports will detail key decisions, outcomes, and performance evaluations (if applicable).
If ever a discrepancy arises between a Charter and the Internal Operating Procedures (IOPs), the Charters always take precedence and supersede the IOPs.