Milestone Assessment

Milestone Completion and Accountability Review

The Milestones and Metrics Sub-Committee will be responsible for assessing and tracking milestones for grants that have reached the Final Review as well as finalists from Seasons 3 through 5.

Milestone Hub

By January 31, 2024, the Operations Manager and Milestone and Metrics Sub-Committee lead shall create a Milestone Hub on the Grants Council Landing Page that serves as a space for grants finalists to report their milestone progress. The Milestone Hub should contain instructions on how finalists should submit their milestones and the form in which those milestones should be reported. The Milestone and Metrics Sub-Committee shall assess whether the Milestone Hub is well-suited to its purpose and may, with the assistance and guidance of the Operations Manager, adapt the Milestone Hub as it deems appropriate.

Prospective Applications

In order to be considered as a finalist, an application must include critical and benchmark milestones. Critical milestones are intended to show good faith effort and a baseline of success toward the goals articulated in the grant application. Benchmark milestones are intended to show impact to the Optimism Collective that can be used to assess the project in the future.

The Milestone and Metrics Sub-Committee will establish Milestone Guidelines for assessing milestone sufficiency. The Milestone Guidelines will be aimed at creating discrete, trackable milestones for each successful application.

At the beginning of each Final Review, the Milestones and Metrics Sub-Committee will review each application selected by each of the Experiments and the Builders Sub-Committees for Final Review to determine whether the application’s milestones meet the standard of sufficiency set forth in the Milestones Guidelines.

In order to be eligible to become a finalist, an application must receive a favorable vote of a majority of the Milestones and Metrics Sub-Committee members verifying that the application’smilestones meet the standards of sufficiency.

Past Applications

The Milestones and Metrics Sub-Committee shall make recommendations to the Foundation or Optimism Collective as to whether or not to proceed with the remainder of an Experiments or Builders grant. In general, the Milestones and Metrics Sub-Committee shall not recommend proceeding with a project unless all critical milestones have been achieved (per the vote of the Sub-Committee).

The Milestone and Metrics Sub-Committee is generally responsible for voting on whether or not milestones have been achieved. In circumstances where the Sub-Committee determines that it would require expertise beyond the capacity of the Sub-Committee, the Milestone and Metrics Sub-Committee Lead may submit a milestone for consideration of the Sub-Committee that originally voted to designate the application as a prior finalist. In such cases, the majority vote of the relevant sub-committee shall be considered determinative.

Standard procedure

  • Applications for the continuation of an Experiments grant or the completion of a Builders grant should be submitted to the Milestones Hub. (Season 5 will be CharmVerse)

  • In general, applications will be reviewed only after a project confirms that all relevant critical milestones have been completed. However, the Milestone and Metrics Sub-Committee may consider requests to review individual milestones in the case that a project requires feedback on a milestone to continue.

  • Absent an approval for a greater amount of time, critical milestones will be considered past due after six months from the delivery of the grant for Experiments applications and twelve months from the locking of the grant for Builders applications.

  • Milestones and Metrics votes shall be recorded.

Other procedures

  • In cases where a project has failed to complete its critical milestones in the allotted time (either the six or twelve month defaults for Experiments and Builders or the time allotted on the specific application, whichever is greater), the Sub-Committee will default to recommending against proceeding with any further steps of the grant.

  • In the case where a proposer makes a proposal to change the substance (or extend the time) of a critical milestone, the Sub-Committee may consider the change only if (a) the Sub-Committee determines that there is substantial good reason to support the request and (b) a super-majority of all of the Council reviewers vote in favor of the proposal.

  • For milestones pertinent to Intent 1 mission aplications, the Sub-Committee shall wait for the Developer Advisory Board to confirm the completion of the critical milestones prior to confirming completion to the Foundation.

At any point, if the Council becomes aware of a matter that should be presented to the Code of Conduct Council, the Council may revoke its recommendation to move forward with a grant.

The guidance in this section yields to any contrary rule, guidance, or vote from Token House or the Foundation.

Reviewer Metrics Accountability

In conjunction with the newly established Milestones and Metrics committee, that committee will start the process of ensuring grant council reviewers communicate effectively with the grant applicants and are accountable for their work. For Season 5, specific metrics and processes as mandated by the charter will include: reviewer comment frequency on substantive rubric components, reviewer comments on failed intake applications, reviewer attendance of sub-committee meetings, reviewer voting on sub-committee and full council polls.

The metrics as a whole will possibly be adapted over the course of the season as best practices reveal themselves in this trial run period. The goal will not be to micromanage each reviewer but more so to identify and allocate additional support for those reviewers that need such, while also offering comparison between reviewers for delegates and token house members.

Official Record and Rule Changes

  • The Council will maintain a tracker of applications considered, finalists named, milestones for finalists, and the progress / completion of milestones.

  • For Season 5, the operating procedures for any Requests for Grants considerations from Season 4 shall be approved by separate rules set forth by the prior RFG Lead and the current Operations Lead and Milestone and Metrics Lead with the consent of the Foundation.

  • On a bi-weekly basis, the Council may review the effectiveness of its internal procedures and make proposals for improvement. The Sub-Committee can amend the internal procedures by a simple majority vote of the members of both Sub-Committees (provided that any vote to amend the rubric comports with the procedures described above). Any amendment must be recorded as a comment to this post and reflected on the Landing Page. It is recommended that the Sub-Committee defer the effectiveness of an amendment until the next review cycle, unless the amendment creates a critical improvement to the review process.


Rules of Decision

  • If one or more Sub-Committee members abstains from a vote, a vote will pass by the simple majority vote of the remaining members, provided there are more than one voting members remaining. If only one member of a Sub-Committee votes, the result will be to take no action 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.

  • Any Council-wide votes must include members of each Sub-Committee to achieve a quorum.

  • The Grants Council Lead may correct any clear errors in the Internal Procedures or resolve any conflicting provisions. For resolving conflicts, the Lead may submit a question of the best resolution to a vote of the Sub-Committee members, the results of which may be recorded on the Landing Page.

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This document has been modified to reflect the Season 5 Milestone Assessment rules.

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