Season 5 Grants Council Operating Budget

🏛 Token House Governance
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Grants Council Operating Budget Proposal for Season 5

Proposed Council Lead: Lund Ventures (Dane Lund)

Proposed Council Operating Budget: 440k OP

Contact Info: danelund.eth (forum)

Please link to any previous work or qualifications to be Council Lead:

  • Link to community contributions
    – Season 3 Grants Launch
    – Season 4 Grants Launch
  • Grants Council Lead Seasons 3 + 4
  • Dane is a core contributor at Alliance (alliance.xyz) and a fellow of the Decentralization Research Center

Council Charter:

· Link to original Charter: Season 3 Charter

· Link to Last Season’s Charter: Season 4 Charter

· Link to proposed Season 5 Charter - Please note all Council Charters will now be maintained on github as pages under the Operating Manual

Please note that the Charter of the Council will need to be expanded to account for the following changes in Scope:

§ The Grants Council will now process all Delegate Mission Applications, under all Intents (not just Intent #2)

§ The Grants Council will no longer operate its own Request For Grant program, but rather will be able to propose Delegate Mission Requests, subject to Token House approval in Voting Cycle #18

§ Mission Applications will continue to be classified as growth experiments or builders grants, or a combination of the two. The Grants Council should continue to evaluate these grants based on defined goals and public rubrics for each grant type, as well as their ability to achieve the corresponding Intent

§ All Mission Applications should be processed according to Trust Tiers

Breakdown of Council Operating Budget:

The proposed Council Operating Budget is increased relative to Season 4 for a number of reasons. First, the number of reviewers has increased by five in order to accommodate much larger than anticipated interest (in the prior Season) in the Optimism Grants Program. The reviewers span three Sub-Committees rather than two in Seasons 3 + 4. Second, the Grants Council was dedicated to one intent in Season 4, but will review proposals from all intents for Season 5. Third, the Season 4 budget was put together with ten weeks of grant processing in mind (in reference to Season 3, which was two cycles), relative to 12 weeks of grant processing in Season 5.

3 Sub-Committees and Ops = 400k OP

  • Builders: 5 Reviewers @ 30k OP (+ 5k OP from S4)
  • Experiments: 5 Reviewers @ 30k OP (+5k OP from S4)
  • Milestones and Metrics: 3 Reviewers @ 25k OP (new in S4)
  • Ops Manager: Additional 10k OP (+5k from S4)*
  • Milestones and Metrics Manager: Additional 10k OP (new in S4)
  • Communications Manager: Additional 5k OP (same as S4)

*Should he be re-elected as a reviewer, the intention would be to reappoint @Gonna.eth to this position.

Council-related requests for grants = 40k OP

  • 40k OP will be set aside for grants specifically designed to enhance Council operations (e.g., knowledge management platform, front-end, developer contributions, etc).

Lead = 0 OP

  • This position will be rewarded only through retroPGF if it is rewarded for Season 5.

This budget does not include: any amounts granted by the Foundation for ongoing milestone review and council maintenance prior to Season 5 launch or any amounts granted to Council-members for prior seasons for RetroPGF.

How should Token House delegates ensure the Council is executing on its Charter?

· Benchmark Milestone 1

  • Review > 95% of Mission Requests

· Benchmark Milestone 2

  • Maintain finalist rate < 30%

· Benchmark Milestone 3

  • Process > 300 proposals

Benchmark Milestone 4

  • Publish rubrics for each Sub-Committee, modified as applicable for each intent, prior to the review of proposals for Cycles 19-22

How should badgeholders measure the Council’s impact?

· KPI 1

  • NPS score from finalists > 7/10

· KPI 2

  • Creation of Milestone Hub for long-term milestone tracking

· KPI 3

  • Office Hours and AMA attendance by > 75 unique proposers
13 Likes
2

The additional role for milestones is a good step forward and should boost overall efficiency for all reviewers.

As an Optimism delegate with voting power above the required threshold I believe this proposal is ready for vote. Delegate Commitments - #71 by MoneyManDoug

4 Likes
3

Additional builders reviewers and dedicated roles for tracking milestones seem like good additions to me.

As an Optimism Delegate with sufficient voting power, I believe this proposal is ready for a vote.

2 Likes
4

I have been noticing a high amount of applications being submitted with the help of Artificial Intelligence during the past few rounds. I guess there are not any guidelines against this but I am curious how those who had handwritten their grant application did in comparison for those that were automatically generated.

Any thoughts :thought_balloon: on how AI can also be used to help breakdown each application as well for the grant council?

I am sure that as time goes on we will only see the number of applications grow at a rapid rate for both RPGF & the traditional grants program.

It takes less than one minute to generate a grant proposal with a template.

3 Likes
5

One edit to the proposed charter after posting this, under the Milestone and Metrics Council: “The sub-committee may define, adopt, or amend procedures for the administration of prior grants, such as RFGs 3 and 5 from Season 4.”

This item is not contemplated in the budget and the budget has not been updated given the proximity to the deadline. To the extent that the Milestone and Metrics Council successfully creates and administers these processes, that might be taken into account as an additional measure of impact.

3 Likes
6

This is a needed expansion, one that allows a good deal of specialization and more inclusion.

As an Optimism delegate with voting power above the required threshold I believe this proposal is ready for vote. Optimism Agora

4 Likes
7

I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power, and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

6 Likes
8

Love what Dane has achieved here so far and excited to see it continue. I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power, and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

4 Likes
9

I am a Top 100 delegate and I am of the opinion that this proposal can now move towards voting.

2 Likes
10

I am one of the Synthetix Ambassadors, and a Optimism Badgeholder. I am an Optimism delegate [Delegate Commitments - #65 by mastermojo ] with sufficient voting power, and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote

4 Likes
11

Just jumping in to also show my support for this proposal. Great job Dane!

4 Likes
12

Hi,
I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

2 Likes
13

I’m supportive of this proposal and also excited about the monitoring of milestones and metrics.

2 Likes
14

Hello. I very much like the idea of a milestone and metrics reviewer. I was wondering what the role of the Milestone and Metrics Manager is, and how it differs from the 3 reviewers on the sub-committee? Thanks!

3 Likes
15

I am supportive of this change and believe the grant council is doing good work.

1 Like
16

Great question. The idea is to create division of labor to allow one sub-committee to focus on milestone approval and assessment. The sub-committee would not be in charge of choosing finalists, but would be required to sign off on milestones. The sub-committee would also focus on building the milestone tracking interface. The sub-committee would also create a way to track reviewer participation and help to fill in for intake if needed. Ideally, the milestone sub-committee would pick up the work of articulating the process and selecting the projects eligible for the audit and RPC programs from S4 RFGs 3 and 5. More from the Charter below. It would be great if some excellent community members would consider proposing to fill these positions.

Milestones and Metrics Sub-Committee:

  • Goals: assessing historical grant finalist progress on milestones, confirming final milestones for Season 5 grants, and maintaining relevant council and reviewer metrics
  • Non-goal: not meant to be punitive for the sake of being punitive
  • The sub-committee will create a Milestone Hub in coordination with the operations manager in order to provide a clear location for proposers to report milestones and for the community to review milestone progress
  • The sub-committee will create and track minimum standards for reviewer performance in the Builders and Experiments Sub-Committees
  • The sub-committee will track reviewer-level KPIs for Season 5, which shall include (but not be limited to):
  1. Reviewer comment frequency on substantive rubric components
  2. Reviewer comments on failed intake proposals
  3. Reviewer attendance of sub-committee meetings
  4. Reviewer voting on sub-committee and full council polls
  • The sub-committee will review the application of review rubrics for each of the other two sub-committees and offer recommendations on how rubrics can be more finely tailored to their purposes
  • Reviewers on this sub-committee may be assigned to sufficiency reviews (e.g., intake) if the Lead determines additional capacity is needed
  • The sub-committee may define, adopt, or amend procedures for the administration of prior grants, such as RFGs 3 and 5 from Season 4
  • Responsible for monitoring trust tiers
  • Reviewers: 3
  • Consensus: 2/3 vote unless otherwise stated.
  • This sub-committee will be capable of amending milestone assessment procedures by majority vote. Changes can be vetoed by a simple majority of the full Council within five days of the proposal to change the procedures.
  • The sub-committee will consider any change-of-use or change of milestone proposals from prior finalists and make recommendations to the full Council. A simple majority of the full Council reviewers (7/13) shall be required to approve a change-of-use or change of milestone proposal.
  • The Sub-Committee will have the authority to determine how many votes are needed to accept or reject milestone completion reports through its internal operating procedures.
6 Likes
17

We vote FOR the Grants Council Operating Budget.

Not much to say here, we have followed the work done by the Grants Council from the outside and we know the workload that it really entailed last season, so the addition of new reviewers is reasonable. The same with the new challenges encountered, such as the tracking of appropriate proposals, so the new role conceived for milestones and metrics is also a natural step.

18

The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two.

The Grants Council proved its purpose and effectiveness last season, and we think it’s a good idea to fund its continuation. The proposed changes from last season are reasonable due to the increased interest in the program and the increased workload of the Council.

2 Likes