StationX.network - Builder Grant - Cycle 11

📜 Grant Proposals Grants Council
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Basic Details

Project name: StationX.network

Author name and forum name (please provide a reliable point of contact for the project): Toshit Som (toshitsom)

L2 recipient address: 0x4d144eE8C0F6F263AD57AF29790Ec155A52Ce73f

Which Voting Cycle are you applying for?: Cycle 11

I confirm that I have read the landing pages for the Builders 17 and Growth Experiments 18 Sub-Committees and that I have determined my proposal is best suited to be reviewed by the Builders Sub-Committee: [Yes/No]: Yes

Project Details

What are you going to build?
StationX.network is a protocol to create DAOs using customisable templates for any use-case and start governing & managing assets together, all in under 60 seconds.

Why is what you are going to build going to succeed?
There will exist millions of multiplayer structures on-chain for everything, starting from small pools of friends to a community of 50K+. Small & large people networks investing in opportunities, running different businesses/protocols, funding ideas, collecting assets together, lending/borrowing assets, selling different things & a lot more. DAOs’ AUM was $13B in 2022 and is expected to go to $1T by 2032. And this will only be possible with a platform like StationX that lets people create, manage and do a lot more with DAOs effortlessly.

Is your project likely to bring new builders to the Optimism ecosystem? If so, please describe how
Yes, we plan to open RFPs where we would incentivize builders to create integrations and other features. Builders would also be able to create new templates & sell them on the marketplace ahead in our roadmap. The protocol SDK would allow anyone to integrate a pool/group creator on top of any dApp (imagine a bunch of friends being able to create a pool and add liquidity on any DeFi platform)

Is your project likely to improve the quality of developers in the Optimism ecosystem? If so, please describe how: No

Is your project likely to improve the commitment of developers in the Optimism ecosystem? If so, please describe how: No

Provide us with links to any of the following for the project:

Do you have any metrics on the project currently? (TVL, transactions, volume, unique addresses, etc. Optimism metrics preferred; please link to public sources such as Dune Analytics, etc.)
We’re currently in Private Beta. Some DAOs with whom we’re having conversations & are testing our product are Wealth Ventures, Phree - Defi Lending Protocol, Paxo.finance, OGClub DAO & a few web2 syndicates who want to transition to Web3.

Who are your competitors?
Some companies that are currently working on this problem are Syndicate.io, Juicebox, Aragon & DAOhaus.

What differentiates you from your competitors?
We are creating a platform which has multiple templates (pre-built & custom-made) built for different use cases that our competitors don’t have. Every club/collective has a separate use case and needs a customised solution that our platform can offer. For example we’re working on a template that would have integrations & capabilities to seamlessly provide liquidity to DeFi protocols like Aave, Lido etc & would encourage DeFi DAOs & community pools.

Will your project be composable with other projects on Optimism? If so, please explain:
Yes, DApp integrations to make the journey of DAOs on StationX smooth is one of our main focus areas. StationX contracts allow any DAO to interact with DApps for various use cases.

Team

Who are your founders?
4 of us with CS backgrounds, ran a marketing & tech services company in India right after university from 2019 to 2021.

  • Rishav used to invest in crypto since 2017 (started with investing in projects through small pools & communities that had allocation with private investors). Invested in over 30 projects, this is where he first encountered the problem. Found out small communities came together to act as micro VCs, funds, and syndicates.
  • Subham has been building & shipping products since 2019. He soon transitioned into smart contracts. He has worked on multiple projects for clients ranging from retail, e-commerce, universities to build applications for custom use cases.
  • Pranav has more than 3 years of experience in product design, community & marketing. He started working with Web3 projects in mid-2021 and worked with over 10 projects to build their community.
  • Toshit is a performance marketeer with more than 3 years of experience in marketing & operations, worked with web3 projects since mid-2021 to generate traction & helped them with getting investors & partners on board.

What makes your founders well-positioned to accomplish your goals with this project (1-2 sentences on each)?
The founding team has been working together since 2019, and scaled a profitable services business to $1M in ARR. Rishav has been in the Web3 space since 2017, where he used to invest in early stage projects as a part of multiple pools (or DAOs). Subham has more than 6 years of experience in development & 2 years of experience writing Smart Contracts. Toshit is a performance marketeer & has managed a team of 15+ people in his previous startup. Pranav has more than 3 years of experience in product design, community & marketing. Having worked together for more than 4 years scaling a business & the different skillset that each person brings to the table gives us an advantage over an equally qualified team.

Tell us about the rest of your team (if there are more teammates):
The rest of the team is primarily based in India & are all developers across Blockchain & Frontend roles.

Is this your first Web3 project?
Not exactly, prior to this Rishav built a Twitter scraper for targeted news as a side project and a community of 3000 people went on to use it.

I understand that Builders grants are subject to a 1 year lock-up, as explained further in this post 2: [Yes/No]: Yes

Is your project funded? If so, provide an estimate of how many months of funding runway your project has
We’ve received grants from Polygon DAO, Aave Grants DAO & Filecoin and we’re also a part of OVs Filecoin basecamp. We currently have about 6 months of runway.

Grant Request

What is the size of the grant request? (50k OP max):
50K

How do you justify the size of the grant?
The grant would be split in 3 core components :

  1. Building on Optimism with top DeFi platform integrations.
  2. Exploring a grant DAO template based on Optimism Grants Model
  3. User onboarding on Optimism

The grant amount would be utilised to :

  1. 50% to Compensate the team
  2. 50% dedicated towards Quadratic Funding or Sponsored Liquidity to DAO/Pool treasuries that would be deployed on StationX. This component would be locked even for DAOs/Pools that setup on StationX.

Roadmap

Describe in discrete steps your plan for accomplishing your project:

  • Deploy StationX on Optimism
  • Launch our marketing campaign
  • Onboard users who want to create DAOs
  • Adding features/DApp integrations based on feedback from the community

Please provide any additional information that will facilitate accountability:(smart contracts addresses relevant to the proposal, relevant organizational wallet addresses, etc.): No

Does your plan depend on the receipt of OP tokens?: No

What is your plan for the use of the OP token after the 1 year lock-up?:
After a year of lockup it would be free for communities & team members to use the tokens as they will.

Please provide benchmark milestones for this project. These milestones should guide the Optimism community on the progress of your project during the 1-year lock-up period.
Our milestones are centred around building the key infrastructure to enable the creation & functioning of DAOs on Optimism.
Once the key infrastructure is in place, the next goal is around onboarding DAOs on StationX & working with them to improve the functionalities & adding features.

Please define critical milestones for this project. Critical milestones are meant to show good-faith efforts to accomplish the project. Non-completion of these milestones could lead to revocation of remaining grant rewards.

  1. Milestone 1: 30-45 days to build and deploy on Optimism
  2. Milestone 2: 45 days to onboard users on the platform and test various DAO categories.

Optimism Relationship

Does your project solve a problem for the Optimism ecosystem?
Yes, through our project, people will be able to create DAOs for any use-case on Optimism.

How does your proposal offer a value proposition solving the above problem?

  • With more DAOs on StationX, more TVL on Optimism,
  • DAOs on StationX encourage more community initiatives, which leads to more initiatives that further the ecosystem’s growth.

Why will this solution be a source of growth for the Optimism ecosystem?
The goal is to target the degen community, governance participants and early supporters of Optimism to build DAOs on Optimism. We have a strategy to build a sizeable DAO on Optimism and through it’s members & their network effects more DAOs will be formed.

How committed are you (and your team) to building on Optimism?
The team is fully committed to building on Optimism.

Is your project Optimism Native?
Yes

Confirmations

I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant: [Yes/No]: Yes

I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here: [Yes/No]: Yes

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I’m curious as to whether I can use the ERC 20 tokens that I deploy with Aragon via StationX in voting proposals because I see them listed as a competitor.
Would you also consider Wonderverse as a similar type of platform to yours that is already integrated with the Optimism chain?
We are definitely curious and happy to see more tooling for DAO management coming to the network!

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Hey!

  1. ERC-20 tokens deployed with Aragon can be used to gate a DAO on StationX but cannot be used to vote at this point(we’re currently working on such mechanisms where StationX can wrap such treasuries). Wrapping a custom ERC-20 token like the above is something that is planned in our roadmap where clubs can use any token created previously can be used to govern.

  2. Wonderverse is a task management platform for DAOs, where you can assign taska & track progress. On the other hand, we are a treasury management platform where people can govern the treasury using action-backed proposals

Let me know if you have any more questions, would be happy to answer!

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Amazing!! Thanks for the clarification.

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Hi, @toshitsom I wanted to inform you that the Forum is an official channel and that you are expected to monitor and respond to any outreach here.

Keep in mind we need to track these milestones, can you elaborate on what these key components are?

An example of a benchmark milestone here would be something like x new features every month, x new DAOs every month, or something we can check as progress.

Benchmark milestones are meant to enable the proposer to display success to the Optimism community and for the Optimism community to monitor grantees’ progress.

Completion of benchmark milestones is not required for the full award of a grant; rather, the completion or non-completion of benchmark milestones will inform the community of a proposer’s commitment to the Optimism community and may factor into future grant decisions.

The same goes for the critical milestones if you can be more specific on what are you deploying in the first 45 days and how many users you aim to onboard on Milestone 2 we can track and measure.

For more information on milestones here’s a link: Milestone Assessment

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The founding team has been working together since 2019, and scaled a profitable services business to $1M in ARR. Rishav has been in the Web3 space since 2017, where he used to invest in early stage projects as a part of multiple pools (or DAOs). Subham has more than 6 years of experience in development & 2 years of experience writing Smart Contracts. Toshit is a performance marketeer & has managed a team of 15+ people in his previous startup. Pranav has more than 3 years of experience in product design, community & marketing. Having worked together for more than 4 years scaling a business & the different skillset that each person brings to the table gives us an advantage over an equally qualified team.

Can you be more specific in substantiating this background?

If you have 6 months of runway, how do you intend to cover the following six months before this grant would hit?

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Hey @Gonna.eth - apologies missed this message. I’ll add the relevant numbers (product & customers) here to track the progress.

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Hey @jackanorak!

More about the team:
Rishav (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishavbajoria/) has founded two companies and has been investing in projects since 2017. He started with investing in projects through private pools and communities. Invested in over 30 projects at seed private or ICO stage.
Active member of DAOs such as GCR, Lil Nouns, Hydra Venture DAO, and more.
Leads business, fund raise and product at StationX.

Subham (https://www.linkedin.com/in/subham-sengupta-ba2938134/) has been building & shipping products since 2019. Started as full-stack developer, worked with Enterprise clients and a retail tech product, he soon transitioned into smart contracts. Github: subham7 (Subham Sengupta) · GitHub
At StationX, Subham leads a tech team of 5.

Pranav (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranav-y-167998102/) has over four years of experience in product design, community, and marketing. He co-founded and led the services business, bootstrapping it to a team of 15 and ~$1 million in revenue in two years while working with some of the biggest brands in India, including TATA Group, GMR Group, Government of Odisha, EeVe (Electric Vehicle Startup), and more. Pranav has been a part and contributor to some Web3 communities since mid-2021.
At StationX, Pranav leads design, UX, community and marketing

Toshit (https://www.linkedin.com/in/toshitsom/) is a performance marketer with more than three years of experience in marketing and operations. He co-founded and served as the COO of the services business, managed over $1 million in performance ad spend while working with D2C brands.
Toshit manages hiring and operations at StationX.

We actually thought that some part of the grant would hit earlier and that could really help us a lot. We thought previous OP grants to other projects have been given out immediately/earlier. If that isn’t possible, we’re either way on a lookout for sources of funding with some open conversations.

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Hey @Gonna.eth,

The key infrastructure here would be:

  1. Creating a Token gated or NFT gated Station (DAO)
  2. New members being able to join the Station (DAO) by depositing/minting
  3. Members being able to raise & vote on proposals (Survey & Executable Action Proposals)

Milestones:

  1. Deploy StationX MVP on Optimism - April 30, 2023
  2. Launch public beta and onboard 25 DAOs/pools with mainnet treasury commitments on StationX by May 30, 2023, & then add 5 sizeable DAOs every month for the next 3 months.
  3. With regard to new feature addition we follow a feedback approach to collect key problems of DAOs and build automated workflows for each key operation a DAO performs.

For example - We recently built a programmable claim page for DAOs to setup dividend, reward, profit, etc claims that members can use instead of tedious spreadsheet calculations and manual batch transactions.
There are a bunch of other features/integrations planned such as Notifications, Crosschain deposits for DAO token mints, and more.
We plan to release 2 automated workflows(best case) for DAOs every month.
The marketing & our public beta campaign is planned to get 5 DAOs with sizeable treasury and 20 small pools every month just on Optimism.

Can answer any specific question around this or get more elaborate on this if required.

Apologies for the delay in responding, I’m planning to attend DAO Tokyo & was caught up with the visa process.

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