I’ve lived many grant cycles as a proposer and a voter since governance started and took countless notes on how to make the process better. On the first grants council cycle we used the forum and some Google sheets and I soon realized we were going to need a better platform for Dane’s grants system (which is great and very fair).
I was able to implement many changes on S3 from the rubric to Google sheet format, but when S3 ended I decided to research a tool that could take it all in one place and avoid fragmentation.
I’ve been approached by many DAO tools in the last year given I’m one of EthernautDAO’s founders and PM. And this gave me a good head start. At the same time, I didn’t know if I was going to get elected to Grants Council again and If I was going to be given the possibility to change the platform, but I did the research anyway.
Platform conditions:
- Web 3 oriented (Log in with Ethereum or similar)
- Proposal-oriented (must have proposals integrated)
- Web page service integrated (To keep the GC landing page alive)
- Option to make anything and everything public (No login to “view” mode)
- Adaptable (Something similar to Notion)
- The platform developer team should be reachable
- The platform developer team must know what Optimism and Op. grants are
- Easy for others to learn
- Avoid on-chain if not necessary
- open source
Options analyzed
Dework: https://app.dework.xyz/nation3
Looks like discord, many of the conditions like adaptability, ease to use and learn, and reaching the devs team are not there.
Clarity: https://www.clarity.so/
Great web page and overview of the product but I couldn’t find any community using it and there’s no search on their site.
Daohaus: https://daohaus.club/
Only on-chain oriented and no web service. Many of the conditions are not there.
Spect: https://www.spect.network/
Discord tool, is not what we need.
R3vl: https://www.r3vl.xyz/
Revenue-oriented, NFT oriented, not what we needed.
xDao: https://www.xdao.app/
Fully on-chain, it has some great tools if you need to go on-chain for everything. It has integrations with many DeFi protocols. Many of the conditions needed for the grants council are not there.
Daolens: https://www.daolens.com/
A great team and a great tool overall. You cant edit the left sidebar to show what you want, the product is somehow a tool package you can use but not adapt to your own needs. Ej. You can edit the space profile page (landing page) but you can’t change the format, add an image, or do many other things that CharmVerse lets you do.
They don’t have “Optimism” on their webpage meaning in the future token gated access won’t be possible.
Pricing is another huge difference, you can have 10k blocks with full access to all the tools in CharmVerse for 12$ monthly while DAOLens pricing:
DAOlens is great if you don’t have any sort of developer or web designer or UX/UI experience. You log in, set your space and everything works. But you won’t have databases, adaptability, or a deep project managing tool.
They are a very receptive team and have one of the best introduction tools for new users with role selection, skill, etc. Once you get into the site the user has most of the things sorted out depending on what he chooses in the intro:
Why Charmverse
First, they have all the conditions needed.
I met the Charmverse team because they applied for a builders grant on S3. The product back then was already good. Inspired by Notion, it’s easy for anyone who already uses Notion to start working on it. Adaptability is huge, you just open a new page and start building from scratch whatever you need. You have “roles”, you can even gate with a token so in the future Council members could be identified on-chain. They raised a few million and have at least 2-year runtime. They didn’t go on the revenue model with a token so they are a perfect candidate for RPGF in the future. They applied for a grant for S3 meaning the team understands the grant process and every time I requested a change on their platform or a new feature they always understood why. I had many meetings with them and I believe in the future many Optimism teams will get the value and proactiveness behind the Charmverse team.
Finally, S3 Grants Council approved the grant for this team and I personally think I must put my money where my mouth is.
I feel overwhelmed by having to choose the platform and design everything on it for S4, and I confess I’m absolutely terrified of anything going wrong, but I know this feeling means how important this is to me. Cheers!