Abstract
This proposal aims to define a more transparent structure for the Grants Committee and ultimately for the Ecosystem Growth Fund.
Motivation
Taking into account what could be called an initial GC pilot which we are about to wrap up, the need to define comprehensive strategies and focus areas with grantees is required. There is also the need to communicate clearer GC responsibilities, compensation, and better community involvement in GC activities.
More specifically, this will better help us drive development and usage, cultivating enthusiastic users and talented builders that will help shape the future of the Rarible protocol and chain, fostering a sustainable creator economy.
Rationale
GC needs a set of guiding principles to steer us forward. The first grant sprint helped us define and set up good structures early on but also opened our eyes to areas where we could do things better both internally and externally.
Key Terms
GC: Grants Committee
RFP: Request for Proposal
Specification
The current structure focuses on having two community members and two Foundation member on the committee. One member acts as the grant’s lead responsible for coordination; the other committee members assume evaluator roles, overseeing the grant application evaluation process and supporting grantees, helping them meet and exceed their milestones.
In the initial set-up of the GC, responsibilities were not spelled out, and no real KPI was set to be tracked as a deliverable for the working group. However, after sprint one of the Ecosystem Fund, we are outlining some responsibilities and suggesting some KPIs so the community can easily track the progress of the GC.
GC Responsibilities
- The Committee will self-determine how they reach consensus on grant applications from the intake form as well as the recommendations from the GC Lead.
- The GC will operate transparently by communicating progress during governance calls and sharing information and feedback in public forums.
- Work in iterations (quarterly) - which will allow us to be flexible in funds usage
- Define minimum and maximum allocation for grantees. This tells what kind of program we’ll be running. i.e small and fast grants, or midsize grants that can span over six months
- The GC will also publish a report on their process, learnings, and outcomes at the end of each cycle (three months).
- Creation of RFPs and marketing content to communicate updates and opportunities to the builders.
- Communicate the information regarding approval/rejection of proposals to the RARI DAO community regularly.
- Discuss program improvements within the team during scheduled meetings.
- Each member of the GC will transparently share Conflict of Interest disclosure with the community whenever necessary.
- Publish the qualified projects for every cycle along with our rationale for supporting them on Forum.
- Continue iterating on grant process.
- If something is not clearly outlined here, the GC has decision-making authority over its operations and may decide to make exceptions for proposers at their discretion.
GC KPIs
- Number of Applications Received: Total number of grant applications received. This should include both accepted and rejected applications and a brief note explaining the decision.
- Grant Distribution Timeline: Measure the time taken to review, approve, and distribute grants, ensuring a timely turnaround time of no longer than 10 days from application to resolution
- Grant Amount Disbursed: Monitor the total value of grants distributed to successful applicants including distribution across projects, and budget utilization rate.
- User Metrics: Measure the increase in the number of users or active participants in the protocol as a result of funded projects.
MoS
- Successful review of grantee proposals
- Report submitted to the community at the end of every grant pilot
Multisig Policies
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Assuming the same four member squad in control of the Ecosystem Grants Fund, the multi-sig will be structured as 3 out of 4.
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multisig address: 0x8099b56FC797731f03dA9074a65bBb5Adf16b09F
Budget
Of the GC members, two are from the Foundation, and two are from the RARI DAO community. Foundation members either part-time or full-time get compensated from the yearly operations budget. However, the two community members are not compensated.
I am proposing we compensate these two community members in $RARI that gets unlocked at the end of each cycle. More specifically, I suggest 12k $RARI for each member gets locked through Hedgey around the time the operational budget goes live in December then at the start of next year 2025, and going forward, 3k $RARI is unlocked for each member at the end of every cycle (quarterly).
Concerning the current situation where we are already nearing the end of a cycle and with the two community members (@Jaf and @WinVerse) having already worked for six months, I propose 3k $RARI each for their contributions thus far, and a six-month lockup of 12k $RARI for the remainder of the year. 6k $RARI will get unlocked at the end of the next cycle and if one more cycle is done before the end of the year, the remaining 6k is unlocked. All unused funds will be sent back to the treasury.
There is no separate compensation as multisig signers.
