RFC-XX: Hop Grants Committee Renewal and Redesign

The following reflects the views of L2BEATā€™s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and itā€™s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.

Weā€™ll be voting FOR the proposal during temp-check.

Weā€™ve been following the discussion for the past few weeks and have also provided feedback based on our experience in other DAOs in numerous instances over a few past community calls. We support the idea of renewing and redesigning Hopā€™s grant program, and the overall direction the proposal has taken is good.

One thing that weā€™re reluctant about and hope to discuss further before an on-chain vote is the compensation for grant committee members. While we understand the approach of keeping the base compensation relatively low and introducing vested commissions of up to 15% of grants as retroactive funding, weā€™re not sure itā€™ll yield the desired results.

First and foremost, the success of the grant program (and, therefore, the potential commissions to the grant committee members) relies heavily on their ability to promote the program and attract worthy applications that will positively impact Hop.

In our view, the base salary should reflect the demanding work of setting up a successful grants program and incentivize the respective committee members to do the necessary work. Although the vested commissions are a nice way to tie the committeeā€™s compensation to the programā€™s success (as we had also suggested), they should be perceived as a bonus, not as compensation.

Weā€™d suggest increasing the base salary to at least $1,500 if we want this whole endeavor of renewing the grants program not to have been in vain 6 months from now.

Having said that, weā€™d like to invite delegates and other governance participants to discuss things further during our Hop Office Hours every Friday at 3 pm UTC.