This important discussion has been stagnant for some time and I would like to reignite it because the Grants Committee is a very important part of the Hop DAO.
There were good suggestions made by @max-andrew @0xjack and @jengajojo and I believe the grants committee redesign is ready for a snapshot vote but would like to give some more time for any additional suggestions from community members before moving to a snapshot vote.
This is the most recent iteration of the grants committee redesign based on feedback from community members.
There shall be 5 Grants Committee members, with one uncompensated seat reserved for @cwhinfrey
Two Committee members shall be elected from within the Hop Community and will be compensated $250/month to be paid out in HOP tokens.
There shall be two external Committee Members who shall be compensated $500/month to be paid in HOP tokens. The external committee members will be recruited leveraging Authereum Labs resources.
There shall be no builders call
The funding cap per project should be increased by 50%
There shall be a process for removing inactive Committee Members.
If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions please share them in this thread so that the proposal can be fine tuned before going up for a snapshot vote.
I think a final draft of the renewed Grants committee and Grants program design proposal is close at hand, but I would like to highlight some open questions from this thread:
Should we seek alternatives to weighted voting for selecting the committee?
Are the categories of projects/proposals the DAO intends to fund clearly defined?
Are committee members incentivized well enough to be multisig signers?
Should there be an established framework for finding and selecting Grants (RFPs, Missions/Intents, etc.)?
For the first question, I really like @jengajojoâs suggestion of distributing SoulBound Tokens as voting power for committee selection. I also wouldnât be against using Snapshotâs Quadratic Voting implementation.
For the second question: Why not try to broaden the horizons of what can be funded by Hop DAO?
What if the DAO were to fund an IOT/DePin project that wants to post commitments to data collected to multiple chains in a single block, which Hop could facilitate? Just an example, but maybe DAOs could be a bit more creative in trying to attract a more diverse set of projects which could add value to Ethereum whilst also bringing in revenue for their projects.
Finally, is the amount proposed in the original proposal sufficient for a Grant program? 750k Hop right now is ~$35.4k, is this competitive enough for a Grant program?
The Hop DAO Grants Program began on January 10th 2023, with an initial transfer of 750,000 HOP tokens to the Grants Multi-Sig. At the time of writing this proposal, 738,390 HOP tokens remain in the Multi-Sig .
How many grants were reviewed and then how many were actually paid out? Only asking regarding compensation, as Iâm wondering how many times a month may go by with no applications. Resulting in the committee getting paid for no activity.
This post is a follow up to the Grants Committee Workshop Call that took place on Wednesday 4/10/24 with the following participants; fourpoops, bob-rossi, takeabreath, krystof from L2Beat, and myself.
We discussed the shortcomings of the previous grants committee/program and ways to improve it.
The original grants program allocated 750k Hop tokens to be distributed to successful grants applicants with a max amount of 100k Hop per individual grant. With Hopâs current price of $0.051 (4/12/24), the total grant program amounts to around $38,250 USD with the max grant allocation at $5,100.
To my knowledge there were only two successful grant applicants; Tallyâs delegation week being awarded 75k Hop tokens and MaxAndrewâs Hop LP Rebalancer getting 88.6k Hop tokens. Therefore, there is still roughly 584k Hop tokens in the grants committee multisig.
Since the Grants Committee is targeting; cross-chain tooling & infrastructure, research & analytics, marketing & education, and onboarding, the total grant program of 750k Hop tokens seems very low. The max grant allocation of 100k Hop tokens also seems really low which potentially discouraged high quality grantees from applying.
Additionally, the fact that there were few grant applicants demonstrates that there wasnât enough awareness/knowledge of the grants program to attract applicants. Finally, another issue with the previous program was the lack of incentivization for grant committee members which lead to apathy and lack of focus from some committee members.
With this in mind the following changes are proposed to the grants program and committee;
Please share your thoughts, questions, and concerns so that we can move this proposal to a snapshot vote soon and reignite the grants program.
The below response reflects the views of L2BEATâs governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and itâs based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
After participating in the Grants Committee Workshop call, as well as the Hop Community Call on 17.4.2024, we wanted to take a minute and summarise our thoughts and share them with the community.
@francomâs comment above perfectly outlines the problems that were discussed and identified, and we want to expand on them as well as provide our perspective on an actionable plan forward.
One of the most important things to do is defining the scope of the grants the DAO wants to give out. A good step towards that is existing stakeholders identifying problems and crafting RFPs (requests for proposals) for potential grantees to apply to. We would suggest hosting a separate DAO-wide call, including people from the Foundation, to workshop this.
For any grants committee to have a meaningful impact, it needs active and heavily involved members. We find the proposed compensation of $500/mo to be very low to achieve the goal of incentivising committee members to do meaningful work. Grant programs have a lot of overhead, including creating a rubric, building and maintaining a pipeline, processing applications, overseeing the execution of grants, following up with grantees, and providing support. Weâd suggest significantly increasing the compensation to account for all the work that needs to be done.
Having said that, we recognize that Hop Grants program might have less traffic to justify as much overhead and therefore as much spending. To that end, weâd suggest 1) reducing the number of committee members from 5 to 3, and 2) somehow associating the compensation with the committeeâs workload on a month-by-month basis.
We agree that the total available budget should be increased and the x3 suggested by Francom sounds reasonable. Removing the cap-per-grant also makes sense.
The grants program should be promoted more by the grants committee members with support from other delegates and the Hop Foundation.
To keep things moving forward, we should move this to a Snapshot vote with a general proposal, and we can figure out the exact details (as discussed in the workshop and community call and as outlined above) before the proposal moves to an on-chain vote. That would help us to both move fast and also see that there is a soft consensus that the grants committee renewal is something the DAO wants.
Weâd love to participate in another workshop with other interested parties (maybe @francom can facilitate) to nail down the details to finalize the proposal.
Based on the previous grant program the overarching goal of this new grants program is to drive high quality application volume. The proposal below is based on the most recent feedback and conversations with community members. Please share your thoughts, comments, concerns, and questions. If there is explicit approval or lack of disapproval, this proposal will be moved to snapshot vote and if passed will be followed up with an election for the new grants committee.
3x grant program
No cap per grant
3 grant committee members
Base Salary of $500/month
Commission based
Grant committee votes and approves grants optimistically but DAO has a 7-day period to veto any approved grants.
3x grant program
Donât quite understand what is meant here, mind elaborating further?
No cap per grant
Not necessarily opposed to it, but mind sharing the rationale for not having a cap?
Commission based
I like this approach, but I do wonder if the three committee members would ever be overwhelmed being a sponsor/supporter for multiple applicants/grantees. What are the responsibilities of a sponsor, what does âsupport for granteesâ entail?
Overall, I think the incentives are fine and the veto + rfp period length may be good enough for the community to monitor collusion between the committee and applicants.
Also, what if none of the committee members âbringâ an applicant, but instead an application is seemingly submitted independently? Would sponsors/supporters be assigned to that applicant/grantee at random?
Hey @takeabreath ! Appreciate the questions.
The original grants program allocated 750k Hop tokens to be distributed to successful grants applicants with a max amount of 100k Hop per individual grant. With Hopâs current price of $0.044 (5/21/24), the total grant program amounts to around $33,472 USD with the max grant allocation at $4,463.
The max grant allocation might not be competitive enough to attract high quality applicants which could explain the lack of applicants in the previous grants program. The overarching goal of this new grants program is to drive high quality application volume.
I believe it would be helpful to increase the grants program by 3x, therefore the new grants program amount shall be 2.25 million Hop tokens, and eliminating the max grant allocation amount
The sponsor role during the application process would entail constant communication with applicants to make sure they fulfill all requirements on time to increase their probability of success. If the grant application gets approved then the sponsor must continue supporting the grant recipient by making sure the grant funds are used adequately and the grant recipient is periodically reporting progress with the DAO.
Yes. Sponsor would be assigned at random in this scenario. While the $500/month base salary for grant committee members might not seem high, as long as the grants program has several successful grant applicants, the committee members sponsoring them will be able to receive a vested commission of up to 15% of the grant spent as retroactive funding.
Great, thanks for clearing things up @francom.
All remarks below do not need to be addressed immidiately, as @Sinkas mentioned above, these can be ironed out after the snapshot vote.
I donât mind the rationale for the capless structure of the grant and the commission: even if only a single applicant ends up receiving the entire grant, I think there are cases where Hop can still benefit greatly from this proposal.
In this scenario, however (where there are only < 3 grantees), would the roles of support and sponsor (as well as the 15% commission) be split amongst all three committee members? Just thinking of edge cases right now.
Finally (and the most difficult consideration), KPIs for âsuccessâ:
- If grant is successful then the sponsor can get up to a 15% commission of the grant spent.
Would love to discuss metrics for success/flesh out what the DAO hopes to get out of this program at another workshop if possible, or perhaps before the on-chain vote in the forums.
Appreciate the additional comments, @takeabreath !
In the scenario where one grantee ends up receiving the entire grant program amount I believe it would make sense for the three grant committee members to be the sponsors and share the responsibilities and commission equally.
KPIs for success will be defined further but for starters a successful grantee could be defined as someone who gets the grant and spends it exactly as was mentioned in the application and during the respective agreed upon time frame.
I think the new program makes sense. I would still apply a cap, but since the DAO does have a veto itâs probably fine to vote YES as it is.
I think the cap is needed so that no single grant monopolizes the entire round.
And now a question from a potential grantee perspective. Would retroactive grants apply? rotki has spent a lot of development power, partly because I am a user and fan of HOP, to implement proper tracking and LP balance detection for HOP across all of the deployed EVM chains. This is in final stages of testing and will be included in next release. Would it be eligible for a retro grant?
I will be voting âForâ the grant program renewal and redesign as stated. Having been on the workshop call / bi-weekly calls where this has been discussed, I think itâs clear a ton of thought has been put into this. Both learning from the last grant committee âroundâ, as well as just bringing new ideas from outside grant program experiences.
I think the changes proposed largely address the concerns I had with the old committee and look forward to this as it moves forward.
I also will be voting âForâ this proposal.
I think this proposal is well defined. Further thoughts regarding the specs for this proposal have been expressed in prior posts in this thread.
Donât forget to vote on this before the voting period ends @thegreg.eth @fourpoops @Sinkas and anyone else that hasnât voted yet
Iâll be voting âForâ this proposal and am generally in favor of the approach. My specific views are:
Questions:
The following reflects the views of L2BEATâs governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and itâs based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
Weâll be voting FOR the proposal during temp-check.
Weâve 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 Hopâs grant program, and the overall direction the proposal has taken is good.
One thing that weâre 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, weâre not sure itâll 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 committeeâs compensation to the programâs success (as we had also suggested), they should be perceived as a bonus, not as compensation.
Weâd 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, weâd like to invite delegates and other governance participants to discuss things further during our Hop Office Hours every Friday at 3 pm UTC.
Unfortunately I missed the snapshot vote, but would have also voted in favor.
I missed the vote, and I am glad that it passed. We need more community innovations to make Hop more appealing and be known by the crypto community at large, not just a mere commodity among many bridges.
My real-world experience is that Hop is competitive (in terms of cost and UX) compare to even many widely-known bridges. I feel sorry about that Hop protocol is so little-known. I only heard once from popular Youtube channel.
Voted in favour. I thought it was a good approach to incentivize community development. @Bob-Rossi and @rxpwnz were afterwards elected. I see this was recently posted:
Keen to see where this ends up.