Category

Funding - Rewards/Reimbursement [Grants Programme, DeSci Infrastructure]

Executive Summary:

The creation of a quarter-long grants programme to incentivise early stage DeSci projects to deploy on Gnosis Chain. DeSci is a vertical that Gnosis has long supported, yet did not yet have the traction or product to justify efforts from the Gnosis Foundation. DeSci can facilitate novel use of the blockchain, bringing highly professional teams and researchers to the space, whilst improving outcomes for science and scientists. Gnosis has a keen interest in supporting this narrative. To begin with, the grants programme will be facilitated by the DeSciWorld team.

Specification

The technical specification is divided into two sections: prerequisite and desired.

Prerequisite

The employed technology will be simple DAO tooling such as Safe and Snapshot, to help organise each project and distribute funding in a secure and decentralized manner. We will utilise tools such as Charmverse for the submission of grant applications.

Desired

The scope of the grants programme will be to facilitate the creation of novel protocols for DeSci projects to utilise as foundational tools. We will put a call to action for tools such as funding mechanisms, publishing protocols and collective research tools. The exact specifications for this are not possible to record, except the intention with calls for projects being to facilitate the above tooling creation.

Rationale

It is important to utilise robust and well tested tools for the facilitation of the grants programme. This saves on risk factors, time and money.

For DeSci as a vertical to succeed on Gnosis Chain, we should seek to create foundational tools for onchain researchers to utilise. Tools that facilitate the recording of verifiable data, permissionless “multiplayer” access to the research tasks, collective funding with milestone unlocks and more should be developed to correctly onboard more science to Gnosis.

Budget

Total: $150,000 Reserved for grantees: $135,000 Reserved for DeSciWorld grants committee: $15,000 ($5000/m)

Milestones:

Proposed timeline: 3 months Final deliverable: Reaching the March 31st date with full allocation of grant fund to DeSci projects deployed on Gnosis.

Timeline, Implementations and Deliverable

Milestone 1 - Deployment of the grants application process Deliverables - An extensive and transparent grants application Time and Price Estimate - By January 31st, $5000 unlock from the team budget

Milestone 2 - Funding of 1 project Deliverables - The first project to be accepted and funded Time and Price Estimate - <$40,000 to be unlocked for the first project, as required

Milestone 3 - Funding of 2 further projects Deliverables - The second and third projects to be accepted and funded Time and Price Estimate - <$60,000 to be unlocked for these projects, as required

Milestone 4 - Funding of any further projects Deliverables - Any further projects to be accepted and funded Time and Price Estimate - >$35,000 to be unlocked for all remaining qualified projects

Evaluation

Number of Projects onboarded: **

(deployed code or funds on Gnosis Chain with a specific function of DeSci)

Number of “scientists” with a Gnosis Chain wallet:**

(“scientists” either publicly verified or anonymous but with a form of zK verification)

Users of the grant programme dApps and tools:

Funds allocated to DeSci projects through the grant programme projects:

Average score of temperature check across the Q1 programme:

(as determined by the Gnosis Community vote)

Team/ Organization

DeSciWorld is proposing to lead the “DeSci on Gnosis” programme for the first iteration, in Q1, with the support of the Gnosis community. After the conclusion of this programme, a repeat GIP will be posted. If this first effort is successful, we anticipate support from the DevRel team at Gnosis and resources to be offered from Gnosis.

DeSciWorld has seeded a number of global DeSci communities, onboarded hundreds of people and built a trusted brand since October 2021.

Team from DeSciWorld:

Joshua Bate - Founder Carolina Menchaca - Scientist Relations Dr Jelani Clarke - CBDO Marcus Khoo - Scholarship programme creator (many others in the team involved in development and marketing, but not listed here)

Conclusion

DeSci is a growing and important vertical for the Ethereum ecosystem. It can bring transactions, funding, attention and prestige to this community and Gnosis has a strong alignment both intellectually and ethically with this movement - the name Gnosis alone is rather poetic. It is our strong conviction that funding DeSci on Gnosis would benefit token holders, the Gnosis ecosystem and the GnosisDAO strategically over the long term due to the increased usage of Gnosis Chain, coupled with the liquidity seeking scientific usecases, and finally the strong network effects of being directly invovled with academics and institutional users.