Vote 24: Fund Panda Product Pod

Summary

This proposes to establish and fund a second product pod, known as the Panda Product Pod. As initially detailed by Cryptomac on the Community Forum, the Panda Product Pod will specifically focus on cross-chain liquidity, strategy creation, and data aggregation. It will consist of 6 contributors and will be funded with 300,000 USDC + 150,000 GRO, if approved by the DAO.

Background

The Panda Product Pod’s objectives are to create, open-source, and maintain reusable building block modules that can be utilised by Gro and others in the DeFi ecosystem to build better dApp experiences. As previous participants in the Groda Product Pod, the Panda Pod believe that creating more localised product pods will better achieve the DAO's mission to enable more people to participate in DeFi.

Specifically, the pod has 3 areas where it believes that it can create meaningful differentiation for Gro DAO and attract more usage: cross-chain liquidity, strategy creation, and data aggregation.

Accordingly, the Panda Product Pod will:

• Launch a Deposit Relayer that allows users to deposit assets on a chain with cheaper gas fees and have those assets bridged to Ethereum to be utilised by the Gro Protocol as well as future products to be released by Gro DAO.
• Explore strategies that unlock access to cross-chain yield opportunities, enabling users to deposit into a Gro vault on any chain.
• Create and maintain additional vault strategies on Ethereum for Gro Protocol to increase yields and diversify risks, thereby increasing interest in the protocol.
• Explore the DAO’s interest in creating open-source modules that allow other protocols, as well as the DAO’s own Risk Pod, to gather and utilise on-chain data more effectively.

Composition & Budget

Panda Product Pod will consist of 6 contributors who participate in engineering, product design, and product management:

• BZ (backend & smart contracts)
• LH (backend)
• WW (backend)
• Kwww (product manager)
• VW (full-stack)
• YQ (designer)

These contributors have experience building products and tooling across multiple DeFi protocols on multiple chains (Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum) and will utilise their collective experiences to lower the barrier to utilising the Gro protocol.

For the next 6 months (13 February 2023 - 13 August 2023), the proposed budget is 300,000 USDC + 150,000 GRO (as detailed in the Community Forum) that will be transferred to the Panda Product Pod's operational wallet if approved. Any unused budget will be returned to the DAO Treasury at the end of the 6 months.

The operational wallet will be a 3-of-5 multi-sig wallet consisting of 2 Panda Product Pod contributors, 2 People Pod contributors, and 1 Groda Pod contributor.

Reporting

Panda Product Pod will update the DAO on its progress via quarterly reports and regularly through the community channels such as Community Forum, Discord, and Telegram.

Next Steps

This vote will run for 5 days on a simple majority basis.