OIP-90: Olympus Grants Program further 3 month approval

Summary

Seek approval for:

• The Grants Program for a further 3 month period
• Grants Program to be transferred and manage its own budget to the Grants multisig wallet with any unused budget returned to the DAO at end of period, unless otherwise approved
• Grants Program to compensate contributors for work provided by its contributors

Background

OIP-55 (forum , snapshot) voted for the grants program on the 6th December 2021. The OIP stipulated that the grant program be run for a trial period of 3.3 months, at which point the grants team would provide a report updating the community and recommending improvements for the community to consider, discuss, and ultimately vote on.

Full report and temperature check discussion can be found here: https://forum.olympusdao.finance/d/1145-oip-90-olympus-grants-program-further-3-month-approval

Looking Ahead - Grants v2

Early feedback on OGP v1 indicates there are the following needs:

a) Activate a higher number of smaller grants whilst not swamping existing Committee member process.

Activate the wider ecosystem to contribute to Olympus by giving clear and transparent avenues to accessing smaller amounts of funding through a nimble and efficient process

Proposed solution: Mycelial Method (see below).

b) Solicit strategic developments to assist in achieving grant and DAO wide OKRs

Ability to proactively solicit for specific projects through a Request for Proposals process, including the ability to set scope, set up bounties and approach potential teams to help develop

Proposed solution: Set up Request for Proposals process and seek authority from the community for grants to set, coordinate, fund and manage projects.

c) Form Joint Ventures with aligned ecosystems

Ability to form joint ventures with other grant organisations to co-fund grants which are of benefit to both Olympus and another ecosystem e.g. Olympus and Gnosis putting up 100k USD in match funding for projects of mutual benefit

Proposed solution: Seek authority from community to set up and lead Joint Ventures with other grants organisations

d) Fund internal projects, not only external

Ability to fund projects solicited from within the DAO, not just external to the DAO.

Proposed solution: Seek authority from the community to fund projects originating from within the DAO, not just external to DAO.

e) Clear process for grants larger than 100k USD in scope

Ability to issue grants larger than 100k USD

Proposed solution: Enshrine that grants/projects of larger than 100k USD need to seek authority from the community via OIP in addition to 4/7 committee approval.

f) Decentralise allocation of grants capital to a wider set of OHMies

Ability for grants to experiment with opening up decision making to a wider set of OHMies e.g through setting up Shark Tank style curated pitches of pre-vetted grantees to community to fund via Give - with OGP match funding

Proposed solution: Seek authority from community to allow OGP Committee to fund experiments in broadening participation in grants capital allocation to community

Framework: Mycelial Method

OGP v1 was an adaptation of Uniswap Grants. The Mycelial Method iterates from this starting point and adapts and combines Lido’s grants program (which is an adaptation of Uniswaps process, which itself is an adaptation of Ethereum Foundation’s process) and the Web3Foundation’s grant program

• Sand grains (up to $1000) can be handled by a pair of stewards reporting to two OGP committee members out of their individual committee member budgets (50:50).
• Pebbles (up to $10,000) require a third OGP committee member to agree to the grant approval and participate in the evaluation of the results.
• Boulders (up to $100,000) require majority approval of the OGP committee.
• Mountains (more than $100k) additionally require a regular OIP governance process.

Quarterly budget:

The OGP Individual Committee Members will have a max quarterly aggregate budget of up to $105,000 USD, divided into individual budgets of $15,000 USD for each OGP committee member, from the total budget of the wider OGP budget of $1mm per 3 months. Budget and caps to be reassessed after the end of a quarter.

If an OGP committee member exhausts their quarterly individual committee member budget, they can still propose to the full committee that sand grains and pebbles receive grants out of the general portion of the budget, but will need to obtain approval of a majority of the OGP committee members. Committee members may delegate their share of budget to be administered by an alternate committee member.

While the goals and priorities of the grant program will be thoroughly discussed and reviewed by the community through public discourse, the decision to start the OGP by operating as a small committee is to ensure that the application and decision process will be efficient and predictable, so applicants have clear objectives and timely decisions. All OGP committee members are equal in power but have different specialties.

At the end of three months the committee makes a report on the grants program and a retrospective on how to improve it.

Accountability and Auditing:

All successful Sand-grains and Pebbles will be listed publicly in real time upon acceptance, including which committee member/s approved the grant. Payments will not be released to the grantee until the deliverable has been completed and checked. Deliverables will also be made public in real time. This information will be communicated on the Grants notion section.

All Boulders and Mountains are listed upon committee approval and negotiation of agreements.

Committee

Nominated to the committee were Catwalk, Solarpunk and Kleb. Here is a little about them:

• Catwalk - Background in grants, tech, data science, start-ups, writing, and organizing in decentralized environments. Currently wearing many hats in Grants: monitoring and evaluation, strategy, operations, marketing, etc. Exceptionally interested in the hard problems of scaling coordination problems. they/them
• Solarpunk - Background in tech, platform cooperatives. Built and sold tech companies, VC experience, been through YC. Also wearing many hats in Grants, but will be focused on DD, content marketing and strategy, and impact evaluation. he/him
• Kleb - Analyst, project manager and serial startup-er. Also one of the core members of Incubator.

Church, Dropkick Darren and Brian all had to step down from the committee. We thank them for their efforts during the time of their tenure. To recap, our committee of 7 is composed of Apollo, Appleseed, Catwalk, Json, Kleb, Solarpunk and WollemiPine.

Summary

Grants rules and we want to keep growing the econOHMy GDP, activating our ecosystem and expanding OlympusDAO beyond web3. It’s also integral that the Grants team be empowered to be effective in the most cost efficient and impactful ways given current market conditions. We will shortly put forward an OIP requesting

• Implement the Mycelial Method to enable nimble funding of smaller grants to activate a wider number of contributors from the ecosystem to contribute to OlympusDAO
• Set up a Request for Proposals process and seek authority from the community for grants to set, initiate, coordinate, fund and manage projects.
• Lead Joint Ventures with other grants organisations up to a max of $100k per venture.
• Fund internally originated projects as well as externally.
• Ratify that projects seeking > $100k in funding require OIP in addition to majority committee vote.
• Run the program on a rolling basis with a review, report to community and OIP every 3 months.
• $1,335,916.52 from OGP v1 was not spent and remains in the DAO multisig.
• Fund Grants multisig with $180k of OHM over 3 installments of 60k USD worth of OHM over 3 months to cover administration of the program with contributors compensated commensurate with the rates approved within the DAO.
• Fund Grants multisig with $1mm in DAO owned OHM from DAO multisig (OHM rate set at time of OIP-90 snapshot passing (Time Weighted Average Price or similar)) within 7 days of OIP-90 Snapshot passing.
• Unused funds contribute towards the next OGP OIP budget or returned to DAO multisig if OGP is not renewed.

Having a community approved budget means that there will be transparency and accountability for the program - if we aren’t performing we will have to turn up here next quarter and tell you why and provide you the opportunity to cut our funding.

Vote

For: Approve the program as specified

Against: Do not approve the program as specified