DAO Grants Program - New Categories & Requirements

by 0xd11a019a70986bd607cbc1c1f9ae221c78581f49 (Yemel)

Linked Draft Proposal

DAO Grants Program - New Categories & Requirements

Summary

Redefine the categories of the DAO’s Grant Program, and set up clear requirements that can be translated to questions in the application form and KPIs to measure the performance of the project along the way.

Abstract

Currently, the grants program defines the scope of 4 different categories, representing areas of Decentraland that benefit most from community contributions:

• Community: Education, outreach, events, and moderation.
• Content Creator: Scenes and models for Decentraland.
• Platform Contributor: New features and improvements to existing code.
• Gaming: Complete games for Decentraland.

This proposal aims to redefine the categories and set requirements for each of them.

Motivation

The DAO’s grant program is one of the best vehicles to help grow the Decentraland ecosystem. A community vote approved the current categories, more than a year ago, and now is a good time to review the results and propose improvements.

By reviewing the results of one-year operations , some conclusions can be drawn:

• The Grant Program has allocated funds to a diversity of projects.
• The current categories are too broad and sometimes misused.
• Each category should have clear requirements and impact measurements.

Specification

Every active grant must:

• Comply with Decentraland’s Content Policy, Terms of Use, and Code of Ethics.
• Provide monthly updates on the Governance dApp.
• Provide a presentation in a video format to be shared publicly.
• Be responsive to DAO Committee and Core Unit communications.
• Be ready to summarize how the grant funds were used every month.

The proposed categories are:

1- Core Unit

Provide core infrastructure and operations for the DAO. The work done is essential for the organization and grantees may be considered official representatives of the DAO.

• Requirements:
  • Provide an essential or strategic value to the DAO.
  • Build in the public, publishing open source code and documentation.
  • Define their own performance metrics.

2- Platform Creation of tools and applications that extend the power of the Decentraland platform or provide alternative ways to explore Decentraland’s ecosystem.

• Requirements:
  • Build in the public, publishing open source code and documentation.
• Performance Metrics:
  • The number of contributions made to the main repository of code.
  • Publish the tool or application to production and provide usage metrics.

3- Documentation Creation of free educational content about how to contribute, build and play on Decentraland. The content should be published on official mediums to be found and preserved for posterity.

• Requirements:
  • The topic shouldn’t be already well-covered in the official documentation.
  • Provide examples of documentation done in the past.
  • Describe the format of documentation to be produced.
  • To be published in official mediums.
• Performance Metrics:
  • The number of contributions to Decentraland Documentation
  • The number of contributions to the Awesome Repository.

4- In-World Content Development of attractive experiences in Decentraland that generate retention of users. The experiences can be in the form of scenes, games, and events, in any case, consumed by players through the reference client.

• Requirements:
  • Deploy content or host events in Decentraland.
• Performance Metrics:
  • Newley populated land, Active Users, Returning Users, Time on Scene.
  • Events created and # of attendees to the event.

5- Social Media Content Projects to create content on social media platforms such as Twitch, Twitter, Youtube, Tik Tok, and Discord. The project aims to reach new users and keep them engaged.

• Requirements:
  • Explain audience size and relevancy to Decentraland.
• Performance Metrics:
  • Number of pieces to be produced
  • Total of views and interactions of the created content.
  • Engagement metrics (likes, retweets, reach, retention)
  • Mentions in other media outlets.

6- Sponsorship Supporting conferences, side events, community meetups, hackathons, and contest prices that target audiences relevant to Decentraland.

• Requirements:
  • The event is happening IRL or online but outside of Decentraland.
  • Ensure Decentraland DAO brand awareness during the event.
• Performance Metrics:
  • Number of attendees and level of brand awareness.
  • Evidence of the project execution (photos, videos, publications).
  • Mentions in media outlets.

7- Accelerator A private company or revenue-generating initiative looking forward to receiving an investment from the DAO.

• Requirement:
  • Revenue share with the DAO or alternative value proposition.
• Performance Metrics:
  • Returns of Investment.

Impacts

The proposed changes to the vesting contract will have the following impact:

• Formalize good practices expected from grantees.
• Include in the grant application form a section for detailing a budget.
• Include in the grant application form a question for each category requirement,
• Grant vesting can be stopped based on low-performance metrics.

Implementation Pathways

The Governance Squad should implement the following changes:

• Update Decentraland documentation with detailed requirements.
• Update the grant submission form to reflect new questions for each category.
• Update the grant submission form to request information about the budget.
• Update the grant submission form to improve personnel and roadmap questions.

These changes are all feasible and can be developed in one or two weeks.

The Grant Support Squad should be responsible for measuring performance metrics for each grant and overviewing its roadmap progress. A grant should be revoked if such performance metrics are poor or fails to meet any of the requirements.

Conclusion

This proposal redefines the previous four categories into a new set of seven categories, each of them with a clear scope, requirements, and key performance indicators to measure its impact.

The application form to request a grant should make the requester acknowledge the requirements for the grant category. Grants that do not pass the requirements or are badly categorized should be rejected by community vote.

It’s important for the community and the grantee to agree on the goal of the project and the performance metrics that will be used to measure the impact of the project. Failing to demonstrate results on these performance metrics may result in revoking the grant funding.

Having well-defined categories is a prerequisite for doing proper budgeting, based on these categories the DAO will be able to vote on how to allocate the resources to each category.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO