Renewal Grant Support Squad H1 2024

by 0xe6af22b8fd4a2fdfec9a0b18c6be9683882d70e6 (Yararasita)

Should the following $94,250 grant in the Core Unit category be approved?

Abstract

Since June 2022, the Squad had worked with more than 190 grantees. We onboard them and provide support along the way. Currently, we are providing support and monitoring for 40 active grants. The team participated in governance processes updating the grants program, developed a grants landing page, published articles to showcase grants, provided transparency in public roadmaps, launched initiatives such as Testing Sessions, sent welcome kits to strengthen Decentraland brand awareness, and published a Manual of Operations of our work. We have also created a Revocations Committee, and so far we have recovered $448.949 DAI since this squad was created, flagging grants that were not delivering as expected and projects that returned funds.

Grant size

94,250 USD in DAI

Project duration

5 months

Beneficiary address

0x658497d7681e4Fb18C65AbD5Ce066A1e3082c1e5

Email address

gia@decentraland.org

Description

The Grant Support Squad has been active and working under 3 main goals:

For supporting grantees these last 6 months we have onboarded 100% of the grantees that entered the Grants Program at Decentraland, to provide them with crucial information, while providing more than 115 hours of support per month, we have shipped more than 45 onboarding kits as a warm welcome, and to raise brand awareness. Since the squad was created, we have solved more than 128 problems/requests to lead grants to success. So far, we have also produced 20 articles, published in the Decentraland Blog about the work our grantees are doing. More recently, in March 2023 we have launched the Testing Tuesday Initiative, to give the grantees a space to demo their projects and get feedback from the community. So far we have hosted 27 Testing sessions.

For fostering transparency & accountability, we have launched Public Roadmaps, to make a follow up on grants milestones and impact metrics to 100% of the projects (Grants Framework implemented in 2023). With the spirit of making our processes open, we have also documented our processes on a Grant Support Squad’s manual of operations in a public Notion Page. We are proud of having built a grants program with community input, with 16 step-by-step guides on each of these activities to provide transparency about our work.

For taking care of DAO Treasury, and since the creation of the Revocations Committee on May 2023, 25 cases have been generated, 8 were elevated to the Revocations Committee, contributing to the recovery of $355699 DAI, added to $39750 that our team has recovered from uncomplete grants that voluntarily refunded money to the DAO following our advise, without passing through the Revocations Committee. This sums up a total of $395449 that we helped recover over our last grant and a total of $448.949 DAI since this squad was created.

On October 2023, we have also made public the concerns from grantees that arrive from Formal Requests Public, to provide transparency on the concerns raised, make the status of the process clear, and arguments on both sides.

And to make overall updates and changes to the grants program, we have published 11 governance proposals, and have done 9 pull requests made into doc.decentraland.org to update the Grants Program documentation. We have written security recommendations, and a sensitive data handling policy.

Even though it's been very challenging, we have enjoyed this adventure so far, and we’d love to continue improving our grants program not only with the grantees, but with the broader Decentraland systems, listening to the grantees and applying ongoing changes to better serve Decentraland’s sustainable growth. Proposal on next steps are listed in the Roadmap and Milestones section below.

Here you can see our financial report (June to November 2023)

Roadmap and milestones

Support Grant Projects:

• Periodic Follow-up with grantees to identify problems and requests, audit the grant projects with onboardings, updating roadmaps, monthly calls and facilitating contacts.
• Analyze problems and requests, identify and solve them.
• Ensure the accessibility of information about the grants program by updating the Landing Page, and promoting grants work on blogposts.

Foster Transparency and accountability:

• Write a status update monthly on grantees public roadmap, and provide spaces to share their work and gather feedback with Testing Sessions and Townhalls.
• Provide information about the accountability of grants, by publishing concerns raised, and analyzing the cases.
• Update our manual of operations.

Take care of DAO Grants Treasury

• Elevate cases to the Revocations Committee provide support with meetings, advice, and contacts.
• Report on funds recovered.
• Collaborate with bidding and tendering process

During the last 6 months, we have gathered feedback and we’d like to implement for this renewal:

• Implement a promotion request button in the Grants Landing Page, as it was one of the most common requests from grantees the last 6 months.
• Continue shipping welcome kits as part of our initiative of last renewal. Once they are all shipped, we will apply for a side-grant to provide this if the community finds it valuable.
• Create a Board of Advisors o evaluate more objectively the feasibility and health of technical projects.

This proposal is summarized due to technical limitations. To view it complete and vote on it, visit the DCL DAO Governance dApp