Constructing a Mutual Grants Committee

[kyle]

The details from @owocki create a valuable precedent that there should be more term sheet style interactions, with standard funding options based on some criteria. ie, why does Kernel get X amount in funding support, but dCompass gets Y… and why does Wonder get a “no thank you”, but others may get a “yes.”

I do think that part of the work this group does should include a rubric for how funding decisions are made (to remove some of the bias of the selection committee), or at least make sure its a transparent process so that the community can weigh in (in a quadratic vote).

[ceresstation]

@owocki definitely agree that both side-DAOs and strategic partnerships are important, but tl;dr I’d love to more clearly map out the role of the committee in helping @Huxwell and the crew with any future mutual grants

@kyle +1 on the idea of having a clear rubric for these types of arrangements as well, this is something we’re actually working on within PGF but as above it’d be great to have more steward visibility, maybe we can even do a quick introductory call on this with interested stewards after the budgets are through? If everyone who wants to be included could ping myself, @vgk, @annika or @Fishbiscuit on Discord that’d be a great next step (@kyle will include you by default since it sounds like you’d be down to jam)

[owocki]

@ceresstation

, but tl;dr I’d love to more clearly map out the role of the committee in helping @Huxwell and the crew with any future mutual grants

Does this mean that those relationships are in-scope for this committee?

[ceresstation]

My default answer would be yes but to be sure I don’t think it’s up to me to decide, it would likely be something the committee itself works on a policy for as part of its mandate.

[bobjiang]

Hi Scott,

Firstly thank you for raising mutual grants committee idea, like it.

Second, based on the discussion above, I can see it is more important for now is to create the rules for mutual grants.

We had some partners before like DeveloperDAO and PrimeDAO, so should we involve them in the mutual grants as well?

I’d like to contribute to the mutual grants program if possible.

[Aleborda21]

Hey @ceresstation, thank you for bringing this forward!

If possible I’d love to contribute to this within the work I’ll be doing in PGF workstream as a key effort to continue to build super values aligned imapctDAO stack. I’d be happy to help build an effective framework to evaluate a potential mutual grant and make sure we set ourselves up for these grants to go beyond just a token swap into tangible value add and synergies between Gitocin and these projects or helping these bring a lot of value to the rest of the ecosystem! Continuing to nurture the relationships and execute on synergies will strengthen all mutual grant efforts.

On a slightly separate note, regarding @owocki’s comment on streams going independent – an idea that might be interesting to explore is Orca Pods. Of course, I have far less context on how Gitoin governance works but this immediately came to mind as I was reading the challenge/opportunity of how to think about sub-daos. (Pods are small working groups, usually centred around one expertise. Each pod has its own multi-sig wallet that is controlled by the pod members. So pods can be thought of as mini-DAOs within a larger DAO.) Although they are not yet active and still developing the product, it might be a useful mental model to think about and possibly an aligned protocol to build synergies with.

[owocki]

@Aleborda21

On a slightly separate note, regarding @owocki’s comment on streams going independent – an idea that might be interesting to explore is Orca Pod

I also think that folks should look at @pet3rpan 's framework for governance minimized DAOs + subDAOS: https://twitter.com/pet3rpan_/status/1505977366991974402

[ceresstation]

Would love to have you involved here, I’m going to reach out to everyone that responded or DM’d with their interest this week to get a first call on the books. I definitely think the impact DAO research you conducted is super relevant to helping build a framework for + rank order potential candidates.

Also love the idea of Orca pods as a potential way to build out the different control structures for each independent grantee on the meta governance side. That said, I think that’s likely a consideration down the road as IMO the social coordination should always precede formalization via tools. Will definitely ping Julia for her thoughts as well though!

[puncar]

I love this initiative; I just talked to @vgk about it and would love to get more involved.

@ceresstation

Example 1: Partnerships with groups like Wonder are likely higher risk than those made with a group like Uniswap who have a longer track record of impact in the ecosystem, and thus as stewards discussed should be for smaller amounts if any. At the same time, these projects are often willing to give more to public goods (as in the case of Wonder’s 1% aqueduct commitment).

Example 2: Although partnership with Radicle or Giveth would clearly be values aligned, pushing this forward would require much higher energy in terms of time for meta-governance and in terms of the amount we would have to request as a grant from those groups to properly engage in mutual governance. These are lower risk but also higher cost to execute.

I like the thinking around risk/rewards or cost/impact; I think those are very simple but powerful primitives.
But as you mentioned, some partnerships might need a high amount grants to create reasonable engagement. I would add that it will also require high effort; someone should probably manage this partnership and be actively engaged in their governance, product development, strategy … and that can be a full-time job.

@ceresstation

Practically speaking, this overlapping DAO of DAOs is something Gitcoin has previously missed an opportunity to improve its own positioning through as well, by being unable to help grantees like Uniswap level up past smaller grants to larger forms of funding (often dilutive funding via VCs). Had we been able to do mutual grants then, some of these projects may have been able to avoid VC funding and instead form values aligned networks.

I would put even more emphasis on this - the problem with VC money as I see it is that it’s just the money without the commitment and support. VC-funded DAOs very often struggle with governance engagement as there are no clear incentives to be involved for the VCs. I believe if we are creating an ecosystem of DAOs, something like business partnerships, there are incentives in place to make sure that we are supporting each other as we depend on each other success.

[ZER8]

Hello again Scott! It’s great to see this initiative being created, it’s also related to the discussions that me and @David_Dyor have been having since GR12 and it fits with the future vision we see for the GIA.

We haven’t met, but I’m the person that from GR13 has been entrusted to ensure that all our grants are being reviewed by the community, credible neutrality is maintained, our grant eligibility criteria are respected all while during the round grants are being approved in under 48 hours.

It would be amazing to have somebody from the Grant Investigation Agency(within the FDD) participate in the Mutual Grants Committee. I believe that @David_Dyor and/or me should be in the loop due to our experience with the grant review/appeal/dispute and especially because of the recent evolutions of fraudulent behavior which require ever evolving eligibility criteria, processes and thorough grant investigations.

[a33titude]

Is the mutual grants committee still active?

If so, is there any update on the mutual grants? How many have been given and to who? What is the value of them presently?

Many Thanks

[ceresstation]

Hey @a33titude, the mutual grants committee was paused in S15 as the DAO began to refocus around the program and the protocol.

PGF still thinks there’s a lot of potential for this model but ultimately felt it was important to set a foundation first before continuing. There are currently a few mutual grants that the DAO has already executed and the DAO is still in contact with those teams to push forward initiatives in 2023. Those teams include Radicle, PrimeDAO, and DeveloperDAO.

Would love to have you involved here when this initiative becomes reprioritized.

[a33titude]

Thanks for the update!

When I was writing A BULL/BEAR case for Gitcoin/GTC in 2023 I’d not considered mutual grants in the bull case. After hearing that Uniswap is an alumni, it makes me think it should be a part of the bull case if mutual grants are prioritized again.

Please PM me if the mutual grants committee gets prioritized. I think I could help.

[vgk]

General Update:

Mutual Grants Committee has been paused for the time being - but the DAO is still excited about mutual grants as a vehicle to build deeper ties with ecosystem partners.

As @ceresstation mentioned - the current focus is the getting the grants protocol off the ground.

When mutual grants are re-prioritized, the committee will return with a much stronger idea of how to make the initiative even more valuable to the goals of the DAO - armed with learnings from the current batch of mutual grantees.

[owocki]

Hey all,

SuperModular and @ghostffcode has built something that might be interesting to yall, a tool to facilitate partnerships on Grants Stack.

The tool automates the process of

1. viewing grants from a grants round
2. sorting/filtering through them
3. selecting the ones that are potentially token-swap worthy.
4. facilitating the creation of introductions between teams
5. (eventually, v2) facilitating an offer + counter offer process
6. (eventually, v2) facilitating the actual partnership

We are considering (1) selling this tool to funds (2) using it ourselves (3) possibly starting a fund that uses this tool. Until we figure out product market fit we are not totally sure though.

We’ve got a working proof of concept. Here’s a demo video and the app MVP. Here is the code.

@ceresstation feel free to let us know if you’re interested in the tool! We could possibly market it together.

[ceresstation]

This is awesome, I’d love to experiment with this using a small fraction of my own time. That said, I think right now the biggest piece of work ahead of us as we head into budgeting season is building out and scaling the protocol with the community.

I do think mutual grants will be an important element of how the DAO evolves, and I think this tooling in particular could be a huge use case for Allo. By late S17 / early S18 hopefully it’ll be easier to ask to potentially allocate a pool of capital to testing this model alongside a few incubators, accelerators, and funds.

[epowell101]

First! (Star on Github that is).

What’s the license and do you welcome other contributors?

I’m specifically thinking of a metaDAO project and their couple of contributors.

[owocki]

GPLv3.

Yes other contributors are welcome.

Pls join this telegram, which we are using to coordinate the development of this software (but we are not administering any partnerships or grants in the telegram).

[ghostffcode]

Just updated the repo with the license file

[koday]

Late to the party here but saw this post was getting traction and found it super interesting - thanks @ceresstation!

@ceresstation

To this end PGF has been pursuing small scale mutual grant agreements as opportunities emerge. Mutual grants as the name suggests are reciprocal grants of tokens for shared governance, with partners that are committed to working with Gitcoin via aqueducts, side rounds, or, more broadly, shared public goods related missions.

I had no idea mutual grant agreements were a thing that PGF has dabbled in before. I’d love to see this grow and evolve in the coming seasons and I’m definitely interested in helping out with the committee if it comes back!