[S19 Proposal Amended] Passport S19 Budget Request
S18 Milestone Update
We made a lot of progress against our top 2 milestones of Passport Holder Experience Improvements and GTC Staking Improvements driving significant gains in the growth of both, largely due to our BD efforts (thank you Azeem) and our inclusion in the Linea campaign. We’ve already exceeded our end of S19 GTC staking target by an additional 67%!!
We’re behind schedule with onchain scoring which we thought would launch in June. The delay was caused by spending several weeks on scaling initiatives as we ramped quickly in volume numbers, nearly 4xing our total Passport holders and improving the effectiveness of our stamps and scoring models. We believe we can improve this going forward by doing a better job of publishing the roadmap, breaking down, and estimating work. The good news is that we’re planning to launch onchain Passports Aug 30th on Optimism Layer 2. We’ll continue to follow EAS and rollout to all L2s which have EAS including PGN.
**Milestone Report for the past Season**
Legend
Success / completed / shipped
Incomplete but will hit goal and/or priority changed for initial description
Incomplete, will not hit goal (see description for reasons why)
Canceled (see description for reasons why)
| Initiative/Project | Key Results | Value Delivered |
|---|---|---|
| Passport Holder Experience Improvements: Enhance the user experience for those holding Gitcoin Passports by streamlining the onboarding process, improving the passport dashboard, and refining the overall user interface. |
532,000 Passport we’re about halfway to our 1M goal. Likely to come in at least 80% of the total target if not hit it! |
Proved system could scale, BD is the key to driving adoption, real pain exists in the market |
| GTC Staking Improvements: Incentivize user engagement and commitment to the platform by allowing users to stake GTC tokens. |
750,000 GTC staked through the end of July against a target of 450,000 |
Proved identity staking can lead to GTC utility. Doubling down on our focus here to improve GTC utility |
| Revenue Experiments: Discover durable value capture mechanisms that provide a regenerative flow of resources back to the DAO. |
Onchain stamps should launch at the end of August for the first experiment with a $2 mint fee per onchain Passport. |
Beginning to understand possible revenue options within the workstream. |
| Onchain Scoring: Facilitate the adoption of on-chain scoring mechanisms, enabling native smart contract interactions and providing more accessible and versatile data for dApps. |
Launch scheduled for August 15th on OP. Two integration partners have been identified. |
Unlock fully onchain use cases, including governance. |
| Custom Scoring: Offer tailored scoring mechanisms that cater to the specific needs of various communities, encouraging wider adoption of the Gitcoin Passport platform. |
All current integrators are using the default score and threshold. Cannot complete with the resources we have, hiring a dedicated Passport data Scientist in S19 to able to achieve this goal in S20 |
N/A |
| Reputational Exploration: Enhance the value and relevance of Gitcoin Passport by researching and integrating innovative identity and reputation models from the broader community and industry. |
We’ve currently deprioritized exploring reputational models due to a lack of expressed need from partners. However, as we work on the Sybil problem and strive for product-market fit, we’ll stay responsive to partner feedback which might highlight the need for such exploration. |
N/A |
| Research Custom Community Experience: Assess the feasibility of providing custom-branded Passport experiences for individual communities that integrate seamlessly with their existing platforms. |
Created new endpoint stamp-metadata, added new parameters to /score/{scorer_id}, updated submit-passport to return scores, all based on current or new partner feedback. |
Adding more abilities for new integration partner use cases |
For additional details on past work and plans please see previous budgets for S17 and the S18 & S19 proposal
Budget Update
S19 plan at the beginning of the budgeting cycle was $589,846 for which we had a core team of 11 people on
Passport across Product, Design, Engineering, Devrel and Ops support. Cognizant of Passport’s fundamental nature as a data-centric product, we’ve adjusted our budget to $494,116, a reduction of 16%.
As part of this realignment, we’re prioritizing resources towards data analysis by adding a dedicated data science role, even while streamlining our development team. This decision is driven by our conviction that data expertise can unlock significant value for us, enhancing identity verification mechanisms, improving stamp curation, refining scoring models, and strengthening overall analytics. This strategic shift enables us to extract more value from data while continuing to meet our operational and product objectives. The Gitcoin Passport workstream is carried forward by the following:
7 full time contributors
- 4 Developers
- 1 Product manager
- 1 Data Scientist
- 1 Workstream Lead
6 part time contributors (or part time on the workstream)
- 2 Support
- 1 Design
- 2 DevRel
- 1 DevOps
In addition to the headcount reductions in this budget we have also significantly reduced the DevRel budget by 50% which will reduce our ability to fund bounties and hack-a-thons, but we believe it was important to get to > 20% reduction before we incorporated the dedicated data science role for Passport.
This is the amended funding proposal for the Gitcoin Passport workstream requesting funding for Season S19 (1 Aug 2023 through 31 October 2023).
We invite you to offer feedback, ask questions and help us identify any blindspots we may have. Coordination starts at the governance layer, and we need you to make us better!
Amount
Passport is requesting 535,000GTC* = $529,451 for S19, assuming 0.99 USD/GTC, excluding reserves and rolled over amounts.
| Budget 2023.08 | Budget 2023.09 | Budget 2023.010 | Total S19 | |
| Total GP Budgeted Spend | 160,205 | 173,705 | 160,205 | 494,116 |
| 33% Reserves | 164,704 | |||
| Past Season Treasury Balance | 129,368 | |||
| Total S19 Request | 529,451 |
Budget evolution:
| S17 | S18/19 | Amended S19 | |
| Passport Budget | 515,254 | 589,846 | 494,116 |
A full breakdown of the budget can be found at the end of this post.
*The amount of GTC requested and the value of the reserves will be adjusted based on the current market value at the time this proposal is moved to Tally using the lower of the current price or the 20 day moving average, whichever is lower.
Budget Breakdown
Breakdown staffing, contracting, operational expenses
We have tried to be as comprehensive as possible for expenses we foresee without also padding our budget beyond what is necessary. We have a team of 13 people for Passport across Product, Design, Engineering, Devrel, Ops, and Support.
| Budgeted | Budgeted | Budgeted | Budgeted | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expense Statement | 2023.08 | 2023.09 | 2023.10 | S19 | |
| Passport | |||||
| Staffing | |||||
| Passport Core Contributor | 92,766 | 92,766 | 92,766 | 278,299 | |
| Passport Leadership / Ops | 23,000 | 23,000 | 23,000 | 69,000 | |
| Total Staffing | 115,766 | 115,766 | 115,766 | 347,299 | |
| DevOps | |||||
| DevOps Consulting | 8,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 | 24,000 | |
| Design Consulting | 3,300 | 3,300 | 3,300 | 9,900 | |
| Total Contracting | 11,300 | 11,300 | 11,300 | 33,900 | |
| DevRel | |||||
| DevRel | 14,864 | 14,864 | 14,864 | 44,592 | |
| Hackathons | 1,000 | 1,000 | 1,000 | 3,000 | |
| Content Generation | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Bounties | 1,200 | 1,200 | 1,200 | 3,600 | |
| Total DevRel | 17,064 | 17,064 | 17,064 | 51,192 | |
| OpEx | |||||
| AWS (SuperModular) | 9,000 | 9,000 | 9,000 | 27,000 | |
| Software | 2,600 | 2,600 | 2,600 | 7,800 | |
| Faucet / gas subsidization | 1,000 | 1,000 | 1,000 | 3,000 | |
| Alchemy | 375 | 375 | 375 | 1,125 | |
| Audits | 0 | 15,000 | 0 | 15,000 | |
| Events/Travel | 2,000 | 1,500 | 2,000 | 5,500 | |
| Professional Development | 1,000 | 0 | 1,000 | 2,000 | |
| Incentivizing User Interviews | 100 | 100 | 100 | 300 | |
| Total OpEx | 16,075 | 29,575 | 16,075 | 61,725 | |
| Total GP Budgeted Spend | 160,205 | 173,705 | 160,205 | 494,116 | |
| 33% Reserves | 164,704 | ||||
| Past Season Treasury Balance | 129,368 | ||||
| Total S19 Request | 529,451 |
* Any and all revenue generated during the past season will flow back to the DAO treasury or will be rolled over to the next season.
_During the season we will transparently report to CSDO and Stewards on revenue plus efforts to remediate currency fluctuations and report on these in the next budget request. _
We greatly value your feedback and invite you to contribute in specific areas. We seek suggestions for integration partners, introductions to potential on-chain pilot programs, and participation in user interviews. Your ideas for novel use cases that could expand Gitcoin Passport’s reach are always welcome. Thank you for your time and insights!