Grants Committee Purpose/mandate brainstorm

Purpose

Be stewards of the DAO treasury

Ensure that funds are allocated according to the best interests of the DAO

Set funding priorities for each season and socialize applications to meet these priorities

Hold projects accountable to their KPIs and targets

Mandate

Help projects achieve their goals by funding the right infrastructure and optimising the way existing projects and guilds are funded

Identify discrepancies between project deliverables and costs with an ultimate goal of maximising returns for the DAO for the least possible token emission

links’ thoughts

Kouros has stated that Grants Committee was originally started as a way to avoid having to go to Snapshot for every single funding request (i.e. only mid-season funding)

Currently: Grants Committee effectively manages ALL funding at BanklessDAO. Seasonal funding is “approved” by Grants to go to Snapshot, where the ultimate decision is made

there is some fuzziness here - if grants is responsible for all funding, what is BanklessDAO Multisig responsible for?

Personally, I feel that the Grants Committee should be responsible for encouraging effective contribution via token distribution

encouraging means that we aren’t forcing or guaranteeing - i.e. it’s not just a dollars and cents thing

Ap0ll0517 thoughts

Self-sovereignty doesn’t necessarily mean that projects and guilds need to bring in revenue. It just means that they shouldn't rely solely on bDAO funding. Maybe the GC could direct projects to other sources of funding like Giveth, Gitcoin, Ethereum Foundation, etc.

In addition to informing projects of outside sources, maybe we serve as guidance counselors - helping review the funding requests to ensure they meet certain criteria or suggesting certain verbiage to improve the chances of funding

Or maybe we go reach out to other sources of funding and request funds that can be used to distribute to projects and grants so we’re not always distributing BANK. After the BANK emissions have stopped, will we stop operating as GC?

I see the GC as liaisons. We want to increase contributors and BANK token distribution but we also want to see growth in the Web3 space, not just bDAO. There is so much funding out there, I feel like we could help projects tap into that funding.

I feel that has an interesting idea of collecting fees or dues from members to help maintain our BANK balance so we’re not just always distributing BANK and depleting our treasury. If we directed projects to outside funding and implemented guild fees, we could improve our treasury and increase our runway.

0xRene thoughts

I feel that in this context we need to address the disconnect between initial grants and seasonal funding. As long as we are just responsible for the initial funding there is a misalignment of incentives. Even though we sanity check the seasonal funding, we probably would install a different system, if we really were fully responsible for the BANK spent in the seasonal funding, too.

The above also determines the by far biggest leverage that GC would gain.

I feel we need to answer, whether we should also actively encourage that the DAO spends BANK in a mission aligned way? Approving grants is a passive way - others need to come up with the right ideas, energy and prioritisation. In the absence of all of this, maybe we will see ourselves pushed to spend BANK for the projects at hand instead of keeping the money in the treasury for later, when even more mission aligned projects are being proposed.

Since we are calling it a Grants Committee, maybe we can also think about distinguishing between Grants and investments. There could be a Grants Committee that just gives grants to projects that are mission aligned with what we think the DAO space or bDAO need. No strings attached. And then there could be an Investment Committee (could be the same people of course, just for the same of thought experiment I am distinguishing here), who would only look at projects that propose ROI.

Grants Committee Purpose/mandate brainstorm

Purpose

Be stewards of the DAO treasury

Ensure that funds are allocated according to the best interests of the DAO

Set funding priorities for each season and socialize applications to meet these priorities

Hold projects accountable to their KPIs and targets

Mandate

Help projects achieve their goals by funding the right infrastructure and optimising the way existing projects and guilds are funded

Identify discrepancies between project deliverables and costs with an ultimate goal of maximising returns for the DAO for the least possible token emission

links’ thoughts

Kouros has stated that Grants Committee was originally started as a way to avoid having to go to Snapshot for every single funding request (i.e. only mid-season funding)

Currently: Grants Committee effectively manages ALL funding at BanklessDAO. Seasonal funding is “approved” by Grants to go to Snapshot, where the ultimate decision is made

there is some fuzziness here - if grants is responsible for all funding, what is BanklessDAO Multisig responsible for?

Personally, I feel that the Grants Committee should be responsible for encouraging effective contribution via token distribution

encouraging means that we aren’t forcing or guaranteeing - i.e. it’s not just a dollars and cents thing

Ap0ll0517 thoughts

Self-sovereignty doesn’t necessarily mean that projects and guilds need to bring in revenue. It just means that they shouldn't rely solely on bDAO funding. Maybe the GC could direct projects to other sources of funding like Giveth, Gitcoin, Ethereum Foundation, etc.

In addition to informing projects of outside sources, maybe we serve as guidance counselors - helping review the funding requests to ensure they meet certain criteria or suggesting certain verbiage to improve the chances of funding

Or maybe we go reach out to other sources of funding and request funds that can be used to distribute to projects and grants so we’re not always distributing BANK. After the BANK emissions have stopped, will we stop operating as GC?

I see the GC as liaisons. We want to increase contributors and BANK token distribution but we also want to see growth in the Web3 space, not just bDAO. There is so much funding out there, I feel like we could help projects tap into that funding.

I feel that has an interesting idea of collecting fees or dues from members to help maintain our BANK balance so we’re not just always distributing BANK and depleting our treasury. If we directed projects to outside funding and implemented guild fees, we could improve our treasury and increase our runway.

0xRene thoughts

I feel that in this context we need to address the disconnect between initial grants and seasonal funding. As long as we are just responsible for the initial funding there is a misalignment of incentives. Even though we sanity check the seasonal funding, we probably would install a different system, if we really were fully responsible for the BANK spent in the seasonal funding, too.

The above also determines the by far biggest leverage that GC would gain.

I feel we need to answer, whether we should also actively encourage that the DAO spends BANK in a mission aligned way? Approving grants is a passive way - others need to come up with the right ideas, energy and prioritisation. In the absence of all of this, maybe we will see ourselves pushed to spend BANK for the projects at hand instead of keeping the money in the treasury for later, when even more mission aligned projects are being proposed.

Since we are calling it a Grants Committee, maybe we can also think about distinguishing between Grants and investments. There could be a Grants Committee that just gives grants to projects that are mission aligned with what we think the DAO space or bDAO need. No strings attached. And then there could be an Investment Committee (could be the same people of course, just for the same of thought experiment I am distinguishing here), who would only look at projects that propose ROI.