First of all, despite this seeming to be somewhat controversial amongst the DAO, I am very happy to hear the conversation around this. It’s been quiet, and if this is what it took to spark discussion, I’m happy to see it. Thank you @Dekan for igniting this discussion.
Regarding the slow down of the grants flow:
- I think there were valid, and definitive reasons the grants process was paused. The discussions surrounding forming a more-sustainable treasury were weekly conversations for a few months, which I think was worth brainstorming and discussing. During those discussions, the thought was if we’re able to determine a way to give grants directly from yield (while maintaining a treasury base) then the more grants we distribute before finding that solution, the more we ate away at our starting principle. If this were solved, then we would’ve had a somewhat perpetual grant-distribution machine.
- At this point in time, after much discussion, it doesn’t quite look like this is going to be the answer we may have been hoping for (with any reasonable level of risk).
- Given this, I do agree it’s very important that we get back to supporting this growing ecosystem.
Aside:
- As an alternative here, sustaining the treasury with yield may not be our answer, but given ETH is relatively cheap at the moment, perhaps if folks know others who wanted to contribute via “blood-equity” this would be a good time to reach out to these individuals.
- We’ve also discussed how we can potentially provide non-financial ecosystem support, through social signaling, network connections, or potentially project mentorship.
As for this specific proposal (The Pet3rpan fellowship fund) for 32 ETH:
- Reviewing many of the grants that have been given over the life of MetaCartel, I have no doubt that @pet3rpan has a keen eye for solid projects that can make an impact in this space. He’s clearly experienced with this stuff, and many of the most successful grant recipients were referred directly by him. As others have pointed out (ie @victorrortvedt’s post), if Pet3r were to go rogue and abuse/waste/run off with, or simply just fund garbage projects, then we take that small haircut and vote “no” in the future on such proposals (though something tells me that won’t happen).
- I don’t see this as necessarily “replacing” the existing grants flow. @Jeremy has spent a lot of time working on the grants flow, which only really paused because of above reasons. I’m also in favor of getting this going again, and is really only a matter of flipping an off-chain switch to start the flow back up.
- I don’t really see too much of a problem with having a few different streams of grant distribution, with a few different trust models. The grants flow back in Q1 involved a subset of us having the ability to work with minion funds to help streamline that process, but this could also be another route.
We could ask Pet3r to simply place any grants he’d like to give as a proposal. Most, if not nearly all of these proposals pass… I suspect part of the reason is because many of us have developed a trust for the advocacy of others in the DAO, and not strictly because every voter has thoroughly investigated the project that is requesting funds. I strongly suspect if Pet3r were to place several on-chain proposals for grants, that they would all pass with flying colors. So, I think it’s reasonable to argue that the current proposal just streamlines that into one proposal.
A new metacartel.org website is also in the works, with grants being organized in an Airtable to be displayed on the website. We can work to make sure projects being funded through this mechanism are still transparent via this dataset and the website.
Summary of thoughts:
I’ll admit, my first thought was “we can just get the grants flow going again” and “32 ETH seems like a high starting point.” But, as I’ve spent some time thinking about this, chatted with a few folks, and read the comments thus far, I think delegating the decision making over this subset of funds as a collective to a small representative group with a strong track-record could potentially be an efficient way to get funds into the hands of new projects that could benefits from it.
We can debate separately the best way to provide value to the ecosystem. In the meantime, I am personally leaning towards this being a reasonable plan of attack to expedite some new grants, especially given we slowed things down right before a BUILD market, and this could help jump start a few projects without too much overhead and demand on the entire DAO. Ten-percent of the treasury isn’t insignificant, but anything less may not really have an impact, and anything more could verge on being a bit too much for a first go at this approach.
I don’t have much voting power, but I do think it’s something we should consider, and it has my support.