[Referendum: 87] Revised Grant Program

[sicco-moonbeam]

TLDR

Timing: Plan to put this Proposal in for Vote 2/28/2023

The Interim Grants Program (Proposal, Proposal Description) expires Mar 12, 2023. I am proposing an extension of the grants program because as a community member and a member of the Community Grants Committee I believe grants remain a critical component of Moonbeam’s growth and support for developers who are building cutting-edge technology.

Ecosystem Grants (formerly known as “Level 3 Grants”)

• Ecosystem Grants replace the “Level 3 Grants” of the previous Interim Grants Program

  • Ecosystem Grants will be the largest grants (>$250k) and will be approved directly by the Community (opposed to approval through the Community Grants Committee)

• Ecosystem Grant Budget is up to 9mm GLMR:

  • Apr-Jun (Tranche 1): up to 4.5mm GLMR
  • Jul-Sept (Tranche 2): up to 4.5mm GLMR
    • The maximum grant size for individual grants per tranche is [2mm GLMR] (“Ecosystem Grant Maximum”).

• Unlike the process for Level 3 Grants, Ecosystem Grants will not be distributed on a first come, first serve basis. Instead, there will be an application deadline, followed by a community vote via snapshot where the community will be able to submit a weighted vote on how the budget for the first tranche of the Ecosystem Grants should be distributed between the eligible applicants. (example of weighted vote on snapshot).

Please note that there are important requirements for snapshot voting which are explained in greater detail below.

• The process for Tranche 1 will start shortly after this Grants Program Proposal is enacted. The process for Tranche 2 would start close to the end of Tranche 1 (estimated end of June)

Since the process for distributing ecosystem grants will likely take a couple weeks, THE INITIAL DEADLINE FOR ECOSYSTEM GRANT DRAFT PROPOSALS IN THE FORUM WILL NEED TO BE SOON AFTER THIS GRANT PROGRAM PROPOSAL IS ENACTED

Proposed Process for Ecosystem Grants for each Tranche:

Note: all dates are just illustrative. Actual dates will depend on the approval and date of enactment for this Grant Program Proposal

1. Set a deadline for teams that want to be considered for Ecosystem Grant to submit a draft of their Proposal to the Moonbeam Forum

   a. Draft Proposals will need to indicate one of the two overall goals for the use of their grant:
   
      i. Maintain and Grow Activity (active users, transactions, TVL)
      ii. Connected Contracts Use Cases (using XCM and other message passing protocols)
   
   b. Other criteria for Draft Proposal will be similar to the criteria in the Interim Grants Proposal for Level 3 Grants
   c. Draft Date: Mar 13, 2023
   

2. Gather community feedback (including from Community Grants Committee) on Draft Proposals

   a. Deadline for Feedback from Community Grants Committee: Mar 17, 2023
   

3. Give teams a couple days to revise their Draft Proposals and incorporate feedback from the community (including Community Grants Committee). Once the deadline for revising Draft Proposals has passed, the Community Grants Committee will review the Draft Proposals and determine which Draft Proposal satisfy the Criteria (“Eligible Draft Proposals”)

   a. Deadline for incorporating feedback and finalizing Draft Proposal: Mar 19, 2023
   

4. Community Grants Committee to set up a weighted vote on Snapshot with the Eligible Draft Proposals as options and the community will vote on how the first tranche of the Ecosystem Grants budget should be distributed between the Eligible Draft Proposals.

   a. Start of Community Snapshot Vote: Mar 20, 2023
   b. End of Community Snapshot Vote: Mar 25, 2023
   

5. The Community Grants Committee will then submit the Ecosystem Grant Proposals with the revised GLMR ask based on the Community Snapshot Vote outcome for on-chain governance vote.

   a. Start of vote: Mar 27, 2023
   b. End of vote: Apr 3, 2023 (will recommend to the Moonbeam Council to fast-track this vote for a 7 day voting period with simple majority voting rule)
   

6. Implementation & Disbursement of Grants

Other Big Differences from this Proposal and the old Interim Grants Program

• Combine Level 1 and Level 2 Grants, now called “Community Committee Grants”
• Community Committee Member Changes
  • Aaron Evans to step down from Community Grants Committee and Thiago Castroneves will be nominated to replace him
    • Thiago previously served as a non-Foundation Committee Member but accepted a full-time position at the Foundation and if approved by the community will serve as a Foundation Community Committee Member
  • There will be a new nominee for Thiago’s Non-Foundation Community Grants Committee spot
• Length of Committee Member term: 6 months
• Budget will be for 6 months

Motivation

Same as Interim Grants Program Motivation

Rationale

Same as Interim Grants Program Rationale

Overview of Program

*Budget: Community Committee Grants may be paid in USD or USDC at the Community Grants Committee Discretion. The intention is for Grants to be funded from the “Liquidity Programs” allocation specified on the Moonbeam Foundation website. However, Moonbeam Foundation has full discretion for the funding sources of the Grants Program. The budget for the Grants Program Structure is not inclusive of previously committed grants by the Moonbeam Foundation. The Community Committee Grant Budget may also be increased by the Leftover funds from Adjustment to the Ecosystem Snapshot Votes as described below.

** In addition, applications and proposals will not be considered/put up for a vote if they fail to comply with Moonbeam’s code of conduct or are at odds with the mission, values, or principles of the Moonbeam Foundation.

Ecosystem Grants

This Proposals proposes a new process for the community to determine Ecosystem Grant recipients by using Snapshot voting as well on-chain voting.

Use of Snapshot Vote

The Community will use the voting system of weighted voting on Snapshot to determine how to distribute the first tranche (Tranche 1) of the Ecosystem Grants budget to the Eligible teams (Eligible teams are teams that submitted a Draft Proposal to the Forum by the set deadline and that satisfied the community-approved Criteria (also outlined in this Proposal).

With weighted voting, “Each user can spread their voting power across any number of choices, from one to all. Their voting power will be divided between their chosen options according to how much weight they attribute to each option by increasing or decreasing the voting power fraction.”(example of weighted vote on snapshot)

Important Considerations about Snapshot Voting

• Staked GLMR or GLMR locked in Democracy cannot be used in Snapshot voting (remember it takes approx 7 days to unstake GLMR). Only free balance GLMR is considered.
• In weighted voting, the entire free balance of your wallet at the exact block the snapshot vote was created will be used across the options you distribute to - funds moved in or out after this block will not affect your voting power.

Adjustments to Snapshot Vote

This proposal places the maximum of 2mm worth of GLMR per Ecosystem Grant per Tranche (“Ecosystem Grant Maximum”). In the event that at the end of the Snapshot Voting period:

• Any Eligible Draft Proposal receives fewer than the equivalent of $250k worth of GLMR (calculated with a 7-day TWAP from the date this proposal is enacted) will be not proceed to an on-chain vote and the funds allocated to that Eligible Draft Proposal in the Snapshot Vote will be deemed “Leftover”
  • If the “Leftover” funds exceed 1.75mm GLMR then the Community Grants Committee may hold another snapshot vote with the Eligible Draft Proposal from the first Snapshot vote that did not receive the minimum votes otherwise Leftover funds are allocated to the Community Committee Grants Bucket.
• Any Eligible Draft Proposal receives a percent of the vote that would correspond with a grant over the Ecosystem Grant Maximum, the Community Grants Committee will then distribute the funds allocated in excess of Ecosystem Grant Maximum to the other Eligible Draft Proposals (that received the minimum number of vote in the initial vote) on a pro rata basis.

In addition, when implementing new processes with new third party platforms, especially as it pertains to governance, there is always some uncertainty and associated concern that this process could potentially be manipulated or misused to misrepresent community desires. Therefore, it is prudent for THE COMMUNITY GRANTS COMMITTEE TO RESERVE THE RIGHT TO CANCEL THE SNAPSHOT VOTE IN THE EVENT OF EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES WHERE THE OUTCOME OF THE VOTE VIOLATES THE PRINCIPLES OF MOONBEAM AND DOES NOT REFLECT THE INTENT OF THE COMMUNITY.

Ecosystem Grant Criteria

Draft Proposal Template

• Title - [PROJECT NAME]: Ecosystem Grant Draft Proposal
• Author - Team Name or individual if applicable
• TLDR -
  • Primary Goal- Draft Proposals will need to indicate one of the two overall goals for the use of their grant:
    • (i) Maintain and Grow Activity (active users, transactions, TVL) OR
    • (ii) Building Connected Contracts Use Cases (using XCM and other message passing protocols)
  • Project Description - One sentence describing what the project does
  • Requested GLMR Grant Amount - [##]
  • Use of Grant - One or two sentence outlining the Use of Grant
  • Motivation for Grant Amount- one or two sentences on why the Moonbeam Community should support this Ecosystem Grant Amount.
  • Updates - TLDR should be updated with any revisions made to the initial Draft Proposal
• Project Overview and Relevant KPIs - brief description of project including historical KPIs on protocol traction and success to date on Moonbeam.
• Team Experience - include names of team members and relevant experience
• Timeline and Milestones for Use of Grant - relevant timing details, including, but not limited to, start date, milestones and goals, and completion dates.
• Vision Of Success - description of what success looks like if the team receives and executes on the Ecosystem Grant Proposal, clearly defines the suitable metrics to measure success, addresses the sustainability and growth of the protocol after the grant expires, and describes grand vision for the protocol / company over a 2 to 5 year period
• Rationale - an explanation of how this Ecosystem Grant would add value to the Moonbeam Ecosystem, including description of how this Ecosystem Grant will advance its primary goal of either (i) Maintain and Grow Activity (active users, transactions, TVL) OR building (ii) Building Connected Contracts Use Cases (using XCM and other message passing protocols)
• Steps to Implement - the steps to implement the proposal, including associated costs, manpower, and other resources for each step where applicable.

The proposal must also be in line with the grant guidelines and will be reviewed by the Community Grants Committee from a business, technical, and administrative perspective. The Community Grants Committee may request additional information. Lack of response or cooperation during this process may result in the Draft Proposal failing to proceed through the process and be included in the snapshot vote.

Community Grants Committee

The Community Grants Committee will consist of individuals from the community who are currently serving a role at the Foundation and community members who are not actively serving in a role at the Foundation who understand the priorities of the ecosystem and who serve to help facilitate growth of the ecosystem. If at any time there are not two individuals at the Moonbeam Foundation who can serve on the Community Grant Committee then the Foundation may appoint a representative(s) to act on behalf of a Foundation Community Grants Committee Members.

• Member Composition:

  • Total Community Grants Committee Members: five (5)
  • Foundation Community Grants Committee Members: two (2)
    • Foundation Community Grants Committee Members nominee: Sicco Naets
    • Foundation Community Grants Committee Members nominee: Thiago Castroneves

• Non-Foundation Community Grants Committee Members: three (3)

  • Non-Foundation Community Grants Committee Member nominee: Natalia Kovtun
  • Non-Foundation Community Grants Committee Member nominee: Jim Certhum
  • Non-Foundation Community Grants Committee Member nominee: Ismael Bautista

• Term: Committee Members will serve for the length of 6 months starting the day this proposal is enacted

• Compensation: Non-Foundation Community Grants Committee Members will be compensated $3500.00 monthly for services provided to the committee and the intention is that this compensation will be funded from the treasury.

• Community Committee Grants Approval Requirements: A Grant Application is approved if at least three (3) Community Grants Committee Members vote “Aye” with at least one of the Foundation Community Grants Committee Members voting “Aye”. A Grant Application will not be accepted if there are more Nay Community Grants Committee votes than Aye votes.

Grant Guidelines

Moonbeam Foundation Grants Program exclusively supports open-source projects that add value and help grow the Moonbeam ecosystem by increasing users and/or transaction volume.* Projects applying for grants will have greater success if they can demonstrate:

• Well-researched and tested project idea ideally with examples of prior work
• Description of idea and project that ideally can be differentiated from competitors or implements technology that doesn’t exist in the ecosystem yet.
• Strong technical background of team and team’s experience in the project’s concept and ability to deliver on promised milestones
• Team demonstrates their ability to maintain (and grow) the project after the grant deliverables. Applicable factors include team’s prior experience, project’s funding, business wherewithal and marketing knowledge.
• High-quality application with clearly defined milestones and rich in technical detail
• Reasonableness of amount requested relative to outlined milestones
• Engagement and Responsiveness throughout the application and diligence process
• Commitment to the Moonbeam ecosystem, ideally, with demonstrated collaboration efforts
• Use of a Connected Contracts implementation approach using one of the integrated messaging systems on the Moonbeam Network and which materially impacts adoption of the Moonbeam network (i.e. increasing users and/or transaction volume).
• Alignment and respect with Moonbeam Guiding Principles (outlined above), Moonbeam’s Code of Conduct

*exceptions to open source requirements can be made by a simple majority vote of the Community Grants Committee on rare occasions.

The Process: Community Committee Grants

Phase 1: Application is submitted to Community Grants Committee

• Project team submits a Grant Application through the Moonbeam Foundation website.

Phase 2: Screening

• The Community Grant Committee or designated service provider will then reach out to the Grant Applicant to schedule a Screening call(s). Based on the information provided in this phase and the Grant Application, the reviewer will decide whether the project moves forward based on the community approved Grant Guidelines.

Phase 3: Admin, Business and Technical Diligence

• The Community Grant Committee will then conduct further diligence into the project, concept and grant asks to assess whether the Grant Application aligns with the community approved Grant Guidelines and Moonbeam Guiding Principles and this will likely involve a second, more in depth call.

Phase 4: Community Grants Committee Vote

• Once Phase 3 is completed, the Community Grant Committee will review the diligence findings and vote on whether the Grant Application should be accepted or rejected. A Grant Application is approved if at least 3 Community Grants Committee Members vote “yes” with at least one of the Foundation Community Grants Committee Member voting “yes”

The Process: Ecosystem Grants

Phase 1: Submit Draft Proposal to Forum for Community and Community Grants Committee Feedback

• Application deadline will be set by the Community Grants Committee for teams who want to be considered for Ecosystem Grant to submit a draft of their Proposal to the Moonbeam Forum
  • Draft Proposals will need to indicate one of the two overall goals for the use of their grant:
    • Maintain and Grow Activity (active users, transactions, TVL)
    • Connected Contracts Use Cases (using XCM and other message passing protocols)
  • Criteria for Draft Proposal will be similar to the criteria in the Interim Grants Proposal for Level 3 Grants and the intention is to pin the Criteria for the Draft Proposals in the Forum
  • Draft Proposal should be submitted to the Governance > Grant Proposals Category
• The Community Grants Committee will provide feedback by a specified deadline on these proposals and evaluate whether the Draft Proposal satisfies the community approved Criteria. In addition, the Community Grants Committee may invite the Draft Proposal teams to complete any necessary legal and admin review by the Moonbeam Foundation and service providers.

Phase 2: Revise Draft Proposal

• Teams will have a set amount of time after the deadline for feedback from the Community Grants Committee to incorporate feedback and finalize their Draft Proposal
• Once the deadline for revising Draft Proposals has passed, the Community Grants Committee will review the Draft Proposals and determine which Draft Proposal satisfy the Criteria (“Eligible Draft Proposals”)

Phase 3: Snapshot Voting for Allocation of Funds

• The Community Grants Committee will then set up a weighted vote on Snapshot for the community (“Snapshot Vote”).
  • The Snapshot Vote will have each Eligible Draft Proposal as an option as well as an option to not use a portion of the Tranche 1 funds.
  • Community members will then vote with their GLMR on how to allocate Tranche 1 funds across the Eligible Draft Proposals by indicating the weight of the GLMR in their wallet that they would like to place on each option.
    • When voting, community members should be mindful that this proposal places the maximum of $1mm worth of GLMR per Ecosystem Grant per Tranche so community members should not to over allocate their vote to any one Eligible Draft Proposal otherwise the Community Grants Committee will apply Adjustments (as described below).
  • The snapshot should be open for 5 days

Phase 4: Allocation of Tranche 1 Funds and on-chain Ecosystem Grant Proposals

• The Community Grants Committee will then publish the finalized GLMR grant requests for each Eligible Draft Proposal (subject to any necessary adjustments as outlined in this proposal)
• The Community Grants Committee will update the Eligible Draft Proposals with the GLMR grant size ask based on the outcome of the Snapshot Vote
• The Community Grants Committee will then be submitted for on-chain vote as a single batch and the Council is strongly encouraged to consider fast tracking the voting period to 7 days with the simple majority tallying rule and provide any necessary deposit amount.
  • The Minimum Preimage Deposit will be covered by the Community Grants Committee and the Minimum Proposal Deposit will be covered by the Council.

Phase 5: Ecosystem Grant Referenda

• Once on-chain for vote, an Ecosystem Grant Proposal is referred to as Ecosystem Grant Referenda
• The Ecosystem Grant Referenda will then follow the typical Governance on Moonbeam process. Voters will vote Aye or Nay (see https://docs.moonbeam.network/learn/features/governance/ for more information).
• There are two subcategories of Ecosystem Grant Referenda: Passed or Failed. Only Passed Ecosystem Grant Referenda will move into the Implementation phase Phase 6: Implementation of Passed Ecosystem Grant Referenda
• For Passed Ecosystem Grant Referenda: implementation will begin based on the steps outlined in the Ecosystem Grant Referenda including execution of a grant agreement or other documentation dictating the conditions for administering and implementing a Passed Ecosystem Grant Proposal.
• The Foundation will make good faith efforts to directly or through the use of contracted parties to implement and enact the Passed Ecosystem Grant Referenda

Timeline

The Interim Grant Program should go into effect as soon as it is reasonably practical and after it is voted on and accepted per the Moonbeam Governance process.

Given the time sensitive nature of this proposal, the Council is strongly encouraged to consider fast tracking the voting period to 7 days.

The Grant Program Budget and general composition of the Foundation to non-Foundation Community Grant Committee members is fixed for 6 months and may not be amended.

[jose.crypto]

I like the changes made so far

Will there be a limit of applicable projects?

and it is not clear to me how the new grant distribution system will be

Let’s say there are 3 applicable projects

if there is 2M of GLMR available for this first tranche and among the options the vote is divided into a

A)1%
B)50%
C) 49%

That project with 1%, will receive 1% of the 2M GLMR? did i get it right?

[turrizt]

Hey Sikko, thank you for your proposal!

I would like to clarify that, as far as I understand, this program is temporary until OpenGov is rolled out to Moonbeam. Since you propose to extend this program for another 6 months, it seems that we expect OpenGov to not come to Moonbeam before September? If OpenGov comes to Moonbeam earlier, how will this affect the Interim Grant Program and the distribution of Ecosystem Grants?

I really liked that the process has changed and is no longer first come, first served, but instead has a certain deadline when teams have the opportunity to submit their projects. After that, a general vote will be held where everyone has an equal chance. The only thing that bothers me is whether there is a limit on the number of tokens with which one user can vote? It seems that if one of the communities has a large whale as an ally, then this whale can affect the entire outcome of the vote. What do you think about this?

Regarding Ecosystem Grants and the maximum grant amount of 2M GLMR per tranche, is there a limit on how many teams can be represented at the voting? Also, how many projects will be able to receive a grant from the results of the vote? For example, if six teams submit proposals to be nominated for a grant and all of them are put up for voting, and the percentage of votes is approximately the same, then how will the winner be determined? How many projects will be able to receive a grant, and how will the grant amount be determined?

Additionally, it seems that the community would be interested to see how much work the committee has done and be acquainted with the statistics of how many projects submitted applications, how many of them received a grant, how many projects were rejected, which projects received grants, and what they were able to achieve

[TheTeriyakiDon.dot]

Hey Sicco, glad to see this program continue in an adjusted form! Removing the FCFS system that was unintentionally introduced in the first version is a great idea.

Expanding on Rafael’s question, would there be a limit for the number of projects that would be eligible to receive the grant? IMO it could be a good idea to introduce a reasonable limit, so not to split the grants between too many projects and cutting off the tail end of projects that receive minimal support from token holders.

The Community Grants Committee will then submit the Ecosystem Grant Proposals with the revised GLMR ask based on the Community Snapshot Vote outcome for on-chain governance vote.

Would they all be submitted as one or individually?

WRT a weighted vote for Eligible Grants Proposals, would it be possible or make sense to remove the vote weighting system in this vote? I could see this being manipulated by voting with strong conviction. A more “fair” system in this case may be 1 GLMR = 1 Vote. Up to discuss.

[liv_moonlife]

thats my understanding. In your example then option:

Option A - would received 20k GLMR
Option B - would receive 1mm GLMR
Option 3 - would receive 980k GLMR

[liv_moonlife]

Hey @turrizt!

Re Question on program length and open gov: My understanding, like you are pointing out, is that the budget and committee length or term is for 6 months for this new grants program. I don’t know when OpenGov is going to rollout out on Moonbeam. Not sure if anyone does since the idea is to make sure it is properly working on Moonriver across multiple scenarios which could take time, 6 months sounds like a long time so I am hopeful OpenGov comes to Moonbeam before then. If OpenGov comes to Moonbeam within the next 6 months, I dont think much would have to change in this proposal except that the new Ecosystem Grants would go through a designated track for voting, probably General Admin makes sense to start. Of course that would

Re: the question of whales and voting is something that I think all governance systems are struggling with right now. I think it’s good to discuss and call out if that’s happening and to suggest alternatives. Right now, substrate governance doesn’t have obvious solutions to this issue that im aware of (but pls correct me if Im wrong). My hope is that with OpenGov Agile Delegation, maybe smaller token holders can more easily band together via delegation to be more active in votes against whales.

Re your point on max grant size and distribution: I dont want to speak for Sicco here, but see @jose.crypto question above and my response. Dont think with weight voting on snapshot there needs to be a limit on how many teams can be represented on voting. The percentage of the tranche they get will be determined by the weight of the vote they receive. Still need more clarity from @sicco-moonbeam on how adjustments could be made if the weight of vote they receive goes over the set maximum per grant.

And for stats - I think a lot of L1s are hesitant to release the names of applicants who have been accepted for a grant before any milestones are met for various reasons including legal and given the community false sense that something is being built in case the team doesn’t deliver. So Ill let Sicco add any relevant stats but referring to the grants page is prob a good option Moonbeam Grant Recipients | Moonbeam Foundation

[jose.crypto]

mm well then if this is really so, the number of applicable projects should be limited

but then maybe apply a minimum quorum, and obtain like 10% of the weight vote?

Because, if you are requesting a grant greater than 250k $, and you only get 9k $ , representing 4% of the requested amount, it may not be an effective grant

I do not know if I explained well

if not it would simply be applied to a lower level of the grant , and surely get more funding

[liv_moonlife]

thats a good point. maybe there is a threshold, like if you dont receive at least 50% of your grant then it fails and get redistributed to the winners?.. something to think about @sicco-moonbeam

this issue I worry about is if you cap the number of teams that can included in the snapshot vote, how is that decided and by whom? is our community comfortable with our community grants committee deciding who gets into the final vote? unclear to me even the criteria they would use ?

in terms of quorum requirements, would be interested in your thoughts bc right now you cant vote with staked tokens on snapshot and bc we havent used snapshot alot, its hard to gage what that quorum requirement would be…

[sicco-moonbeam]

Thank you all for the initial feedback and excellent questions. I’ll try and respond to the general topics that I believe people have raised.

Grant Limits:
I think you all have raised some excellent points here - my general intent was to give the community an opportunity to weigh in on how the Ecosystem grants would be divided via snapshot voting, but as jrafaelangarita, TheTeriyakiDon and liv_moonlife have pointed out there are challenges between the number of projects that can apply and how much the Ecosystem portion can get fragmented (jrafaelangarita’s example is a good illustration) so to be honest - I need to give this some more thought and refine the proposal.

OpenGov & Duration of the Interim Grant Program
As was already mentioned in this thread, OpenGov is currently on Moonriver and being tested there. I don’t think the intent is for it to take another 6 months before it’s released on Moonbeam, but I can’t put an exact date on the go-live as that is somewhat dependent on how testing goes. I think the suggestion to start distributing the Ecosystem portion via the General Admin track of OpenGov once it’s available is an excellent suggestion. This proposal is more intended to cover the period until OpenGov is released and in recognition of the fact that the current v1 Interim Grant Process (and with it the budget) ends on March 12th.

I do want to mention that I believe there will be a continued role for the Grant Committee for the smaller grants (i.e. the Grant Committee Grant Program) - the reality is that we get a large volume of smaller grant requests every single week; these teams are often at an earlier stage of their development and so the amount of effort to evaluate and weigh their ability to execute against potential value they could bring to the ecosystem is a lot higher; while at same time the amounts are a lot smaller. I believe because of that difference with the more established teams applying for larger ecosystem grants, it makes more sense to have representatives appointed by the community do that evaluation.

Vote Weighting & Whales
As liv_moonlife mentioned, this is a problem across a lot of the web3 protocols and somewhat inherent in a proof-of-stake system. It’s also somewhat subjective and relative - your smaller token holder is someone else’s whale. I think this is something we should all continue to think about and discuss; and we should continue to provide opportunities for smaller token holders to contribute to governance in a meaningful way.

Stats:
I would like to thank Turritz for raising this question; and I’m happy to provide some high-level stats. In the roughly 5 months that the current Interim Grant Process has been in place, the community grants committee reviewed and met with over 70 project teams spanning the whole gamut of web3 applications - Defi, Wallets, Gaming, Infrastructure such as block explorers and news aggregation websites, NFT collections and marketplaces; and much more. Of those 70, we voted for roughly 30 to receive a grant (contingent on meeting milestones), with the average grant size being around 40K USDC. As liv_moonbeam pointed out, I think it would be premature to release the actual grant recipients as many are still in a “building phase” and if they don’t actually meet their milestones; then of course the grants will not be paid out.

The community grants committee puts a lot of work into those meetings - we gradually developed a “due diligence” process that examines the applicants for sustainability, past work history and team track record, product market fit, marketing, code practices, proportionality of the grant ask; anticipated value to the ecosystem; and so on. That due diligence research is pretty time consuming - on average it takes anywhere from 4 to 8 hours per team, and the committee handles about 3 to 5 of these per week.

While the overall administration of the grant program itself is handled by the foundation, at this point, almost all the due diligence is being done by the non-Foundation members of the Committee; with the foundation community members pitching in sporadically here or there as needed. In addition to that research, the committee members are meeting with the teams on conference calls; and then meeting separately to discuss and vote, sometimes multiple times per week. Overall engagement and participation by all the committee members has been absolutely exemplary - I can’t say enough good things about how dedicated the entire committee is to the task.

[jose.crypto]

Well let’s say that the glmr price remains at $0.5, the 2M tokens would be $1MM

if the participants must meet the threshold, of 50% of the grant, that would give up to 8 teams, if all are paid $150k

Can we estimate how many grants of this lvl we expect?

For example, despite the fact that in the first 6 months it was first come first serve, was there interest from some other projects to go for a lvl 3 grant?

[sicco-moonbeam]

Moved the longer text for the proposal into the original post.

[jose.crypto]

something that is of interest to the community, can anyone from the community apply for that available position from the non-foundation?

If so, what would the process be like?

Or will it be chosen by the other current members?

[nataliak.8]

Thank you for your feedback! It’s hard to say how many applications for lvl 3 grant will we get. During these 6 months, there were 7 applications published at Polkassembly: https://moonbeam.polkassembly.network/grants
Maybe we would have received more ones if we had a budget left.

[turrizt]

If I’m not wrong, Jose is referring to this point

@sicco-moonbeam

• • Thiago previously served as a non-Foundation Committee Member but accepted a full-time position at the Foundation and if approved by the community will serve as a Foundation Community Committee Member
• There will be a new nominee for Thiago’s Non-Foundation Community Grants Committee spot

[ThinkWildCrypto]

@sicco-moonbeam

Ecosystem Grant Budget is still being worked on, but the budget would be divided into two tranches:

• Apr-Jun (Tranche 1): [half of GLMR in Ecosystem Grants Budget]
• Jul-Sept (Tranche 2): [half of GLMR in Ecosystem Grants Budget]
  • The maximum grant size for individual grants per tranche is [2mm GLMR] (“Ecosystem Grant Maximum”).

I think this will provide time for more applications and spread the allocations which should serve the community well.

[liv_moonlife]

Hey, in the updated proposal that Sicco posted this is better explained see “Adjustments to Snapshot Vote”. To address your question there is in effect a min and max for grants that be allocated ecosystem grants.

If two grants get the max grant of of 2mm then only 3 grants that can be distributed in Tranche 1.

If all the grants get the min of $250k worth of GLMR (assuming $0.52 for GLMR is about 483k GLMR grant) then there can be 9 grants out of Tranche 1 with a little Leftover (154,693 GLMR Leftover)

Let me know if this makes sense. I tried out some other scenarios to try to visual these constraints and how the adjustments would work if helpful

This proposal places the maximum of 2mm worth of GLMR per Ecosystem Grant per Tranche (“Ecosystem Grant Maximum”). In the event that at the end of the Snapshot Voting period:

Any Eligible Draft Proposal receives fewer than the equivalent of $250k worth of GLMR (calculated with a 7-day TWAP from the date this proposal is enacted) will be not proceed to an on-chain vote and the funds allocated to that Eligible Draft Proposal in the Snapshot Vote will be deemed __“Leftover”__
__If the “Leftover” funds exceed 1.75mm GLMR then the Community Grants Committee may hold another snapshot vote with the Eligible Draft Proposal from the first Snapshot vote that did not receive the minimum votes otherwise Leftover funds  are allocated to the Community Committee Grants Bucket.__  

Any Eligible Draft Proposal receives a percent of the vote that would correspond with a grant over the Ecosystem Grant Maximum, the Community Grants Committee will then distribute the funds allocated in excess of Ecosystem Grant Maximum to the other Eligible Draft Proposals (that received the minimum number of vote in the initial vote) on a pro rata basis.

[sicco-moonbeam]

@jose.crypto We only received one new nominee who expressed interest and I have updated the proposal with their name - here is their statement of interest. Bear in mind as well the Interim Grants Proposal indicated that any of the non-foundation community member can be changed with governance so people can always submit a forum discussion on why they should be the nominee for a committee and receive feedback

[GAMA]

A lot of changes have happened since first edition of Grants and I am afraid to say hardly anything has changed.

Allocation 4.5 M GLMR per tranche with a maximum of 2 million per project, voted by “community”. Community = whale VC farmers

We are safe to say that both Moonwell and StellaSwap will take 2 million each. VCs are farming GLMR on their platforms and why would they change this? They will simply vote for this to continue.

On the end of the day what is left here is 0.5M GLMR for everyone else in the ecosystem. Sad story that after almost a year of centralizing the chain this is still the moto for Moonbeam. Zircon left for this exact reason and I am afraid others will follow.

Design favors whales and platform that they are using (Moonwell and StellaSwap). Both of those platform have had more than $10 million already given to them by Moonbeam Foundation. Projects like this should be excluded from the Grant. You can’t receive money every single month but on Moonbeam it looks like you can.

Dogfight for 0.5M GLMR which is 250k$ at best for everyone else. Sad sight to see.

6 months of potential growth will be wasted again and my question is when will you learn?

[SvPatrik]

I think the grants program is very important and should be continued. You have already answered all the questions that I was interested in. Thank you for this offer, I am sure the grant program will continue to work and contribute to the growth of the Moonbeam ecosystem.
One question. You propose to the Community Grants Committee people who have already worked there. I only see one new nominee. Are you simply proposing to prolong their powers? I think that the members of the committee should be changed every 6 months - this will be fair and will give other members of the community an opportunity to benefit the project.

[SvPatrik]

I would also like to be the new nominee. I am sure that I will do well with these responsibilities.