Hello, I agree with this proposal.
I have a question concerning the methods of payment of the grants. Is it already defined ? I guess there will be specific rules that set objectives for the granted projects (in terms of technical performance, timetable,…), so will the payment of the grants be linked with the achievement of the objectives ? Or will it be a single payment once the project has been chosen.
If a grants regulation is created, I imagine that it will be easily consultable on your website.
It is very uncomfortable to mention this, but if I am to speak frankly about why this is a good idea, then I must.
It could do what the interchain foundation doesn’t, but is supposed to do.
Additionally, Orbital still would not be the right group to make security reports to, and security work cannot be disclosed in a transparency report, except after a patch or after an exploit.
Maybe orbital could work on ICF delegations, too, and maybe they know how to use GitHub.
Excellent work on the proposal. Very detailed and thought out. I like the Oversight Committee as another level, nice touch. This initiative will hopefully fill a gap holding the hub back from substantial growth and grassroots/community contributions.
My only comment is that the current cap of 100,000 ATOMs is approximately 15% of the treasury, which seems a little high. Perhaps this could be smaller to start and increase the cap on the next funding request. The community will then see the value and volume of grants you can provide within the limit. A $1m grant seems relatively high for “small to medium size projects”.
Other than that, I’m looking forward to hearing from the proposed members on the community calls/AMAs to learn about your experience, qualities, and the value you can bring to the community for the requested funds.
again, for me, even if i like the overall prop, i won’t be in favor of having in the committee validators which are so easily manipulable with a 10mn god phone call. (and some massive last minute delegations)
I agree fundamentaly with this proposal but requested amount is a bit huge (40% of the current community pool).
Certain amount atom should be sent per quarter for exemple with a reajustment for price of atom.
OGP should not be taken as exemple.
That doesn’t give any space to any new & others dao.
Grant should not be higher than 10000 atom = 100k.
Any amount > 10000 $Atom should be voted
Reading through all the comments; the most alarming thing about this is that it doesn’t seem to have learned from all the failed grant programs out there. OGP I think everyone will admit hasn’t really achieved its stated purpose. The Juno grants programme became a mess partly because decisions were being made by non transparent committees. I don’t know much about terra but the general sentiment seems to be the similar. The litmus test for funding of a project shouldn’t rely on their capacity to convince a self-selected 7 man panel of the validity of the project. This prop would be better setting up a panel to advise rather than decide on grants.
TS - That said. Citizen Cosmos would like to support a hub grant program, just not designed in a centralized manner AND does not have such tremendously high costs.
I have been working in blockchains since 2015, including running and organizing several such programs, hubs and grants. It simply, doesn’t need to be so costly and bite off such a huge chunk of the CP or take away the ability of on chain governance to have a final say in where is THEIR money gonna go
Having a grant program sounds like a good idea, but it’s current form seems like a bad idea because it is:
Much too costly
Much too centralized
I would prefer a more decentralized DAO-like structure, but my main gripe is that this should be more of a startup-like approach. I don’t think something akin to a startup should get that much money for something that is unproven. Whoever that does this should shoulder some of the initial risk, be scrappy and then when having a proven track record come back and ask for more. Or perhaps some money should be paid after-the-fact instead to have a continued incentive to do good work. Or something - the point is that it should be more scrappy in the beginning until proven.
Some good thought have clearly gone into this, but 700k is a lot. Both Osmosis and Juno has recklessly spent a lot of money with little real value to show for it (at least compared to the cost gone into it), so for something similar I would expect a more humble approach.
Maybe good idea, but 7 people asking for currently half of the community pool and most of them only part time. They request a high income for having nothing delivered yet.
I would like to see, what the income of each person in the proposal should be.
I see only 2 fulltime and 5 part time.
How many hours per week will a part time work for this? How do we track the things are done? A full time employee works 40h a week, how will it be proved that they where working 40h per week for the good of the Hub?
As said: a breakdown of the salary per person is needed, a proof of work is needed, and even more a control of salary if nothing happens.
A monthly payout might make sense and it must also reflect price increases of Atom. Imagine if atom will go above 20$, that would make over 20.000$ per person per Month.
For me it looks like some persons want to get Atom for nothing…
Sorry, my vote is NO! Even if the proposal would ask only for 250.000 Atom
Youssef & Co. Thank you for all of the time you’ve dedicated to thoughtfully crafting this proposal and constructively addressing the feedback you’ve been receiving. I fully support this proposal!
Yes, this is entirely correct. Criticism, without action is a hollow thing. I like the idea about performance incentives although I would like to voice some concern about public goods, those don’t necessarily directly have price impacts that can be measured in the manner that traditional performance incentives can be. Although, I suppose that in that case we could just be looking at completion and adoption of public goods work.
My main criticism is that 710,000 ATOM is far too much for an initial grant program fund allocation. I think 100-200k ATOM is plenty to start with, even that might be a bit much for an unproven program.
Not directed at Polkachu I would also point out that none of my questions posted above were answered - will quote them as a bump:
Unfair of me to say “none” were answered… this one as been addressed indirectly. I think this answer depends on if this program will have a mandate toward small/medium projects rather than being involved with core infra. Which I think should be the case. Replicated Security consumer chains for example should be funded from the pool directly, and not through a grants program, because validators need to weigh in on if the chain is worth them running or not. As mentioned above we already took a risk with prop 72 funding chains that are not guaranteed to launch as consumers as governance may not approve them.
@JD-Lorax sorry that we missed answering your questions.
On smaller projects this shouldn’t be an issue as milestones are unlikely to be useful (it is either done or not). Important to recognise that failure is a difficult term in the area of development as not all incomplete projects are failures and not all examples of a team not shipping should prevent future funding so there is so needed transparent nuance as we get into the reality of things. Having said that, in broad terms if a project fails to meet its milestones no future payments are made and the community will be informed of the position - this transparency is important for everyone but also helpful to other grant funds.
In the event that someone from the DAO leaves the ecosystem and no longer wants to be involved or has a conflict of interest that prevents them from taking part on the majority of votes then we will replace them. If improved gov tooling exists at the time this could be do via election etc.
Yes we’re the community to vote that someone leave the team then the team would respect that vote. Again in future this might be easier to do with better tooling.
I am not going to answer the more technical question as I am the least technical person on the project by quite a distance and would hate to misrepresent the DAO.
Anyone can present a proposal to the Cosmos community via governance to receive a grant. Then the whole Cosmos Community including validators, delegators and other stakeholders review the proposal and vote. And here the risk and work is for those asking for grants since they need to put the ATOM for the proposal deposit and answer questions from the broad Cosmos community. The over $700k costs to pay 7 part timers to have the full decision control of around half of the total community pool funds could instead be used to give grants to many projects. I mean, having such great decision power and control over the community pool funds, they should be actually paying for the privilege of having such huge decision power and control. Having full decision power of over half of the community pool is already very valuable, and on top of this they request $700k additionally for having this privilege?
Interesting logic, ‘we support because it is the only proposal’, by this logic if they edit the proposal to control 100% of the community pool and pay themselves each $100k per month you would support this right, since ‘it is the only proposal’?
Do you realize most of the 7 people self-appointed already have full time jobs?
When will they work for this grant program? In the evenings/weekend?
Their current employer is ok to pay them a salary for working on other things about the grant program and so they get a double salary?
$10k/month salary is like $120k yearly salary, in Zurich salaries are probably the highest on average globally, and $120k is a high salary even for Zurich for a full time job, not part time
This is not the main criticism, the main criticism is that the 7 people self-appointed themselves for this, they already have other full time jobs, they are using OGP as an example and just trying to replicate it for the Cosmos Hub. Also, they are calling themselves THE cosmos hub grant program hoping to centralize all grants decisions through them. Moreover, they are requesting to have decision control of almost half of the community pool funds, and the ability to approve grants by themselves of over $1M, not to mention paying themselves a huge salary even for Zurich standards for working part time on this.
I think the ambition behind this proposal requires a significant amount of Atom. The amount requested does not shock me so much if everything is transparent. I don’t know if it would make sense to have a discount grant program.
I think something people should keep in mind is that you need people to advocate, market, manage, etc. if you want a good grants program with the goal of improving the hub.
I can’t speak for everyone, but with the way discourse happens on even the smallest of proposals, I bet it scares off people who want to contribute. Personal attacks, aggressiveness, threats, etc. are all pretty common from what i’ve seen. I’ve seen people already who have written this off because Youssef (gasp) WAS PART OF THE ATOM 2.0 INITIATIVE!!! THE HORROR!!!
We need people dedicated to the advancement of the hub who can actively search for contributors, negotiate terms and make people feel like building around the Cosmos hub ecosystem is a fulfilling experience. Otherwise, they’ll find somewhere else to contribute and we’ll just be stuck in this perpetual loop with the embarrassing founding organizations playing tug of war and core developers feeling alienated.
As I said in an earlier post, I do think the ask is high for an initial round, but I have zero qualms with the people who have stepped forward. Voters shouldn’t be choosing individuals for each position because this DAO isn’t structured like that. If people want to start a fully decentralized, democratically chosen DAO for the hub, they can do that, but for this initiative, we are voting to entrust these people with running a grant program, period.
As I said in an earlier post:
Definitely trim how much is being asked for with team salaries and the starting amount for grants. If this group does well with whatever amount is given, they can request an extension at the end. Maybe even bonuses contingent on deliverables.
Rename and focus the scope.
Set up as much as you can on DAO DAO on Neutron.
To ease concerns, go in to more detail about accountability, deliverables, checks and balances, etc. People need to believe that you have the hub’s best interest at heart, and you’re not just here for some fat checks for 9 months.