[PROPOSAL] A new vertical DAO and how we can improve NEAR Foundations grant process

CC: @marieke.flament @cameron

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We would like to introduce you to the idea of an Operations DAO, why it makes sense to implement it and how much impact and growth we will get from it.

Introduction

Last year there were still the Community Squad and Ecosystem Development DAO, which handled small funding proposals that are now out of the scope of the Marketing DAO and the Creatives DAO. Unfortunately, these verticals were closed at that time. We want to bring this vertical back with the Operations DAO.

Problem

The NEAR ecosystem is growing at a lightning speed. While there were about 100 projects at the beginning of 2022, we are already at over 750 projects today, and almost 1,000 projects are in the pipeline. This volume has to be managed somehow and through almost a year of working on the Project Ops team and Onboarding 180 projects, we have noticed that many teams with great ideas and funding sizes under 25k had to wait more than 8 weeks on average for grants to be approved. The grants team is overloaded with so many applications and the competition is growing so fast that we may lose some good opportunities for good ideas to kick off and develop.

Also, project leaders don’t usually get help from the community until they are “verified” by receiving a grant. We think funding approval from the “Operations DAO” is more efficient and can accomplish the same thing.

Here you can clearly see that more than half of our grant requests are still waiting for a response from the grants team after 6 weeks.

And also broken down into sectors, you can easily see that even in the NFT sector where we have identified that NEAR needs to catch up, almost 30% of the projects are still waiting for a response regarding their grant.

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Case Study

I would like to demonstrate to you with the example of Mintickt how inefficient the grant process was and how long it took to get a response and the first payout.

Mintickt applied for a 50k (Fast Grant) with the NEAR Foundation on 4/19/2022. When there was no response after 6 weeks, I took care of it and wrote to the people who have a direct connection to the Near Foundation or the Grant team. Then when still no response after 4 weeks, I followed up again and unfortunately kept getting stalled. It wasn’t until early June that I got feedback that the Mintickt application was still under review. On June 12, almost 8 weeks after the application was received by the NEAR Foundation, Mintickt received an email with the request to make an appointment so that they can meet the team. After the meeting, the grant was lowered from 50k to 15k and told that only the MVP will be funded, which is not a problem for now. However, Mintickt then had to wait 4 weeks again and didn’t receive the payout of 3,000 for the first milestone of developing the MVP until 07/12. So in summary, Mintickt had to wait a total of 12 weeks for a $3,000 payout! I think it is clear to everyone that this is not very conducive to building the NEAR ecosystem.

The problem is that this is not an isolated case. My team and I have several similar cases and it is beyond the scope of this proposal to list them all. We have collected this data during the last 10 months in our Project Ops Sheet and I am happy to provide these KPIs to the NEAR Foundation.

Solution

The solution is a new decentralized vertical, the Operations DAO. Similar to the Marketing or Creative DAO, designed to help projects of all types get kick-start their MVP version to market without having to wait 8 or more weeks for approval.

Goal

Our main goal is to fill the gap between the Marketing DAO and the Creatives DAO and to encourage projects to launch their MVP, which would otherwise have to wait for weeks for a response from the NEAR Foundation and may even decide to switch to another blockchain.

In summary

• Boost growth of the ecosystem

• Increase the efficiency of the grant process for grants <25k (MVP Grant)

• Take workload from the NEAR Foundation grant team

• Strengthen decentralization

How do we measure success?

Per month:
→ Distribute funding to 4-10 projects building on NEAR

Each quarter:
→ Report 10 new projects on testnet
→ Report 5 Projects receiving Grants

Six months:
→ Report 20 new projects on mainnet

A year:
→ 100,000 users of all projects we supported

Team

The founding team consists of @FritzWorm, @HaiVu, and @Kemal.

Fritz is an engineer with significant experience in web3 development and building on-chain communities, he will be responsible for the developer relations, as this is one of the main pain points from teams that reached out to us. (CV)

Hai is a marketing expert with seven years of experience in brand building in all communication aspects (B2C, B2B, Corporate) for Mitsubishi, and another two years of experience in above-the-line advertising agencies focusing on the return on investment of each marketing activity. He will be responsible for analyzing and valuing the marketing concept of the projects. (CV)

Kemal is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of professional experience. He has founded companies himself in various industries and is currently building his own NFT project on the NEAR Blockchain. Kemal will be responsible for analyzing and valuing the business model and future prospects of the projects. CV

As part of the Project Ops team, which was a sub-team of the @ConciergeTeam, we have gained almost a year of experience in what matters in valueing projects. Furthermore, we now have a broad knowledge of the NEAR ecosystem and have built a strong network of developers, so we have all the tools and experience to help projects launch their MVP.

DAO & Council

We would start with 5 council members and would like to expand the number of council members to a maximum of 9 councils later on, and to promote decentralization and increase the efficiency of this DAO we would like the Councils to come from different time zones.

Criteria to be taken into account:

• Owner/founder of a business
• Experience in product growth, sales, and business development
• Experience as a Council of a DAO
• Experience with VCs or in PE

The main activities of the council members overlap with what we do in the Project Ops sub-team.

1. Reviewing the incoming requests
2. Analyze the business model
3. Checking the team
4. And now additionally: Approve/Reject the proposal

If this proposal gets approved, the next step will be to form an LLC with Otoco and make an open call for 2 more councils.

Treasury

• $100,000 monthly grant pool to be distributed to incoming projects.
• Funding 4-10 projects per month with a grant between 10-25k

This is great @Kemal! If driven and knowledgeable council members are elected this structure could help out the NEAR ecosystem immensely.

We had a very poor experience with the NEAR Grant process earlier this year as well.

Our team is very excited to participate in any discussions which help improve the current state of Near Grants!

NEKO:

We had a very poor experience with the NEAR Grant process earlier this year as well.

Hey @NEKO, thanks for your support! Would you share your experiences and the problems you had with the NEAR grant process?

Kemal:

Mintickt applied for a 50k (Fast Grant) with the NEAR Foundation on 4/19/2022 . When there was no response after 6 weeks, I took care of it and wrote to the people who have a direct connection to the Near Foundation or the Grant team. Then when still no response after 4 weeks, I followed up again and unfortunately kept getting stalled. It wasn’t until early June that I got feedback that the Mintickt application was still under review. On June 12, almost 8 weeks after the application was received by the NEAR Foundation, Mintickt received an email with the request to make an appointment so that they can meet the team. After the meeting, the grant was lowered from 50k to 15k and told that only the MVP will be funded, which is not a problem for now. However, Mintickt then had to wait 4 weeks again and didn’t receive the payout of 3,000 for the first milestone of developing the MVP until 07/12 . So in summary, Mintickt had to wait a total of 12 weeks for a $3,000 payout! I think it is clear to everyone that this is not very conducive to building the NEAR ecosystem.

On the same page. It’s hilarious to see the Near grants program work.

• Nobody follows milestones;
• Lack of any reports on gov forum;
• Millions of stolen money;
• Thousands of intermediaries offer their services to help to get a grant (including NF staff);
• 753 dApps, but half of them are not working; for example, social media apps, NFT marketplaces, etc. @marieke.flament @illia please, do research, check all apps (alive or not), compare with milestones, amounts of grants received and to whom NF issued them. It will be fascinating for you.

I propose to take over the Near Foundation grants pipeline to the community as the next grand step of decentralization and transparency.

This is a great initiative. I know one member here and his integrity is proven.

My questions are these:

1. Would DAOs be able to write proposals for funding directly to Operations DAO and what kind of proposals are expected to be funded here?

2. If 4- 10 projects receive grants between 10-25k, does that mean there will be a cap on fundings?

3. What will the remaining 75k be used for?

Thank you.

Hey @BigM007, thanks so much for joining the discussion!

1. Right, the idea is that the Operations DAO like the Marketing DAO distributes funding directly to the projects.

2. Exactly. For now, the funding will be capped at 100,000. If more is needed and the Operations DAO is successful, then the consideration would be to increase the funds in the Treasury of the Operations DAO.

3. There will be nothing left over. 4 x 25k = 100k or 10 x 10k = 100k. The entire 100k will be used for projects.

Thanks for your response.

This is really amazing. I cant wait for this initiative to come to life.

Well done guys.

That is a very good idea to be implemented. I’m in several proyects and i see the weeks delay to get any response. Sometimes you never get a feedback.

Thanks for sharing it, actually we have daily questions, feedback, and also complaints on NEAR discord - ecosystem chat & grantee sub-channel about what you have mentioned!

Grantees keep asking about the grant results, milestones report, and partnership with the related projects in the ecosystem!

From the grant team, with the big quantity of grant applications so far, that’s the reason why grant team is stuck.

From the project side, we need a control system and KPI to make sure the fund is sent to the right place, the right people and require to achieve the concrete milestones (MVP, MVCommunity, TVL…) before giving bigger grants.

Due to those barriers, we, Operations DAO, would like to become the “Layer 2 roll-up” to speed up the process and enhance quality control.

andresdom:

That is a very good idea to be implemented. I’m in several proyects and i see the weeks delay to get any response. Sometimes you never get a feedback.

Can you share a recent example, please?

Naboto:

Nobody follows milestones;

Milestones must be followed to receive the next batch of funding. How would you be privy to what they are? This is not a public process.

Naboto:

• Millions of stolen money;

Can you share examples that quantify this?

–
Although I agree that, in the past, the grants team has encountered significant backlogs which has led to delays, and the processes were less than desirable, the recent reorganisation of the Foundation set out, in part, to address this.

A major concern of mine is the significant amount of checks and balances (from NF) that this would require.

If we can recall this piece of work which was going to be published by the Project Ops team prior to it being halted by NF team members. There are a few major issues with that:

• It looks ‘official’
• The quality of the content wasn’t up to standard
• Some of the information in there was false (I believe it’s since been updated)

If you had the mandate to go out and pursue this type of initiative, where would the burden of ‘keeping the information correct and of high quality’ sit? What, if any, backlash would the NF encounter if this team failed to do so and/or acted inappropriately in a ‘semi-official’ capacity?

Furthermore, I’m not sure if the scale of this operation has been fully considered. How will you fill the gap regarding:

• Legal
• KYC
• Compliance
• How you ensure quality

Or will that be deferred to NF?

Kemal:

you can easily see that even in the NFT sector where we have identified that NEAR needs to catch up

Is this answer just speeding up funding? I’d argue no.

Kemal:

The solution is a new decentralized vertical, the Operations DAO. Similar to the Marketing or Creative DAO, designed to help projects of all types get kick-start their MVP version to market without having to wait 8 or more weeks for approval.

The current lead time is ~ 3 weeks (correct me if I’m wrong @Oliver.Near ) which is a huge improvement from the ~ 8 weeks we encountered in the past. The Grants team is aiming to get this down even further.

Although I think the proposal is well-intentioned, I think it would make more sense for the Grants team to continue to settle into the goals of the reorganisation.

Kemal:

• $100,000 monthly grant pool to be distributed to incoming projects.

What rewards are the team (you & the others listed) requesting?

Hello community,

I do think this is an interesting proposal IF the ‘Verticals’ will continue to be the system of preference for delivering tokens, however this made me go back to this topic: House of Guilds: a new funding mechanism for Guilds

I believe there are issues that must be solved ‘at the source’. Sometimes adding extra layers to a specific process in the hope of solving its issues might cause the opposite effect.

As a community member, I would very much like to see ‘the maximum amount’ of clarity from NF at the fundamental levels, and it seems NF is trying to achieve that.

David_NEAR:

Can you share a recent example, please?

Sure David,

NearP2P the response was negative because the market condition, we submit a second grant with no response.

MusicFeast and Everyone Eats Entertainment since January of this year, waiting to sign up contract.

I agree with this proposal, personally I am in a development team supporting the guild of Malaysia, a project of Antonio called NEARBASE.io, and my first observation is the time to answer, my second observation is that when we finally had the technical interview, who interviewed us made some suggestions, based on this we present an approach to the suggestions that supports the form of execution of the development and we have more than a month waiting for an answer of YES they support or NO support, we are left in a status without response

andresdom:

NearP2P the response was negative because the market condition, we submit a second grant with no response.

Sounds like it was declined (the market conditions are the same)? Not sure if that would be eligible as it’s kinda DeFi, too? Maybe @Oliver.Near can chime in.

andresdom:

MusicFeast and Everyone Eats Entertainment since January of this year, waiting to sign up contract.

I spoke to EEE and they hadn’t submitted the grant application at that time IIRC? That was ~ a month or so ago.

Plus, it’s worth noting things have changed in the past ~ 1 month with the reorganisation for the Foundation.

andresdom:

MusicFeast

When did they submit the grant form?

I’ll defer to the Grants team for these Qs as it’s more in their domain.

A native NEAR P2P, 100% decentralized and has not received support although Grant has been requested 2 times

David_NEAR:

When did they submit the grant form?

I’ll defer to the Grants team for these Qs as it’s more in their domain.

Music Feast and EEE are the same project

David_NEAR:

Sounds like it was declined (the market conditions are the same)? Not sure if that would be eligible as it’s kinda DeFi, too? Maybe @Oliver.Near can chime in.

Yes is Defi and we were referred to CypherPunk

andresdom:

Music Feast and EEE are the same project

Then they were intro’d to @Oliver.Near by myself on July 19th.

Appreciate you raising it and thanks for the example, but in hindsight, I don’t want to fill up this thread with too much discussion of single grant applications. Happy to discuss on another thread or in DMs (to the extent that the information is discussable).

Let’s discuss the proposal

Sure David, rather thank you for your prompt reply.

Hello fam

David_NEAR:

Milestones must be followed to receive the next batch of funding. How would you be privy to what they are? This is not a public process.

I know from different experiences in this process from different roles that this is common. I mean, even know about projects who get the funding and didn’t build anything.

The Grant team is doing an amazing job for partnerships and funding over $50k, but when it is about building MVPs, Grants below $50k, initiatives to keep updating the TIP BOT, or just adding NEAR to existing projects like Otoco.io, we could use a specific team for it. There is a distance between the Grants team with the small initiatives and disconnection with the community.

David_NEAR:

If we can recall this piece of work

That document was a draft, it was not final… and it kick-started the creation of the following website:

https://nearprojects.guide

Who later worked as a catalyst for the creation of a NEAR Community website from other members. This means that our team is pro-active, experienced, and is adding value not just with the creation of content but also by inspiring other NEAR members.

David_NEAR:

• Legal
• KYC
• Compliance
• How you ensure quality

We expect to function similarly to Marketing DAO.
Our legal status in this early stage is Delaware Series LLC.
In addition, we plan to work with developers who got certifications from Near University.
Operations DAO is focusing on development. We can improve quality compared to the ongoing distribution schemes by distributing funding after delivery and review.

David_NEAR:

The current lead time is ~ 3 weeks

@Kemal statements are backed up by data from 69 projects where there could be answer from 4 weeks to 17 weeks.

David_NEAR:

The Grants team is aiming to get this down even further.

We know the Grants team is even improving their work, and we aim to fill the gap regarding small projects.

Again, the Tip Bot is very useful for community engagement, and it could have been upgraded and grown, for example, adding the possibility of sending other NEAR tokens, not just the native one. At the same time, little funding to kick start MVPs is out of the Grants team’s scope right now.

David_NEAR:

What rewards are the team (you & the others listed) requesting?

As this is meant to be a Community vertical, we all need it for development so that we will have support for marketers, artists, and developers. So, the rewards are expected to be similar to the Councils around the Community Verticals.

Hey Everyone, this is Ollie. grants program manager for the NEAR Foundation. I will respond soon with a detailed response to the first proposal however I wanted to address some immediate points.

The NEAR Foundation grants team has been working very closely with the EEE team and founder with a positive experience. I can not share details of the application as this is private to the founder however it has taken some extended time to put milestones together. The grants team was introduced to the EEE project on the 19th of July by @David_NEAR

I have looked in to P2P proposals since the start of 2021 and our records show market conditions have not been mentioned in a rejection email. The rejection email has redirected the P2P projects to apply to cypherpunkguild or proximity due to being defi related.

I am happy to investigate your specific case if you would like to direct message me your project details.

There is a mention of a few defi related projects in the thread and we put a detailed handbook together (which has been live for a few months now) with a section on what projects the NEAR foundation can support and re-directing projects to alternative funding methods: NEAR Foundation Grant Program Handbook - Public.pdf - Google Drive. The website also outlines funding sources: Get Funding – NEAR Protocol

EEE is on its way, and once connected to Grants via @David_NEAR things have been smooth.

Prior to that there were a number of changes in the ecosystem that had to be navigated, but since the we have been solid.

Much appreciation to the team!

@Kemal
Thank you for this thoughtful concept as well as the analysis. I/we are new to the NEAR Platform and founded Rising DAO. For Context for my points below – we are Silicon Valley-based researchers and communications strategists (worked with/at Google, Netflix, AirBnB, The Insitute for The Future, The Peggy Guggenheim Foundation) with a focus on the Creative Economy (a 2.2 trillion dollar economy) – we founded the DAO out of Rising Partners (a company based in SF and Rome – site launches next month.)

Rising DAOs goals are the following:

• Explore all facets of the Creative Economy on the NEAR Platform through research, writing, trend-tracking on a syndicated platform

• Publish “From NEAR the Edge”, a syndicated media resource with commissioned works, writings, research, podcasts, and events

• Drive adoption of the NEAR platform by making it the platform of choice for artists, creators and innovators worldwide

We JUST came onboard to NEAR in the past month and received our first grant (2K USD) from the Creatives DAO last week.

So, as you can see we are not a tech play per see, but, as we see it NEAR is in the process of building a new planet and creatives are figuring out how to live on it . This gives us a slightly different, but meaningful perspective and we believe our value here on the platform will become crystalized as we organize and provide content ABOUT the players on the platform innovating creatively in the coming year.

So, all this is to say that:

1. Having a 25k Cap on funding per proposal makes great sense for us since we don’t have a huge build budget, but a REAL need for support in our growth and offering,

2. Having a team of people (as you described) who have true INNOVATION marketing and growth experience is critical for us. We are experienced and need true partners as investors (much like we have IRL) – we really really need experienced founders in positions of decisions around grants (NEAR Foundation CERTAINLY is this, though they are, as you say, slammed and our needs might not be crucial to them at this pivotal growth moment.)

3. Finally, I don’t actually think what we want to do matches the Marketing DAO at the moment – we need more foundational, innovation, and growth support that moves the needle in our space, which might loosely be called “Content Innovation” for NEAR.

(It does not seem the current Marketing DAO has deep experience in content innovation, cultural programming, or entertainment/media innovation and we REALLY need a team for this because content creators ARE coming to the platform).

So, please let me know how I might be of support, and if and when you will be accepting Decks and ASKS.

Best of luck, and thanks!
Sarah

@David_NEAR
@starpause
Forgive me, adding your entire team here: @FritzWorm @HaiVu

It’s a great idea!! Go for it!

David_NEAR:

If we can recall this piece of work which was going to be published by the Project Ops team prior to it being halted by NF team members. There are a few major issues with that:

• It looks ‘official’
• The quality of the content wasn’t up to standard
• Some of the information in there was false (I believe it’s since been updated)

If you had the mandate to go out and pursue this type of initiative, where would the burden of ‘keeping the information correct and of high quality’ sit? What, if any, backlash would the NF encounter if this team failed to do so and/or acted inappropriately in a ‘semi-official’ capacity?

Hello David,

I think the comment is quite “cherry-picking” toward us, only for supporting your claim.

At that time (SOL was stuck, UST losing peg), the Multichain DRAFT proposal has been prepared for recruiting projects from SOL, Terra, and had not been fine-tuned yet as it was a draft idea from the whole NEAR Concierge team to get the comment on the structure first. Then you just commented on the detail and said it’s not qualified enough, and NF ordered us to STOP because Nicky (who was at BD at that time) takes care of all of that, not because we’re not responsible for the task.

However, after that, I still got a lot of projects from SOL, and Terra onboarding NEAR but they haven’t received support until now. One example is SOLSTER, which applied for moving from SOL to NEAR on 22nd April but is still pending now. @Cameron is still in the discussion stage with them.

On the contrary, our responsibility was proved through our nearprojects.guide project which was done in the same way and got the green light to start from the BD team (@MarcusNEAR ).
Later, it becomes a backbone for the creation of NEAR Community website which can be proved by @shreyas

So it’s unfair to choose a draft project that was decided to stop and based on that, you conclude us we are irresponsible OR acted inappropriately in a ‘semi-official’ capacity.

Finally, my point is we can prepare a detailed proposal on how we can fill the below gap, but not another burden for the grant team, if you give us a chance to prove it.

David_NEAR:

• Legal
• KYC
• Compliance
• How you ensure quality

Thanks.
Hai

Hey Everyone, this is Ollie grants program manager at the NEAR Foundation.

The NEAR Foundation grants program has had a number of new improvements which I think are worth highlighting before digging deeper into the proposal outlined.

• The NEAR Foundation inbound grants program is not the only source of funding within the NEAR ecosystem. The new website highlights alternative funding outside of the NEAR foundation with more funding routes to be added soon.
• The NEAR Foundation grants team created a comprehensive grant handbook to dive deeper into expectations and the grants program. This includes clear grant tracks and help on detailing out solid milestones
• When a project applies to the NEAR Foundation we have automated emails which visually show where a project is at in the process and time expectations
  
  

  Screenshot 2022-08-23 at 12.16.541176×790 108 KB
• There will be improvements on visibility and transparency on the program in the future with a monthly newsletter on highlights

Diving deeper into the proposal outlined above and some key important points mentioned:

• We acknowledge that at the beginning of the year as the program was being set up there were longer waiting times of up to 8-10 weeks. The program now has automated processes, additional team members and a structured workflow. We are currently over our desired review time currently sitting at around a 4-5 week turnaround for first review however I believe that across the board this is a very good turnaround time to receive funding for a project. We are still working on bringing this down and are making good progress to have this to around 2-3 weeks in the future.
• I do not believe there should be any ‘quick way’ to funding. The NEAR foundation grants program has a structured review process (shown in the image below) to protect the integrity of the ecosystem, ensure high build quality and support solid building within the NEAR ecosystem
  
• For smaller projects building to a proof of concept/ MVP we have an activation grant track to directly support this. Builders will need to illustrate developer experience and a solid project proposal to be considered for this grant
• @Kemal I would love to dig deeper into the data you have provided as this does not match our internal systems. If the projects names are confidential please dm me with the 67 project names and I will check the status on each grant
• @David_NEAR has raised some important concerns on the set up of the operations DAO. What would be the set up be and how do you cover the legal aspects? how do you make the voting council diverse and subject matter experts? what is the review process? whats the onboarding experience into the ecosystem? How do you manage milestone follow ups? etc
• I had already started discussions with @FritzWorm to try and assist in this area. My biggest advice is start building a pipeline of grants. There is a referral section in the grants application form, this enables the NEAR Foundation to measure the quality of grants coming from an individuals pipeline and starts to form a relationship to explore opportunities in the future
• It is my understanding that a few of the issues highlighted are legacy issues when the program was getting up and running. With the new changes/ improvements to the program communication is being increased, turnaround times reduced on grant applications and improved onboarding experience. For any queries on individual applications please always feel free to reach out to [email protected]
• For Mintickt project milestone review in particular. It is unfortunate that the milestone was sent to old system used for project reviews and not to the milestone review workflow. I know that this issue has now been resolved and the Mintickt milestone evidence now sent to the correct workflow and is currently being processed

A NEAR Foundation grant strategy document is currently being finalised which includes a path to decentralising grants and will be shared once completed. I appreciate @Kemal sparking this conversation as the NEAR Foundation grants program has made many improvements recently and there is always room for improvement. Happy to work with the community and feel free to email me direct at [email protected]

@illia @marieke.flament , I want to inform you that Starpause (Astro DAO) offered some applicants “grant service.” So it’s why he is an advisor in many ecosystem projects which already received grants from NF.

HaiVu:

I think the comment is quite “cherry-picking ” toward us, only for supporting your claim.

Just raising what I believe to be a valid concern. The document would have gone to the design stage two days after if it weren’t halted.

HaiVu:

and NF ordered us to STOP because Nicky (who was at BD at that time) takes care of all of that, not because we’re not responsible for the task.

NF asked you to stop because of the quality of the work. You can check the Discord messages, it was me who told you to do that.

HaiVu:

So it’s unfair to choose a draft project that was decided to stop and based on that, you conclude us we are irresponsible OR acted inappropriately in a ‘semi-official’ capacity.

I never made either of those claims. Hope it didn’t come across that way! It’s a question - what if the team here were to do that? How would it be handled?

HaiVu:

Finally, my point is we can prepare a detailed proposal on how we can fill the below gap, but not another burden for the grant team, if you give us a chance to prove it.

For sure, that’s a part of the goal of this thread. Please do share it.

–
Overall, I don’t think this proposal has enough detail about the processes, checks and balances, and aforementioned questions, for me to support atm.

Kemal:

A year:
→ 100,000 users of all projects we supported

Seems arbitrary. What is the thinking behind this?

–
FYI; I’m not attacking anyone. I think the work on the website is great, for the most part. The proposal is requesting in excess of $1.2m per year. That’s a huge amount. Hope we can see more stringent checks and balances from the wider community, too (and this is coming for Creatives and MarketingDAO, too.)

Naboto:

I want to inform you that Starpause (Astro DAO) offered some applicants “grant service.” So it’s why he is an advisor in many ecosystem projects which already received grants from NF.

Starpause is a former NF team member and is currently employed by Pagoda AFAIK. Not sure what relevance this has?

David_NEAR:

Can you share a recent example, please?

This question was not addressed to me, but I would like to respond anyway. In my proposal, I clearly mentioned that this is not an isolated case and that there are several such cases. Some of them are even still current!

David_NEAR:

If we can recall this piece of work which was going to be published by the Project Ops team prior to it being halted by NF team members.

The presentation you call “piece of work” was a DRAFT! We had to consult a hundred times with the NF to get approval for the next step, but in the end, it was still a DRAFT.

David_NEAR:

There are a few major issues with that:

• It looks ‘official’
• The quality of the content wasn’t up to standard
• Some of the information in there was false (I believe it’s since been updated)

• The presentation you refer to was for internal purposes only, so I think it’s okay if it looks “official”.
• The quality of a DRAFT is not important, it was more about the context and the idea we wanted to convey to NF.
• We consulted very often with NF regarding the Project Ops Guide, no one said anything about “wrong information”. If you were unhappy with my team’s work, you could have just reached out to us, instead of bringing it into this discussion, which has nothing to do with the presentation of the draft version of the Projects Guide.

David_NEAR:

Furthermore, I’m not sure if the scale of this operation has been fully considered. How will you fill the gap regarding:

• Legal
• KYC
• Compliance
• How you ensure quality

We would create an LLC via Otoco as mentioned in my proposal. And for KYC there are tools for that like Seon for example.
As proof of our quality in the selection process, we can take as a reference the 69 projects that we have helped get a grant. But the quality can always be improved. When I remember the projects that the NF initially approved, there were many that lacked quality!

David_NEAR:

Is this answer just speeding up funding?

No, it tries to show that there is still a problem with NF grant process.

David_NEAR:

The current lead time is ~ 3 weeks (correct me if I’m wrong @Oliver.Near )

I can correct you because that is just wrong what you are saying. As I said, I am talking about data that we have collected. I can tell you right now about another NFT project that applied on July 18 and still has not heard back regarding the grant. But we shouldn’t be talking about individual cases, we should be talking about how we can improve the problems that the NF Grant team faces.

David_NEAR:

What rewards are the team (you & the others listed) requesting?

As mentioned the Operations DAO would work similarly to the Marketing DAO, therefore we thought the rewards would be similar to the councils of other community verticals.

David_NEAR:

What, if any, backlash would the NF encounter if this team failed to do so and/or acted inappropriately in a ‘semi-official’ capacity?

That is why it is important that the team consists of experienced people. Our team consists of experienced marketers, developers, and founders and we would like to add at least two more experienced members to the council.

Sincerely, I agree with this suggestion.

Kemal:

The presentation you refer to was for internal purposes only , so I think it’s okay if it looks “official”.

It wasn’t AFAIK. It was going to be used in a presentation to a project from Terra the week after it was shared in Discord (where feedback from NF wasn’t requested). Besides, the content was more of the issue than the way it was presented (official or otherwise).

Anyhow, it’s just an example I thought was pertinent. I don’t think we need to go off track to get into the details.

Kemal:

I can correct you because that is just wrong what you are saying.

See Ollie’s response:

Oliver.Near:

e are currently over our desired review time currently sitting at around a 4-5 week turnaround for first review however I believe that across the board this is a very good turnaround time to receive funding for a project. We are still working on bringing this down and are making good progress to have this to around 2-3 weeks in the future.

–
I’m not denying there have been, and may well presently be, issues with the grants process.

I’m skeptical on whether spinning up a new fund is the answer to them, though.

I think that the basis for this is built on legacy data, too.

Changes to the Verticals (Creatives and Marketing) are also being discussed with NF, as far as I know, so it would be wise to make sure that system is valid and will continue to operate before using it as an example for other Verticals.

Independently of anyone’s merits and the quality of anyone’s proposals, as far as I’m concerned, it’s better if community proposals have clear and intelligible groundings on the long-term NF vision.

frnvpr:

Changes to the Verticals (Creatives and Marketing) are also being discussed with NF, as far as I know, so it would be wise to make sure that system is valid and will continue to operate before use it as an example for other Verticals.

Excellent point. Since changes are on the horizon for those verticals, it would make more sense to have that ironed out rather than rushing to spin up another fund.

David_NEAR:

It wasn’t AFAIK. It was going to be used in a presentation to a project from Terra the week after it was shared in Discord

The point of the Draft was to present an idea. If the idea gets approval, then we can focus our efforts on making it, and building that up, if not, we can avoid wasting energy on that as we have many activities to carry on supporting project leaders.

David_NEAR:

Seems arbitrary. What is the thinking behind this?

It is a goal, just as Near University had the goal of 1,000,000 developers. We also set up a goal, the thinking behind this is that we will be able to support up to 10 projects per month, meaning around 100 projects in one year, if each project user database is of 1,000 users, you get 100,000.

David_NEAR:

I don’t think we need to go off track to get into the details.

I believe it is crucial to make it clear that it was an intern document and draft idea because so far, the only point discrediting us as capable of running a vertical to support development.

David_NEAR:

Since changes are on the horizon for those verticals, it would make more sense to have that ironed out rather than rushing to spin up another fund.

Agree, that no rush is needed, here, we raise awareness of the problem: Lack of community support for developers and distance from the Grants Team with project leaders looking to build MVPs or to continue the growth of forgotten but important dapps as the tip bot. In addition, we show a possible solution for it.
As with every successful initiative, it should go in steps.

David_NEAR:

For sure, that’s a part of the goal of this thread. Please do share it.

Already share answers to it here:

FritzWorm:

We expect to function similarly to Marketing DAO.
Our legal status in this early stage is Delaware Series LLC.
In addition, we plan to work with developers who got certifications from Near University.
Operations DAO is focusing on development. We can improve quality compared to the ongoing distribution schemes by distributing funding after delivery and review.

@Kemal statements are backed up by data from 69 projects where there could be answers from 4 weeks to 17 weeks.

We know the Grants team is even improving their work, and we aim to fill the gap regarding small projects.

Again, the Tip Bot is very useful for community engagement, and it could have been upgraded and grown, for example, adding the possibility of sending other NEAR tokens, not just the native one. At the same time, little funding to kick start MVPs is out of the Grants team’s scope right now.

As this is meant to be a Community vertical, we all need it for development so that we will have support for marketers, artists, and developers . So, the rewards are expected to be similar to the Councils around the Community Verticals.

The goal of this thread is to raise awareness about the missing vertical and show a path on how to fix it.

We have community support for marketers and artists, but what about developers?

Spinning up a community fund for development is a need, there are facts shared on this thread on why, and it is also very clear and logic, that’s why so far 35 community members liked/support this proposal.

If NF wants to fix this, and find us suitable to kick start it, then we will start communications and share docs with specifics.

FritzWorm:

I believe it is crucial to make it clear that it was an intern document and draft idea because so far, the only point discrediting us as capable of running a vertical to support development.

Just wanna make it clear that none of my comments have been made in an effort to discredit anyone. I think the work you guys have done is admirable

FritzWorm:

Already share answers to it here:

This isn’t granular enough for anyone to assess it. Would love to learn more of what you have in mind for processes and wider procedures, though.

I’m of the opinion that this is a solution looking for a problem atm, in light of Ollie’s comments. Certainly in regards to the scale of this.

However, I do believe the Grants Team can do more on transparency and communication. Maybe office hours would go some way to achieving this.

–
Have left my 2c on this, that’s all from me for now, would love to hear from the wider ecosystem on this

I know that everyone is struggling right now. Let´s try to keep the discussion in good terms and in the direction to move forward.

It is important to understand that NEAR Foundation is going through internal changes as many of us know. This has setback most of the initiatives that we kickstarted since the start of the year. It takes time and a lot of consensus to agree on the right step forward.

Let us agree to disagree, remembering to put NEAR holders front and center. For now DAO´s are in a state of alpha-beta testing. Even successful initiatives like the NEAR Hispano education initiative are on hold, this is to give the NEAR Foundation team the space to regroup and start executing. It takes time and as a community we need to be patient, yes it has been more time than expected.

This is important to place in front of the discussion, expectations on each party.

For the Foundation

• Transparency in the process, this is something the Grants team is working on.
• Speed in funding allocation, the issue here is due diligence takes time if you want to do it right - KYC, team interviews, addressable market, etc.

For the ecosystem

• It is not trivial to run a fund, which is what you are suggesting. There is a lot of compliance issues that need to be taken into consideration - taxes, team payroll, fees, etc.
• Funding an external initiative will require a lot of due diligence, this is not just putting tokens on a DAO. The NF needs to go through a compliance process in order to allocate the funds; which to be honest might take more time.

Note: Nobody is trying to discredit anyone. We need to be open for anyone to make questions about our initiatives. Do not take it personal.

In my opinion waiting for the Grants team to be setup for success is a much faster route into what everyone of us want, more projects getting in the NEARverse.

Web3 moves in lightning speed, let us not forget that sometimes speed will put projects in a very difficult situation. So now it is the time to be patient.

Do not get me wrong I am also interested that the process would be faster and transparent. But I also do not want for NEAR Protocol to be affected by everyone of us jumping the gun and put the ecosystem in a situation that instead of moving forward will hinder its growth.

Lets keep the conversation open and do not try to read in between the lines. The Grants team is a professional group inside the NEAR Foundation and I have full on confidence that they can deliver.

Everyone makes mistakes, the important part here is that it has been acknowledge and the team is doing everything they can to make it right.

As an ecosystem our part is to question and suggest growth initiatives to the NEAR Foundation to arrive at a middle ground. Let us keep that focus and for this discussions to unite us and not create any gaps between all parties.

Stay safe everyone and looking forward to this conversation.

Just trying to summarize what has been said without so much noise of some points, I think we all agree that it should:

• Have more transparency on the subject of the Grants. (Not because the capacity is doubted, I think many want to know the exact details of why they are approved or not)

• Definition of the flow with very punctual times. (Many are creating projects and do not want to wait months for a negative answer.)

• Regarding the DAOs, we want to know if new ones can be created or approved on specific development issues, although here I recommend that they not only arm themselves with people from marketing or business experience, devs would have to be involved.

• On the subject of near education, all of us who collaborate in one way or another are waiting for the definition of points to be able to see if we continue and with what tasks we continue.

This conversation was required, and is great to get many questions solved on this thread.

The facts that we found:

• NF is on a transition. Changes consume time.
• Grants request has been growing during the last months.
• Grants are essential for building, and mostly for scaling.

For community:

• I celebrate this conversation, broken silence is mandatory for community growth. Lets keep it in a high level for benefit of all.
• Give NF benefit of doubt. I know in the past was a long time for answering but the new process pretend to be smoother than the older one.
  
  

  Screen Shot 2022-08-23 at 11.31.52584×528 72 KB

For NEAR Foundation and grants team:

• Be more active on community and try to solve as many doubts as possible. The silence makes the community disappointed and distant. This should be improved.
• Make the process more transparent. We just want to know who is doing what. Is more related to learn about how the process work than to know details of every grant.

I’d suggest that instead of making this a troubleshooting thread for missing grants applications, NF can give community a channel for solving doubts around that. Use this thread for making improvements on the process and give feedback for NF. The eyes of the grants team is over here.

claudioac:

It is not trivial to run a fund, which you suggest. There are a lot of compliance issues that need to be taken into consideration - taxes, team payroll, fees, etc.

Fortunately, the Near community is more aware of taxes, payroll, fees, etc., than anybody in the nf grant committee. We have the best crypto lawyers and accountants in community. So, don’t worry about the point.

claudioac:

a lot of due diligence

As well. Having seen hundreds of not working apps that withdrew money (exit scams), I had concerns about due diligence skills in the grant committee.

claudioac:

So now it is the time to be patient.

We don’t want to see a new bunch of not working apps recommended by intermediaries who chase personal gain. .

Agree with all the points and I have confidence that you and many from the ecosystem have the experience.

Either way the NEAR Foundation will have to do due diligence on the team members and the initiative as well. This will require time and will not be something to be executed immediately or at all, since they have the last say in who gets funding or not.

Also it is important to understand that there is a lot of failures when deploying capital to projects. Agree that there has been a lot of misses and scams, but no Foundation/Accelerator/VC is an exemption to this and it is an iterative process. Rinse and repeat, it is our job to call out the bad actors.

We cannot expect 100% success rates and there will be bad actors abusing the goodwill from the NEAR Foundation and also internal power struggles. All types of organisations face this challenge. We just need to acknowledge and help in anyway we can.

Again, the goal is to find a middle ground. Like I stated in my post, no one is discrediting anyone or the initiative. Just want for the ecosystem and the NEAR Foundation to meet in the middle.

Best!

Hi everyone

Reading through all the comments and remarks I wonder if/why there is no way to set up a governance forum (including grant proposal, voting and approvals, etc) run by the entire community (=NEAR token holders).

This would be in the spirit of decentralisation and enable a community driven growth of the ecosystem.

Other protocols are able to manage this process in a smooth way, I don’t understand why NEAR community wouldn’t be able to do it, too.

The details of course would need to be ironed out, but this would give the community a fair voice (and vote) in directing and growing the ecosystem.
The voting would be fair, namely according to the number of tokens, as it’s with many other projects.

NF could focus on key projects such as infrastructure and “big brands”.

This would also resolve some of the mentioned delays or communication issues and in the long run would benefit everyone: NF, ecosystem, projects, community, etc

All transparent, decentralised and in the hands of the community, as Web3 should be (IMHO!).

Just a thought…

David_NEAR:

Just wanna make it clear that none of my comments have been made in an effort to discredit anyone. I think the work you guys have done is admirable

Thank you chief

David_NEAR:

This isn’t granular enough for anyone to assess it. Would love to learn more of what you have in mind for processes and wider procedures, though.

Sure, step by step, no rush from my part, the details can be worked out together, I also know the following is happening:

frnvpr:

Changes to the Verticals (Creatives and Marketing) are also being discussed with NF, as far as I know, so it would be wise to make sure that system is valid and will continue to operate before using it as an example for other Verticals.

So, I believe the goal is to raise awareness and kick start a discussion about the Community vertical support for developers that we are missing. Cause NF Grant Process is a centralized one, and we want to support the Near Community grow with Decentralization.

Absolutely it’s a good news for all the community of talent wich are working hard developing amazing new ideas and creating great technological solutions strenghten with Blockchain technologies using Near Protocol.

We are waiting and looking forward for next steps to follow up this conversation from the LATAM Community very interested to knows about the roadmap and following creating new solutions.

We’re coming up on two years since MainNet, and the process is ever-evolving. We must remember that many experiments have occurred, some successful and some not. This is all still very new. Getting it right is better than getting it fast.

There is a principle that my wife has to give me a frequent reminder of: “Change doesn’t happen overnight.”

The sentiment the community is voicing has been there since the beginning, and Pagoda & the NEAR Foundation has always listened/adapted. Illia brought up community governance via a Ecosystem Treasury DAO some time ago, and he recently presented an updated version at ETHCC:

Action is NEAR!

josedlujan:

On the subject of near education, all of us who collaborate in one way or another are waiting for the definition of points to be able to see if we continue and with what tasks we continue.

Correct, Near University was supporting MVP building through the Developer in Residence program which is closed now. And it was filling part of what we are missing now.

I want to make clear something @David_NEAR @Oliver.Near @claudioac @blaze and all other members checking on this thread:

→ Near Grants team has done an amazing job
→ I am very glad to be part of the Near Community growing the Near Ecosystem
→ This is a proposal to help build MVPs, supporting from the Community verticals, that is not meant to take over any of the Near Grants Team activities, but only what is not part of the scope

blaze:

“Change doesn’t happen overnight.”

Agree Please keep going

Cheers for the great ecosystem we built, let’s keep it growing

Thank you!!! In the 075 we have several members that are to this day in the grant purgatory! Have applied beginning of the year and to this day never heard a response. It;s the reason The 075DAO is going through this process so we can disperse funding

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their lively participation in this discussion.

In addition, I would like to mention from our side that we have in no way tried to discredit the NEAR Foundation or question their work with this proposal. I think that the NEAR Foundation is doing an amazing job of meeting the needs of the community that no other ecosystem offers.

What we also did not want to do is to bring about an immediate change, as we are aware that this will take time and that essential factors still need to be clarified.

What we wanted to achieve with this proposal was the awareness of a problem that we have noticed from the collected data and for which we believe we have found a solution.
We wanted to share this idea with the community to get input from the community, but also from the NEAR Foundation, to find together a way to achieve the overall goal of the NEAR Foundation: scalability, transparency, and decentralization.

I think we can agree that we are still not there, but that the NEAR Foundation is working hard to build the foundation for that and that the community is here to help achieve this goal.

I also think that probably everybody agrees with me that we are here to build and that such discussions are the foundation for any development. Because one thing is certain, the downfall of any community is silence.

We look forward to the NEAR Foundation’s updates on Community DAOs and hope that we can expect more transparency about development in the future.

Here are the topics we will cover in more detail next:

• How does the Operations DAO will increase the efficiency of the NEAR Foundation?
• What are the benefits for the NEAR Foundation and the community?
• How does the Operations DAO ensure that the KYC is properly executed?
• How does the council ensure quality is met?
• How does the council ensure that milestones are met?
• How will the council structure will look like in detail?
• The Legal Structure
• Compliance

Thanks, everyone!

The best part is “compliance.”
At least you could disclose that you are applying for 50k and not Mintickt because Mintickt is your “project” considering you are the “founder”.

Should I delete this message? or do you report it too? Because public data sourced from the internet, in the name of the Near value of “transparency” cannot be reported on this forum… despite being public information. Somehow “privacy” is confused with censorship.

Kemal:

Mintickt applied for a 50k (Fast Grant) with the NEAR Foundation on 4/19/2022 . When there was no response after 6 weeks, I took care of it and wrote to the people who have a direct connection to the Near Foundation or the Grant team. Then when still no response after 4 weeks, I followed up again and unfortunately kept getting stalled. It wasn’t until early June that I got feedback that the Mintickt application was still under review. On June 12, almost 8 weeks after the application was received by the NEAR Foundation, Mintickt received an email with the request to make an appointment so that they can meet the team. After the meeting, the grant was lowered from 50k to 15k and told that only the MVP will be funded, which is not a problem for now. However, Mintickt then had to wait 4 weeks again and didn’t receive the payout of 3,000 for the first milestone of developing the MVP until 07/12 . So in summary, Mintickt had to wait a total of 12 weeks for a $3,000 payout! I think it is clear to everyone that this is not very conducive to building the NEAR ecosystem.

David here, working in the NF grants team. We will be communicating our takes and actions to the community based on the constructive feedback in the thread.

Thank you again for the constructive feedback.

Here is a problem in the NF grants team paradigm.

You’re working for the community (not in NF grants team) which will use the apps and helps Near Ecosystem bring one billion active users.

Our current results. How much money did we spent on grants? Where is report?

image1206×2377 158 KB

Naboto:

How much money did we spend on grants? Where is report?

Although we seem to have agreed that a certain amount of transparency should be expected, if you’re asking for a breakdown of grants and the dollar value associated with each project then you should temper your expectations.

I can’t think of any Foundation, or similar organisation, that would show a hand like that so clearly.

That said, I believe there is a transparency report in the works. But it’s certainly not going to be so granular that you can identify that x project received x amount of funding. That wouldn’t make sense from a competition POV.

@David_NEAR I have submitted for a grant, I should to do a post here in the forum also? Thanks

Thank you! It is refreshing to see some initiatives on this issue. I’m sure it will give a lot of us a confidence boost if the granting process is efficient enough.

As an example, Near Singapore Guild was informed that their grant has been approved for an IRL community event initiatives. Though the event was a success, the grant have not been honoured after 2 month since the approval (they are still waiting for it now…) I don’t think this will be encouraging for the SG guild member to onboard projects
Thread: [Report] Near Singapore Grand Kick-off Event was a huge SUCCESS

bladen16.near:

Though the event was a success, the grant have not been honoured after 2 month since the approval

The delay in funding was due to restructuring of NEAR Foundation that time and NF Grants team is different while Marketing DAO Vertical is different.

PSA: Delays in Processing Funding Requests Near Community and nodes

Hey all, There is a small delay in processing funding requests which should be cleared throughout this week and next. This impacts: Receiving KYC links for those who haven’t passed Distributing reward agreements Distributing funds The delay has been caused by restructuring processes and teams within the NF. The longer-term goal of this will result in an accelerated process for future funding requests with much of the manual work being automated away. Thanks all for your patience. If you’ve…

fernandapaixao:

I have submitted for a grant, I should to do a post here in the forum also?

Hey, no requirement to do so but feel free if you want to intro your project

Yes, there is a need for a solution in this area. While an EIR with NEAR Foundation I worked on a more decentralized grant process and proposal for a Decent Grants Lab with NEAR. Happy to share my findings and collaborate on this. I am interested to participate in DAO & Council.

I have a DAO proposal. I’m getting to know the ecosystem, participating in ‘bounty’, studying the processes and methods for presenting projects.
The points made here are very important, from my perspective as a new member.
Thanks.

Wanted to post this here for reference: The NEAR Foundation announced a working group to move to community-driven self-governance:

Formation of NEAR Digital Collective (NDC) and call for participation in the Community Working Group NDC

Formation of Community Working Group on NEAR Ecosystem Governance Following NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin’s talk on NEAR ecosystem governance at EthCC (video here), we’ve had a lot of questions from the community about how they can get involved in this critical initiative. We are creating a new framework and implementation plan for an ecosystem-wide self-governance structure and treasury called the NEAR Digital Collective (NDC). ​​The purpose of the NDC is to further decentralize NEAR’s eco…

Please join if you would like to contribute to creating a revolutionary framework for a self-governed on-chain treasury that is ecosystem-wide.