Proposed Bounty/Grant Budget and Process

Grants / Bounties
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Summary

We are proposing to allocate 30% of the pDAO treasury to grants and bounties.

As an example, over the next 12 inflation periods:

  • Total funding 30% - 38,947 RPL (USD 1,324,197 at today’s RPL/USD)
  • Grant allocation 10% - 12,982 RPL (USD 441,399 at today’s RPL/USD)
  • Bounty allocation 20% - 25,965 RPL (USD 882,798 at today’s RPL/USD)

To support the grant/bounty program, we are proposing a selection policy that utilises social structures already present within the Rocket Pool community.
To support the grant program, we are proposing a performance policy that ensures grantee’s uphold their responsibilities to the protocol and their grant.

Motivation

The Rocket Pool community have always strongly contributed to developing a Rocket Pool ecosystem. From marketing outreach, to developing online tools, the community have self-organised and satisfied their own needs. This proposal further encourages this, by setting some structure around a grants & bounties program. This proposal is open for debate and refinement, it serves as a starting point for discussion and ultimately implementation through community co-development.

By funding community intiatives, Rocket Pool aims to reward community contributions, increase agility, and further develop a rich ecosystem surrounding Rocket Pool.

Details

When dealing with pDAO funds we feel it is important to set a guiding budget so that spending can be tracked and does not encroach on other activities.

We are proposing to allocate 30% of the pDAO treasury to grants and bounties. We feel this allocation is a solid capital base for generating lasting impact on the Rocket Pool ecosystem, while providing enough pDAO capacity for other initiatives.

Defining a grant or bounty

A definition of what is a grant vs a bounty has been proposed: Grant / Bounty Definition

To help potential applicants apply for grants we are proposing a set of standard sizes:

  • Small grant - 500 RPL over 12 inflation periods (USD 17,000)
  • Medium grant - 1,000 RPL over 12 inflation periods (USD 34,000)
  • Large grant - 1,500 RPL over 12 inflation periods (USD 51,000)
  • Custom - to be defined through negotiation, ideally this would be rare

Bounties are one-off payments for a specific piece of work and so they would pretty much always be custom.

Selection Policy

We are proposing to establish an initial grant committee, consisting of at least 1 member of the core team, and the Rocket Scientists (Discord role). The grant committee’s role would be to regularly assess bounty and grant applications and decide whether they should be funded or not. The Rocket Scientists are respected members of the community that have shown deep commitment to Rocket Pool. Obviously it is not compulsory for Rocket Scientists to participate in the grant committee. As we develop the process we will look to opening up more positions on the grant committee, either by expanding the Rocket Scientist program or have some sort of assembly selection process.

To support the grant committee’s decision we will use Snapshot voting to signal community sentiment.

We feel token voting alone has significant limitations (Moving beyond coin voting governance), which is why we are proposing to combine it with a community representation.

Performance Policy

Grants are given based on providing a service to the Rocket Pool community. It is important that the community receive the value that the protocol pays for. Each grant will need to state service levels that they will maintain for the length of the grant. These will be assessed by the grant committee, if in the unlikely event the grantee is not upholding the service levels - the grant will be withheld.

Conclusion
Rocket Pool will further develop its rich ecosystem: rewarding contributions and enhancing the Rocket Pool experience for every member.

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:clap:

I wonder if we might want further delineation between the payout amounts. Does a difference of 3x (500 = small, 1500 = large) capture the difference in value that we’d expect across the spectrum of ideas?

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I think there should be grant categories and be named A,B,C,D,E etc, because grants are not small or large, it depends on the ammount of work done.

Also i think only 3 categories is not enough to categorize such a variety of things that “need” to be done, i understand the custom category, but i think that aspect will be very time consuming for the team to determine exactly the ammount so just having more categories will make it easier and faster.

Also categories can be conbined for a payment. Like TRanslation - 1A + 1C

1 suggestion :
Grant A 50 RPL
Grant B 150 RPL
Grant C 400 RPL
Grant D 700 RPL
Grant E 1000 RPL

Edit: Rocketpool is awesome!

1 Like
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Adding a few items that I think will be helpful:

Definitions:

Grant : A proposal submitted by an individual or group that proposes some action with an estimate of cost and payment schedule. This contract is awarded to the entity that submitted the proposal if the grant is approved.

Bounty : A proposal submitted by an individual or group that proposes a payment for an achieved result. The bounty proposal should establish the desired outcome, state an award compensation amount with a payment schedule, and describe how interested parties can compete in the selection process for the bounty. The entity that submitted the proposal may or may not be the person(s) awarded the bounty contract.

Budget:

I think it is essential that we have a general budget framework for the pDAO funds. I support the 30% allocation for grants/bounties but believe we need to budget the remaining portions so that we have a complete picture of the envisioned use of the pDAO funds. We don’t need to spend the other allocations yet but outlining what we anticipate using the pDAO treasury for would be very helpful. As an example:

  • 10% Reserve Treasury
  • 20% Immunefi Bug Bounty
  • 10% Marking (tradeshow, swag, advertising, etc.)
  • 10% Incentives (e.g., LP bonuses,
  • 20% Audits (e.g., major smart contract audits; Sigma Prime, Consensys, etc.)
  • 30% Grants and Bounties.

As the protocol matures, it would be helpful to know when (or if) there is a transition from the dev wallet to the pDAO wallet. Are there other costs (e.g., additional staff, server hosting, legal, etc.) that we need to budget for?

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Great to see this process getting started! I don’t have much to add right now other than more questions:

@langers How is Rocket Pool Pty Ltd compensated right now? Since I wasn’t around for the ICO, can anyone else provide clarity as to where those funds are located and how they’re being used? The current dev team is doing a fantastic job, so I see no reason to change anything, but having details may help with pDAO budget discussion (do we need to account for paying RP P/L for their contributions?)

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Also, there are 13 inflation periods in a calendar year. (28 d * 13 = 364)
I recommend that we adjust the parameters to reflect that.

For example, a small grant would be 500 RPL over 13 inflation periods or 38.5 RPL each mint period. Or if we went with Astoneta’s idea a Grant Level D would be 700 RPL paid out over 13 mint periods at 53.8 RPL each.

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@Marceau the initial delineations are a starting point and not definitive - to get the ball rolling. If we find we need more delineations we can discuss and add.

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i kept it to few categories to keep it simple when choosing but would be happy to have these categories/sizes as the initial set, if people agree?

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Not sure I agree with combining as it opens it up to more complexity.

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The core team are funded by the dev wallet and our ODAO positions. Rocket Pool Pty Ltd pay for the core team head-count, legal, and development expenses. This includes audits etc.

For reference, this is the dev wallet:
0xFD857D3cFcb942039388FBd44c18163f91552b35

To define the overall budget categories and allocations I have created the following post:

https://dao2.rocketpool.net/t/pdao-budget-definition/644

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Whole heartedly behind the use of a small committee that is already aligned with Rocket Pool institutional knowledge.

Future community driven selection process of the committee for a specified term is ideal when governance is setup. But to get things off the ground and support existing projects that are already benefiting the protocol the current proposal is sensible.

In the interim, we should set transparency as a stated goal at the start as this will assuredly improve outcomes down the road. A couple things to consider, but not in a manner that would delay the current proposal, are to add a forcing function on when to review grant performance, consider how budget works with rolled over funds between periods, and consider how to constrain misuse of such rolled over allocations.

Transparency

From the outset having transparent discussions and decisions is vital to long term community consent and retention. This is primarily with a view towards having a more formal committee in the future when more is at stake.

Decisions

Have decision results open to the community that include reasoning by each committee member for approvals and rejections. Requires a bit more justification than “X person does awesome work and deserves Y amount”. Specific justifications for what each committee members see as the primary benefit to Rocket Pool for an approved grant/bounty will help provide:

  • Information for future grant applicants on the process, which in turn reduces future scope of work on committee
  • The opportunity for committee members to publicly recuse themselves from decisions that would personally benefit themselves, family, pets or colleagues beyond general community and protocol improvements
  • Increased trust in the committee
  • Mitigation of shirking committee responsibilities that would result in concentration of powers
  • Another signal that can be used for the public at large regarding the growth of Rocket Pool
  • A small incentive to have a yes/no answer for grants to reduce time in limbo

Discussions

I also prefer the decision process and the discussion between committee members being open to the community (read only access). However, this may not yet be reasonable as it is is asking for a lot of commitment and a bit of formality from the committee. I see it as adding:

  • A layer of accountability and transparency to the community
    • This is less about the current potential committee set, and more about a future unknown set when the protocol is larger
  • Information for future committee selection (pDAO delegates, or whatever that may be)
  • Improved debate and communication among the committee around contentious matters in a open fashion
    • Normalizes confronting disagreements and working through them
    • Leads to formalizing of a decision process. Consent to decision process outcomes as binding even when a committee member disagrees with a decision outcome is key to long term success
    • Sets expectations for future committee members

Performance Policy

  • Scheduled reviews or check-ins for approved grants with conclusions published to the community will help maintain information feedback loops for grants, committee, and community (every 4 or 6 periods)
  • This is better than someone just happening to notice that something is a full blown disaster after potential mitigations and support could have been rallied
  • Make the check-in results public, even if it is a simple “everything is good” check mark. An occasional failure should not be unexpected for non-retroactive projects, and it would be good to know the what and whys for future endeavors

Budget

  • Allow for rolling over of funds between periods for Grant & Bounty budget as this will remove an incentive for short term bias
  • Consider setting constraints on the use of rolled over funds will mitigate misuse of any large allocations of funds
    • Should be fine for now, but better to be proactive than reactive
  • Accounting of funds over time for transparency, such as occasionally part of a community call, should be part of the feedback loop to the community

POAPs

  • Committee members should get a POAP for their community service for each term as a standard
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