Grants
Blockworks Research
Never heard of them. They also can’t spell Rocket Pool properly.
It doesn’t sound like they’ll be doing any research, just summarize the Saturn upgrade and present it as research while in fact it’s just paid marketing.
In that case they should tell us about their readership and how big their reach is and what results we can expect from them. Their Twitter account has 29k followers and I looked at some random top-level tweets and they got like 3k views which doesn’t seem a lot? We could get way more exposure by paying a shitcoin influencer. They also want the payment upfront which doesn’t inspire confidence.
I don’t think we’ll have problems attracting node operators when we can launch minipools with 4 ETH and no RPL. $45k is quite a lot for 3 fluff pieces that will get 3k views each while the RPL price is so low. Skip it for now.
Cyfrin Updraft
We already have plenty of educational materials. Official docs, Rocket Pool School, Rocket Pool University, Bankless garbage we have funded in the past, etc.
Also $200k would be the highest ever funding for a project.
On the other hand, I remember this guy and his mega Solidity course and it was great and very high quality. So the asking price actually seems fair, unlike other outrageous asks.
But their non-flagship videos seem to get only 3-5k views on YouTube. Node operator course would also be only ready in March 2025 if we assume no delays.
A bit torn here. We don’t need more of this stuff. But they produce very high quality stuff and could be some useful marketing.
Rocket Pool Governance Analytics Dashboard
I am not sure if they even realize that Rocket Pool uses Snapshot, custom pDAO on-chain voting and that there’s also oDAO that’s voting on their own different on-chain proposals.
$50k seems quite a lot for reading some on-chain data (and Snapshot API) and creating a dashboard. In comparison, Rocketscan got like $70k. On the other hand, once they realize this is not just some standard OpenZeppelin Governor stuff they’ll probably want even more.
But I must say their dashboards for Optimism and Safe look decent. And since Rocketscan is dead there’s no nice dashboard that shows governance stuff in one place.
If this gets funded it should be open source.
AlphaGrowth
Seems better and more professional than the Blockworks crap.
Sounds like outsourcing some of the work that the Rocket Pool team (Mav and Grant) should already be doing?
They’ll create a list of potential partnerships and integrations, set up meetings and then what? Someone needs to implement it.
Feels like this will be another OpenUX, a shiny report but nothing practical. But maybe worth giving it a shot.
Retros
Scaling Analytics for the Rocketpool Community
Never saw this. Seems useful. It’s open source. Pay him.