In order to keep the application threads clear of discussions (to make it easier for committee members to read and score them), please use this thread for any and all questions and discussions of round 18 period of grant, bounty, and retrospective award applications.
Grants
RPL Defi
Pay him. Make it $300 per update so it’s not less than the cost of one piece of content.
Patches partnership Part Deux
$6,642 for all that work. LMAO, it’s like we robbed him. Double it as a goodwill measure and to incentivize him to keep doing this.
Fund the grant. Conflicts of interest are not concerning at all.
Rescue Node Quota usage visibility feature
Looks useful. Fund it.
beaconcha.in v2 Dashboard
Fund it. Love beaconcha.in. They are also active community members. Cost seems reasonable. It’s on the lower side of what I see enterprises pay for data access and imagine how much it’d cost to build something yourself and host it.
Token Motion Design Subscription
Perfect. Fund it. Sleety has been contributing to Rocket Pool for years and his work is fantastic. This is why I have no qualms about recommending this.
Incentives Grant for AlphaGrowth
Hmm. I know the pain of having to beg for funds to get something done. Since we already funded AlphaGrowth let’s also give this budget to them. We’ll then see if all this was worth it or not.
Retros
Rescue Node Smart Contract wallet support for Solo Stakers
Nothing to do with Rocket Pool. It’s a feature for solo stakers. I don’t see why the GMC should fund it even if it’s not that much.
RPL Defi (Pre-Grant Work)
Pay him. Make it $300 an update which is the cost of one piece of content.
Rocket School
Looks like they ran out of funds. They’ve already spent $40k on this. I must say the quality of the production is great. But I don’t think we gained many new node operators because of it so the ROI is probably not that great.
I say fund it. $11k in the grand scheme of things is not that much and it would support work that was created with soul.
5 Likes
Bounties
None. 
Retros
Rescue Node - Smart Contract wallet support for Solo Stakers
Hate to say it, but I mostly agree with peteris here… this isn’t RP work and we don’t have the budget to pay for non-RP public goods these days. That said – I’m willing to be convinced that this human cares and is competent and would be worth orange-pilling. If that’s the angle, I don’t mind the payment (skilled folks with energy to get things done are tough to get). But it wasn’t really presented that way.
RPLDefi (Pre-Grant Work)
The $-value was initially low-on-purpose when I did it and didn’t go up when it was taken over and quality increased. I’d consider going up a bit here.
Rescue Node Feature: Quota usage visibility
I think the $/utility is reasonable here.
Grants
Rocket School [was in retros, but really should be here]
I will start by noting I haven’t interacted with the content.
I am hesitant here. The initial grant was supposed to cover videos, program management, polished website, an outreach program, and maintenance. At the time they were anticipating that the ethstaker grant would cover the videos for the most part and the GMC funds would hit the rest – sounds like the estimate was off by quite a large amount.
Timewise, it’s been 14 months and it’s not live. From an NO perspective, not too much has changed, but still… this probably misses saturn 0 (and mentions of incoming 1/2), rpip-30, Houston, etc, as those are more recent. Smartnode v2 is also right around the corner. Target dates are ~6 weeks out (though I worry that the holidays may complicate that timing). I’m concerned the grant has essentially fed something that will be significantly deprecated by the time it launches. I don’t know about others, but if I’m following a guide and it mismatches reality a couple of times – I’m done with that guide as I can’t trust it.
Finally - it’s not clear what metrics/anecdotes we have so far to tell us “yeah – this has gotten some traction even in the current incomplete version, which leads us to believe it’s valuable to polish.”
So yeah :/. Extremely big miss on predicted spend. Timeline may be pushing obsolescence. Unclear outcomes. Not sure it makes sense to fund. I’m also a little uncertain on if/why we paid out the $15k, as that was meant to be paid out on launch and it seems like it’s rather been some kinda internal softlaunch or something?
RPLDefi
Price should likely match the decision from the retro.
RP Team partnership (Patches) Part Deux
Amazing pricing, which I’m interpreting as highly on purpose (else negotiate it up).
beaconcha.in v2 Dashboard
Price seems very reasonable for the amount of work this sounds like. That said, from a utility-to-RP perspective, this seems kinda moderate. I don’t think live vs daily is a huge benefit to us. I do think having it grouped nicely is convenient. If the webhooks are flexible enough to allow repeated alerts for an ongoing bad state “this has been below threshold for 1/2/3/n days”, that would be a significant step up from the currently available alerts and make it easier to take action (which likely consists of DMing the appropriate people). Not sure about the applicability to MEV theft… it’s something, but at 300 nodes it may be easy to fly under the radar.
Token Motion Design Subscription
I think we may face some struggles finding effective uses off and on. Still sleety’s work is awesome and they know RP/community, which is a pretty special edge vs any other similar offering.
Other potential thoughts on use cases: prettify rpldefi.com somehow (ideally without making it too challenging to maintain, which is essentially the sole benefit of the current google docs format); outward facing community members (like jasper/waq); popes for community stuff, which we’ve paid out separately before.
Incentives Grant for AlphaGrowth
This is a big increase in funding. The previous funding was about $60k, and this adds about $47k at current prices. There are clear benefits in terms of flexibility when working with potential partners. I don’t have a strong overall opinion here.
One option if doing this would be to keep the funds in, eg, a 3/4 multisig with all 9 GMC members and 1 alphagrowth member – that would make the execution bar quite low, but still keep a clear “acceptance” step.
4 Likes
Bounties
none
Grants
RPLDefi
$1650 for 12 months
Fund - Persistent and consistent work. Living content for rETH promotional campaigns.
Patches Part Deux
$100/hr at max 40hr/wk - 6mo term Nov-Apr - ~$96k upper and ~$6k ish lower bound
Fund - Continued good work at a surprisingly low cost. A unique combination of skillset, existing knowledge of protocol, and adaptability to protocol needs. Team’s evaluation of work is important, but on the face of it the work is great.
Beaconcha.in v2 Dashboard
$15k/yr
Fund - An important step to increased visibility of protocol performance. While not defined, recommend this require yearly grant cycle approval instead of subscription auto-pay.
Token Motion Design Subscription
~$30k/6mo (12.5hr/wk)
Fund - Great asset to support various community bits that are outward facing. Design work for new tokenomics reference/landing page (general audience), material for DAO investment into rETH audiences, ETH Denver community event info designs, poaps, etc. This can be a great resource for other community projects funded by the GMC that need design work (RPLDefi).
The actual marketing aspect (strategy, target audience, timing and priority) is my concern. How will the pDAO manage this talent to the highest impact areas? We should expect methods of sourcing ideas, strategies, and prioritization to adapt through practice instead of black inking it in. Coordination should be at top of mind.
RPL Incentives Grant for AlphaGrowth
4k RPL (~$40k)
Alternative solution - This is an extra 4k RPL (~$40k) check for carte blanche action, which is fine for a trusted partner to efficiently execute.
AlphaGrowth’s first grant in the rather recent Round 16 asked for $80k but was only awarded $60k. This extra $40k grant would bring the total to $100k which, if haircut, is more inline with topping up to the initial ask in August. Not a great vibe.
That said, this seems like a request to remove the IMC/pDAO from interfering in timely action by having a free floating bucket of funds. Examples of how existing IMC prevented actions have not been provided, perhaps out of good manners or perhaps because their hasn’t been time to suit up and see if coordination is an issue. If IMC members co-wrote this grant I would fully support. End of the day the amount is not concerning given role, but seems a bit early to be increasing trust set by the GMC unless the committee wants to revise its position from September.
I prefer Val’s 3/4 multisig option as a solution.
Retro
Rescue Node Quota Usage Visibility
$750
Fund - As a node operator I would personally find this useful. Rescue Node quality of life improvements are good for Rocket Pool and Solo Stakers. This maintains the good reputation of Rocket Pool and directionally beneficial for operator conversion.
Rescue Node Smart Contract Wallet Support
$750
Fund - Resue Node is a potential node operator funnel to Rocket Pool, though perhaps decreasing in potential conversion audience size. Maybe ask for more copy area for RP GMC branding. GMC click through link is to the governance page, but could potentially be a landing page about RP pDAO and community if one were to be created.
RPLDefi
$960
Fund - aligned with grant
Rocket School
$11k $2k retro, $9k grant
Sunk cost? - Love the content, production level and heart put into it. This should be classified as a grant. However, I lean toward pessimistic on how many will actually use the site to assist (at least 2 in discord have commented, which means more have, but no metrics provided) with new operators or as potential node operator conversion. The miss on completing the initial version of the site is disheartening. Lack of a completed product makes it harder to judge.
This is best looked under the light of potential core living content (with production house) similar to guidance docs to which to direct people. This will need to be supported with content updates, maintenance, and intertwined with promotion campaigns overtime. As a trial, it should be evaluated not just on heart but on delivery. Do we want to keep this trial afloat by putting another $11k in it? If so, a date should be set for presentation of satisfactory site to GMC subcommittee and evaluation for long term viability. Given the past slipped timeline, a forcing function for review is important. The lack of a promotion budgeted in is also concerning and that will be an additional need outside of scope. The alternative is to consider this as a sunk ship.
1 Like
Work for the Rescue Node quota usage visibility feature is already complete. I would prefer not to receive compensation. The funds will be better off allocated elsewhere.
It’s on the house. Thanks for the consideration all the same.
4 Likes