No need to type after canessa said everything I wanted to aswell. I share the same opinion.

Should the DAO institute another grant freeze? This proposal has been PASSED by a DAO Committee Member (0xbef99f5f55cf7cdb3a70998c57061b7e1386a9b0)

My apologies everyone hahaha

Should the DAO institute another grant freeze? This proposal is now in status: FINISHED. Voting Results: * Freeze spending 62% 7,885,649 VP (56 votes) * Continue as we are 37% 4,763,161 VP (49 votes) * Invalid question/options 1% 25,249 VP (7 votes)

Grant freezes are silly. Not building right now when all of the competition is seems kind of an odd business strategy. (what tech company has stopped spending money in the last decade?) The DAO needs to better manage its own funds and grants process. The DAO should be working to INCENTIVIZE builders and creators that MOVE the platform FORWARD... NOT grants that take funds for things that have already been made, or to upgrade games and features almost nobody on the platform uses. Builders are currently stuck using a broken builder that needs fixed, or proposing a grant for another builder to be made... which can't even pass with the horribly designed systems of the DAO. IN a few more years DCL will have more processes, hoops, and education (thanks Pablo for the proposal on further gatekeeping and increasing the barrier to entry for everyone in DCL, further pushing it down as a platform!) to go through in order to just place a vote.

We may just yet see a "dead mall" in Decentraland if we keep passing grants to give people funds on projects that have already been built or developed. It seems like Pablo and many others are all for slowing down the process and hindering DCL's growth at the expense of the platform. I personally dont see $50k in value bringing in an old game nobody plays when the tech has massively changed in 4 years and we could use those funds to better the PLATFORM. (for everyone) Lets keep passing grants that benefit a couple people while limiting growth and progress so nobody can build what is actually needed for DCL.... (We are already there) If drastic changes arent made to where real grants that will benefit the platform can exist, then DCL will die. (and it wont take as long as you think)

This is going to be a continuous request and issue until we: A.) Stop hemorrhaging so much money with barely anything in return. B.) Have sustainable plans around our finances so that when vesting runs out, we have nothing to show for it. If you do not like grants freezing, then come help us fix these issues. Platform development, which has proven the hardest category to abuse as it requires real outputs, should not be frozen.

Who gets to decide which grants are "ridiculous" though? That's what the voting system is supposed to be filtering out. There is an inherent inequity in the voting system that favors investors over builders, which definitely contributes to a certain amount of corruption. If a powerful few can nearly get someone de-personed from the entire platform, of course they can find ways to line the pockets of themselves and their friends. Has anyone come up with a decent strategy for addressing that yet? Another thing to take into consideration is a lot of these decisions are being made by people who have no idea how to value software development or services. If a developer wants $100k to extend the platform, how do you determine if what they're offering is actually worth $100 or $1 million? There are so many factors at play and one of them is for your understanding of what's being offered to match what the other person thinks they're offering. None of this is going to be solved by freezing grants, but if we want to say it's necessary because the price of MANA is too low...what if we freeze grants and the price keeps going down? Just hope everyone keeps building out of the goodness of their heart and doesn't find it easier to do so elsewhere?

While I feel the sentiment of voting yes with also limiting it to only platform upgrades, This will not solve the problem of people getting ridiculous grants. It actually would close the door to some grants who are honest and trying to do things right. Anyone who is voting yes for their friends and is not looking at their prior credibility objectively or looking at the substance of the grants itself, is the problem here. Because these people in real life would never lend any of their own money to them, they dont care because it isn't their direct money. What those people need to realize is that we all lose if the DAO gets drained. Yeah you may think you are walking away with $100k of funds, but realistically, you could walk away with millions if this platform is successful. **Addressing some problems:** *If the problem is the dao draining funds, then we need some kind of credibility system in place to hold everyone in check about how they are voting and what they are proposing.* - Stop supporting bad actors. Don't attend their events. Don't tweet for them. - Let them bring the outside value that they are promising. Most of these grants are NOT for entertainment of the current DCL citizens, they should be targeting audiences outside of Decentraland. - Support the events that bring real value to Decentraland. If you are only attending to support a grantee and you feel like it is a chore, then clearly you are wasting your time. You should want to attend that event, because that event is soo good on its own. That's a good way to measure the value. - I repeat, if you are only attending because someone asked you, then it is time to start being objective. If that event is not attractive enough on its own to attract you (someone who is active in DCL), then why would it attract an outsider? **Don't make an outsider come to something that you feel is a chore.** That is exactly why they are not coming back. *If the problem is Mana price going down, then we dont need to freeze, we need to be more selective on the grants we choose while keeping that in mind.* *If the problem is the lack of users, maybe we should focus on more final solutions than temporary marketing solutions or events.* - Platform Upgrades are needed. - Content that will bring returning users - Scenes that will provide endless service industry based jobs

Having gone through the grant process for the first time recently, I've been pretty happy with the Grant Support Squad's role in keeping me accountable and making sure the health of the project remains on target. I've mostly been working with @fifitango on that, who has really made it feel like I'm being supported in building my project and communicating my progress. Fifi also did a great job of setting expectations for what the DAO framework required for my grant category, and what kind of behavior from grantees generally rubbed the community the wrong way. All this was done even for a grant which was pretty uncontroversial and supported by the community. I know DAU wasn't the main point of your comment, but some thoughts on DAU - I think it is a really hard metric to estimate in advance (as far as saying "I will build X and it will bring in Y new users"). It may be hard to even reliably calculate, as we found out in the process of making the number 38 into a community meme, and in discussing the idea of rewarding high-traffic scenes. For a platform like mine (Virtual Land Manager), DAU gets complicated too. Is Virtual Land Manager's DAU based on the number of people who log in and manage their scenes in a day? Or the number of people who visit VLM-enabled scenes in a day? I guess it could be both. But that gives my platform a pretty unfair advantage, because by convincing all the large event hubs to install my tool, I get to absorb all of their DAU and portray my platform as the most successful project in DCL, despite the fact that I'm just making life easier for the people who are actually bringing in those users with their builds. Expanding on the point I keep going back to about stimulating economic growth - maybe we could develop some formula that combines a number of different KPIs to do predictive analysis of the economic impact of a project on our economy, as well as retrospective analysis?

I do agree with you there, jar0d. Ideally DCL will become a place where businesses want to come and hold events out of FOMO, because we have a thriving decentralized economy they can benefit from. We should probably start favoring efforts that promote any long-term *economic* growth, not just platform enhancement necessarily. But I think the hard part is determining what contributes to *long-term* economic growth. Consistent events, consistent creation, and consistent platform stability are all contributions in my eyes. I think it makes sense to pause every once in a while to reevaluate how the DAO should prioritize its funding, especially in times when MANA is less valuable. But to address @pablo 's point with @jar0d 's point here - if people are going to hold events and create things in the metaverse anyway, what's going to bring them here as opposed to other platforms where it's cheaper and easier to build large, complex, or expansive experiences? Do we have any workgroups on *economic stimulus*? I think that may be a better way to think of the grant funds. They're meant to stimulate the economic growth of Decentraland, not of just one group or individual.

I'm voting no because the last grant freeze was came with a lot of turmoil and frustration within our community. I voted to pause grants last time because I believed it would let us find a solution for long term sustainability. I received pushback in my DM's from creators that those of us who voted to pause the grants were "suppressing creativity" on the platform. I'm surprised and frustrated that 8 months later, we are having the same conversation again. *Did we not have a plan in place to compensate for the possible drop in price of mana???* One way to stymie the flow of funds out of the DAO is to freeze new grants being approved, but let's also have the difficult conversation around the grants that are already being paid out..... Are these grants shipping their deliverables? Are they really bringing in the numbers of new DAU they indicated they would in their proposal? Are grants getting passed at a high frequency with one or two large whale votes? Are grants that are not following their roadmaps being revoked? We may need to consider that we need more "teeth" in our committee that checks in with grantees. For anyone active in the DAO 8 months ago, you remember what a battle it was to pause grants in the first place. If a group wants to come up with a solution to the DAO spending...do it...but this time, I say do it while the clock is ticking. Pressure has a way of getting results that actually work.

I support the idea of a 6month/ perpetual freeze until we have our shop in order and until MANA is at a higher price, which at the very least should be above 50 cents, and to exclude the platform category. It is counter productive from a DAO treasury standpoint to keep funding projects and add to the downward pressure of MANA's price. It's almost as if we want MANA to go down more so that we can pay more to get the same content we have. If you are infuriated with the inflation that you are experiencing IRL, this is the same, paying more for the same amount of stuff consumed.

If people are only hosting parties because the DAO is paying them, they probably shouldn't be getting paid by the dao to host parties.

I think there is a decent financial argument for freezing grants that aren't related to platform development. But I feel like as a developer and grantee in the Platform category, I have a potential to be biased in that direction, so I am voting for things to remain as they are. Without people throwing events and hanging out in Decentraland, nobody will have a reason to use the tools we build. It truly is a chicken and egg problem.

I'm happy to see this conversation happening. I supported the budgetary increase for the platform category, but increasing the budget alone will not necessarily yield the results we are looking for. I would support a pause of all grants except platform, but there should also be a plan to reach out to those whom would contribute in that area instead of waiting for applications.

I agree with much of the concerns individuals have raised and advise switching to Semi-Annually for all grant categories. If individuals would like to continue quarterly, then we can potentially limit it too only Core Unit & Platform would be beneficial. Voted Yes, and believe all grants should remain frozen at least until the beginning of next year, which would permit us some time to have deeper conversations and reassess our focuses on the longevity of Decentraland.

I'm not sure about completely closing the grant program again because I fear that we are going to suffocate the creativity in our platform. Instead, I'll keep voting NO on things I don't want and YES on things I do with a tougher personal critique.

With Mana continuously crashing upon each Mana sale to fund the grants, and in accordance with Maryana's schedule, the **1.85 million Mana** that vests monthly would be valued at **$185,000** if Mana reaches 10 cents – and we are close to those levels. at that amount we will barely fund one grant because usually grantees ask for dollars and not Mana payments. I support a total freeze or even a partial one that exempts platform grants. Any form of freeze could contribute to sustain the Dao treasure health. Taking in consideration that I know the importance of consistent platform development under all circumstances, BUT it's essential to prioritize the health of the Dao treasury as it connected to Decentraland general sustained progress and health.

Refer to the chart below to see how the amount of MANA that gets vested when the DAO Committee sells off MANA from the treasury and into the exchanges to pay grants. The shaded blue cells represent monthly grant payments ranging from a "one time payment" of $500 to a 3 month 80K payment for a $240,000 grant. This gives you an idea of how much MANA is leaving our treasury. The shaded nude cells represent the price range of MANA in August. i.e. If a 140,000 grant, vested at $0.35 for 6 months, that equates to 400K MANA a month for 2,400,000MANA over the grant period (Assuming MANA stays at 0.35 those 6 months). That same grant at $0.30 for the same duration is 2,800,000 MANA. Now imagine if we calculated all the MANA lost from proposals that at this time, are "written off". Imagine once MANA hits .20-.25 cents.. 

voting for freeze all spending but would like the next draft to include freeze all spending except for platform category

I am voting yes for this proposal, but I will only support the next stage if the following exception and focus will be included. Let's temporarily suspend funding for all grant categories, with the exception of platform development. Make the primary objective to substantial improvement DCL's platform, with a focus on attracting developers that can contribute to the platform's capabilities. Once the platform has matured with many added features, we can then resume funding for the other grant categories. Strengthening the platform will enable content creators to produce way higher quality content, which will enhance the overall user experience. I think that this approach has the potential for significantly improving returns on investment across all grant categories in the future once the platform reaches its full potential. Possible platform improvements could include reducing lag for users, enhancing graphics quality, expanding SDK capabilities to enable more interactive and engaging user experiences, developing a fully functional mobile version, and anything else that enhances the platform's overall performance and accessibility.

There are sayings that Bear market is the best time for building and hiring from a wider pool of talent. ...or maybe it's just a myth. I will vote continue as it is and apologise to everyone for freezing the grant system. Cheers! Reverse akasya.eth

[quote="Shiny, post:4, topic:20277"] @pablo Those who are asking for grants won’t go to Hyperfy since they are not giving out free money like Decentraland DAO currently does. [/quote] Im not talking about people asking for grants, those are few, Im talking about all users in general that can spend time in decentraland with enjoyable experiences. Both, core components and content should grow in parallel in order to success IMO.

I think we should go for a 6 month period of only giving grants for improvements on the platform. e.g. improvements to clients, the chat systems, hosting, connectivity. There should be a hold for 6 months on funding any marketing, content creation or anything that does not directly improve on the current system We need to concentrate on getting the platform to a level that it can actually keep users active, currently we are only giving grants to "bring users to the platform", which may or may not work but the main issue is retaining the new users. without a fully functional platform, as it stands now, we are struggling to achieve this. If we just stop all grants again we are stuck in a cycle of doing the same things expecting different results. we have been here before so we need another solution than one that we have already tried.