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Renewal Grant Support Squad H1 2024 [Resubmission]

EnactedGrant Request

Proposal Details

Author0xf048…54cf
PublishedNov 22, 2023 20:19
Voting beginsNov 22, 2023 20:19
Voting endsDec 06, 2023 20:19
Snapshot#8363118

Grant size

61,500 DAI

Tier

Higher Tier

Beneficiary

0x6584…c1e5

Description

Since Jun22, the Squad has worked with more than 190 grantees. We onboard them and provide support along the way. The team participated in governance processes updating the grants program, developed a grants landing page, published articles to showcase grants, provided transparency in public roadmaps, launched initiatives such as Testing Sessions, sent welcome kits to strengthen DCL brand awareness, and published a Manual of Operations. We have also created a Revocations Committee (RC), and so far we have recovered $433.778 DAI since this squad was created. **The GSS has been active and working under 3 main goals:** **1) For taking care of DAO Treasury**: [$433.778 has been recovered](https://www.notion.so/dcl-dao/edfd964a496942d4befa74d22f4ae26d?v=177d8ed6010f4efd9e96f8f14e7cf5a3&pvs=4). Before establishing the RC, were our squad revoked vesting contracts based on gather information, engaging with the grantee, and seeking inputs from advisors to confirm or refute our findings. This approach served as a double-check on the information available. After nearly a year of following this procedure, our team and the community began to recognize that it concentrated a significant amount of power within a single entity. As a response to this concern, the RC was established through a governance proposal. Its purpose was to review our recommendations and allow grantees to engage with an impartial third party, thus ensuring a more fair and transparent process. In this stage, funds related to 8 projects were revoked or recovered, totaling $291,330 (all made possible thanks to investigations or interventions by the GSS) and 13 cases were dismissed. **2) For supporting grantees**, we have onboarded 100% of the grantees that entered the Program. On our last renewal, while providing more than **784 hours of support**, we shipped more than 45 onboarding kits to raise brand awareness. Since the squad was created, we have solved more than **128 problems/requests** to lead grants to success. So far, we have also produced **20 articles**, published in the DCL Blog about the work our grantees are doing. More recently we have launched **Testing Sessions**, to give the grantees a space to demo their projects and get feedback. So far we have **hosted 27 sessions**. **3) For fostering transparency & accountability**, we have launched Public Roadmaps, to make a follow up on grants milestones and impact metrics to 100% of the projects (Grants' Framework 2023). We are proud of having built a grants program with community input, with 16 step-by-step guides to provide transparency about our work: [Grant Support Squad’s manual of operations](https://dcl-dao.notion.site/Grant-Support-Squad-Documentation-bc14cb2ffc0c4df18302bcffc6b60b2f). We've also created the [DAO Grants Github REPO](https://github.com/Decentraland-DAO/grants) to compile all the available codes from open sourced grants. And to make overall updates and changes to the grants program, we have published 11 governance proposals, and have done 9 pull requests made into docs.decentraland.org to update the Grants Program documentation. We have written security recommendations, and a sensitive data handling policy and we created the [Grants Program Landing Page](https://dao.decentraland.org/grants/) . [Here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P0TNgMW15zxQupKUVQUmYKTBNIzAn5g929kRuLInc4Q/edit?usp=sharing) you can see our financial report (Jun to Nov23). It continues in comments.

38 Comments

daoDec 12, 2023

Renewal Grant Support Squad H1 2024 [Resubmission] This proposal has been ENACTED by a DAO Committee Member (0xfb1afa4dc069ffb47b19dbee196045d508fcd5a2) Vesting Contract Addresses: 0x9b6e28109d589f9042266bab5f5124f255f0a90e

LandlordDaoDec 12, 2023

Hi @Zino Firstly, I apologize for the late reply, and congratulations on the approval of your grant. I hope you can make things even better. I don't know if you've heard the saying, 'Onlookers see more clearly,' which means that people outside a situation often have a clearer perspective. Another phrase someone from our DAO community shared with me, also from Sun Tzu's Art of War, is 'Know yourself, know your enemy, and you will never be defeated in a hundred battles.' I prefer the next line: 'Know yourself but not your enemy, and you win one, lose one (50%); know neither yourself nor your enemy, and you are at a loss in every battle.' If you understand our platform's competitors well, perhaps you can find the answers. I don't understand code or technology, but I believe that continuous breakthroughs are needed in technology and code on our platform. Don't let your current vision limit you. What seems impossible is everything that is possible. I hope my message perspective is helpful to you also for all the DAO community members. Indeed, the purpose of the DAO extends beyond just facilitating grants; it’s about platform breakthroughs, innovation, and collaboration, addressing core issues. We are committed to moving in this direction and not relying solely on the foundation. Thank you for all your efforts for the platform. —“Teamwork makes dreams work.”—

InJesterrDec 11, 2023

Thats great to hear, wish you all goodluck on the following 6 months! Great decision to promote fifi aswell and congratulations to her ❤️

palewinDec 11, 2023

Hi @InJesterr ! I'm sorry for not getting back to you earlier; I hadn't seen your message. Thank you for your suggestions. Here are some comments on your points: 1. We are actively working to expedite this process. However, as you can imagine, conducting the analysis of each case takes time, especially when multiple formal requests overlap. 2. In the process, it is stated that if there is a formal request concerning the GSS, the DAO committee is responsible for reviewing it and determining whether or not to escalate the case to the revocations committee. Here is the [framework](https://www.notion.so/dcl-dao/1-Grant-analysis-process-a83dc1f269b348629b44e00db99ad79d?pvs=4). 3. We are always doing our best to improve processes. 4. Indeed, given the reduction in the squad's budget and its members, we have decided that Fifi will be the only one to receive a promotion in this grant. Greetings and thank you!

InJesterrDec 07, 2023

Congratulations to the GSS for passing their proposal, Hope we will see our given feedbacks taken in and turned in to something positive! Some additional recommandation I have is. - turning formal requests faster and more efficiently on to the next stages. as of right now it seems it takes a long while to process these. - Since there is no one watching you as grantees I think you should be more transparent with the community will help alot more, for example sharing monthly meetings & sharing financial reports. - Some members must be more supportive towards grantees and show that you are not only here for a salary. - Lastly Give Fifi a biiggg promotion <3 Really hope 2024 will be the Best Year of the DAO!

palewinDec 07, 2023

Thanks @mazafaka! And hi everyone! Thank you all for voting on the proposal. We are very pleased to continue our work. Clarification: although this contract starts on December 15th and ends on May 15th, the 5-month period referred to in this grant began on December 1st and ends on April 30th (we've never paused our work). Thanks!

mazafakaDec 07, 2023

Congrats @palewin @Zino, Wish ya luck, I hope you are going to work for better future of this community.

daoDec 06, 2023

Renewal Grant Support Squad H1 2024 [Resubmission] This proposal is now in status: PASSED. Voting Results: * Yes 79% 11,203,788 VP (101 votes) * No 15% 2,231,064 VP (12 votes) * Abstain 6% 891,229 VP (5 votes)

mazafakaNov 29, 2023

Thank you for your answer @palewin

ZinoNov 28, 2023

Hi @LandlordDao Thank you for your input. Your engagement is appreciated, and I'd like to address some of the points you've raised. I would like to clarify that the budget for core units during Q4 was frozen on October 1st. Our proposal does not aim to increase platform management expenses. Instead, it is a thoughtful way to allocate previously discussed and considered funds. We are committed to responsible budgeting and financial sustainability. I completely agree with your perspective on the importance of improving the platform itself. It's a challenge that the entire Decentraland community can work together to address. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on how we can achieve these goals and further enhance the Decentraland ecosystem. Have a great day! Zino

palewinNov 28, 2023

Hello @mazafaka! Sorry for not responding earlier. Regarding your questions: 1. In the history of DCL, 202 grants have been approved. Of these, 50 belong to the first stage (2021-2022), before the GSS was created. As soon as we started working, we contacted them to see if they had fulfilled the committed projects or not (we found that 36 complied and 14 did not, of those 14, we were only able to recover some money through refunds and 1 revocation = $14,916). Since the establishment of the GSS, we have worked with 94 projects before the New Framework (2022-2023, 3 are still active) and with 58 from the New Framework (2023), of which 38 are active. On the other hand, in relation to the grantees, I can tell you that we have interacted with 269 people linked to grants. 80 are from North America, 58 from Europe, 50 from Latin America, 25 from Asia-Oceania, and the remaining 56 have not reported their nationality. 2. If a concern related to our Grant is raised, we send it directly to the DAO Committee to analyze, and they go through the same process established for all the Grants. This is something to add to the Framework of the Revocations Committee, but we are using this step. Also, it is written in our public documentation, specifically [here](https://www.notion.so/dcl-dao/1-Grant-analysis-process-a83dc1f269b348629b44e00db99ad79d?pvs=4). On the other hand, we need to revalidate our work with the community every 5 or 6 months, like all the core units, by submitting a renewal (like this one). Regards,

UnknowerNov 24, 2023

Personally, I would love to build for free, just because I enjoy building and growing the community. I was doing that before I ever made any money here. It was a cool hobby that let me practice a lot of different skills. Of course, outside the metaverse my body needs food, water, clothes, and shelter to stay alive. To have those things I have to make money. Time is free, but I only have so much of it, and some of that time has to be spent making money so that I can stay alive to get more time. So while I might love doing things for free, society makes it pretty hard for me to do that for very long. Especially when building *really* cool ideas ends up costing me a lot of time *and* money. A lot of people where I live are basically just working and sleeping, and don't even have time for hobbies that cost them money. Inflation is making it more expensive to live, and most companies have the same mentality that you have - pay the absolute bare minimum needed to get a warm body into a job. Only raise the wage when nobody is willing to work for it anymore. Since some people are single with no kids and are fine with their job becoming their entire life, that becomes the standard expectation for everyone. The sad thing is, people do better work when they can spend time doing things they love. But if we only raise wages when we run out of people willing to do a job, we end up with people working jobs they hate because the money is good. I guess what I'm saying is, the real life standards of capitalist society might not be the best system to reference if we want people to do good work. Once again our problems in Decentraland could be solved if only we could figure out society's most complex problems - like how we could improve the flaws of capitalism without going full-on communist, knowing that both ends of the spectrum leave plenty of room for corruption. Considering your iPhone example - if spending $640 every 6 months bought me an iPhone that somehow prevented me from losing $2000, I'd buy it every time. And that's a more appropriate analogy for the GSS. We're spending money to save money by adding some accountability to a grant system that exists in a world where people are incentivized to make as much money as possible in the least amount of time.

jamesNov 23, 2023

As someone who has been involved with Decentraland since the ICO it's heartbreaking when DAO money is wasted on projects that are not effective and don't deliver value to or enhance the platform. Worse still when grant funded creations even make the platform look bad (I think we all know which content/events fall into that bucket) I'm leading a team who are creating an live instructor led training application which we are templating and open sourcing for others to use both in GC and Worlds. Working with Fifi on that has been a pleasure. I am a long time software engineer (30 years of experience) and I have been impressed by the professionalism of the GSS and the way they are helping projects structure their work so it can be effectively evaluated over time. It's really easy to assess on-going grants because of the work they are doing. Without them there would be no backbone to these grants projects and everything will start to unravel. The experience I have had can only be described in the most positive terms and that they are a credit to Decentraland.

InJesterrNov 23, 2023

Hey fifi really appreciate your feedback, I just share my opinions due to my conflict of interest and bad experience with him, You are the only reason I haven’t voted NO. About yarasita and pablo I dont have much to say barely know them so cant really publicly speak about them I bet they are really sweet too! Really would love to see you continue your work like you do. You really up the name of the GSS which is a really good thing. About the salaries I’m a bit objectively worried it had minor to do with the need of a GSS. Because I truly believe we need a GSS despite the fact that it is going to be expensive! I see improvement in this proposal on the budget already which is a great thing so take my critics not so heavy! Open to discuss what you can elaborate on the salaries, coming its from you such great person! I want to say I give you alot of credibility!

fifitangoNov 23, 2023

Thanks a lot for the sweet comment about my work! 😊 I'm sorry to hear that you and Zino didn't have the smoothest ride buuh :frowning: but I genuinely value his contributions to the team. We need a mix of approaches and experiences to handle the diverse range of grants in different categories, we currently have 40, to be exact! (Yep, lot of work) While I'd love even more diversity on the team, financial constraints might make that a waiting game. @Zino plays a crucial role, and his vast legal experience helps us shape processes with responsibility, tackling the not-so-fun task of analyzing projects when things get tricky. He's super keen on beefing up the governance process, and dealing with the Revocations Committee, which is never an easy job to do. I'm so happy that you and @didiimakiii enjoy working with me (me too), I just want you to know that I've got an awesome team backing me up. Together, we're committed to finding the best and fairest ways to support you. I will be back later to share some thoughts about my point of view with salaries. Have a great day :slight_smile:

InJesterrNov 23, 2023

Maybe its the region where Il live in where 1k feels like 10k my dad have alot of patients he treats, they are working for 400 16 hours a day no weekends off with their entire back bones and leg bones and muscles need fysiotherapy. So I think thats thougher then 6 hours per day for them for 1000$ per month doing office work plus bonus weekends off. I think this all is regionally different then 🤷🏻‍♂️ sorry to bother you.

mazafakaNov 23, 2023

"Since Jun22, the Squad has worked with more than 190 grantees." WOW Can you show us some analytics, documents, etc? @palewin And since you're here asking for a grant, can you tell us who's in charge of monitoring your grant? Again you have my "NO" vote.

InJesterrNov 23, 2023

I dont believe its underpaying, there are many people that would love to do this work for that amount. I have an analogy would you rather buy an iphone for 640 but every 6 months you repay 640 again or would you rather buy an iphone for 480 and every year you pay 480 again? both are same color, same model, same ram, same cam, same everything.

InJesterrNov 23, 2023

Its not about the work I’m talking about. its about the cost. Long term this is going to hurt the DAO. It can be easily done for 1k per month per member which is currently 4 and then x 6 you would pay 24k or do even a year for cheaper. With these rates its unjustified to overpay them.

LandlordDaoNov 23, 2023

GSS is very important to prevent abuses by grantees. However, I strongly advocate for reducing platform management expenses, especially considering that our financial expenditures in the past 30 days have consistently been several times higher than income for many years. SpaceX also owed workers money before achieving success. Before we achieve success, I hope everyone joins DCL not just for the money but for their dreams; you are creators, not just players. I lean towards allocating funds to address the core issues in platform development. Therefore, I vote 'no'. The collective efforts and contributions of everyone are the first steps towards the platform's success. 'Team work makes dream work"

UnknowerNov 23, 2023

This is going to become a race to the bottom. We might as well find the country with the cheapest cost of living on the planet, and say that anyone who wants to be eligible for a grant should have to prove they live in that country before receiving their grant funds. Otherwise, what's to prevent someone living in some high-cost location like Switzerland or Iceland from getting a grant based on their regional income in USD, and then moving to a very low-cost location like Pakistan or Egypt, where they will make more than a doctor? We can't simply use a global average, because then someone in Pakistan or Egypt could use that money to move somewhere with a much better economy and quality of life (oh no! can't have the DAO improving people's living conditions, can we? - said sarcastically) In order to attract top talent and encourage economic growth in Decentraland, the best way would be to allow people to make *more* in the metaverse than they would be able to in real life. Otherwise, why would anybody even bother with this place? It's not exactly a stable source of income when it's based on the whims of the community. So who is going to be willing to take that risk? People who are just doing it as a hobby, or maybe as a second job at best? Are we really expecting to propel this platform forward through the work of people doing it as their second job or part-time hobby? Can we expect people to sacrifice time with their family or focusing on their health in order to build something meaningful here? Can I just speak from experience here? Dealing with the scrutiny from this community...while building a grant project as a second job...where you're expected to be paid *much* lower than your market value...while still being treated like you're asking way too much...all while giving up time that you could be spending with family...you can't help but wonder why you bother sometimes. I'm sure someone could find a way to criticize me for saying that, using the dollar amount of my grant to attack me without having any idea how much time or sacrifice was actually required. But the reality is, I could be doing a lot less and making a lot more in a position where I actually have some stability and don't have to be a people pleaser to garner support from a mob that has tasked themselves with protecting someone else's money.

InJesterrNov 23, 2023

Fifi has been really good to me too, that doesn’t mean the whole squad needs to be overpaid and to be honest because they have been good to us doesn’t mean they have been that way to everyone else. We can’t overpay people for having a great experience. Emotions and Money should never be mixed with each other. Btw its just a reply not looking to hurt you just trying to elaborate. I still like what you have been doing so its nothing personal. ❤️

web3nitNov 23, 2023

**Voting NO. In my opinion, there was recently an unjust review of grant cases, like with Serena's. Her grant was halted, stopping all her planned activities she had been hardly working on.** This is a sign that there should be a rotation in the squad - new members should come in! **They have already received three grants.** Maybe it's time to give others the opportunity?! There can't be a monopoly in such an important branch of a DAO as Grants Management! Do the current GSS members want to manage grants forever? That's not a DAO but a dictatorship.

InJesterrNov 23, 2023

[quote="esteban, post:15, topic:21279"] GSS is critical to prevent abuses by grantees. [/quote] I agree on this but per 5 months 60k is too much for such a job. I know for a fact I can assemble a team of 4 for a whole year for even cheaper then this current one,to do the exact same job for 1k a month which equals to 1,000 x 4 x 12 = 48k. 4 people that are total active with each covering 4 x 6 hours of the whole day except weekends for a full year. **With these rates:** The DAO pays 13,500 less The DAO gets 6 months for free + on top of it. Don't you agree that if we can pay less for a longer period of time that this current model isn't worth passing?

estebanNov 23, 2023

GSS is critical to prevent abuses by grantees. I'll match this grant so that perverse incentives don't get on the way of their effectiveness. Shaving the budget of our anti-corruption squad is not the right thing to do when grants are creating awkward situations.