CGP 2.0 - Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook

[0x7751]

What’s cooking here, any progress?

[harsha]

Hi, yes, there’s been a lot of progress in the last 15 days, thanks for asking. This is what happened in the last 15 days:

• Had calls with blockchain clubs at various universities, and some of the major comp token holders to take their feedback on the proposal. Incorporated this feedback into the latest proposal.
• With the help of the compound community members, evaluated various ways in which the proposal can be put up for voting, and met a couple of them at ethBagota to understand the process in detail.
• Requested to whitelist me in order to put up the proposal for voting, based on the last update I received from the compound team, we are almost ready. So most likely we will have the proposal up for voting next week!

[0x7751]

awesome! looking forward to it.

[rleshner]

Harsha, thanks for keeping the program moving forward.

Before a proposal is created & voted on, I have a few observations & questions to help ensure the CGP 2.0 is more successful than CGP 1.0:

1. Over the course of the original grants program, there was a shift towards “RFP” and deliverable based funding. This helped ensure that grants went towards outcomes, instead of being delivered up-front with varying (and in many cases, very little) progress. Beyond the contract (above), how will CGP 2.0 ensure that grant recipients deliver on their stated goals? Will there be presentations on community calls, progress reports, or incremental disbursements?
2. The original grants program returned approximately half of its allocated COMP back to the community as unused after six months. If a domain is unallocated after six months, will it’s unused portion be returned to the community?
3. As grants manager, how will the program be marketed? Will you be able to take over the compoundgrants Twitter account and website, etc?
4. How will the time spent by the allocators and manager be tracked?

In general, I would strongly suggest a smaller initial budget for each domain (e.g. $200k over 6 months) knowing that the community can easily increase funding for any domain on an as-needed basis, especially if it is showing results.

[harsha]

Thanks for asking these questions @rleshner , please find the responses below:

Over the course of the original grants program, there was a shift towards “RFP” and deliverable based funding. This helped ensure that grants went towards outcomes, instead of being delivered up-front with varying (and in many cases, very little) progress. Beyond the contract (above), how will CGP 2.0 ensure that grant recipients deliver on their stated goals? Will there be presentations on community calls, progress reports, or incremental disbursements?

Spot on. To precisely address the same issue, we would be giving out Milestone-based payouts through the tool. The entire grant amount would not be disbursed immediately when an application gets approved. The payouts will be done per milestone. Please find the detailed product wiki for making milestone-based payments here.

Milestone-based payout product screens for the allocators:

The grant proposal has a structure where the applicant must share the milestones and the deliverables to receive the specific payouts.

Grant Application Sample:

Each approved applicant will be required to share their work & progress with the community on regular grants calls (Will be setup exclusively apart from the compound community dev calls if there are too many grant applications). They also use the grants channel on discord to share their work and take the feedback or support from the community.

2. The original grants program returned approximately half of its allocated COMP back to the community as unused after six months. If a domain is unallocated after six months, will it’s unused portion be returned to the community?

That’s right, all the remaining funds from the grants program will be returned to the treasury at the end of the program. Also, if there is a domain that is seeing a lot of applications over the other, we might be shifting the funds between the domains accordingly on a case-to-case basis.

3. As grants manager, how will the program be marketed? Will you be able to take over the compoundgrants Twitter account and website, etc?

If it is possible to do that, that would be great. Since there is an existing audience for the compound grants twitter page already, Would love to take it over and re-activate it. We planned to do twitter spaces with grant applicants and reviewers and also spread the word in the developer communities regularly. The chosen domain allocators have also mentioned how they would spread the word and source applications in their one-pagers. The Questbook tool also has 20K MAU who come to the tool to apply for the grants programs.

Ref: https://www.similarweb.com/website/questbook.app/#traffic

4. How will the time spent by the allocators and manager be tracked?

The allocators and the manager clock their hours and submit their weekly reports, which can be publicly viewed. This report has specific details like:

• Proposal reviewed | Hours clocked
• Activities performed to market the grants program | Hours clocked
• Miscellaneous | Hours clocked

In general, I would strongly suggest a smaller initial budget for each domain (e.g. $200k over 6 months) knowing that the community can easily increase funding for any domain on an as-needed basis, especially if it is showing results.

We understand the suggestion of $200K instead of $300K for the initial budget for each domain for 6 months Robert, and we agree to it. Will update the proposal and in case more funds are needed, we will request them accordingly.

Most of the concerns here are addressed in the Delegator Onboarding Documentation which will be shared once the program is live. Have shared the relevant parts above for now.

[harsha]

Update on the voting dates and the SAFE.

• The proposal will be put up for voting on November 28th, which then goes through the voting cycle.The proposal link will be shared here once it is live. The dates of posting have been pushed keeping the Thanksgiving holidays in mind to ensure maximum voter turnout on the proposal.

• CGP 2.0 Grants SAFE (eth:0x8524B12CB7710C75B53bAa9ca72B420542d24C13) has been set up and the domain allocators : @allthecolors , @cylon , @Bobbay_StableNode , @madhavanmalolan , have been added as the multisigs. The allocators will also be commenting on this post from their profiles, to prove their ownership.

[madhavanmalolan]

Thanks @harsha I’m hereby confirming my ownership over the address : 0xa2dDFc8a6C1F8868B80F2747D04532a6cDE9804d

Here’s my signature

{
  "address": "0xa2ddfc8a6c1f8868b80f2747d04532a6cde9804d",
  "msg": "0x6d6164686176616e6d616c6f6c616e20666f7220636770322e30",
  "sig": "491e61c56e6e5a22932fec4cc6b75e1aac12baa184ff653221c53e3dab843ad5053d8a78a38e153555069b50bd7f0b906c998cd3077a1fdb894849495ed5838c1c",
  "version": "3",
  "signer": "MEW"
}

[allthecolors]

Confirming that I control the key for the address 0x66cd62c6f8a4bb0cd8720488bcbd1a6221b765f9, to which allthecolors.eth maps.
{
“address”: “0x66cd62c6f8a4bb0cd8720488bcbd1a6221b765f9”,
“msg”: “0x4920616d2040616c6c746865636f6c6f7273206f6e2074686520436f6d706f756e6420666f72756d2c2070656e64696e6720646f6d61696e20616c6c6f6361746f7220666f722043475020322e302c20616e6420492068657265627920636f6e6669726d2074686174204920636f6e74726f6c207468652070726976617465206b657920666f722074686520657468657265756d206164647265737320307836366344363263364638413442423043643837323034383842434264314136323231423736354639”,
“sig”: “dab707c3d1b251f818178660c1804874a695dbad0dcb42f1eface38e07387ff0285c9a6327e01d51d1c2d85421e1824640ddb3c2a94747d68754613c1f2370591c”,
“version”: “3”,
“signer”: “MEW”
}

[cylon]

Confirming my ownership of 0x98fdE0e52fd38eeE6D319B3E45bcaFF48237384c as a signer.

{
  "address": "0x98fde0e52fd38eee6d319b3e45bcaff48237384c",
  "msg": "0x4d69636861656c204c6577656c6c656e20666f722043475020322e30204d756c74692d7369672061743a20307838353234423132434237373130433735423533624161396361373242343230353432643234433133",
  "sig": "84d11fff060e93ba720025c649efba06193f10111a223764040bba8709fd3b383386711545ac07c57c64c05f57a7df94b6e3cf7ff835ead6095567ee773dae6a1c",
  "version": "3",
  "signer": "MEW"
}

[Bobbay_StableNode]

I control the key for stablelab.eth, which is 0xea172676E4105e92Cc52DBf45fD93b274eC96676.

{
“address”: “0xea172676e4105e92cc52dbf45fd93b274ec96676”,
“msg”: “0x4920636f6d6669726d204920636f6e74726f6c20746865206b657920666f7220737461626c656c61622e6574682c20776869636820697320307865613137323637364534313035653932436335324442663435664439336232373465433936363736”,
“sig”: “30b35ebeb92e1ae21ed7a266ecfdb04ee4cca0db79a89ba9ebda4f112c0729e914deb565252bfad1058b07d1c886a736eeb87b08d03638ebbc0fa9273a7992f000”,
“version”: “3”,
“signer”: “MEW”
}

[VonNeumann2022]

Here are my questions:

1. Which entity on the DAO side will be signing the contract (via the contract template that was proposed)? Unless there is a legal entity representing the grantors, I don’t see how this would work.

2. How will Questbook’s compensation be working now (seems to be pro bono initially) and going forward?

3. Does the need for a grants program to be more decentralized justify this significantly higher cost? My initial thought is that it does not and that there are efficiencies gained from the standard centralized grants committee model that might be lost here (e.g., having a single committee review multiple grant proposals might garner better conversation and review).

4. I think the tooling that Questbook offers is helpful, but couldn’t the same tooling be provided to a more centralized grants committee?

5. What is the KYC for potential grant recipients meant to accomplish?

[harsha]

Thank you for the questions, please find the responses below

1 - Questbook International Inc will sign this contract on the grantor’s behalf. Yes, you’re right it’s a legal entity.

2 - We’re providing the Questbook tool for free for CGP 2.0. We’re only charging for managing the program.

3 - The focus is on running this grants program in a decentralized manner.

Robert on one of the calls mentioned: " At compound, we spend a lot of starting to push the community forward and developing the core protocol itself. A whole decentralized team of developers should be making improvements to the core compound protocol and adding new functionality".

Ref: Welcome & Intro to DeFi Grants - YouTube

Apart from the problems this proposal aims to solve by running the grants program in a decentralized manner, having multiple allocators to run the individual grant programs can also help attract builders through their networks and allows faster decision-making.

4 - Yes, a centralized grants committee can also use Questbook as a tool to disburse grants. Polygon for example, has a more centralized grants committee - uses Questbook to run its entire grants program.

5 - KYC is performed to understand to whom the payouts are being made, in order to be compliant.

[harsha]

Confirming that I control the key for 0x3bf8b0acc8db7a8958d7f0ca0ead9e5bf4a47130
Signature as below:

{
  "address": "0x3bf8b0acc8db7a8958d7f0ca0ead9e5bf4a47130",
  "msg": "0x486172736861206f6e20626568616c66206f66205175657374626f6f6b20434750322e30207465616d20",
  "sig": "12937027e00d9d47b9fa072da9e03c79b8c3bea3853db998e597de46d4f71e6d1e91d152911ac8e0cb1cee1d39df4f32405a4800f53b9b4d292929a5651691d61c",
  "version": "3",
  "signer": "MEW"
}

[harsha]

The proposal is up now!!

Thank you, everyone, for patiently following up on this proposal, and thank you @adam for all the assistance to help me navigate through the app. I’ll update here once the voting begins, it is currently in the review phase. This is the tentative voting cycle

[madhavanmalolan]

Very excited to have this going!

[VonNeumann2022]

Thanks. That all makes sense and is helpful. I’ll vote for this proposal.

I’m generally supportive of better tooling and decentralization.

I’d be interested to know more about the KYC requirements and what will be charged for services surrounding that – are you referring to the need to screen under the OFAC list, etc.?

[eaglelex]

Hi, I am part of the legal team which is assisting Questbook.

The KYC provider will apply the usual standards concerning the evaluation of risks (UBO, geographic area, type of activity). We want to avoid that Compound or Questbook get associated with illicit activities. That’s all!

It’s becoming a common standard within grants programs. Nothing new. Please tell me if you need further information.

[harsha]

The proposal is live for voting now!
If you hold COMP, please vote. The voting ends in the next 48 hours. Thank you.

[harsha]

Update: The proposal has passed!

Thank you everyone for your consistent support throughout.
We are putting our heads down and working towards what we have promised.
Will be sharing the next plan of action very soon on this thread.

Thanks once again for the trust the community has put in us.

[harsha]

Update: Confirming here that the transaction is executed, and the tokens have been transferred to the SAFE.