Finanzgoblin - Grant Reviewer Application

Governance Proposals Community Treasury - Grant Reviewer applications
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1.) Preferred Display Name and Age (If you do not want to enter your age, enter that you are above 21 years of age, which is the minimum)

Name: Finanzgoblin - Richard Mediavilla

Age: 29

Social Media Handles

YouTube Finanzgoblin - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX4FTqjrXSmqoQh5ScgGCLA

Twitter: Finanzgoblin - https://twitter.com/finanzgoblin

Discourse: Finanzgoblin - https://govern.iota.org/u/finanzgoblin/summary

Linkedin: Richard Mediavilla - https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-mediavilla-689370161/

Discord: Razor0x / Finanzgoblin#0683

Telegram: Razor0x

2.) What motivates you to apply for this position?

I am very enthusiastic about Web 3 and especially DeFi, because I truly think that smart contract platforms will eventually evolve into decentralized computing and change how the world will operate fundamentally. The Shimmer-IOTA ecosystem might be a step forward towards a decentralized computing infrastructure, making smart contract usage and decentralized applications much more scalable.

Shimmer can evolve to be a major player in this nascent and rapidly evolving industry and I think that I can share my acquired DeFi and information security knowledge to support the greater IOTA/Shimmer ecosystem.

3.) What is your educational and professional background?

Educational Background

  • Bachelor of Science in Economics / “Volkswirtschaftslehre”
  • Bachelor Thesis: “Kryptowährungen: Ein dynamisches Modell” translated: “Cryptocurrencies: A dynamic model”

Web3/Crypto Background

  • Consulting a Web 3 VR education start-up in DeFi Security and Tokenomics,
    (https://axonpark.com/about-us/)
  • Assisting MultiDAO, a subsidiary DAO to Multichain, the largest Web 3 bridge, on drafting the early governance processes and being part in its active operations group,
  • Supporting a Crypto-Hedgefunds (TheBit Research) with doing research on DeFi protocols regarding business viability for long term investments,
  • Supporting the same Crypto-Hedgefunds (TheBit Research) with doing research on DeFi protocols for yield-farming opportunities.
  • Operating a small Web 3 and DeFi related German‑speaking YouTube‑Channel (Finanzgoblin)
  • Active Member of the Crypto Hub Malta

Professional Background

  • Information Systems / IT Security Consultant
  • Information Systems / IT Security Auditor
  • DeFi and Tokenomics Researcher

4.) What experience do you have relevant to this position (grant reviewer, Project manager, etc.)? Please describe

I have a lot of knowledge about doing due diligence reports and audits and have been reviewing Web 3 and DeFi related projects on a private investors basis for quite some time. I furthermore am consulting two different companies in the regard of tokenomics design and/or their business model.

Especially noteworthy is the consultation of Axonpark, because me and other consultants are still actively refining the tokenomics.

But my unique selling point is my strong involvement and interest in in DeFi and trying to keep up with its innovations.

5.) Are you a software developer? If yes, please provide info on your skills and proof of the projects you already have built/worked on (Github, languages, certificates, etc.)

No, but I worked as an information systems consultant and auditor, so I have a lot of knowledge about the industry in general.

I assisted for example in creating an eIDAS‑compliant PKI for eIDAS-compliant signatures and seals as a product manager and requirements engineer.

I furthermore helped in auditing the German ”Elektronische Patientenakte” (electronic patient record) and the German ”E‑Rezept‑Fachdienst” (electronic prescription service) according to gematik framework (which include among other things requirements from ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27002, BSI IT‑Grundschutz and Common Criteria), while also serving as a project lead in the security audit of the electronic prescription service.

6.) Do you have affiliations that may cause a conflict of interest when reviewing applications? The community would like to know particularly if reviewers are involved with projects as a creator, on the board, or employed. Please list any projects or applications you have affiliations to.

MultiDAO / Multichain -
I currently serve in MultiDAOs early governance board and active operations group and might run for Multi Citizen Committee or Council in the future, if and when the processes behind it are fully established. But I rather see this as an opportunity for collaboration, than a conflict of interest.

Furthermore, having worked in auditing environments, I know when there is a conflict of interest and will actively communicate if and when it arrises openly. Transparancy is key.

7.) Are you willing to sign a legally binding service provider contract and reveal and verify your identity through a KYC process with the legal entity of the Treasury Committee?

Note: KYC is required for this position. If you are unwilling to KYC and sign a service provider contract, you will not be accepted to the Shimmer Community Treasury.

Yes - I am willing to KYC and sign a service provider contract with the Shimmer Community Treasury.

8.) Can you commit 10 hours weekly on average to work as a grant reviewer for the Shimmer community over the next 12 months?

Yes - I am willing and able to commit 10 hrs a week to the Shimmer Community Treasury.

9.) If you are voted in the top 2 reviewers, you may have the option to join the Growth Committee and work with the TEA representatives. In this case, you may be required to work hours over the required 10 hrs per week. Are you able to commit to this if required?

Yes - I am willing and able to commit to the Growth Committee and the Shimmer Community Treasury if required.

10.) Are you willing to sign a service provider contract, including an NDA with the Tangle Ecosystem Association, and respect the Non-Disclosure Agreement if selected as a member of the Growth Committee? Breaking the Non-Disclosure Agreement may bring consequences financially and or legally.

Yes - I am willing to sign a service provider contract and Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). I absolutely will respect all binding effects within such agreement contracts.

11.) Provide any web links or supporting documentation you would like the community to see when assessing you for the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Reviewer position.

Finanzgoblin:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX4FTqjrXSmqoQh5ScgGCLA

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-mediavilla-689370161/

12.) What is your long-term vision of the Shimmer Community Treasury? How do you see the Community Treasury affecting the Shimmer & IOTA ecosystem, and what does the Shimmer & IOTA Ecosystem look to you in three years?

My main vision of the Shimmer Community Treasury is, that the capital inside the treasury is actively and most importantly productively deployed and spent.

I think that the main way forward for the greater Shimmer & IOTA ecosystem is to catch up to its competitors and establish a flourishing ecosystem behind it. This should be done by both integrating established Web 3 protocols into Shimmer and/or IOTA as well as assisting startups that might reveal themselves as unicorns.

Three years down the line, Shimmer and IOTA should be a Tier 1 ecosystem with many Web 3 protocols also being deployed on it. There are a myriad of ways on how the Shimmer Community Treasury can accrue value, being it either native Shimmer/IOTA projects, that are funneling some part of the revenue towards the treasury or even actively engaging with DeFi protocols and extracting value out of them and funneling those values towards the treasury.

Shimmer and IOTA should be easy to engage with, and easy to integrate with. My idea of full Web 3 adoption is the “One-Click GmbH/LLC”, if you are not able to use your digital identity, to create a legal business entity by going on a website and just filling out a form and pressing a “create LLC”-button, we are not in Web 3 yet. And with IOTA looking to also onboard eIDAS-compliant identities and verification mechanisms, we might just be able to pull this one off. Many business (and maybe even DAOs?) have a strong business need for ways to sign and verify things, that are also legally binding, which the eIDAS-regulation solves.

Lets pull this one off together.

Do you support my application as Grant Reviewer?
  • Yes

0 voters

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I have one question:
To make it easier for the community to understand what potential conflicts of interest a reviewer may have, and as not everyone may be familiar with the platform you have stated here, could you shortly describe what Multi DAO / Multichain is and in which sector it operates or plans to operate in the future?

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Hey Phylo,

there is no direct competition between Shimmer and Multichain. Multichain serves as a cross-chain communication and inter-blockchain messaging and bridging protocol. The idea behind Multichain is seamless cross-chain (and cross-tangle) interoperability. MultiDAO serves as a subsidiary DAO to Multichain and operates guilds, that are structured into research, marketing, development and business development. Since MultiDAO will also operate an incubation programme, and I might be eligible for voting on it in the future, there might be an overlap when and if the same protocol / startup applys for both the grants / asks for incubation.

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Thank you for the answer.

I wanted to ask those questions to clarify things, so the community understands how the procedure would work (doing this by all applicants that state conflict of interest).
In your case, the Committee’s rules recommend that you are not involved in direct decisions around grant applications that Multichain brings up to the Committee. Also, if a competitor of Multichain (i.e., another Bridge would like to deploy on Shimmer and asked for a grant) would bring an application forward to the Committee, you would not be part of the team that makes this grant decision.

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I asked our Grant reviewer candidates if they would agree to take part in this challenge on 19 November with this message sent out to everyone:

Hey, I want to challenge all potential Committee members with a little task.

I want to present you with a grant application and give you one week to come up with an opinion about this application based on the information provided to you. Please put anything that comes to your mind in your response to this message, and if possible, come up with an initial opinion if you would support funding this Proposal.

You may want to use the evaluation matrix developed for the Treasury committee: Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee - Version 2

The Proposal is a copy of an original proposal submitted to another Ecosystem Grant program.

I have chosen two types of applications, one that is a bit more developer oriented for the reviewers with experience in software projects and one that is more community/event focussed for the others.

Every Proposal is presented in 3 different versions. I have changed some parameters in every version, so your competitors may be presented with the same Proposal with some small but important changes to the original version.

I hope you agree to this little challenge. It may be interesting for the community to see how different candidates approach this task and to which conclusions they come regarding the grant proposal.

I will DM every candidate with the same text you got here and send them their challenge privately. I hope we can keep this private until the challenge is finished in one week.

Next Sunday, at 11 am CET, I will post the information about the challenge in reply to your application post and will include the response you sent me via DM in this post.

This will, in my opinion, be the fairest process to give everyone the same conditions without revealing a challenge that a competitor has to solve or making answers public that others could consider in their own approach to the problem. So everything will stay with me, and I am the only one who knows who gets which challenge and who replies what until the reveal.

I try to make sure that applicants who are part of the same project do not get the same grant challenge, so they cannot support each other.

Please reply within 24 hours if you agree to this challenge, and I will send you the Proposal.

Thanks again for offering your skills to the community. I hope you find this a fair approach to give the community some better insights.

This is the publication of @Finanzgoblin ‘s participation in the Grant reviewers’ Test challenge. More details about the challenge can be found in this post

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Grant Review:

EasyA x Shimmer - Hackathon Proposal

24.11.2022

─

Finanzgoblin

  1. Overview

  2. Shimmer Scoring System - Verdict

  3. Relevance

  4. Impact

  5. Economic Feasibility

  6. Economic Viability

  7. Economic Efficiency

  8. Competence of the Team

  9. Licensing

  10. Further funding

  11. Conflict of interest

1. Overview

EasyA wants to organize a hackathon for the Shimmer ecosystem. EasyA is a UK-based company that has organized Web 3 Hackathons in the past, most notably for Polygon and Polkadot and Tezos. EasyA has requested an allocation of $135,000 US-Dollars for the organization and execution of the hackathon. EasyA has hosted previous hackathons in London.

Their social media presence can be found here: (LinkedIn), (YouTube) and (Twitter). Their web presence can be found here.

2. Shimmer Scoring System - Verdict:

Scoring Qualities Score (out of 4) Comment
Relevance to the Shimmer/IOTA Ecosystem Not applicable Their business model relies on hosting hackathons for different ecosystems, IOTA/Shimmer is one of those ecosystems. We are basically just their clients and this is their project offer. This is flagged as not applicable (n/a)
Plan and Funding Model 2 The team has defined deliverables in their proposal. Compared to other hackathons, the price tag is very high. (See: Cost Analysis)
Execution Not applicable They have hosted hackathons for Polygon and Polkadot and will host one for Tezos on 26-27th November 2022. So they have a proof of record. Since it is not relevant to the Shimmer Ecosystem directly, it is evaluated as not applicable.

(See: here and here)|
|Verifiability and Quality of the Team|3|The team has experience in hosting real-life hackathons and is reasonably verifiable.|
|Overall Quality & Originality of the Idea|Not applicable|They host web 3 hackathons and thereby push adoption. The project alone however, has little impact on the Web 3 Ecosystem as a whole.|

Verdict:

5/8 points.

We don’t recommend funding the hackathon proposal in this current state, because alternatives like virtual hackathons offer a higher cost efficiency. Furthermore, quoted rates are very high compared to quotations from competitors that can be found on the open market.

The impact of funding a real life hackathon of this magnitude seems to be excessive at this stage. A two day hackathon for $135,000 will almost certainly not yield the desired results of a long term positive impact on the Shimmer and IOTA ecosystem. As stated in the cost analysis, there are many options that offer a higher expected return on investment.

Cost Analysis:

Shimmer Scoring System:

3. Relevance

On-boarding developers is relevant to the greater Shimmer- and IOTA-ecosystem.

4. Impact

The impact of funding this proposal will be small, because of the geographic restriction of real life events and time limitation. It will be limited to the UK and 200 people. A two day hackathon will not yield the desired results of a long term impact on the Shimmer ecosystem.

5. Economic Feasibility

The economic feasibility can only be measured in light of an effective treasury management. Since the size of the treasury is currently unknown, a feasibility analysis is difficult to conduct. Paying $135,000 for a one-off event, may be feasible.

6. Economic Viability

The economic viability can only be measured in light of an effective treasury management. Since the size of the treasury is currently unknown, a viability analysis is difficult to conduct. Paying $135,000 for a one-off event, might be viable, if it were less than 0,2% - 0,5% of the total treasury value. So a treasury size of around $27M USD would be needed for funding this proposal.

Guesstimating from the expected treasury size, I don’t think it is economically viable.

7. Economic Efficiency

As stated in the cost analysis, there are many options that offer a higher expected return on investment. The economic efficiency is quite low. A more efficient method would be to use a platform like Taikai Network, which specializes in hosting virtual hackathons and creating a position, which organizes and prepares those hackathons and also acts as a mentor during those virtual hackathons. With $135,000 dollars, we could pay for a part time position (around $50,000 per year) and use $85,000 for multiple prize pools.

8. Competence of the Team

The team has experience hosting multiple hackathons for different blockchain and DeFi ecosystems. We assume that they are competent in that regard.

9. Licensing

Not applicable.

10. Further Funding

It does not seem to have received funding from the Tangle Ecosystem Association.

11. Conflict of interest

There does not seem to be a conflict of interest.

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