Shimmer Community Grant Committee

Overall the main bulk of the proposal is sound, although there are a few points that I suggest be addressed. My vote would be determined by the way in which these concerns are handled.


4.2 – Guiding Principles for Funding Decisions:
6. All funded projects must be open source (under MIT or Apache 2.0 license). Projects in development must allow the grant committee to access any private repos for review and these projects will only receive 50% of the proposed budget until they fully open-sourced their code.

My objection to this term is the lack of support for applicant funding outside of the core technology development scope. If all funded projects are required to be open-source developments, then this removes the ability for applicants of for-profit projects that could hugely benefit the ecosystem, as well as possible for-profit events, marketing, auditing of dApps, outreach, incentive programs, etc.
Adding this clause was one of the challenges of the EDF. It presented a huge barrier for entry across a number of areas of funding and prevented the EDF supporting funding to for-profit entities and other highly beneficial ecosystem initiatives.

4.3 – Application and Approval Process:
No grants are given out as long as the Market cap of Shimmer is below 50 Million USD

I think we need to take a realistic stance on the current market climate and also the importance of early adoption and incentivised development of the network. There is a very realistic chance that the Shimmer price may settle around the 0.02-0.03 mark. By holding a limited release to the funding opportunities at its most important period, this could negate the positive impact such a funding system could provide. The more impact the early developments have, the more value the ecosystem will gain, and the more likely the token will increase in value.

4.4 – Application and Scoring Process:
Open source:
Will you publish the code of your projects under an open-source license (under MIT or Apache 2.0 license)?

Again, having the open-source clause as a requirement negates the need for this point in the application process. This should be an optional requirement as it is presented here in the application, but it should not be a required element within the application.

4.5 – The Legal Entity:
We propose to set up a Swiss GmbH subsidiary of the Tangle Ecosystem Association and either employ the committee members or contract them as individual service providers.

This puts the entire funds in the control of the Tangle Ecosystem Association, which would result in the 20% additional supply being in the control of a single entity and not within the control of the community. A separate entity should be created and board members rotated annually as is with the committee creation.

Note: both the paragraphs in the first two points contain typing errors until(l) and Mark(c)et, respectively.

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Hey, thank you for your suggestions,

  • Good point for us to clarify. Of course, the committee can fund for-profit projects. That is nowhere excluded just because the code is open source. The whole DLT/web3 space is for profit. Still, all code is open source and available.
    We have discussed this lengthy and think that community funds spend need to profit the whole community at large. So a project that wants to develop closed-source software is not something that relates to the values we think are important.
    A project can still develop in a private Repo, but to receive the full funding, that whole code needs to be open-sourced at one point.
    Otherwise, 50% of the funding will be held back. Also, the Reviewers need to have access to this private Repo. How will you evaluate milestones if you cant look at the code?
    Agree that it may be unclear, but open-source code only relates to software development. Not for Events, Marketing, or other activities besides software. We will clarify this point so that it is clear that it only relates to software development and does not exclude for-profit projects (we want projects to make profits!)
  • The agreement in the group was that with a very low market cap, it would not be feasible to give out grants (that would require a huge amount of treasury tokens) So this is the majority opinion of the governance group at this point (i personally are more on your side here, but it is the communities will to not throw to many tokens out of the window in times of very low market cap).
  • The legal entity can be set up so that it is obliged to follow governance decisions by the community in its actions and not orders of the TEA. Swiss law offers these options. Also, the Swiss GmbH would only receive a budget from the community treasury (15% of the 10% supply) that would be in the committee’s control. The funds will be held in a 3 of 5 MultiSig Wallet controlled by the elected community members that hold the committee seats. So there is no possibility for the TEA to control even this 15% budget.

Thanks for your points, will include those in the next version of this proposal.

I am still uncertain as to the value of restricting to purely open source developments, other ecosystem funds have huge success in supporting for-profit entities in their early stages and providing hugely advanced ecosystem value.

Again, I still think that this is putting a blocker on the entire structure of the funding. What if the market cap settles and never goes beyond 50mil, or is held under 50mil for 12 months? Essentially we have a whole years worth of zero funding, which would halt the ecosystem in its tracks and completely negate the point of the fund - a fund in minor use is still a fund in use.

But a Swiss GmbH as a subsidiary can also be closed at any time by its owning entity, and the funds will still be in the full control of the TEA. This puts the entire 20% in the full control of the TEA and their agenda, it is in no way a separate entity.

Hi, greetings from germany, it is a good project and I like and support that there will be an “iota” way to structure and process it. It is useful to compare, and partly copy the modell of already exisiing projects, nevertheless I think due to our limited base resources , we need to be even more carfeul and thoughtful to execute

In this regard I fully support the idea to immediately also work on options for attracting addtional influx! the number 1. point of my previous speaker I relate to.
I also support 2. and 3.
Besides I would like to point out that due to the limted resources and also to me the special “Soul” of the project the salary approach is much to high, especially in the begining, this are overproportional cost eating the funds , to my mind this should be reviewed and cut by half and then developed on evolution. The initial salary signal here is wrong and not in line with IOTA Ethics I perceive!!
Beside by reading i also thought that it might be useful to install a supervisor committee, which is a bit closer to the work of the commitee than the committeee is and kind of advises and help to guide and also protects the committee during there journey. i think about experineced business, maybe older people. That´s it for now. Finally let me express my appreciation for professional work done. it is always nice to be part of such a community.

Hey, as i said, i agree that it would make sense to also give out funds if we are below 50 million, but we follow that majority here and i think also that this will be a theoretical case, 50 million shall hold IMHO.

About the funds: The whole Community Treasury tokens (181.362.051 SMR) are not meant to be in control of the Swiss GmbH.
They are for the time being in control of the Swiss Association because we do not have yet smart contacts that could hold the seed under decentralized control.
Once this is available, the Swiss Association will transfer the funds to such a smart contract system that is only controlled by the Shimmer Token Holders via Governance votes.
The Committee members would receive 15 % of the 181.362.051 SMR from the community (so around 27 million SMR) and these Tokens will be in direct control of the committee members via their MultiSig Wallet. The Swiss GmbH is actually only a legal Wrapper to provide the needed security and legal clarity for the committee members so that they are not at risk of acting against regulations.

So once we have secure Smart Contracts available, the Tangle Ecosystem Association has no control over any community tokens anymore, only over its own tokens that it got distributed from the community decision (the 10%).

Again: Open Source does not mean NON-Profit! That’s a misunderstanding. All projects out there that are successful and generate huge profits are open source (Uniswap, AAve, 1 Inch, the whole DeFi space, etc) So there is no reason for keeping code closed source if you have a great product and a strong Team behind it. All such projects could be funded with this system. They just need to open-source their code once they are life, which is the most normal thing to do in Crypto.

The problem with a low salary is that you will also only attract low quality. Managing such a system and doing really effective professional work needs highly skilled individuals. We should aim for the best possible candidates, not for the cheapest ones. The decision to potentially quit your well-paid management job to move into this crazy crypto project should not be hindered by a below-average Salary.
The usual Salary for these positions in crypto projects is way higher.
The Lead of Aave grants earns 150 Dollars per hour, and every grant reviewer 100 Dollars per hour.
A normal Smart Contract Developer earns 200 Dollars per hour, and a very good and skilled one 250 - 500 Dollars per hour.

We need to be somewhere in the range of this if we want to be competitive in this space. Also, remember that this is “Brutto” and people have to pay taxes and socials from it etc…

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First of all let me clarify, when wondering about the role of the community I meant not in this topic, but more in the whole DAO thing. Since it is specified up till the salary of the people running it, but the actual role of the community if very vague. But apparently how to do it with voting is work in progress :slight_smile: .

In general regarding the text proposed here, especially since more still needs to be added, I would try to make it shorter. And I know that is hard when working with a group on it, since everyone has their own thing they want to include, and you rather don’t delete someone elses work. But this is going to be one very long document that people will need to vote about.

Now more as response on your post:

Regarding employees and salary negotiations note, there will only be one FTE. That will be the Program Lead working 40 hrs. We originally discussed having all the reviewers only work 5 hrs per week

The proposal here mentions 10 hours per week for the others, which brings it to a total of 40 hours for the reviewers, plus 40 hours for the program leader = 2 FTE :wink: . The salary itself is imo not that surprising for someone working fulltime who is somewhat experienced. It is a good salary, but you also need to take into account for a fulltime position that person has to quit his current job, and hope in a year he can find another job again.
And that would be my main comment on the salary: Not so much about the hourly rate, as if this is really a fulltime position. If I look at the description of his work:

One of them is the Program Lead and, besides reviewing funding requests, takes care of all administrative tasks and reporting and coordinates the committee members’ work.

  • The lead also promotes the program, identifies directions for funding, and has a thought leadership role in guaranteeing the program’s success.
    Roles can be adapted, and the number of members can be changed through governance votes if there is demand.
  • Further, an important part is ongoing coordination with the second ecosystem funding program run by the Tangle Ecosystem Association to ensure effective alignment in the goals and directions of the community grants program. This will be one of the Tasks for the Programs Lead

Is this really a fulltime job? And if I look at my own work I am sure every project manager can make it a fulltime job by planning enough meetings. But does it need to be one? Especially if IF can support most of the gmbh stuff.

If it can be a parttime job, you might decide to pay less (you don’t have to give up your current job), although that is imo not that important. You are also way more flexible. I want to stay away from predicing prices too much, still the current Shimmer price is higher than I expected, and if you look at Poldadot / Kusama, a Shimmer marketcap of €30M would be far from impossible. At that value the discussion above if you should still fund projects is not required, since you are using your yearly budget completely on salary payments. (Okay not completely, but a large part).

I would start slow, if it turns out you cannot go through all the requests and there is enough money anyway, change it in 6 months. But I wouldn’t directly hire someone for a year fulltime.

I think we should also note that if anyone from the community has a grievance or feels the committee is acting in bad faith, they can simply use the Governance Forum and submit a Phase I proposal to address this.

Then it should be a requirement the ones determining which proposals get forwarded and which not here, are not the same people as are in the DAO.

I think there may be some confusion…

  1. The “Governance Framework” is different and separate from the “Treasury Framework”. There could technically be a moderator that manages the Governance forum who is also supporting the Treasury Framework. Yet as stated before, in regards to the Governance Framework, there is no bias decision to delete a post. All posts are allowed in Phase I if they follow the guidelines.

As the community and voting, the community is voting on 1. to use this framework and 2. to vote and delegate the Committee to manage and run Tier’s 1-to-3. While they also manage the receiving of Tier 4 proposals but the actual voting and approval is brought to the community.

During group discussion over the past year and a half many of the community discussions were conducted about a Treasury in which the community votes on every little thing or completely 100% is hands off and has delegates with full control. Assessing other DAOs, looking at the pros and cons, the community have come to a middle compromise in which a sort of hybrid system of a community and committee managed Treasury together. I think this works well. As many other people who actively work with Treasuries have stated, that for “small” grants speed, is key. Yet ultimately IOTA and Shimmer is very community focused, To me personally, I really like and support always involving the community in these processes. The current structure I like is: 1) all big projects must be confirmed by the community, 2) the weekly meetings are open to the public and transparent, and 3) the governance framework is there if the community decides to later go in a different direction. I think its a good system that maintains efficiency but also maintains having 100% community oversight.

  1. As to the program lead Phylo has reviewed and analyzed so many Treasuries and DAOs over the past year and a half together with the DAO Pioneers weekly groups. With something like AAVE, within a couple months I believe they had to hire extra reviewers. Most DAOs have at least one fulltime manager which is pretty consistent. It was my mistake, the reviewers are allocated 10 hrs per week, but again, that is only if there are proposals to review. Also remember, for bigger projects that have milestones the Program Manager, and or a designated reviewer, will work as a project manager following the completion activities.

  2. I’m curious what the conflict of interest is for a reviewer and supporting the Governance forum at the same time? I guess, I personally don’t see any issue there. More so what I see as an issue is a conflict of interest when a reviewer has a connection to another project. Whether that be they hold tokens, actively are a founder, or simply being a member of the board; if a reviewer has any connection to other projects they need to divulge that and should not be able to review projects within that projects category. This I believe is already written in the framework.

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Thanks for the discussion.

Me personally my main hope for the Treasury is to be self-replenishing and ever lasting. I think any grant proposals that seek to repay or give equity in any ways would be given priority. Also, any community can propose to get a grant and put funds in a Defi protocol to get returns. I think it just becomes a question as to how much of the Treasury do we want to risk putting into a Defi protocol?

For instance, if the community decides to allocate 15% for the first year to the community, that is about $2.4 million USDT. Let’s say $350,000 USDT is the first years running cost. So now, there is $2.05 million left over. We need to assess, how many Tier 1 proposals do we want to fund, how many Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4? If we put $2 million into a single, or even a couple DEFI protocols for a 5% to 8% annual return, is it worth A) not using that $2 million to fund projects and B) is it worth taking the risk that the DEFI protocol can go bust? So how can we both vest the funds and support the ecosystem growth?

Personally, I think using a percentage of the annual allotted funds for vesting should be conducted. Then, as the Treasury Fund grows with the price of $SMR, more funding is vested each year. So we can do both. We can both support the ecosystem grow which in turns brings more network traffic and thus a higher $SMR price, “and”, vest funds annually which brings returns to the Treasury. So for an example, in year one, we can use 30% of the annual allotment for vesting. For instance, with the year one allotment of 15%, or $2.4 million USDT, minus the annual running costs; there is $2.05 million left over for grants. The 30% ($615,000 USDT) could be used for DEFI vesting which leaves 70% ($1,435,000 USDT) for other grants. Further, the $615,000 would be Tier 4 grants. It could be split amongst 3 DEFI platforms to diversify the risk. The key is, any community member can submit a proposal to use the funds for DEFI vesting and the community would vote on this.

I think what is key, is that the committee 1) is only in control of the yearly allotment and 2) the community can submit a proposal not just for a project, but also how to use the funds. The framework is built to support the communities directions as well as manage the smaller funding rounds.

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I’m curious what the conflict of interest is for a reviewer and supporting the Governance forum at the same time?

At multiple times when making a governance vote, the moderators need to give approval for it to continue. In theory of course this is only to wield out ‘bad’ votes, but there is always a grey area. And if a governance moderator has to give his go ahead for a vote to get rid of himself as Treasury employee, well that seems a bit like a conflict to me. At the very least you need the rule a moderator is not allowed to in any way interfere with anything related to him as employee of the grant committee. Other mods should handle that.

With something like AAVE, within a couple months I believe they had to hire extra reviewers.

Imo better to hire extra reviewers, then find out half your entire budget is going to someone you hired for a year. But well thats just me :stuck_out_tongue: .

Also remember, for bigger projects that have milestones the Program Manager, and or a designated reviewer, will work as a project manager following the completion activities.

How should I understand project manager? As in, I assume he is not actually going to manage the project, that should be done by the people applying for funds themselves, right? So it is more like making sure their deliverables are there for milestones.

  1. Again, moderators can not reject a phase I proposal for any reason. They can only reject a proposal if it doesn’t meet the guidelines. Which the guidelines are only to reject non-Shimmer ecosystem proposals, proposals that discriminate or are harmful, etc. A moderator can’t reject a governance proposal based on bias or judgement. Though it is a good point and I think we can have Phylo add that to the guiding principles. That if a moderator is also a Treasury reviewer, they can not approve/reject any governance proposals submitted that associate with grant proposals or governance framework decisions.

  2. Let’s not forget, the “only” employee that is committed on a weekly basis to incur 40 hrs of expense is the Project Manager. Every other person is essentially working as a contractor/consultant. The reviewers only incur an expense “IF” there are proposals that need reviewing. The co-lead only support the Project Manager to the extent he needs to. Of course this all is managed by the Project Manager. Again, they will have weekly meetings. If the community listens to a meeting and there was 2 proposals to review and somehow all five reviewers clocked 10 hrs of expense, this would be an issue.

To manage efficiency and proper process management I am working on an example of what that process looks like. I’m testing out a few tools and here is an “example”. This is an example of the process management not yet focusing on the content necessarily.

Here is a basic web form example which someone submitting can fill out and attach their proposal.

https://notionforms.io/forms/shimmer-community-treasury-proposal-tracker

This then populates this notion sheet. The Program Manager and leads can then review the proposal and submit accept/reject and also tic the “Reviewed” box.

So essentially, if there is a proposal the Program Manager can assign the proposal review task, or the reviewers can simply put their name. For proposals that are Tier 2 and 3 need two reviewers so the “reviewed” tic box wouldn’t be clicked until the second reviewer finishes.

So using these sheets not only allows us to make public dashboards and sheets for the community, but easily manages reviewers and what proposals they review, and essentially how many hours they incur. Again, the reviewers are only paid for the hours they are required… there is no “find out half your budget is going to someone you don’t need”. They are only paid when there is work to be completed.

  1. Let’s get technical here… lol. Let’s not call them a project manager but rather a grant manager. This will ultimately be directed by the program manager but it was discussed that they will simply support the project in any manner they can, report back to the program manager, and track any data info the program manager would want (would assume that would be budget, execution activities, schedule, etc.). What we want to mitigate is simply giving a project in the Tier 4 category which could be a couple hundred thousand dollars and never pay attention or keep track of the team and their deliverables.
3 Likes

I have been listening in to the governance meetings and this document reflects everyone’s hard work. There is a lot of blood sweat and tears here and I have to congratulate everyone who brought the proposal to fruition.

I think this will be successful as is, but, in the event of some detail that escaped everyone’s attention, the only addition I would consider is describing a change mechanism, which could be as simple as 1. proposal, 2. vote. So a one sentence addition. Plenty of great ideas can be shoved to the next 12 month iteration, this is only in consideration of some unforeseen hiccup that is absolutely necessary to address mid-execution.

Regardless, I think this is a stellar document, and a great foundation for future growth and success. Well done! :beers:

7 Likes

Thank you for the proposal. I can see the good will behind it and I think it is good in many aspects. Nevertheless, I think there is some room for improvement.

General

First of all, I would like to clarify a fundamental question: Are the 10% funds from the “shimmer community treasury DAO” or from the “Ecosystem Development Fund managed by the IOTA Foundation”? For me the proposed way for a DAO would be unsuitable because it concentrates the power on 5 anonymous persons and in the concrete funding request of Tier 1 it even includes only one person. If the funds come from the EDF, I find the proposed committee to be largely appropriate to distribute the funds from.

Feedback

My main criticism of the proposal is the lack of transparency in award decisions and an (in my eyes) underestimation of the amount of work involved. The five members who make the award decisions should go through a full KYC to show their professional experience in the field of project evaluation and in particular crypto projects. It does not have to be obvious which member has evaluated which project, but the members should all be known. The fear that negatively evaluated projects will make threats or even execute these threats is not understandable since there is no legal claim to the funds and a transparent decision should be comprehensible for all. In addition, the applicants also go through a KYC procedure and can thus be reported to the police. It is therefore also absolutely necessary that full KYC of the project manager is applied already from Tier 1. These persons would like to receive 5000$ and must therefore also adhere to certain rules and should not be allowed to hide.

In my opinion, it is not enough to discuss the proposals publicly from tier 2 onwards. You have developed a scoring category (which I think is very good) and according to this template, a review protocol should be completed for each project from Tier 1. This review protocol is a publicly viewable document that documents the award decision and the reasons for rejection or funding. This review protocol must have the same structure for each project. I would suggest using a template here. This creates transparency for the awarding process. At a certain tier level where you want to involve the community, the review protocol is no longer an award decision but a recommendation based on which the community can form an opinion and then vote.

Furthermore, you propose that at Tier 1 (<$5,000) only one person will work on the decision. That is simply insufficient! At least the 4 eyes principle should always be followed and at least two people independently of each other should come to the same decision regarding a project. If I understood correctly, you want to hire the 4 reviewers for only 10 hours a week. How many project proposals do you expect per month? With more than 5 applications per month, this is simply too few in my eyes. Furthermore, it seems to me that the 5 people (lead + 4 reviewers) have already been selected. As already mentioned in the beginning, there has to be transparency about who these people are. If a GmbH is founded anyway (which I support), it might make sense to start a public call for applications to find suitable reviewers. This would create more transparency and also prevent that the 5 members are already too long involved in setting up the community fund and are therefore biased. I don’t want to offend anyone, but I think the pay is very low on top of that. Good professional reviewers in the classic project evaluation (outside the crypto world) charge around 250€ per hour. But I admit that I have no idea about the salary structures in the crypto world and so the payment of 50 USD might be ok. The pay should be definitely set at a level to attract people with experience.

Additional detailed Suggestions

In the next section I would like to give suggestions that are not obvious to me from the proposal but you may already include anyway:

  • In addition to the categories of funding and rejection, there should be a third category that identifies projects that are worthy of funding but have deficiencies that can be addressed. This would give projects after an initial rejection the chance to revise their application and still be accepted.
  • Milestones must be defined in the project application from Tier 1 onwards, as this is the basis for the disbursement of funding. When the contract is signed, a maximum of 50% of the funding amount may be paid out. The remaining funds are only paid after the milestones have been reached.
  • It is to be considered whether you take over 100% of the project costs or only 70% or 80%. This applies especially to the higher tier levels from 50,000$. Projects of this size should also be able to finance themselves through other channels. This means that 70% will be covered by the community fund and 30% must be raised through other partnerships, nft/token sales or other means.
  • Interim and annual reports must be defined in grant agreements with projects to see milestone completion and accurate cost breakdown. Based on this, the disbursement of funds takes place.
  • The community grant committee must also be subject to reporting requirements. For example, annual public reports must be prepared that provide an overview of the number of funds distributed, the number of rejected and funded projects. The report should also include a chapter with improvement potentials and problems that occurred during the last year.

Summary

Although I see the proposal as a good start, I think there is a lot of catching up to do in terms of transparency and reporting requirements. In its current form, too much power is given to a small group of 5 anonymous people who can make non-transparent funding decisions. This makes you vulnerable to attacks from critics who accuse you of nepotism in funding decisions.

The IOTA Foundation has always been very proud of its collaborations with Bosch or Jaguar in the past. Increasing transparency, implementing factual funding guidelines and reporting requirements opens the way for these well-known companies from other industries to apply for projects. This is often prevented because of the lack of transparency in other crypto projects, and companies are certainly reluctant to enter into collaborations as a result. Iota/Shimmer could fill this gap with the Shimmer Community fund and thus attract classic companies. However, this requires strict reporting requirements and transparency, as these companies often have to comply with strict legal regulations in their countries.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback.

2 Likes

Hey Nico, thanks a lot for your suggestions. They will help us to improve, but let me clarify a few things:

  1. The funds for this committee come from the 10% Community Funds, not from the IF (TEA) allocation
  2. All grant reviewers will complete the KYC process, signing legally binding contracts, NDA, and conflict of interest policy statements. Maybe you have not seen it, but this is part of the proposal here Shimmer Community Grant Committee
  3. Tier 1 is one reviewer, but the program lead will always look over every review to have a second pair of eyes on it, but i agree we should highlight this point in the proposal.
  4. We aim to publish a proposal for the selection process of the committee members. There has not been any preselection, and we want it to be an open selection process by the community. We have a working document here: Grant committee selection process - Google Docs It would be great to receive some suggestions there
    All proposals and proposal decisions will be made public, @Deep_Sea has already developed a notion page for this Shimmer Community Treasury (Proposal Submitter)) · NotionForms
  5. We will see how much it gets in the scope of work. Comparing it to other projects, we see the following: Aave grants have approved around 300 proposals in 18 months with seven grant reviewers (including the lead), so i suppose they had over 500 applications to process. Polygon DAO approves monthly over 100 applications, though I don’t know exactly how many reviewers they have. From our point of view, following the selection process, we will have several runner-ups outside the four selected reviewers that we hope to have "on call if it gets busy.
  6. Regarding The salary I agree with you, but you see that a part of the community sees it differently, as we need to get approval for this through a vote and find a middle ground. As I wrote in previous comments, the very successful AAve grants program pays 150 USD per hour for the lead and 100 USD for the grant reviewer. Going into this region would be desirable, but we don’t know if this would be accepted by the community.

Regarding your suggestions:

  • Good point, the plan is always to give rejected projects proper reasoning and ways to improve the proposal
  • Reports are planned a minimum every six months, but a general report should likely be issued monthly. This would fall into the SOW of the Projects Lead. We will define this in more detail, but as stated above, all operations and all committee spending will be publicly visible and tracked in a notion or airtable.

Thanks for the suggestions and comments. We will take that into account in the second version of this proposal.

You are also welcome to join our public meetings in the IOTA Discord. Every Tuesday at 4pm and Thursday at 5pm CEST in the general voice channel

2 Likes

The question is how much overhead you accept. I agree with your point having two people independently look at it, is always preferable. However if we are talking about a $1000 grant being requested, and two people look at it for each lets say 2 hours, at the $250/hour you mention, you have 100% direct overhead! And that is excluding all the other stuff which is required to run this. Since a fulltime leader is requested, that person should be spending at least 50% of his time on other stuff than reviewing (otherwise you might as well have someone do that also more flexible and get a 5th reviewer). And if you start adding up those numbers, well lets keep it on a very large overhead.

And that is what it comes down to for a significant part: You don’t want money to be wasted, but it doesn’t make sense to spend more on extra overhead, than it saves you. (Well exception for scammers, making sure they don’t get anything would be important imo).
Also no idea which project reviewers get €250 an hour, but definitely not those working to distribute government grants.

My last question would also be if you actually get better quality if you pay more. If someone who is perfect for the job and would be popular in the community decides to skip on it because the pay, then yes. But if the same guy is anyway hired, then you just pay the same guy more. And lets face it, this is gonna be mainly a popularity contest.

So in the end for me it is which overhead you accept. Imo I would try to keep it below 10% on direct overhead, then you end up probably easily at ~15% total overhead. Which means with rates proposed here, the total time spend from start to finish on a tier 1 project is half a day, tier 2 with two people half a week, tier 3 with all people half a week, and tier 4, well, just better split it in two projects, easier for everyone involved tbh :stuck_out_tongue: .
And sure I understand in practice with a tier 3 project not everyone will be involved from start to finish, some will drive most of it, others will just scan through it to approve it or not. But that is all inclusive overhead, so not just deciding if it should be approved or not, but also do everything around for example intermediate deliveries.

If salaries go 4x, all those numbers above need to be divided by 4. Or you need to accept a large part of the shimmer funds go to the shimmer committee, and not to the grants they are handing out.

Let’s look at the “max” employee cost for a single year.

Program Lead: $70/hr for 40 hrs a week = $2,800 per week. For 52 weeks = $145,600 USDT
Reviewer 1 (co-lead): $50/hr for 10 hrs a week = $500 per week. For 52 weeks = $26,000 USDT
Reviewer 2: $50/hr for 10 hrs a week = $500 per week. For 52 weeks = $26,000 USDT
Reviewer 3: $50/hr for 10 hrs a week = $500 per week. For 52 weeks = $26,000 USDT
Reviewer 4: $50/hr for 10 hrs a week = $500 per week. For 52 weeks = $26,000 USDT

So the total maximum running costs for the year, specifically for the base employees, would be: $249,600. If we were to set a relative cap on all other running costs (ie: legal retainers, bookkeeping, accounting, entity creation and maintenance, document submittal, KYC, web hosting, web applications, and miscellaneous) to let’s say, $100,000 or less annually; then the max yearly running costs would be around $350,000 USDT. Add an 8% overage given it is the first year running and that gives you a total of $378,000 USDT.

However, as it was stated earlier, the Program and co-lead will be the only ones that are filling their hours fully on a weekly basis. After a few months the co-lead may not even being filling those weekly hours. The other three reviewers, they would only be filling those hours if there are proposals for them to review. So right there you have $78,000, or 31% of the employee costs, that will be variable and most likely be a lower than the analyzed maximum yearly cost.

I believe it is also stated, that if the years funding is below $500,000 USDT in total, then the Treasury would stop and be put on hold. There would be no point to run a Treasury at a loss and be able to offer no grant funds to the community.

I agree with what you regarding a cost per proposal analysis to an extent. Yes, a $75,000 Tier 3 proposal that has 8 hours of cost put into by two reviewers, at a cost of $400 sounds legitimate. Yet compare that to an $800 grant Tier 1 grant in which two reviewers who spend 4 hrs together for a total cost of $200. Yes, in a very focused financial input/output observation the higher Tiers are better, but it doesn’t change the fact that Tier 1 quick funding is known, and found, to support ecosystems. Above that, the extra cost will always minimize a bit the scams that get through and thus loss of funds. So having Tier 1’s KYC and require 2 reviewers still allows for positive funding per proposal, but also mitigates risk of scams and nefarious activity by a single reviewer.

I don’t think right now we need to write into the framework exactly how many hours each Tier should be given. Though I do think the Program Lead will have to analyze and figure this out. Again, all of this is tracked and easily visible by the committee and particularly the program lead through automated forms. I was able to create a randomizer that randomly assigns reviewers to Tiers 1-to-3 grants. The program lead will easily be able to see how long each person is taking. Of course, if it is observable that a particular reviewer is taking extra time above and beyond the average of other reviewers, the program lead will have to have discuss this with that reviewer. The lead isn’t there strictly to manage the program, but also lead and manage the committee team as well.

Just to reiterate, I’m not sure where you get the $250 per hour per reviewer. In your example, if the Tier 1 grant is for $1,000 and two reviewers spend two hours each, then the cost of review would be $200 total. Also note, the Program Lead does not review projects. They aren’t even included in the randomizer. Maybe in an edge case, if all reviewers were busy, or maxed on hours, potentially, they would fill in for a single proposal or two. The point is though, the Program Leads role and responsibility is to manages and lead the Treasury, not spend time reviewing.

Personally I don’t like using a percentage of yearly funds for Running costs as a parameter. I believe this would lead to a situation where a program lead may be “looking” to spend funds simply because the funds are there to be spent. Rather, yearly running costs should be set for the year and adjusted if needed. Yes, in the first year there are a lot of unknowns, but once that first year is completed the Program Lead and committee should have a good idea as to how much the running costs are and will be the following year. Then, each year I personally believe the community should vote on for how much the committee gets to issue for grants for the year, and, how much is used for running costs. Now if the $SMR price, the price of shimmer sky rockets mid-year and tons of proposals come in all of a sudden; I think the committee should submit a proposal through the Governance Framework and get community approval to hire more reviewers or simply use a larger portion of funds for the increased running costs. The point is though I personally think, that they should go to the community for this approval.

As to salaries going 4x, again, the committee can’t simply make these decisions. That is why we are voting on this framework. If the framework is to change, the change needs to be completed through the governance framework and approved by the community. The committee is delegated and approved by the community to run the Treasury within a given set of structures. The committee in no way given free reign to go wild and use the allocated funds at will. As well, in the off chance a committee member, or the committee as a whole, acts nefariously or recklessly; the community would simply vote within the Governance Framework to halt the committee and end any Treasury funding until further community agreement.

As to whether we pay or not pay a salary to committee members, the community agrees that these positions need to be compensated for their time. Everyone during our governance meetings have come to this conclusion. It seems to be at present a minority belief that these positions should be offered with no compensation if there are community members out there. Saying that, a community member can easily donate back their compensation to the Treasury if they so want to. Saying all that, that doesn’t mean that strictly because this is a compensated position that 100% of the applicants will be fully qualified; no one has ever said that. We simply believe that these positions require committed time and thus should be compensated. As well, compensation to some extent opens the pool of applicants to individuals that only have the time available if they are indeed compensated and able to cover their personal expenses. Undoubtedly, regardless if the position is compensated or not, maybe more so with compensation; there will be applicants that are unqualified applying. I do agree that to some extent there will be some ecosystem popularity variable that supports one applicant over another. However, the only way to avoid such actions would be to have a centralized approval team, and even then, popularity would still play into the decision. The only method that allows the community to choose and delegate their committee members is to design a submittal system in which candidates submit, promote themselves, and then are voted on by the entire community as a whole. Personally I hold our community to a high standard. Yes, I believe a few people may vote simply based on a person’s popularity within the community; however, I believe the majority of the community will vote based on the applicants individuals qualifications they bring to the committee.

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I don’t think right now we need to write into the framework exactly how many hours each Tier should be given.

Agreed, it is just something to take into account when thinking about the number of people working there and rates. And of course they need to have enough time to properly do their work, but it is a trade of between risks the wrong projects get funded, and just direct cost you spend on the reviewers.

Just to reiterate, I’m not sure where you get the $250 per hour per reviewer.

That was in response to @Niko

Also note, the Program Lead does not review projects. They aren’t even included in the randomizer.

Huh? It seems somewhat excessive to me to have a >100% overhead in the overhead, the reviewing is (necessary) overhead for the grants, but if of the committee at most 50% is reviewing, and the rest is doing other stuff, well thats a lot of overhead imo. However additionally, this is not something I made up myself, it is literally the first task mentioned in the description:

As to whether we pay or not pay a salary to committee members, the community agrees that these positions need to be compensated for their time.

Just to be clear, I never questioned this. My only point has been that the overhead of the committee should stay reasonable. Not zero, but also not 50%.

I think we agree but through typed communication our points of view aren’t coming through exactly clear enough.

Ya, I agree that overhead should not get out of control. Again, I think the Program Lead should help review if needed, but that shouldn’t be their main objective. I’ll look into this with Phylo and if the community decided to propose that the program lead reviews projects then I’ll add that position to the randomizer. Though to me, I think a better set of checks and balances is the that the Program Lead is agnostic from reviewing, “but” he or she should oversee and approve “every” grant. He or she should double check, as well as, be a tie breaker if one reviewer votes to grant funding and the other decides against it. The program lead can be the mediator and decider in this instance. More so, these will be and should be discussed in weekly meetings with the whole group. Ultimately, the Program Lead should lead the group so as the group decides amongst themselves, but of course, again, he or she can be the tie breaker if need be. So on top of the other activities, the Program Lead will have to review and understand “every” proposal that comes in.

More so, if there is any nefarious activities the Program Lead is the first line of defense. If nefarious activities circumvent the program lead, or the program lead is the direct result of such actions, then the community catches these circumstances. To me, if the program lead has a large span of control and can appoint themselves and approve grants as well; well, that just seems a bit too much power for one person, to me personally at least. Again, I’ll double check with Phylo where the community group lies on this to make sure I’m on the right page of what the consensus is. I’ve been offshore for the past two and a half weeks and things move quick lately! lol.

As for overhead, I think it’s clear that as a committee, the community wants to find that balance between quality yet keep minimal costs. Given two reviewers per grant this seems reasonable. I feel we have reached that and simply need to see it in action as to how it works. We can spend months analyzing things but until we start receiving and funding grants we simply won’t know. Just because we get a ton of grants, I don’t think that means we have to review them in one week. I think what is more important is that the funding allocated for that year is used to grant projects throughout the whole year. That is, that funding doesn’t simply run out after two months, as well as, at the end of the year there isn’t 80% of funding that hasn’t gone out. Yet until we get going we just don’t really know. Again, I think making adjustments throughout the year will be necessary, but those adjustments should be put through the governance framework.

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Just to add on to Phylo’s comments.

You brought up a good point of having two sets of eyes on even Tier 1 proposals. This has been brought up more than once from others and we have certainly heard that suggestion. So we are putting this into the next revision. For now on, two reviewers will be assigned (randomly) to review all grant proposals (Tier 1 through 3). This adds a minimal extra amount of overhead but I think it really mitigates the possibility of any nefarious activity. As well, the program lead will oversee all grant reviewal proposals. So thanks for bringing that point up I think it’s a great idea!

I also agree with having monthly, quarterly, bi-annual, and very descriptive annual reports. And for annual reports, they not only include a review of the previous year but a projection and forecast plan for the coming year. Saying that, I’ve been working on some Data tables and and online tracking sheets that cover the basics for grant proposals. Right now, I’m simply focusing on how individuals submit grants, how we can randomize reviewers to be designated to review projects, and track all of that information. I can start looking into more financial data tracking sheets. Though I’m not an accountant and I think when the committee gets to that point a hired accountant will be much better at tracking and organizing such information. As you stated and I agree with, reviewers must go through KYC, but that sensitive information doesn’t necessarily need to be public. The same goes for grant proposals submitters legal name. This is something we will have to figure out, what data should be public, what data needs to be recorded but kept internally by the Swiss Entity so that in the case of nefarious activities it can be used if needed.

I have updated the online submittal form, which you can see here. I think the link Phylo sent before is now outdated.

Submittal Form: Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Submission Form · NotionForms

Community Public Page: Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

The community public page is where we all should decide what information should be public, and what doesn’t.

Here is a screen shot of a tracker the committee and program lead can use: This screen shot is just the first part of the page. Most of the information is populated directly from the proposal submittal form.

It includes the KYC legal name, their email, if it has been checked by the lead, if the team accepted or rejected it, the proposal attachments.

Other columns in the sheet are shown here:

These columns show if the proposal submitter agreed to KYC, what they requested, what they have been funded to date, and an important data point to the Program lead, does the “minimal” scores between the two reviewers allow for funding that Tier request. That data point is a formula that analyzes the reviewers score decisions which you will see below. Now, what if one reviewer scores to fund, and the other reviewer scores not to fund? I think it’s the Program Leads role to discuss with those reviewers, and the team as a whole, and make a decision to fund the grant or not. If they decide to fund, then the lead clicks “Team Approved”, and if not, he or she clicks “Team Rejected”. Yet the point is, the information is there, transparent to the entire committee (as they should all have access to this web page). The community may not see this information, but the entire committee has access and is there as a checks and balances against each other.

Next set of columns show here:

These next set of columns show the randomly appointed reviewers. It’s a formula. So when a grant proposal is submitted, for Tiers 1 to 3, the formula randomly appoints two reviewers. The reviewers can simply go to this page when an email alerts them (auto generated) when a proposal has been submitted. They then know they need to review this proposal. They would then enter their questionnaire and rate the proposal (will be seen on the next screen shot). The “Score” is a formula showing an aggregate of their score and whether the reviewer wants to “Acc/Rej”, showing whether they accepted or rejected the proposal. Now, the program lead can easily see a summary of both randomly selected reviewers, their scores, and whether they accepted or rejected the grant proposal. More so, the entire committee can see how everyone is scoring the projects, as well as, check those projects if they wanted to.

Next set of columns are shown here:

Here, everyone can see the reviewers answers to the categories for scoring.

I think this type of data sheet will 1) make things streamlined, semi-automated, and keep the committees and grant proposal information in one place, 2) this gives a real basic overview for the program lead to manage and lead the committee, and 3) everything is transparent for the program lead and the committee members. So, if anything nefarious starts occurring, like one reviewer always negatively scores certain types of projects because their might be a hidden secrete conflict of interest, it will become apparent very quickly due to the transparency of the process and the tracking sheet.

What I wonder is, how much of this information should be public to the entire community? Should the grading and identity of the reviewers be public? Personally, I don’t think so. Saying that, I think it is important for the community to understand this and take this into consideration when voting on the committee members. We need mature, talented, and qualified members and a program lead, and then allow them the freedom to manage the Treasury. Saying that, having a database sheet like this should be there in the case of an issue so that someone designated by the community, such as an IF member, can go and review the information; review the data, and then discuss and take actions on behalf of the community.

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I support this idea and I’m very excited about the selection process for potential committee members.

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