Proposal for Grape to sponsor an Instagrant for SuperTeam members
Summary
The SuperteamDAO is a service DAO (focused on the Solana ecosystem) that aims to onboard people in ascending markets to crypto by giving them opportunities to work & earn.
Grape is a token gated community building tools for communities in Solana. Driving adoption of the grape token to skilled members will be valuable for grape.
By offering an instagrant to superteam members, it helps both communities achieve their goals
Superteam members get funded to build stuff within the Solana ecosystem
Grape drives adoption of its token to members demonstrating strong proof of work & gets a pool of projects for the incubator and talent for building stuff.
What is an Instagrant
A pool of funds that people can pitch any idea & apply for.
The grant is either approved or rejected within 48 hours.
Once approved, funds are transferred to the recipient and they build.
Here is an example of the Solrazr <> Superteam instagrant - Instagrants
How will this help Grape?
In two broad ways:
Attract high quality talent: Superteam is positioned as a service DAO, as a result folks who want to work in web3 end up sticking around. This will be an amazing top of the funnel of skilled and highly motivated developers, designers, writers, memers, ops & marketing folks will be coming into the ecosystem through these grants.
On-demand growth team for Grape ideas & experiments: There are so many cool ideas to build - in the recent DAO call we discussed dynamic engagement based NFTs , creator coins etc - this instagrant pool can be used by grape to sponsor such experimental work items allowing the core team to focus on planned items. (Bounty Menu)
Here is a product (built within 2 weeks) from the first ever instagrant (by a 15 year old developer) - https://wagmi.bio/
How will the process work?
We make a public announcement and setup a landing page (like the Solrazr one)
Anyone can apply for an instagrant, they need to specify:
What they will build,
What staffing will be needed
by when they can build it
Prior proof of work (not necessarily web3 specific)
Amount of money they are requesting for and how they plan to use it
Two options here:
Upto 5k USD, superteam can approve directly and keep the grape community informed. Anything larger than that becomes a DAO proposal. I prefer this one because it gives us speed.
OR, Superteam will apply a first level filter and then submit all applications as a proposal to the grape DAO. DAO members have 48 hours to comment and vote on the proposal, after which the grant is either passed or rejected. The time period can be extended as the grant size gets larger.
Additionally, any Grape DAO member can propose a bounty along with an amount which will be spent from the instagrant budget (Bounty Menu)
How do we know people will follow through & build / do the work
There is no perfect way to ensure this and people are under no obligation to complete the work they said they would. We mitigate this in the following ways
Start small - for individuals who’ve never worked in the DAO we limit the grant size
For larger grants, payment can be scheduled and sent out as milestones are met. Members who have built a reputation by completing work within the community are likely to get larger grants.
We create a discord channel within Superteam for the project where the applicant can share regular updates and ask for help. A few Grape members can be selected to join these channels too
We can also invite applicants to the grape discord and to the weekly DAO call to share progress. This will be completely optional and up to them.
Look at prior proof of work and scope of grant to assess feasibility
Ultimately, this is a bet we’re taking on the individual - it is possible they don’t come through. We’ll need to calibrate along the way.
Proposed Budget
Total commitment : 10m GRAPE (~1mn USD @ current market price , 0.1% of total supply)
We allow for people to apply for a grant of $1 - $10k (open to feedback on the size)
No fixed time period for allocating, comes down to quality and volume of applications.
Future grants can be evaluated based on performance.
Financial Ops
Funds remain in the grape treasury until a grant is passed.
Once passed, funds are transferred directly to the recipient. Superteam does not take any fees or commission.
In the future, if this scales - a subDAO can be set up within grape to run operations and can have its own budget for members who do the work.
Open Questions
Should we exclude grape members who have a certain class already? they can just apply to grape directly - this can be focused on getting new members.
Should we allow for a small portion of the grant to be in USDC? The reason for this is that the primary applicant might need to hire someone (e.g. i’m a developer and need to hire a designer) that is easier done in USDC. Otherwise the member will need to sell Grape to make payments OR convince the recipient to accept payment in GRAPE (helps us but puts more work on the applicant that we could avoid). But I understand this puts pressure on the treasury. Open to suggestions.
If this passed, what is an idea you would like to pitch for ? It will be valuable for us to bootstrap the first set of ideas and give people a direction of what a successful instagrant looks like.
Would love to get feedback from the community. Based on this, I’ll make updates and open it up for a vote after 1 week.
I am not sure if Grape really needs the „help“ of the SuperTeamDAO because we already have highly skilled people in our community and they also get emissions for their work. So maybe just focus on spreading the word about Grape and attract more people to join us directly.
Could we find people to work on the NFT idea I mentioned a couple weeks ago in the dao channel? I assume Grape doesn’t have the capacity to work on something like that right now or anytime soon. But I also don’t know SuperTeamDAO well enough to know if they would have the skills to take on a large-scale project like that.
absolutely! in-fact - these are exactly the kind of projects superteam can contribute towards.
to set expectations - the way we would do this is
float a grant worth, say, 10k USD (in GRAPE) & describer clearly the output we expect
for this idea we have a good sense of the team needed - designer, developer etc , people can form groups and apply with proof of work and maybe a note on how they will implement this (anything that gives us confidence)
we pick an application and give them the grant (upfront, partial, milestone based etc )
there is no guarantee that it’ll get picked up. but the synergy is strong imo and long term i’m expecting both the talent pool & the work to grow
there’s always more to do. this enables the core team to focus on the grape roadmap and opens up an on-demand team for executing on moonshots/experiments.
also worth noting that a lot of these folks can’t / won’t spend 0.5-2k USD to get a membership. they are entering the superteam through proof of work, this can open up a grape grant/scholarship for them - they probably end up becoming contributing members of the grape community too. win-win
This is an amazing proposal and I want to make sure we give it adequate attention, especially since it could be a solution towards building ideas the community has but is unable to action on today (ie @Durden Grape NFT idea)
Would you be available on Sunday or a different day next week to have a public discussion about it? Other SuperTeamDAO members are more than welcome to join so we can really give this the appropriate effort it deserves!
so, there is no legal contract or “equity” grape or anyone will get. in that sense it is non-profit. there is a social contract & reputation at stake.
The benefits are -
community equity (more skilled folks join & learn about grape) ,
the work that is done ,
project alpha (grape could incubate/invest in projects it likes)
does this answer your question? or did you mean something else?
Had some ideas here. Could we have a certain allocation (<10%) for our Gorillas to be able to invest in? Instead of GRAPE grant per se, it could be an opportunity for members to invest. Would move away from grants model but this would allow GRAPE community to support significantly more projects without any risk to treasury. Just thinking out loud.
love the idea, i don’t think we need reserve allocation per say. there are 2 ways to do this
keep an eye out for projects you see getting grants, if you find great fit - reach out and partner/invest
buy moaaar grape to benefit from the upside
and, if there is a compelling instagrant application that the treasury can’t fund (fully or in part) , it is a great idea to reach out to members (gorillas first) to see if folks are willing to sponsor. that can happen on a case by case basis. i’ll update the main proposal to reflect this.
Hi @saditya, I like challenging ideas, especially since your goals seem to be in line with what we need.
I gave it some thought and have several questions that came up. Don’t take this the wrong way, please, I’m just cautious by nature
My first question would be why now? Wouldn’t this spread our resources that we could invest elsewhere? I don’t necessarily mean funding/emissions, I mean time and effort from members.
I like the optimistic view of yours, I worry though, that by doing this we’d also attract a lot of people who will try to exploit this. A free grant, no verifiable proof of prior work, and no obligation to complete what someone pitched us? I can’t be the only one that had this thought.
I can’t really see, why a grant is necessary to do this. Why not just issue a tender for a specific project and actively ask in our community? Just because we give someone a grant for their project, doesn’t mean they’ll help us with ours.
Why not, as @Continental mentioned, source from our own community and use the funds to actively recruit developers?
Why so much? Why not start with one project and see how it goes?
Right now, I’m not sure why we’d need a special instagrant program to achieve your goals. Maybe you can elaborate a bit more on this or address it in the call. I’m curious what you think
Thanks for taking the time to share these questions.
My first question would be why now? Wouldn’t this spread our resources that we could invest elsewhere? I don’t necessarily mean funding/emissions, I mean time and effort from members.
I think this achieves the opposite - it frees up time and focus for grape members to continue working on core bets while allowing for experiments/moonshots to be executed via these instagrants/bounties?
I like the optimistic view of yours, I worry though, that by doing this we’d also attract a lot of people who will try to exploit this. A free grant, no verifiable proof of prior work, and no obligation to complete what someone pitched us? I can’t be the only one that had this thought.
Yes this is a real risk, I’ve outlined a few ways we can manage it in the proposal, would love more suggestions. More importantly - by keeping grants small (5-10k USD), it allows us to catch these quickly and scale up sustainably.
I can’t really see, why a grant is necessary to do this. Why not just issue a tender for a specific project and actively ask in our community? Just because we give someone a grant for their project, doesn’t mean they’ll help us with ours. Why not, as @Continental mentioned, source from our own community and use the funds to actively recruit developers?
I think having a grant like this significantly reduces barrier to entry for both grape and superteam members. As a grape member, i’m encouraged to think about more ideas with the knowledge that i can float a grant/bounty from a pre-allocated budget. As a superteam member i have the grape community top of mind when i’m looking for sponsors/collaborators. Ofcourse both of these things can happen without an instagrant but I think it just makes the process much better & we’re more likely to see outcomes (more projects being shipped)
Why so much? Why not start with one project and see how it goes?
in practice, this is how grants will work. there is no fixed time period over which the amount is to be spent. comes down to quality and volume of proposals + their output. i think the proposed structure is better than a project by project level for the reasons i’d shared above. I think your suggestion of building confidence through a pilot project is great, it’ll help build confidence.
