AIP-252: Funding Grant Proposals using Delegated Domain Allocation

[ruchil]

Proposal Name : Funding Grant Proposals using Delegated Domain Allocation

Proposal Category : Ecosystem Fund Allocation

Abstract

• We propose ApeCoin DAO fund a wide variety of teams aligned with ApeCoin’s roadmap with a budget of $1M spread across 2 quarters using Delegated Domain Capital Allocation Model. Questbook is leading Compound grants program through Delegated Domain Capital Allocation Model, a community-run grants program
• We additionally propose that this budget be managed by 4 individuals called Domain Allocators - chosen from the community and by the community. These domain allocators would manage grants for a domain. These domains are strategic areas of focus for which ApeCoin DAO wants to disburse grants
• The performance of each of these domain allocators will be publicly viewable and auditable using rich dashboards. At the end of the quarter, the ApeCoin community can vote to replace, continue domain allocators or increase budgets for each domain allocator.
• We (Questbook.xyz) will help facilitate setting up these domain allocators and provide the tooling to run the program in an efficient and transparent way. We have previously set up or currently setting up the grants process for Compound, Polygon, Solana, Celo, Aave, Perpetual, and IoTeX

Author Description

Ruchil was the program manager for Polygon facilitating the disbursal of ~ $1M in grants. He works with the Solana foundation and ecosystems within Solana on a daily basis to help them design their grants program and disburse grants to builders while maintaining a very low TAT. He has received a grant of $250K from the Solana foundation for the same. He works closely with Compound Grants Programs 2.0’s Program Manager.

He is well-versed with the demands and needs that contribute to the success of a grants program. He has spoken to more than 100 builders and teams over the last 6-8 months and understands what it takes to make a grant program successful – from both program manager and builder perspectives. He is also an employee of Questbook and will not personally receive any financial benefit from the revenue collected by Questbook through this proposal

Team Description

Questbook (Y Combinator-W21) is a decentralized grants orchestration tool used by some of the most reputed ecosystems such as Compound, Polygon, Aave, Celo, TON, Solana, IoTeX, Zebec, etc. Our team has a rich experience in building in Web 3.0 since 2016. Questbook’s founders are among the first 5 contributors to Plasma (Ethereum scaling solution) specifications and are active contributors to open source development. They have previously worked at reputed organisations such as Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Intuit.

Questbook’s Github : Questbook · GitHub

Motivation

As we continue to experience the depth of the bear market, it is increasingly important for ApeCoin to retain the mindshare of key ecosystem contributors and incentivise builders to build on top of it. Funding proposals through grants is a great way to attract high-quality builders and grow the ecosystem more quickly. We propose that ApeCoin DAO use Delegated Domain Capital Allocation model to to attract high-quality builders and accelerate its ecosystem growth. The Delegate Domain Allocation model is popularized by the Ethereum Foundation.

“We also believe that more decentralized funding is important for the future of the Ethereum ecosystem. We continuously try to allocate resources to third parties that we believe can make better decisions than us within certain domains.” - Executive Director Ethereum Foundation [link]

Each domain allocator will run their domain on-chain for full transparency using Questbook. The data and performance across key metrics will be visible to the community in order to evaluate the domain allocator’s performance.

This proposal details the benefit to all the stakeholders involved - token holders, builders and DAO members.

Benefits to ApeCoin DAO (Rationale)

1. Aligned allocation of funds: By leveraging the Delegated Domain Allocator (DDA) model, the ApeCoin DAO can ensure that funds are allocated to projects that align with the domain (key areas selected by the ApeCoin DAO community), promoting efficient and effective use of resources. This approach aligns with ApeCoin DAO’s goal of enabling the distribution of $APE to empower the community to build and participate in the future of the Greater Metaverse.
2. Increased transparency: The Delegated Domain Allocator approach provides a clear and transparent process for allocating funds, ensuring stakeholders understand the decision-making process and building community confidence. Questbook, a decentralized grant management platform, provides a transparent space for teams to showcase their backgrounds and experience. In addition, Questbook’s reporting features will allow the ApeCoin DAO to quickly generate monthly reports on the allocation of funds, with the details for each grant proposal.
3. Increased accountability: With a dedicated group of stakeholders responsible for allocating funds, the Delegated Domain Allocator approach promotes increased accountability, ensuring that the funds are used effectively and efficiently. Domain allocators can be replaced through a community vote if their performance is not up to the standards accepted by the community.
4. Pseudonymity / Anonymity: Builders can use Questbook and apply for funding without doxxing themselves. Questbook provides a transparent space for teams to showcase their backgrounds and experience, fulfilling the proposal’s requirement for team member descriptions.
5. Turnaround Time (TAT): The Delegated Domain Allocator model will help significantly improve proposals’ turnaround time and overall outcomes for the ecosystem. An example of this is Compound who’s already leveraging the DDA model and has a communication TAT of less than 48 hours
6. Increase in the number of high quality proposals : While we recognize that the ApeCoin DAO has dedicated its entire treasury to support proposals that advance its mission, we are concerned about the underutilisation of reserved funds and the dearth of high-quality proposals. Comparatively, Aave receives more than 50 proposals per month, and Nouns receives over 100 proposals per month across different funding formats. Without investing in resourcing and scaling high quality proposals, we believe that the ApeCoin DAO risks falling behind and losing its competitive edge. Delegated Domain Capital Allocation Model and Questbook’s organic builder traffic of 20,000+ builders/month will enable the ApeCoin DAO to source and fund significantly greater number of high quality proposals in a transparent manner.

More specifically, the Delegated Domain Capital Allocation model aims to address the following challenges:

1. Addressing Blind Spots: It is unrealistic to assume that every community member or one individual possesses expertise across all domains. Evaluating projects outside of one’s area of expertise can be challenging and inefficient, potentially resulting in missed opportunities for valuable contributions to the ApeCoin ecosystem. By delegating capital and decision-making to people who are experts and who are closely involved in that domain, ApeCoin DAO will be able to find and fund projects that align with the mission of the ApeCoin DAO, while also addressing any blind spots.
2. Addressing Voter Fatigue: We believe that not every grant proposal needs to go through an AIP process for receiving grant funding. Requiring every proposal to be voted on by the entire community can result in voter fatigue and low participation. By funding proposals through delegated domain capital allocation model, domain allocators can set maximum thresholds for accepting proposals within their respective domains. Proposals that fall below the threshold can be approved directly by domain allocators, reducing the burden on the community while reserving the AIP process for proposals that exceed the threshold and require broader community input.
3. Addressing Inadequate Review Process and Tooling : Lack of evaluation rubrics and domain-specific evaluation criteria can result in an inconsistent and subjective review process, potentially leading to suboptimal proposals getting funded. Each domain allocator in the delegated domain capital allocation model will be required to specify domain specific evaluation rubrics to ensure alignment with ApeCoin DAO’s roadmap and funding of high quality proposals. With Questbook, members of the community can easily access and view the scores assigned to a proposal by the domain allocator, based on their domain-specific rubric as mentioned below.

Specifications

The program structure focuses on having community members as domain allocators. ApeCoin DAO will be required to set an overall budget of $1M to be disbursed by the domain allocators across two quarters. Each domain Allocator will run their domain on-chain for full transparency, and the community members can track their performance.

• Each domain allocator will run the domain in a transparent manner using Questbook. Questbook is a decentralized grant orchestration tool, currently being used by Compound, Polygon, AAVE, Celo, Solana and TON Ecosystem

Product Screens

Invite proposals

Anyone from the community can view and comment on the proposals

Invite community members to review proposals based on an evaluation rubric

Make milestone-based payouts directly from the multi-sig

Track the performance of domain allocators

• Multi - Sig Wallet - The disbursement of the grant will take place on-chain through a multi-sig wallet for each domain controlled by the program manager & the domain allocator

Steps to Implement

The disbursement of the grant will take place on-chain through a multi-sig wallet for each domain controlled by the program manager & the domain allocator. The domain allocators will approve or reject proposals based on their evaluation rubric. The program manager will then coordinate with the community to ensure that the proposal aligns with ApeCoin DAO’s values and areas of focus before making the disbursal. The multi-sig’s sole purpose is to ensure capital is not siphoned. However, the allocators are encouraged to make independent decisions regarding the approval of the proposal based on their expertise.

The grants committee and the ApeCoin DAO community shall evaluate each domain’s and domain allocator’s performance using publicly available data every quarter. The outcomes could be as follows:

• Change the domain
• Change the allocator/program manager
• Change the budget

Active community members can initiate a no-confidence motion to begin a review off-cycle. The program manager can coordinate this if the situation arises. The unused funds from every domain will be returned to the treasury at the end of 2 quarters.

DDA Grants Committee

The program will consist of

1. A Program Manager
2. 4 Domain Allocators

A Grants SAFE, with 3/5 multi-sig, between the program manager and 4 domain allocators will be setup. We will then have 4 SAFEs for each of the domains with a 2/2 between the program manager and the specific domain allocator.

The funds for the grants program will flow from the treasury into the Grants SAFE. This SAFE will hold the funds related to operational costs, committee compensation, and the grants budget. Funds that will be disbursed to the proposers will reside in the domain-level SAFEs. The program manager will be responsible to update the community about approved proposals and their details through bi-weekly community calls and reports over discord.

After this AIP is successfully approved by the community, Questbook will assume custody of the funds, and will be responsible for ensuring both security and transparency. This will be achieved by establishing an interim SAFE, which will be setup by Questbook. To ensure transparency and accountability, we will share the addresses of each SAFE with the community. A similar setup can be seen here as in the case of Compound Grants Program 2.0.

After conducting a thorough research (going through past funding allocations, Apecoin foundation’s transparency report and recent Working Group Twitter’s spaces) and gathering feedback from key contributors in the ecosystem, we have identified the following domains that are crucial to maximize growth opportunities for ApeCoin DAO. When finalizing these domains, we have ensured that they align with ApeCoin DAO’s goals and cover its broader mission, while avoiding any redundancy.

Domains

Domain	Why it is relevant?	Examples of Existing Proposals from ApeCoin Discourse
Game Development	This will help ApeCoin DAO bring unique gaming experiences to the community, drive community engagement, and contribute to the growth and sustainability of the APE ecosystem.	AIP-78: Ape Worlds - Create Ape-themed games on the blockchain, no code required, AIP-179: NFTCG Generation 2 - ApeCoin DAO Physical & Digital Trading Card Game
Community Growth and Events	This will help ApeCoin DAO promote its values , culture and initiatives across different ecosystems and attract quality contributors	AIP-64: APE Coin Festival - Bringing NFT Communities Together, AIP-112: Forever Apes, free luxury physicals for all $APE holders, AIP-226: ApeCoinIRL - Decentralised Events Network
Security and Tooling	This will enable ApeCoin community to proactively identify, mitigate, and manage risks and build necessary tools, applications to grow the APE ecosystem.	AIP-9: Boring Security - Ecosystem Fund Allocation, AIP-134: Bug Bounty Program for AIP-21, AIP-212: Forever Apes // Upgrade #7 // Enable Shopify to display $APE in eComm stores
Education and content for new user onboarding	This will help ApeCoin increase its adoption, and empower new members to actively participate , and meaningfully contribute to the DAO.	AIP-66: ApeCoin Newsletter - Ecosystem Fund Allocation, AIP-70: Bored Ape Gazette: Ape Coin Media/ BAYC News - Ecosystem Fund Allocation, AIP-104: Bringing Web3 to Educators & Schools

Interested community members will be required to self-nominate themselves and specify their domain of interest after this AIP is successfully passed through a community wide vote. They must also provide details related to their relevant experience, domain specific rubrics, time commitment, and expected communication TAT with builders for their domain with the ApeCoin DAO community. All domain allocators will be chosen from within the ApeCoin community by the ApeCoin DAO community members through a community vote. Questbook will help facilitate the selection of domain allocators.

Domain Allocator Roles & Responsibilities

The following will be the roles and responsibilities of the selected domain allocators and the program manager.

1. Program Manager:

2. Communication:

   1. Coordinate between ApeCoin Council, treasury Working Group and the ApeCoin community
      regarding funding requirements
   2. Communicate the information regarding approval/rejection of proposals to the ApeCoin
      community regularly
   3. Ensure a 48 hours turnaround time for communicating with all proposers
   4. Attend community calls, actively participate in the community forum, and keep the community
      updated and take their feedback on the program
   5. Regularly update the progress of the grants program to the ApeCoin community bi-weekly
      over Discord and community calls

3. Grants Program:

   1. Source good-quality proposals from developer communities
   2. Sign the transactions for the approved projects
   3. Ensure a quick turnaround time for proposers regarding their proposal decision
   4. Coordinate between the domain allocators to ensure that the workload is evenly distributed
      and take their feedback consistently

4. Domain Allocator:

   1. Reject/Approve proposals and coordinate consistently with the program manager
   2. Source proposals by reaching out to relevant communities in their network
   3. Discuss program improvements with the other domain allocators and program manager during scheduled meeting
   4. Review proposals received for their domains based on the rubrics set by them in a format similar to as follows:

Evaluation Rubrics

Score	0	1	2	3	4
Team
Reach	No project developer team. No developer attraction.	No dev team. Small attraction plan (1 to 5 devs).	Yes team dev.	Yes team dev. Small attraction plan (1 to 5 more devs).	Yes team dev. Big attraction plan (+5 more devs).
Team
Commitment	No commitment attraction	Mercenary commitment attraction (stays until benefits end)	Commitment attraction (1 to 3 months )	Commitment attraction (1 year)	Commitment attraction (3 year)
Team
Quality	Project does not have a reasonable chance to attract high-quality devs	Project has a possibility of attracting high-quality devs	Project has a reasonable possibility of attracting high-quality devs and/or has high-quality devs	Project is likely to attract high-quality devs	Project is highly likely to attract high-quality devs
Likelihood of success	Clear flaw in design that cannot be easily remedied	Difficult to see the project continuing for more than a year	Reasonable chance that the project has intermediate-to-long-term success (+1 Year)	Project is likely to generate long-term, sustainable value for the ecosystem	Project has substantial likelihood to generate long-term, sustainable value for the ecosystem
Grant size	Grant size significantly outweighs projected benefit	Grant size is considerably larger than expected benefit	Grant size is proportional to expected benefit	Expected benefit outweighs grant size	Expected benefit meaningfully exceeds grant size
Team assessment	Team does not substantiate ability to deliver on plan	Team does not show significant ability to deliver on plan	Team shows reasonable ability to deliver on plan	Team shows significant ability to deliver on plan	Team exceeds what is required to deliver on plan
Milestone Assessment	Milestones do not significantly hold proposer accountable	Milestones are unlikely to hold proposer accountable	Milestones are reasonably likely to hold proposer accountable	Milestones are significantly likely to hold proposer accountable	Milestones are very likely to hold proposer accountable
Demo included (binary yes/no)	No demo included		Demo included
Score	-2	-1	0	1	2
Discretionary Factors (comment required)**

Timeline

The timeline for the implementation of this proposal is as follows:

1. May/June : Election of the domain allocators through a self nomination process where interested community members will be required to specify their domain of interest along with the details related to their relevant experience, domain specific rubrics, time commitment, expected communication TAT with builders and any conflict of interest with respect to their domain. Interested community members must submit their nomination within a week, following which each nominee will be presented as a choice in the Snapshot vote. The vote will be made available during the Weekly AIP Release and will conclude at the next Weekly Voting Close. Questbook will help facilitate setting up these domain allocators.
2. June/July : Setting up 4 multi sig SAFEs for each domain with a 2/2 between the Program Manager and the Selected Domain Allocator.
3. July : Setting up 4 domains and adding selected domain allocators as admins on Questbook.Announcing the launch of the program
4. August : First community update and monthly report shared by the Program Manager with the ApeCoin DAO community over a community call and Discourse

Compensation (Overall Cost):

ApeCoin DAO will be required to set aside an overall budget of $1M to be disbursed by the elected domain allocators to fund a wide variety of teams aligned with ApeCoin’s roadmap across two quarters. The compensation for Domain Allocators and Program Managers has been factored into this overall proposed budget. Please find below its details:

1. Program Manager : $100/hour (est. $24K per quarter at 20 hours per week)
2. A Domain Allocator : $80/hour (est. $14.4K per quarter at 15 hours/week per domain allocator)

The proposed compensation is based on the valuable feedback given by the ApeCoin community members, community poll and our ongoing engagement with Compound. It is competitive with some of the best-run grants program and community initiatives of ecosystems such as Compound, Uniswap, Nouns DAO, ApeCoin DAO Working Group and Aave. Based on our experience after working with multiple reputed ecosystems, a domain may receive more than 20 quality proposals per month. To effectively support and fund exceptional teams, domain allocators will need to invest significant time in activities such as marketing, project research, calls with proposers, preparing reviews, exchanging info/feedback with other DAs, tracking teams’ progress, and coordinating milestone based payouts. These activities demand significant expertise and time commitment. It is crucial for ApeCoin DAO to attract top talent for the role of domain allocator to ensure that exceptional projects are funded.

3. Questbook : 3% of all disbursals made through Questbook as product fee

Our approach of charging a percentage of the grants disbursed is designed to align our incentives with delivering value as against product usage. Funding a project signifies that the ecosystem has identified a project worth investing in, which further indicates that various steps in the funding process, such as attracting quality builders, establishing evaluation rubrics, and ensuring successful milestone-based payouts, have been executed effectively by the domain allocators. Our intention is to charge based on the successful completion of all these steps, rather than just product usage, to align our pricing with the value delivered through the entire grant disbursal cycle.

The domain allocators and program manager will be required to track their hours and provide weekly reports that will be accessible to the community. If the domain allocators have clocked fewer hours than estimated, the total spend will be lower than the proposed spend. If there are fewer grant requests or smaller grant amount requests for a particular domain, the unused fund from every domain will be returned back to the treasury after two quarters. For instance, in the case of CGP 2.0, not all domain allocators spent an equal amount of time reviewing and funding proposals for their respective domains. Some domain allocators spent comparatively less time than the budgeted 15hrs/week due to the time required to review proposals and the volume of proposals received within their domain.

The proposed budget represents the maximum amount needed to ensure the success of the program and to avoid the need for frequent community ratification for budgets for the proposed funding model. It does not guarantee that all the proposed expenses will be incurred. The unused fund from every domain will be returned back to the treasury after two quarters. Moreover, the proposed spend per quarter is expected to remain constant for the proposed budget/quarter and is not expected to increase every quarter.

Conclusion

What Does Success Look Like?

KPIs

Objective:

• The prime objective of this model is to have domains that align with ApeCoin DAO’s priorities. This way, the project’s contribution to the program directly adds value to the DAO and the token holders.
• Increase in the number of contributors, proposals, and funded projects
• Increase in the homegrown leadership to run grant programs (measured by the number of people running grant programs)
• Increase in the community members’ participation to keep domain allocators and program manager accountable (measured by the number of people looking at the dashboard and participating in the program)
• Diversity in projects being funded across technologies, geographies, and demographics, to name a few. We encourage the community members to review the proposals across different domains during ApeCoin DAO community calls regularly
• Increased engagement in builder community’s
  • Discourse
  • Discord, Telegram
  • Social media (Twitter, Reddit)
  • GitHub

Subjective:

• Improved community involvement in the grants program
• Strengthened contributors’ sentiment toward ApeCoin DAO
• Enhanced ApeCoin DAO brand recognition in builder circles

About Questbook:

Details and First Program Manager

• Questbook (YC-W21) is a decentralized grant orchestration tool, currently being used by Compound, Polygon, AAVE, Celo & Solana Ecosystem
• Ruchil Sharma from Questbook will be the first program manager. Thereafter, the program manager will be elected from the community. Ruchil was the program manager for Polygon facilitating the disbursal of ~ $1M in grants. He works with the Solana foundation and ecosystems within Solana on a daily basis to help them design their grants program. He has received a grant of $250K from the Solana foundation for the same. He also works closely with Compound Grants Programs 2.0’s program manager. He has spoken to more than 100 builders and teams over the last 6-8 months and understands what it takes to make a grant program successful – from both program manager and builder perspectives. He will be actively working with the domain allocators and tracking key metrics detailed in the proposal.
• Questbook Grants tool will make sure the workflows are systematic and transparent.

Product Flows

1. Posting a grant - Link
2. Reviewing and Funding Proposals - Link
3. Settings - Link
4. Communicating with Builders - Link
5. Funding Builders - Link

DDA Case Study: Compound Grant Program 2.0

CGP 1.0 concluded in September 2021. But, CGP 2.0 was delayed due to issues in the grant management flow and operations. Questbook worked with the Compound team and community to relaunch Compound Grants Program. We received considerable support from the community. We also adapted the tool to ensure that CGP 2.0 can work with the DDA model.

The community’s demands for increased transparency are also now met owing to the tool. We expect the selected domain allocators to disburse $1M through the tool over the next six months.

Our Usage Metrics

• 20K+ MAU.
• Grant managers have reviewed, accepted, and facilitated grants worth $2.1M.
• 1500+ proposal submissions from high-quality builders

Project links

• dApp: www.questbook.app
• GitHub: Questbook · GitHub
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/questbookapp
• Product Wiki: https://questbook.notion.site/Product-Wiki-for-Grant-Programs-1d43dd8af8ee4d6181e1d51a285bf226

Next Steps

We believe that the Delegated Domain Allocator model, offered by Questbook, will be a highly effective solution that aligns with the ApeCoin community’s values of transparency, decentralization, and accountability.

We welcome any comments on our proposal from the Apecoin DAO community and would love to seek suggestions/answer any questions.

[Sasha]

Thank you for the proposal and welcome to ApeCoin DAO.

While detailed, the major point this fails to address is why we need a system that essentially replaces both the current system and, partially, the large Working Groups proposal and discussions that have been ongoing for awhile now. I.e. why should we outsource this to a third party when we will have an internal working group that may just happen to pick Questbook as software of choice for tracking?

@ruchil

• Program Manager : $120/hour (est. $29K per quarter at 20 hours per week)
• A Domain Allocator : $100/hour (est. $18K per quarter at 15 hours/week per domain allocator)

These numbers seem high. Who is the program manager or how are they selected?

@ruchil

Questbook : 5% of all disbursals made through Questbook as product fee

That’s also quite high… could you elaborate why you’re charging such high fees? Usually SaaS products charge flat enterprise fee or a per-user fee. If we manage $5M/year of grants (very plausaible), that’s $250K / year for just the tracking software…

Thank you!

[ruchil]

Thank you @Sasha for sharing your comments and thoughtful questions🙏.

While detailed, the major point this fails to address is why we need a system that essentially replaces both the current system and, partially, the large Working Groups proposal and discussions that have been ongoing for awhile now. I.e. why should we outsource this to a third party when we will have an internal working group that may just happen to pick Questbook as software of choice for tracking?

Taking into account the current structure and the working group proposal and discussions, all proposals that require support in terms of grants need to go through an AIP process. As all/majority of the DAO treasury is dedicated to funding proposals (or is a grants program) that align with the mission of Apecoin DAO, we aim to tackle various challenges associated with grant disbursals through an AIP process by proposing the following solutions:

1. Addressing Community Blind Spots: It is unrealistic to assume that every community member possesses expertise across all domains. Evaluating projects outside of one’s area of expertise can be challenging and inefficient, potentially resulting in missed opportunities for valuable contributions to the ApeCoin ecosystem. By delegating capital and decision-making to people who are experts and on the ground, we can engage the community to proliferate the ideas and projects that further the mission of the ApeCoin DAO.

2. Addressing Voter Fatigue: We believe that not every grant proposal needs to go through an AIP process for receiving grant funding. Requiring every proposal to be voted on by the entire community can result in voter fatigue and low participation. By funding proposals through delegated domain capital allocation model, domain allocators can set maximum thresholds for accepting proposals within their respective domains. Proposals that fall below the threshold can be approved directly, reducing the burden on the community while reserving the AIP process for proposals that exceed the threshold and require broader community input.

3. Addressing Inadequate Review Process and Tooling : Lack of evaluation rubrics and domain-specific evaluation criteria can result in an inconsistent and subjective review process, potentially leading to suboptimal proposals getting funded. Each domain allocator in the delegated domain capital allocation model will be required to specify the domain specific evaluation rubrics to ensure alignment with ApeCoin DAO’s roadmap and funding of high quality proposals. With Questbook, members of the community can easily access and view the scores assigned to a proposal by the domain allocator, based on their domain-specific rubric.

All domain allocators will be chosen from within the ApeCoin community by the ApeCoin DAO community members through a Snapshot vote, and will function as an internal group. These allocators will have the autonomy to independently decide on the approval or rejection of proposals based on their expertise and will be accountable to the ApeCoin community. As a team, we are committed to collaborating with the ApeCoin DAO community and adopting a structure that best fits the needs of ApeCoin DAO .

These numbers seem high.

1. The proposed compensation is based on our ongoing engagement with Compound, and the proposed compensation detailed in the Governance Working Group proposal. Based on our experience after working with multiple reputed ecosystems, a domain may receive more than 20 quality proposals per month. To effectively support and fund exceptional teams, domain allocators will need to invest significant time in activities such as marketing, project research, calls with proposers, preparing reviews, exchanging info/feedback with other DAs, tracking teams’ progress, and coordinating milestone based payouts.

2. We aim to attract applications from quality domain allocators and keep the ApeCoin DAO competitive with other ecosystems.

Ecosystem	Grants Budget	Committee Compensation	Details
Aave	$3.25M per 2 Quarters	Grants Lead- $9k/month Review committee- $150/hr, capped at 10 hrs/week	Aave - Renew Aave Grants DAO
Compound	$1M per 2 quarters	Program Manager - $100/hr Domain Allocators - $80/hr	Compound | Proposal Detail #136

Who is the program manager or how are they selected?

Given my expertise in designing and overseeing grants programs for various ecosystems and the intensity of the role, I have proposed to take on the responsibilities of the Program Manager for the first two quarters. Thereafter, the program manager will be elected from the community. I will be actively working with the domain allocators and tracking key metrics detailed in our proposal. I’ll be personally accountable for these numbers to the community and will be attending all the community calls to take suggestions and answer any questions.

That’s also quite high… could you elaborate why you’re charging such high fees? Usually SaaS products charge flat enterprise fee or a per-user fee. If we manage $5M/year of grants (very plausaible), that’s $250K / year for just the tracking software…

Thanks for raising your concerns. Our approach of charging a percentage of the grants disbursed is designed to align our incentives with delivering value as against product usage. Funding a project signifies that the ecosystem has identified a project worth investing in, which further indicates that various steps in the funding process, such as attracting quality builders, establishing evaluation rubrics, and ensuring successful milestone-based payouts, have been executed effectively by the domain allocators. Our intention is to charge based on the successful completion of all these steps, rather than just product usage, to align our pricing with the value delivered through the entire grant disbursal cycle.

We also acknowledge the importance of working within the budgets of the ApeCoin DAO, and hence, we have put forth a proposal for a 5% fee until the allocation of the $1 million proposed budget. We are willing to reevaluate our pricing structure to accommodate a different budget in order to remain in line with the DAO’s fiscal constraints while maintaining our commitment to providing value.

I will be attending subsequent community calls to take suggestions and answer any questions from the ApeCoin DAO community

[Sasha]

@ruchil

I have proposed to take on the responsibilities of the Program Manager for the first two quarters.

Thank you, I missed that part on 1st read. Would you be okay if the Program Manager was up for election right away?

Would you mind also disclosing if/how much you’d be paid from the 5% that Questbook would collect? And what equity and any other financial interest do you have in the company and this proposal?

- THE TOTAL COST -

Assuming 1M in grants distributed over X quarters, we’d have…

Fixed cost:

• $50,000 software license

Quarterly cost:

• $72,000 for 4 domain allocators (18k * 4)
• $29,000 for program manager

So if 1M in grants is distributed over X quarters, where X is…

• 1 quarter: $151,000 in cost, or 15.1% of grant budget
• 2 quarters: $252,000 in cost, or 25.2% of grant budget
• 3 quarters: $353,000 in cost, or 35.3% of grant budget
• 4 quarters: $454,000 in cost, or 45.4% of grant budget

Please let me know if I miscalculated anywhere.

You mentioned elections of PM after 2 quarters. Is that how long you think 1M distribution would take? If not, how many quarters do you expect it to take to distribute the money?

Lastly, how did you arrive at proposing 4 domain allocators (and not 3 or 5)? The volume here is rather low, and frankly even if it doubled or tripled I could run the whole grant allocation program just by myself during a regular 8-hour day (used to process 15-20 apps/day at startup accelerator). Perhaps you can elaborate on how this is different or why we need so many domain allocators.

Thank you for the detailed answers!

[Sasha]

To add on cost.

US Dept of Education caps administrative costs at 2% of grants.

For non-profits, the total admin cost and fundraising costs are considered to be a red flag if they exceed 25%, as you want the vast majority of money to go to grant recipients. Note that here, we neither have to fundraise (already done) nor actually execute the grants (as a non-profit must). So with these two major sinks removed, it’s reasonable to aim for 2-5% max. In your proposal, it’s 15% minimum, but 25%-35% most likely.

Hence my questions.

[ruchil]

Thanks @Sasha for sharing your thoughts. Really appreciate it!

Would you be okay if the Program Manager was up for election right away?

We welcome any member from the community to nominate themselves for the program manager role and are open to the selection of program manager through an election. However, we strongly recommend having an experienced individual for the first phase (atleast for one quarter) of the grants program. To produce the best outcome and build trust among the community members and proposers, a program manager is required to ensure a low TAT, keep the community members updated, be familiar with the reporting structures and tools and possess a thorough understanding of what it takes to make a grants program successful. At the end of each quarter, the ApeCoin community will evaluate the performance of the Program Manager and vote to retain/replace them using publicly available data. Having extensive experience in setting up and managing multiple grants programs, I am well-versed with the demands of the role and understand the key factors that contribute to the success of a grants program. As program managers for CGP 2.0, we have received very positive feedback from several proposers who have shared their experience as follows

Would you mind also disclosing if/how much you’d be paid from the 5% that Questbook would collect? And what equity and any other financial interest do you have in the company and this proposal?

Sure, I am an employee of Questbook and will not personally receive any financial benefit from the revenue collected by Questbook through this proposal. Any proceeds from this proposal will go to Questbook to cover the operational costs associated with running the program. If elected as the Program Manager, my primary responsibility would be to ensure the success of the grants program and to ensure that all the funded projects align, further the mission of the ApeCoin DAO.

At the end of each quarter, the ApeCoin community will evaluate the performance of the Program Manager and vote to retain/replace them using publicly available data.

THE TOTAL COST -

Assuming 1M in grants distributed over X quarters, we’d have……Please let me know if I miscalculated anywhere.

Thank you for providing detailed calculations . Domain allocators are expected to disburse $1M over a period of two quarters. We estimate a quarterly allocation of a maximum amount of $500,000 from the domain allocators. Taking into account, the proposed committee compensation and product fee, the maximum spend for each quarter will be ~ $75,400 ($36,00 + $14,400 + $25,000) . This spend per quarter is expected to remain consistent for a budget of $500,000/quarter and is not expected to increase every quarter.

The domain allocators and program manager will be required to track their hours and provide weekly reports that will be accessible to the community. If the domain allocators have clocked fewer hours than estimated, the total spend will be lower than the proposed spend. If there are fewer grant requests or smaller grant amount requests for a particular domain, the unused fund from every domain will be returned back to the treasury after two quarters. For instance, in the case of CGP 2.0, not all domain allocators spent an equal amount of time reviewing and funding proposals for their respective domains. Some domain allocators spent comparatively less time than the budgeted 15hrs/week due to the time required to review proposals and the volume of proposals received within their domain.

The proposed budget represents the maximum amount needed to ensure the success of the grants program and to avoid the need for frequent community ratification for budgets for the proposed ApeCoin DAO Grants Program. It does not guarantee that all the proposed expenses will be incurred. The unused fund from every domain will be returned back to the treasury after two quarters.

You mentioned elections of PM after 2 quarters. Is that how long you think 1M distribution would take? If not, how many quarters do you expect it to take to distribute the money?

The ApeCoin DAO’s community will evaluate the performance of the Domain Allocators and the Program Manager each quarter using the publicly available data and vote on the following outcomes every quarter:

• Change the domain
• Change the allocator/program manager
• Change the budget

Yes, you are correct . We expect the disbursal of $1M across 4 domains over the course of two quarters.

Lastly, how did you arrive at proposing 4 domain allocators (and not 3 or 5)? The volume here is rather low, and frankly even if it doubled or tripled I could run the whole grant allocation program just by myself during a regular 8-hour day (used to process 15-20 apps/day at startup accelerator). Perhaps you can elaborate on how this is different or why we need so many domain allocators.
Thank you for the detailed answers!

Thanks for your kind words and sharing your thoughts! We have proposed 4 specific domains after researching and going through ApeCoin DAO’s past funding allocations, number and relevance of past proposals, Apecoin foundation’s transparency report and recent Working Group Twitter’s spaces. When finalizing the domains mentioned in our proposal, we have ensured that they align with ApeCoin DAO’s goals and cover its broader mission, while avoiding any redundancy. I have personally been in touch with more than 20 active community members over Twitter, Discord and Telegram and have incorporated their feedback to determine the domains that are most important to the ApeCoin DAO. However, we are open to adding more domains and incorporating changes based on the feedback of the ApeCoin DAO community

After conducting a brief analysis of the funding requests received by the ApeCoin DAO on Discourse, we observed that the DAO has received ~ $8M in funding requests in the last two quarters (Oct - Mar). A breakdown of some of the proposals is provided below. We also noticed that the foundation has paid out only $96,000 of the reserved $181M grants budget to proposers according to the Apecoin foundation’s transparency report

Funding Requests

Proposal	Proposed Domain	Funding Amount Requested
ApeCoin Esports (ACE) - The ESports League DAO Powered by ApeCoin	Game Development	$2.5M
Team ApeCoin // Esports Team Accelerating The Growth Of Web3 Gaming	Game Development	$1.5M
AIP-214: Sponsoring The DAM Show + Live Game Shows	Game Development	$95,000
For old times’ sake, Melonade is bringing back a timeless, classic bored game	Game Development	$70,000
AIP-179: NFTCG Generation 2 - ApeCoin DAO Physical & Digital Trading Card Game	Game Development	$55,885
AIP-148: Forever Apes // Upgrade #3 // Biweekly card games and tutorials for all $APE holders	Game Development	$20,000
BAYC / MAYC Collectible Trading Card Game	Game Development	-
AIP-226: ApeCoinIRL - Decentralized Events Network	Community Growth and Events	$2M
Eco-friendly Apecoin Carpets	Community Growth and Events	$180,000
ApeDAO Partners with Kickback!	Community Growth and Events	$100,000
AIP-218: Rumblerz by Gamed Productions - A stop-motion animation/claymation TV show leveraging existing IP	Community Growth and Events	$80,000
Ape IRL Community Building & Expansion	Community Growth and Events	$60,000
AIP-64: IRL Events Feasibility Study — Recap	Community Growth and Events	$10,190
AIP-134: Bug Bounty Program for AIP-21	Security and Tooling	$1M
AIP-235: ApeTalent // Beyond Talent: Building the Future	Security and Tooling	$330,000
AIP-232: Resubmission of Building Apeverse: A Multi-language Information Hub for the Ape Ecosystem	Security and Tooling	$135,000
AIP-225: Ape Page - One place for everything about your Ape	Security and Tooling	$125,000
AIP-227: Nothersight - Public goods for building DAOs based on islands in the Otherside	Security and Tooling	$48,000
AIP-234: Boring Beverages	A community built & part-owned beverage brand	Education and content for new user onboarding
AIP-195: Forever Apes // Upgrade #6 // ApeCoin Media Collective - Connecting Communities And Creators	Education and content for new user onboarding	$85,000
Beyond the SWAMP: Bimonthly ApeCoin & Yuga Labs Focused Magazine + NFT	Education and content for new user onboarding	$52,500
AIP-151: ApeCoin DAO Animated TV Series	Education and content for new user onboarding	$38319
AIP-187: Expanding web3 Access	Education and content for new user onboarding	$37,000
AIP-236: Fantasy Novel about NFTs	Education and content for new user onboarding	$28,150
AIP-191: ApeCoin DAO Mission Statement Workshop	Education and content for new user onboarding	$19,000
WEB3 Learn to Earn Program	Education and content for new user onboarding	-
Brainstorming - How would you attract new users and their participation in the DAO?	Education and content for new user onboarding	-
Total		~$8M

While we recognize that the ApeCoin DAO has dedicated its entire treasury to support proposals that advance its mission, we are concerned about the underutilisation of reserved funds and the dearth of high-quality proposals. Comparatively, Aave receives more than 50 proposals per month, and Nouns receives over 100 proposals per month across different funding formats. Without investing in resourcing and scaling high quality proposals, we believe that the ApeCoin DAO risks falling behind and losing its competitive edge. In Vitalik’s own words:

Using Delegated Domain Capital Allocation model, each domain allocator will be required to spend significant time reviewing as well as sourcing proposals to drive top of the mind awareness and retain the mindshare of key contributors. Giving domain allocators the capital and decision-making powers will increase the efficiency of the grants program, without compromising on accountability, which may not be feasible for a single individual. Specifically, Delegated Domain Capital Allocation model focuses on:

• Individual’s expertise for each domain
• Distributed load instead of individual/community backlogs

To add on cost.

US Dept of Education caps administrative costs at 2% of grants.

For non-profits, the total admin cost and fundraising costs are considered to be a red flag if they exceed 25%, as you want the vast majority of money to go to grant recipients. Note that here, we neither have to fundraise (already done) nor actually execute the grants (as a non-profit must). So with these two major sinks removed, it’s reasonable to aim for 2-5% max. In your proposal, it’s 15% minimum, but 25%-35% most likely.

Hence my questions.

Thank you for sharing the statistics . You are correct in highlighting that US Department of Education has capped administrative costs at 2% for grants. However, given the unique scope, high volatile markets, and competitive landscape of ecosystems within Web 3.0, we feel that it is more appropriate to compare the proposed ApeCoin DAO’s grants program with other well-run grants programs within Web3 such as those run by Aave, Compound, and Uniswap.

Sourcing, reviewing, funding, marketing, tracking and nurturing proposals for each domain demands significant expertise and time commitment. It is crucial for ApeCoin DAO to attract top talent for the role of domain allocator to ensure that exceptional projects are funded. Competitive compensation and operational overhead, as seen in the best-run grant programs, reflect the importance of these tasks and incentivize reviewers and domain allocators to source and fund the best proposals while being accountable to the community and proposers. Below are the operational spending details that have been approved by the community for each of these reputed ecosystems:

1. Uniswap Foundation : 18.9% of the total proposed budget
2. Compound Grants Program : 20% of the total proposed budget
3. Aave Grants Program : 13.1% of the total proposed budget

We also acknowledge the importance of working within the budgets of the ApeCoin DAO and are willing to reassessing our pricing structure to ensure that it aligns with the DAO’s budget and the spending proportions of the best run grants program while upholding our dedication to delivering maximum value to the ApeCoin DAO and its tokenholders.

[Sasha]

Which of those 3 grant programs are run by Questbook? (aave uni compound)

[ruchil]

Thank you for your inquiry . Questbook led the establishment of Compound Grants Program from scratch using the Delegated Domain Capital Allocation model. The program is currently active across four domains and has received significant support from the community.

Furthermore, Aave employed Questbook to manage their developer tooling domain and disbursed $50k within a month to builders. Multiple ecosystems such as Celo, Solana, TON, Perpetual, and Polygon use Questbook to manage their grants program on chain in a transparent manner.

I would be happy to connect you with the active domain allocators from the Compound Grants Program to gather their detailed feedback on the Delegated Domain Capital Allocation model and Questbook. I will also be attending future community calls to gather suggestions and answer any questions from the ApeCoin DAO community members .

[Sasha]

Thank you, Ruchil.

The reason I asked if Questbook managed Uniswap, Compound, and/or Aave is because you provided numbers for these three as a justification to my concern that Questbook’s costs are significant/too high. But if Questbook also ran programs for those entities, then you’re just comparing your costs to your own costs, not to competition or industry average.

To summarize, my feedback would be that the gist/idea/concept is cool (as an experiment to get some proposals jumpstarted) but prices are, imho, astronomical. Based on my time doing this very job, you don’t need more than 1 manager and 1 analyst (i.e. domain allocator) at most, though I am still of the opinion that the analyst isn’t needed (you can outsource the outreach for $10-15K and then just review apps that land in the funnel). The software license cost of $50,000 for 6-9 months seems very unreasonable for what is essentially a customized Trello/Notion.

Overall, the total cost of this proposal (25-35% of the entire allocated budget) for 6-9 months is 2.5-3.5x above what I know to be reasonable from my experience. Beyond 9 months, the prices become entirely untenable, so any long-term licensing/work with the DAO is off the table (imho). Whether you can reduce by 2.5-3.5x is your call, but that’s what I’d like to see before voting yes. Others may have a different opinion.

ps: Above I say “as an experiment” because this proposal, if approved, completely circumvents DAO’s current approval process/system. This opens a whole new can of worms if it’s not done as a one-off experiment.

[vulkan.admin]

Hi @ruchil,

Your topic will be moving to the AIP Draft phase in less than 24 hours. Are you content with the feedback received or do you wish to extend community discussion for another 7 days?

If we do not hear from you within 48 hours after your topic closes, your topic will be moved straight to the AIP Draft process.

We look forward to hearing from you.

-Vulkan

[ruchil]

Hi @vulkan.admin , we kindly request a brief period of 24-48 hours to address the feedback and questions raised by the community members.

Re: We would like to extend the discussion for another 7 days.
Thanks!

[vulkan.admin]

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@ruchil has requested to extend the community discussion period for this AIP idea. This topic will automatically close a further 7 days from now. We encourage the community to continue to engage in thoughtful discussions through constructive criticism, honest feedback, and helpful suggestions.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

-Vulkan

[ruchil]

Hi @sasha, thanks for sharing your thoughts and feedback.

The reason I asked if Questbook managed Uniswap, Compound, and/or Aave is because you provided numbers for these three as a justification to my concern that Questbook’s costs are significant/too high. But if Questbook also ran programs for those entities, then you’re just comparing your costs to your own costs, not to competition or industry average.

Questbook was responsible for launching only Compound Grants Program from scratch. Aave Grants Program and Uniswap Grants Program were initiated and supported by their respective communities without any involvement from Questbook. An operational spend of over 13% of the grants program budget was ratified by the community as a means to incentivize the allocators to source and fund the best proposals while being accountable to the community and proposers.

Similar operational and compensation structures are utilized in other grants programs and working groups

1. Cosmos Grants Program 12% of the overall budget

2. Ethereum Foundation - ~11% of the overall budget

3. Nouns DAO Treasury Spend

4. Proposed compensation detailed in the Governance Working Group proposal

To summarize, my feedback would be that the gist/idea/concept is cool (as an experiment to get some proposals jumpstarted) but prices are, imho, astronomical. Based on my time doing this very job, you don’t need more than 1 manager and 1 analyst (i.e. domain allocator) at most, though I am still of the opinion that the analyst isn’t needed (you can outsource the outreach for $10-15K and then just review apps that land in the funnel).

Really appreciate your recognition of the Delegated Domain Capital Allocation model . We believe that to evaluate and source proposals effectively, one needs to have expertise in the relevant domain. It can be a difficult and inefficient task to assess projects that are outside of one’s area of expertise, which will lead to missing out on valuable contributions to the ApeCoin ecosystem. By delegating capital and decision-making responsibilities to experts in the field who are closely involved in that domain, ApeCoin DAO will be able to find and fund projects that align with the mission of the ApeCoin DAO, while also addressing any blind spots individuals may have outside their expertise if they are evaluating all the proposals alone by themselves.

The software license cost of $50,000 for 6-9 months seems very unreasonable for what is essentially a customized Trello/Notion.

Questbook is a decentralized on-chain grants management platform that is trusted by some of the most reputed ecosystems to run their grant programs. There are several significant advantages of using Questbook over Airtable and Notion:

• Permissionless Community Participation : Unlike Notion or Airtable, where commenting is permissioned and restricted to those added to the workspace, anyone from the ApeCoin community can comment on any proposal received on Questbook

• Transparency in the review process and decision-making: Questbook allows anyone from the community to view the domain-specific rubrics set by the domain allocator and understand why a proposal was either accepted or rejected. This helps proposers to revise and resubmit their proposals based on rubric scores and domain allocator’s, community feedback. This level of transparency is not always available in the current process and on Notion/Airtable, where proposers often do not receive feedback on why their proposal was accepted or rejected. One such example is given below for reference.
  

  

  A transparent review process and decision-making will also provide greater insight into the performance of the domain allocator to the ApeCoin community based on which the community will re-elect/replace the domain allocators through a Snapashot vote.

• Improved TAT : By evaluating proposals in a transparent manner, domain allocators will be held accountable for their performance in terms of communication, decision-making, and funding turnaround time (TAT), as it will be visible to the ApeCoin community. An example of this is Compound who’s already leveraging the DDA model and has a communication TAT of less than 48 hours

• Detailed On-chain analytics : Using Questbook, ApeCoin community will be able to track the performance of the domain allocators using data rich dashboards. Additionally, any community member can create their own custom dashboards permissionlessly as all the data will be available on the chain

• Increase in the number of proposals : Questbook is a desired destination for 20,000+ builders each month. In addition to the domain allocators’ sourcing efforts, ApeCoin DAO will benefit from the organic traffic of high-quality contributors from other reputable ecosystems, resulting in an increase in the number of quality proposals.

Overall, the total cost of this proposal (25-35% of the entire allocated budget) for 6-9 months is 2.5-3.5x above what I know to be reasonable from my experience. Beyond 9 months, the prices become entirely untenable, so any long-term licensing/work with the DAO is off the table (imho). Whether you can reduce by 2.5-3.5x is your call, but that’s what I’d like to see before voting yes. Others may have a different opinion.

ps: Above I say “as an experiment” because this proposal, if approved, completely circumvents DAO’s current approval process/system. This opens a whole new can of worms if it’s not done as a one-off experiment.

With $181M as the total allocated grants budget as per the Ape Foundation transparency report, we are requesting only 0.5% of that budgeted funds to be used to fund high quality proposals through Delegated Domain Capital Allocation Model. As this will be a community run initiative, at the end of each quarter, the community will decide whether to change domains, domain allocators, increase/decrease the budget.

The proposed budget represents the maximum amount needed to ensure the success of the grants program and to avoid the need for frequent community ratification for budgets for the proposed ApeCoin DAO Grants Program. It does not guarantee that all the proposed expenses will be incurred. Moreover, it does not scale with time period and amounts to a constant figure/quarter.

The rationale behind the proposed number and type of domains, domain allocators’ compensation, and product fee is provided in the following links:

• Proposed number of type of domains
• Domain allocators’ compensation
• Product Fee - Detailed here

Additionally, we would love to receive more inputs from the community members and would like to conduct a community poll to gather additional feedback. We welcome all members of the community to participate in the poll and share their opinions on the proposed domains, hourly compensation, and product fee. Your inputs will help us finalise the domains, grants program spend and proceed towards finalizing the domain allocators accordingly.

Which domains would the ApeCoin community like to see as part of the grants program for the first two quarters?

• Game Development
• Community Growth and Events
• Security and Tooling
• Education and content for new user onboarding
• Other

What should be the hourly compensation of Domain Allocators taking into account that they’ll be required to work for a maximum of 15 hours/week for two quarters?

• $100/hour
• $80/hour
• $60/hour
• Other

What should be the hourly compensation of the Program Manager taking into account that they’ll be required to work for a maximum of 20 hours/week for two quarters?

• $120/hour
• $100/hour
• $75/hour
• $50/hour
• Other

What should be the product fee for running ApeCoin DAO Grants Program on Questbook across two quarters?

• 5% of all disbursal
• 5% of all disbursals capped at $30k
• 3% of all disbursals
• Other

[Evil]

Why did I got a notification from this thread tho? o.O
Am I missing something?

[ruchil]

Thank you for your inquiry, @Evil . It is possible that you received a notification because of my response or because your proposal was referenced above as an example to emphasize the importance of greater transparency in the review and decision-making process for proposals submitted to grant programs.

[Evil]

Ah makes sense!
Good luck (;

[Sasha]

Those 11-13% numbers from other DAOs are are indeed more aligned with the target cost I’ve pointed to as target numbers, which this proposal in its current form misses by 2-3x.

I’d just like to add that I think it’s not fair to compare a proposal budget to the total size of the treasury and such comparisons should be categorically avoided. I could say that my own proposal is just 0.015% so quick, guys, just click yes! But that is a terrible way to allocate funds. All proposals should stand on their own and judged in isolation. It’s never about how much money it needs; it’s always about how that money will be used.

[ruchil]

Thanks again @Sasha for sharing your thoughts!

Those 11-13% numbers from other DAOs are are indeed more aligned with the target cost I’ve pointed to as target numbers, which this proposal in its current form misses by 2-3x

We have presented a broad range of data points across multiple grant programs to provide a comprehensive view of spending patterns across different ecosystems. Our goal is to provide the ApeCoin community members with all the relevant data points to help them make an informed decision on our proposal and the associated polls.

We acknowledge that the committee compensation and product fee (cost) constituting 11% - 13% of the total proposed grants program budget ($500k/quarter) will lead to reduction in cost. However, if revised to 11% - 13% of the total proposed grants program budget, the current proposed cost will be 1.1x - 1.3x of the revised cost.

We want to reemphasize that sourcing, reviewing, funding, marketing, tracking and nurturing proposals for each domain demands significant expertise and time commitment from domain allocators and they should be fairly and competitively compensated for their efforts. Additionally, the proposed budget represents the maximum amount needed to ensure the success of the grants program and to avoid the need for frequent community ratification for budgets for the proposed ApeCoin DAO Grants Program.

We would love to receive more inputs from the community members and welcome them to participate in the polls to help us finalise the domain, grants program spend and proceed towards finalizing the domain allocators accordingly

I’d just like to add that I think it’s not fair to compare a proposal budget to the total size of the treasury and such comparisons should be categorically avoided. I could say that my own proposal is just 0.015% so quick, guys, just click yes! But that is a terrible way to allocate funds. All proposals should stand on their own and judged in isolation. It’s never about how much money it needs; it’s always about how that money will be used.

Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this ! We completely agree that proposals should be judged based on how the allocated funds will be used and their potential impact, rather than the proportion of the total treasury they represent Our mention of the proposed spend as a percentage of the total treasury was meant to provide context and transparency, and not as a justification for the spend. We appreciate ApeCoin DAO for being open to making an independent decision regarding the budget and the cost. This demonstrates the strength and commitment of the community to evaluate proposals based on their merit.

While we acknowledge that comparing a proposal budget to the total size of the treasury may not be the sole or most effective method of evaluating or determining budget allocations, we believe that it can help the ApeCoin DAO community to understand the size of the allocation and build mental models around it. A similar framework can also be seen used by the Ape foundation transparency report and the Apecoin Ecosystem Fund Allocation proposal as mentioned below.