Batch Four and the Astrotrope
The fourth batch of Panvala Token Grants will be the first batch that the token holders run completely on-chain.
At the beginning of August, the third batch of grants was awarded to teams throughout the Ethereum ecosystem. With each batch, we’ve come closer to the governance process we expect to occur on chain. For the first two batches, the Panvala Awards Committee put together recommendations for grants that will be included in the initial distribution of tokens. For Batch Three, the Panvala Launch Team gave them some competition by proposing our own recommendation for grants. Test token holders overwhelmingly supported the Panvala Awards Committee, so their recommendation will be enacted by the system.
Batch Four is the first batch of grants that will be decided by actual token holders on the Ethereum mainnet. Instead of appointing a group to make recommendations like we did with the Panvala Awards Committee, Batch Four will be open for anyone to make a recommendation. Anyone can form an advisory group to issue recommendations that synthesize the consensus of the Panvala token holders. The first advisory group is the Astrotrope.
The Astrotrope is an advisory group that makes recommendations to keep Panvala headed in the right direction: starward. The Astrotrope is led by its Chair, Niran Babalola. Members are invited to the Astrotrope to give feedback on upcoming recommendations, and to review the outcomes of past recommendations. Responsibilities are delegated to committees of the Astrotrope, where small groups of members lead decision-making for particular topics.
Committees of the Astrotrope manage the beginning of the process to form each quarter’s recommended slate of grants. Along with the Chair of the Astrotrope, committees reach out to relevant teams to collect their upcoming budget requests, then gather them all for evaluation once the deadline for applications has passed. Committees discuss their applications and make a preliminary recommendation for members of the Astrotrope to review and discuss. After the Chair of the Astrotrope reconciles conflicts between each committee’s budgets, committees will have an opportunity to provide feedback on the whole budget recommendation for the quarter. The Astrotrope then presents that full recommendation to the public to get their comments and potentially adjust the recommendation before writing it to the chain.
The first committee of the Astrotrope is the Ethereum 2.0 Committee, chaired by Mehdi Zerouali of Sigma Prime. This committee will review ongoing and planned work towards Ethereum 2.0 to make recommendations for grants to issue for each batch. Together with the Chair of the Astrotrope, the Ethereum 2.0 Committee will incorporate their priorities into the complete recommendation that the Astrotrope will record on chain for each batch. The Astrotrope is seeking a second chair for this committee so we can have a rotating chair. This will allow the chairs to avoid conflicts of interest when they apply for grants themselves.
In addition to a second chair, the Astrotrope is also filling out both the Ethereum 2.0 Committee and an Ethereum 1.x Committee to assist with recommendations for these topics. There are limited seats available on these committees, and we want as much expertise as possible to inform our recommendations. While membership in the Astrotrope is typically by invitation only, we welcome anyone interested in serving on these committees to apply at chair@astrotrope.org.
We believe this process for making recommendations is the most effective path to get Panvala off the ground. But we don’t have the final say — the token holders do. Anyone can create an advisory group like the Astrotrope that operates however its creators choose. Their recommendations will compete with the Astrotrope’s recommendations, and the token holders will decide which path they want to follow.
The deadline for submitting grant applications for Batch Four is September 6. To apply, send an email to info@panvala.com. The deadline for the Astrotrope or any other advisory groups to stake on a recommendation is September 10 at 0500 UTC. Each staked recommendation will extend the deadline beyond September 10 for other groups to have a say.
