Panvala Token Grants

Earn tokens for work that makes Ethereum safer.

6 min readNov 20, 2018

Panvala uses tokens to organize the work that needs to be done to make Ethereum safer. Some of that work is about getting Panvala Marks on smart contracts that meet the community’s safety standards. But the Panvala token system is designed to incentivize not just that work, but any work that improves Panvala or makes Ethereum safer in general. The system accomplishes this by issuing grants of Panvala tokens, and we’re going to start the grant program this month off-chain — grant recipients will have their tokens included in the initial distribution. Since we want Panvala to be governed by people who will actually participate in the system, our token sale will be limited to people who have already won token grants to allow them to purchase more tokens if they choose.

The Token Capacitor

We’ve reserved half of the token supply (50 million tokens) for token holders to control via our token capacitor smart contract. Every quarter, a new batch of tokens will be released to distribute as grants. Our token capacitor matches Bitcoin’s half life of four years, so the number of tokens available in each batch will decrease over time. Batch one has 2,119,836 tokens, batch two has 2,029,962 tokens, and four years later, batch sixteen will have 1,106,845 tokens. The last batch of tokens is scheduled for January 15, 2106 with just one token in the batch from the 50 million we started with.

But that’s only what happens if no one ever donates tokens to charge back up the token capacitor. Our goal isn’t to watch the tokens be released as scheduled. It’s to issue grants that reward work so compelling that it’s easy for us to find the funders for the work we do together. Those donors will buy tokens from grant recipients and deposit them in the token capacitor to keep it charged up and rewarding work far past the year 2106. If we succeed, Panvala will continue distributing rewards forever. Our mission will grow beyond making Ethereum safer as we prove that Panvala can organize cooperation more effectively than anything we’ve seen.

Applying for a Grant

Fill out this form to apply for a Panvala token grant. Grant applications include details about the work you intend to complete, the costs you expect to incur in USD, as well as the number of tokens you want to receive in your grant. All grant applications are public so anyone can attempt to make recommendations about which grants to issue, not just the Panvala Awards Committee. You can edit your application whenever you want. The Panvala Awards Committee will try to get as much useful work done with the fixed amount of tokens they have to distribute, so you want to make sure your grant is a good deal by the time they make their decision. We’ll reach out to applicants with periodic updates about where their application falls in the distribution of proposals by expected costs and tokens requested.

Grant issuance is governed just like the Panvala Mark governance we demoed last month. Grant applicants seek a recommendation from the Panvala Awards Committee, then use that recommendation to convince token holders that their proposal to withdraw tokens from the token capacitor should be allowed.

The committee knows the total number of tokens the token capacitor will release in each batch (2,119,836 tokens for batch one), so they need to put together a budget of grants to recommend to the token holders. Any token holder who supports the budget can stake tokens on the proposal to begin the release. If they want the Panvala Awards Committee to change their ways or stop making budget recommendations altogether, any token holder can stake tokens to challenge the budget and initiate a vote of token holders. They will choose whether to support the Panvala Awards Committee and allow them to continue making recommendations, or oppose them to force a change. The losing staker forfeits their tokens to the winner.

Since there aren’t any token holders to make decisions yet, all of the grants recommended by the Panvala Awards Committee before the system is live will be distributed in the initial distribution of tokens. These tokens come from the 50 million tokens held in the token capacitor.

The committee will decide on the first budget before February 1, 2019. The earlier you submit your application, the more time the committee will have to evaluate your application and provide feedback to help you improve it. Tokens are released from the capacitor every quarter (13 weeks), so there’s no single application deadline. Late applications will just be considered for batch two on May 3 instead. Once the system is live on the mainnet, token holders will be able to stake and vote to overrule the Panvala Awards Committee’s recommendations if they choose, and replace them with people or processes they prefer.

The Panvala Awards Committee

To start, the Panvala Awards Committee will be appointed by ConsenSys Diligence, Panvala’s initiating team. We believe the Panvala Awards Committee will be most successful with representation from people who pay attention to wide-ranging subjects in the Ethereum community, people with experience awarding grants, and people who spend time thinking about how to use tokens to do good.

If you’re interested in joining the Panvala Awards Committee to help define how decentralized systems like Panvala can be governed, send us an email.

Grant Ideas

If you want to do work that makes Ethereum safer, you should apply for a Panvala token grant. The easiest way to earn a grant is to apply to continue work you’re already doing in the Ethereum community. Here are some ideas to get you started, but any work that you think the community will love is a good idea.

Governance

Recommending applications is hard work. People who serve the community by making recommendations should apply for token grants to recognize their work.

Serve on the Panvala Mark Council
Serve on the Panvala Awards Committee

Education

To keep growing our community of users and developers rapidly while keeping everyone safe, we need to spread security education as effectively as we can.

Teach users how to stay safe on Ethereum
Teach workshops about developing smart contract systems safely
Create new coding challenges for people to hack

Auditing

Security auditors have a key role to play in making Ethereum safer, especially when it comes to evaluating tools that we all use.

Audit commonly used open source libraries
Audit full contract systems that the community values but don’t have their own business model

Development

The more quickly we can build simple, audited versions of new concepts in our community, the more experimentation we’ll be able to do on top to test whether they work.

Improve commonly used smart contract libraries
Build reusable implementations of popular concepts, token-curated registries, bonding curves, and delegated token voting

Evangelism

We believe that many people want to make Ethereum safer, and that Panvala is the best way to organize our efforts. Doing work that brings all those people together in the Panvala community will amplify our effectiveness.

Raise awareness about Panvala
Create videos to explain Panvala
Design posters that highlight the work of Panvala grantees
Design Panvala t-shirts

Donations

Our goal is to issue token grants so effectively that the most compelling way to spend money to make Ethereum safer is to buy tokens from grant recipients and donate the tokens back to the token capacitor contract they came from.

Research options for encouraging donations
Design accessories for donors to wear to make their donations public (like badges, pin buttons or bracelets)
Design digital accessories for donors (like profile photo frames)
Design posters or other artwork that honor Panvala donors