Transparency and Support: The Grant Support Squad’s Role in Grant Analysis

We are writing this article to bring clarity to the community about how we analyze a grant when there are concerns raised, and what are the activities, methods, and criteria behind this process. This need is based on a few community interactions in Discord through the forum and raising governance proposals for already contemplated processes. We acknowledge that information is difficult to follow, so we hope to bring context and clarity to one place.

Hows Grants’ concerns are raised today

Today Grants concerns are raised in two ways: The community can raise concerns via a formal request, or the Grant Support Squad (GSS) raises them when each Grants Program Manager notices that a grantee is not following the Grant Program framework or their grant’s proposal.

How Grant Support Squad analyzes a funded grant

The criteria used to determine if a project raises concerns are based on two factors: one is the comparison between what the grantee has proposed in their Proposal’s roadmap with their monthly deliverables, and the second is if it complies with the Decentraland DAO Grants Program Framework.

The analysis process of the Grant Support Squad for each grant

We follow a chronological process to provide support, foster transparency, and take care of the DAO treasury, which starts with the onboarding of each grantee, and ends when the project is executed, and contains the following defined steps:

Onboarding:

Add grant to Database: When a grant passes, the Grant Support Squad (GSS) Program Manager designated to that grant adds the new project information to the internal database.

Analyze the proposal: The GSS Program Manager analyzes if the project complies with the requirements of the Grants Program Framework. To accomplish that, we go analyze 3 main points:

• Category: we check if the project is allocated in the correct category by comparing what is written on the proposal with the category selected, and that their deliverables will comply with the category’s Impact Metrics.
• Comments section: we check the community’s comments on the proposal page, particularly if any member has raised an objective concern regarding the project during the votation period, and the grantee’s response to those concerns. The Grant Support Squad’s scope of work starts when the Grant Proposal has passed, not before. This is why we analyze this at this point of the Grantee’s cycle.
• Check if the project Is doable: There are limits to what can realistically be built within the Decentraland platform. For example, the creation of smart wearables is a hard blocker. For grants within the category of Platform and In-world Content, most of the time this step involves a technical advisor external to the Grant Support Squad, who analyzes the feasibility of the project.

Contact the grantee for onboarding: An email is sent to the grantee to schedule a 1st meeting to answer their questions, provide suppport if needed and discuss their proposal if there is any concern. Along with them, we create their public roadmap with its deliverables which is made public after we have the grantee’s consent.

Monthly Analysis:

• Monthly update: Every month, the grantee must post an update on their Grant Proposal Page in the Decentraland Governance dApp. Each Program Manager reviews these updates and compares them with the grantees deliverables.
• Monthly Check-in: The GSS has a monthly meeting with each grant team to provide continuous support, and to flag if they have any problems/requests that the GSS can help with. Also, if a critical blocker shows up or a concern is raised, the GSS flags these to the grantee and works together to think of potential solutions.
• Testing Tuesday: If the project is mature, we offer to test it with the community and get direct and early feedback.

How do we elevate cases to the Revocations Committee?

When a concern is raised (by the community or the GSS) we open a case for the Grant to be presented to the Revocations Committee as was decided by a community through a poll and later a governance proposal Which includes the following arguments:

• A report within the back and forth that we went through with the grantee, describing the objective concerns and our recommendation to the Revocations Committee. This triggers a pause in the vesting contract of the project in question as a preventive action.
• We notify the Revocations Committee about the case, posting the report in the forum and in the Revocations Committee Discord Channel.
• The Grantee is encouraged to post their response so the Revocations Committee can have the most information possible to make an informed decision.
• The Revocations Committee debates and votes without the Grant Support Squad involved in the process. Also, If the Revocations Committee has any doubts, they could request information from the Grant Support Squad or the Grantee as needed.

The Grant Support Squad follows the mentioned procedure to honor the governance process that the community has voted for. If you are new to the Decentraland DAO, the following paragraphs include information that provides context on the governance steps that brought us here.

The Decentraland DAO possesses a MANA fund set aside to help sponsor and facilitate the continual growth of the Decentraland platform. The Grants Program was created to allow any community member to request funding to contribute to a decentralized metaverse built and owned by its community.

The Grant Support Squad was created to guarantee the effectiveness of the Grants Program, providing support for the grantees to have successful projects but also for holding grantees accountable for their projects and signaling if a vesting contract needs to be revoked, as the basic terms and conditions and requirements to take care of the DAO Treasury.

During the first 4 months of the Squad, we got to know the grantees on video calls, spent time with them, listening to their needs, provided support in various forms, and have seen successful grants. We went through the sieve of the requirements written on the documents related to the Grant Program. Walking through those 58 grants that finished ($3.5M USD) before the Grant Support Squad existed, we detected that 17 grants had concerns regarding their proposed proposal. This represents 1,3M USD. Almost 50% of the funds provided.

During this period, we found projects funded were incomplete, and some other projects were delayed on their proposed roadmap. The difficulty in these cases is that the contracts of these grants were still vesting.

For that reason, at that time we recommended the DAO Committee execute the only technical mechanism that the DAO had to make sure we can stop vesting contracts, the revocations, with the commitment that as soon as the grantee delivers according to their proposed roadmap, the DAO Committee would create a new vesting contract for the funds remaining for them to execute their projects.

We were aware of this action’s negative connotation on the grantees, and that the method was not the best. But, in the past, it was the only tool that we (the DAO), had to make sure the funds were going to projects that nurtured our community.

However, we addressed that negative environment and started to work on improving the Grants Program, particularly by finding tools to mitigate the negative impact of the action revoke.

So, we worked with the community on the governance process (poll, draft, bidding proposal) to create the Revocations Committee. This gave an opportunity to the grantee to argue with an objective third party not involved in the “revocation process.” In short, to distribute the decision-making responsibility.

Since the Grant Program was restructured and new categories were added to the grants program (March 1st), we had 4 grants submitted under the wrong category, with the distinction that 1 had other concerns, such as security.

We started the onboarding process with them, respecting the method and process that we have and honoring the governance process. We talked with the grantees trying to find a way of mitigating these concerns, for example, by re-submitting the proposal under the correct category..

Learnings for the first 4 months of the new grant program with a revocations process and a new committee.

• The DAO must continue to support community builders. For that reason, the Grant Support Squad will be submitting a poll in coordination with the Facilitator Squad to work with the community regarding the possibility of adding a new category called “community builders” in the Grants Program.
  For that, we must define concepts, requirements, impact metrics, and budget allocation, such as the other categories.
• High-quality information about the Grants Program and its requirements is needed, and we compromise to address it. The Grants Support Squad will add this Awesome Repository contribution guideline of documentation being only in English to the requirement of the documentation category
• Honor the governance process.
• Create a way to visibility the stages that a funded Grant has. The Grant Support Squad commits to work with the Governance Squad to show into the GovApp the mentioned stages of the Grant.
• Also, documenting our internal process is one of our goals for this new grant period. So, we will be incorporating the information into doc.decentraland.org. Meanwhile, as with the public roadmaps, we are committed to publishing the stages of the Grants in a public Notion.

Conclusion.

The article provides insights into how the GSS analyzes funded grants and addresses concerns raised within the community, following a defined set of steps during the project onboarding process, including analyzing proposals based on the Grants Program framework, assessing project feasibility, and establishing regular check-ins and updates.

When concerns are raised, the GSS initiates a case for potential grant revocation, which is then presented to the Revocations Committee. This Committee, established through community governance processes, allows grantees to present their case to an objective third party. The GSS ensures transparency by sharing the report and facilitating communication between the committee and the grantee if needed.

The blog tries to highlight the importance of honoring the governance process and continuously improving the Grants Program, such as the idea to add a new category for “community builders”, improve documentation guidelines, enhance the visibility of grant stages, and document internal processes. The Grant Support Squad is committed to fostering communication, transparency, and continuous improvement within the Grants Program.

Overall, our dedication is to accountability, fairness, and community involvement in the Grants Program. By addressing concerns and working towards improvements, we aim to create a robust and effective program that supports the growth and development of the Decentraland platform owned by the community.

We hope this information was helpful to all and shows our compromise to keep improving our communication and the Grants Program.

Best regards,

Grant Support Squad.