Game On — Introducing Prime Rating Season One

From October 11th until November 7th

This article summarizes Prime Rating Seasons, a new post-rate-athon framework. Check “Prime Where we stand today” “Prime Rate-athon” articles for deeper info on Prime Rating.

TL;DR:

• ‘Prime Rating Seasons’ is a gamified approach to Rating DeFi projects
• Season one will begin on October 11th, 2021, 10:00 AM (UTC) and last until November 7th, 10:00 PM (UTC)
• Early submissions are incentivized with bonuses
• Raters can level up to earn extra rewards
• 10.5K USDC + 21K PRIME in prizes to be won

A bit of context

For our readers not familiar with Prime Rating, this section will provide a brief intro. If you are familiar with our rating framework, skip to “Introducing Rating Seasons.”

Prime Rating is a permissionless and open-source rating framework to quantify the quality and risk of open finance protocols. Prime Rating offers a simple and comparable opinion in the form of a benchmark rating, on a scale from A+ to D. Prime Rating operates through a permissionless process governed by the Prime Rating stewards. Protocols are evaluated from the perspective of a token holder based on smart contract quality and fundamental analysis.

The goal of Prime Rating is to improve the resiliency and functionality of the open finance ecosystem, educate end-users about the associated risks, and create a benchmark for an open financial system that is permissionless, trustless, and transparent.

Are you into fundamental analysis?

If deep-dives, fundamental analysis, and token research are your thing, join us on our mission to help educate each other and the broader ecosystem. Prime Rating is open for anyone to contribute. Anybody with a fair understanding of the Web3 ecosystem is invited to create and submit rating reports.

Our theory is based on the wisdom of the crowd, and we do believe that our ratings will become more trustworthy, resilient and reliable, the more people participate and add their perception to the overall score. Prime Rating is a community-driven project based on an incentive structure inspired by DeFi and other service DAOs.

Did it spark your interest? Read on to find out how to contribute and become a Prime rater!

Introducing Prime Rating Seasons

As proposed in a forum post, ratings shall be done seasonally, much like in traditional sports. In other words, there is a fixed time window throughout which reports can be submitted and reviewed. This will ensure that reports are kept up-to-date and increase engagement by providing clear rules coupled with a deliberate infrastructure and tools.

The following structure is applied for the first season:

• The duration of one season is 6 weeks
• The 6 weeks are separated into a 4-week rating season and a 2-week review/recap window
• Reports can be submitted during 4 weeks after the official start, which is on October 11th, 2021, 10:00 am (UTC)
• The season ends on November 7th, 22:00 (UTC); participants can submit reports afterward, but they will not be eligible to win Seasons’ prizes
• The first season focuses on DeFi projects. A list of eligible projects taken from Coingecko will be published before the start
• After the rating period, there is a 2-week break. During this break, Prime stewards will look at all reports that came in last minute and accept/reject all remaining reports
• Moreover, the break is used to curate and upload all reports onto the Prime Rating website, to payout rewards, do a recap of the previous season, and prepare for the next
• To encourage submitting reports early, the rewards will be slightly higher during the first two weeks (see details below)

Report Acceptance Process (RAP)

With the basis laid out above, we will now look at how contributors can participate, make sure their reports are accepted so that their rating score is applied, and increase the chances of winning.

Submitting a report consists of three main steps: report creation, gathering feedback, and submission. Those steps can be summarized into the report acceptance process (RAP) as described below:

1. The report template is downloaded from Gitbook. Rater creates a copy of the file and fills out the report
2. Once completed, the report is added to the PrimeDAO Discord channel #report-feedback to get feedback from Prime stewards (and other raters)
3. At least one Prime steward will provide feedback as comments into the document.
4. The party submitting the report can decide to either implement the feedback, stop with the process, or (if feedback was excellent) proceed directly to submission. participants can also repeat the feedback process if you want to make sure the report adheres to the quality standard expected
5. After finalizing the report, it is converted to a .pdf file. Rater can process the submission form, fill out the required details and upload the report
6. Reports that were submitted will go to a vote using Snapshot. Prime stewards will again review the report, and finally vote FOR or AGAINST accepting a report
7. If the majority votes FOR, the report will be added to the Prime Rating App and the rating will be added to the project’s overall score. Rewards are paid to the report creator.
8. If the majority votes AGAINST, the report is not accepted. The rater can then approach the governing group, ask for feedback, and re-submit again after implementing the feedback.

Please be aware that raters can only submit the same report twice per season. If reviewers did not accept it the second time, that usually means that the report is not of good quality.

Community Contributions & Raters

As outlined here, ensuring high quality of reports is extremely important to Prime Rating and one of the main reasons a rigorous governance structure is put in place. We also want to provide the opportunity for more engagement within Prime Rating to those raters (and groups) that consistently create high-quality reports.

Furthermore, we want to establish a community that becomes self-sustainable, that can carry this project forward and ensure its future success.

Thus, together with Season #1, we want to introduce a system that allows raters to level up and receive more responsibility within Prime Rating.

• Level 0: Each person or group that wants to participate in Prime Rating starts at level 0. There are no rights or duties associated with this level.
• Novice: After successfully submitting 3 accepted reports, a rater or a group will become a Novice rater. Each novice will receive a non-transferable token (NTT).
• Graduate: After successfully submitting 10 reports that were accepted, a rater or a group will advance to Graduate. This will again result in an NTT plus rewards being increased by 10%. In addition, Graduates are encouraged to become reviewers and provide feedback to any reports being submitted.
• Master: After successfully submitting 20 reports that were accepted, a rater or a group will be granted Master level. This will again result in an NTT plus rewards being increased by 20%. Masters are encouraged to become reviewers and are eligible to become part of the governing group that decides whether reports are accepted/rejected.
• Grand Master & Legend: In the future, we plan to have additional levels such as Grand Master (35 reports) and Legend (50 reports).
• Reviewers: Raters with a level of Graduates or higher can choose to become reviewers. If they do, it’s their job to look at incoming reports and provide feedback to raters to increase their chances of being accepted. Reviewers will also be rewarded per review (details below).

Other roles within Prime Rating:

Prime Stewards: Currently, there is also the role of a Prime steward. These are the individuals who are more involved in the day-to-day business and ensure the progress of PrimeDAO, e.g., website development, community / social media manager, BD/partnerships, etc. Prime stewards are long-term community contributors, and we encourage everybody interested to join PrimeDAO to introduce themselves in Discord and ask for ways to contribute.

So, when can a rater level up? Leveling-up can only occur once during a season, plus once at the end. For example, if a rater starts at level 0, they can submit 3 reports within the first two weeks of the season and be granted Novice. If the person submits an additional 7 reports until the season ends, leveling-up would only occur at the end, i.e., during the 2-week break and not during the season. The person can then start the next season as a Graduate rater and immediately level up to Master (if another 10 reports are submitted).

Rewards & Rules

Rewards are paid out a per report and depending on the timing of submission. As mentioned above, to encourage early submission, the first 2 weeks yield slightly higher rewards. Below are the rewards for a level-0 rate & novice rater.

Rewards:

• Normal rewards per report (level-0 and Novice): 150 USDC + 200 PRIME
• Reports submitted in week 1 receive 20% bonus: 180 USDC + 240 PRIME
• Reports submitted in week 2 receive 10% bonus: 165 USDC + 220 PRIME
• Reward per review: 100 USDC + 100 PRIME

Prizes:

Like in our most recent rate-athon, there will be prizes to win for two main categories. The first one is quality, and the second one is quantity:

• The three best reports in terms of quality — chosen by the governing group — will receive 2000 USDC + 4000 PRIME each
• The three parties that submitted the most reports, will receive
• 2000 USDC + 4000 PRIME for the 1st place
• 1500 USDC + 3000 PRIME for the 2nd place
• 1000 USDC + 2000 PRIME for the 3rd place

Other rules:

• A project can only be submitted once per rater
• A project cannot be submitted more than 3 times per season. The first 3 submissions (that get accepted) will receive the rewards
• The list of projects eligible for rating will be released in due time before the season starts

How can I participate in Season 1?

1. Join us on Discord
2. Read through the rules and guidelines
3. Follow the step-by-step instructions as outlined in the #pr-season-1-rules channel on Discord

Find out more about on our website, Discord, and Gitbook

Disclaimer: this seasonal approach, as described above, was proposed by a community member and is the first of its kind. The PrimeDAO community will evaluate the suitability and success of this first attempt throughout and after season 1. Depending on the outcome of this assessment, this approach may or may not be continued to a second season.

About PrimeDAO

Our mission is to facilitate the broad adoption of open finance by coordinating and cultivating protocols, DAOs, and DAO2DAO relations that promote reliability, liquidity, collaboration, and extensive access. We’re excited to continue to build next-generation coordination tools for decentralized finance and help steer DeFi towards a synergistic ecosystem.

If you or a DAO you participate in wants to collaborate with PrimeDAO or launch a DAO2DAO — hop into our Discord channel and let’s make it happen!

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