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Treasury Proposal: Ordum | Public Good Grants Aggregator for Polkadot and Kusama

inBig Spender
3 years ago
Confirmed

Dear Community,

Ordum is a public good grants aggregator for the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems. This proposal addresses the funding of R&D.

Introduction

There is no existing software besides Gitcoin to publish, apply for and manage grants. Gitcoin focuses on a quadratic funding model, while there is a need for an overall indexer and management software for grants in web3.

After reading the Builders Program post(https://forum.polkadot.network/t/builders-programs/226) on the Polkadot Forum and speaking with other members of the community (including councillors, Web3 Foundation, and members of Shokunin Network), it was evident that a grants aggregator is imperative for bringing projects into the ecosystem as well as scaling it.

In order to construct a rich and independent environment of public goods and DAOs, it is fundamental for teams to easily find and acquaint themselves with treasuries and foundations.

Problem

Treasuries / foundations(eg. Polkadot Treasury) are burning funds as there are not enough projects to support.


Grants information and guidelines within the ecosystems are scattered and therefore difficult to find (there are only 2 places where we have a somewhat overview of these; Polkadot/Kusama documentation and Web3 Foundation Github).


It is difficult to publicly track (grant) funding for different stages of project development. This has previously resulted in conflicts within the community.

There isn’t a unified public record to privately / publicly manage and display a grant recipient’s quality and outcome of delivery (scattered documentation).


With GOV2 incoming, further research is required on tracking proposals and deliverables in order to determine the appropriate UX.


Solution

Success for Ordum is the deliverance of all milestones and a V1 POC of a public goods grant aggregator.

  1. A dapp which contains all grants from the ecosystems.

    Index data from treasuries in the ecosystem by building custom APIs(Subsquids) for tracking proposals

    Integrate Github in the front end for tracking and submitting non-treasury grants

    Building and maintaining light clients for quick data retrivals, security and low loading times

    Enable log in with multiple DID services, Github and Wallets


  2. Minting of non-transferable NFTs as “certificates” for completed milestones. Each token would contain information on what was executed and how it was evaluated.

    Ordum will be built on Phala to leverege the chains privacy capabilities and Phat smart contracts

    Create a connection between DID (foundation)–> Phala Smart Contract–> Non-transferable NFT–>DID (recipient)

    Design a custom type of RMRK non-transferable NFT, stored on Crust, containing reports from the foundations on milestone delivery


  3. Delivery of milestones, grant applications and funding are displayed on a team’s profile for transparency.

    Front end displaying funding amounts and certificates within a roadmap

  4. Issuing surveys and analyzing / feedback data for the purpose of aggregating and managing treasury grants in the most optimal way.

    Design the optimal UX through collaboration with other teams in the ecosystem(interviews, surveys)

Requested funding 78,804 USD
Kusama rate EMA7 as per 24th of November 2022: 25.24 (and reimburstment of submission and decision deposit)

The full proposal can be viewed here

We look forward to hearing your feedback.

Comments (3)

3 years ago

Hello Team!..

Unfortunately, we are voting Nay on this occasion,

The underlying spirit of the proposal is indeed very good and, in case unsuccessful at this time, we would love to see it to mature enough and maybe reapply in the future.

However, the problem statement has a major flaw, as it is debatable that "The Network" will suffer from the burning of Treasury funds.

Additionally, it would be interesting to have a working MVP or PoC to validate the overall vision of the project. Without it, you have had no means to confirm that the scope and plans are deliverable.

Please keep the good work!!

Milos

3 years ago

Thank you for the comment @gatotech .

If I am not mistaking, Anaelle LTD@KSM had pointed out the same issue, and we had addressed this matter.

I believe that our wording might be vague or incorrect here(hence why we should probably change it). The implication wasn't that the treasury suffers from the burn, we try to state that there are not enough relevant proposals being submitted because the grants are not indexed in a UX friendly manner and therefore not attracting teams and talent to the ecosystem overal. The argument is that this is a visibility/searchability problem rather than a problem for the treasury itself.

Would a video demo of the UI wireframes in action be able to possibly change your mind? :D

3 years ago

This is a great proposal and I fully support it! A grants aggregator will certainly help the ecosystem. Currently, we only have general democracy aggregators like Polkassembly or the Polkadot JS App. While convenient for tracking overall democracy, these apps are not very ideal for grants. There are also no standardized processes in place for projects to report on their milestones. This project will deliver a specialized app made for grants and will establish processes for reporting and tracking grants. It will be built by individuals who have shown great dedication and reliability in the ecosystem - they absolutely deserve to get paid for this, not to mention how affordable this project is for the Treasury. The estimates are very reasonable and realistic and the overall plan shows a high level of competency from the team. My only concern is marketing. When you guys eventually build this thing, people will need to know about it! A marketing plan isn't a deal breaker for me but I'd like to see a marketing strategy eventually. Just something to keep in mind and if you can share any thoughts or ideas about spreading awareness about this app, I'd love to hear it! Respectfully, Adam

3 years ago

Thanks again @asteeber for the positive comments and constructive feedback, very much appreciated!

Yes exactly. Ordum also aims to automate as much of the application process as possible.

In terms of marketing, we have addressed it in this response to Anaelle LTD@KSM in the discussion post, bellow is our response:

The first phase of research is UX, meaning that we will be reaching out to every team issuing grants in the ecosystem. Additionally, we will speak to grant recipients to construct note their paint points in the current user journeys, this should make them aware of our existence. That is the plan for raising awareness amongst ecosystem projects, both grant issuers and applicants(we want to cooperate and demonstrate how we care for their needs and solve their problems). As for the outside world, we haven’t thought about this and possibly will not until there is an MVP, as we are focused on functionality rather than hype in the R&D stage. Happy to reconsider this method and start thinking of it more in depth if you suggest so :D. There are a lot of projects in the eco the community is not aware off, I completely agree here.

We are also working on our content creation strategy which will start to roll out as of next week. Currently the aim is to have a balance of technical articles (showing our research, development, discoveries, progress etc) and less technical articles which will demonstrate Ordum usecases within the ecosystem(grant aggregation, voting, evaluation, decision making etc) and beyond it(fraud prevention, accoundatility, how Ordum fits in Web3 alltogether etc).

We are happy to take anyone's considerations into account within this domain.

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Requested

DOT
323.82K DOT

Proposal Passed

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