The Ecosystem Working Group is requesting funding of 2.3 million USD equivalent for the second term. The budget has four categories. All figures are presented in USD equivalent.
Multisigs / Subgroups: $1.5m
Funding in this category is associated with a multisig wallet that has a clearly defined mandate. These multisigs been approved by current stewards of the ENS Ecosystem working group.
Examples of subgroups receiving funding include bug bounty, support mods, dot-eth websites, .limo infrastructure, hackathons, and ENS ecosystem rounds during gitcoin grants rounds.
Funding in this category relates to current and future proposals. Potential examples include on-chain normalization, ENS avatar, and future RFPs. Details on the RFP process can be found in this thread.
Funding in this category supports retro-active grants not covered by predefined multi-sigs in the subgroups category. The majority of this funding is expected to be allocated to the prop-house.
There has been a lot of progress in the past few weeks on the ENS Subdomains front. Communities like Purrnelopes CC & organizations like Coinbase have realized the potential of uniting their members under a single ENS domain. With the namewrapper coming up in the next month, this would be the perfect time to create an ENS-Subdomains subgroup.
Thanks @stevegachau.eth for creating this post. The good news is the proposed budget has discretionary funds to support educational resources and tooling relating to subdomains.
That being said, this thread is to discuss the proposed budget. You may have missed this thread Term 2 - WG Budget & Initiative Requests. Items in that thread did influence how we thought about the budget in all working groups.
I’m happy to put this potential subgroup on the agenda on our next weekly call (they happen every Monday at 6pm GMT, calendar link here) so we can have a discussion there.
Hey @slobo.eth thank you for the post and the proposal.
One request. Please add tables and not screenshots for the budget breakdowns. It’s quite hard to review and impossible to copy paste things around.
Here I would like to protest the usage of the Gitcoin ecosystem funds. This may run a bit off-topic and I apologize. Projects like the one I work in, rotki, have been staunch supporters of ENS and have tried to support as much of it as possible and promote it to our users.
In fact right before the gitcoin grants round 14 started we had just finished implementing ENS reverse resolution across the app. Something we are really proud of. And then wanted to continue and integrate ENS avatars.
The TL;DR is some grants like ours have been open for 4 years and have multiple devs in our payroll. A dry number without context makes it look like we are rich, while we are still struggling to survive. (the number is also off – but this is another discussion).
So I felt quite hurt when a project I like and devote time to its governance disqualified us. I am of a mind to lodge a protest NO vote on this budget proposal just for this.
I don’t want to stop anyone here from getting funded. I just want to protest what happened. And maybe ask if we can find either ways to support bigger projects that are public goods and support ENS like rotki, or to rethink the policy on the Gitcoin ecosystem round of ENS.
I read the thread you linked and I am still not sure what these funds is for. Can you please provide an easy to digest TL;DR? I would like to understand what it is that I am voting for.
What are these retroactive grants exactly? Any link to read about them?
I also asked this in the other proposals. If they are unused do these funds rollover in the next quarter/period? Who is responsible for reporting the financials here?
But I instead of voting against the budget because of it, maybe it’s enough for the stewards to agree to raise it to a community discussion before the next Gitcoin round, to see what people here think about it? I think that’s the part that was lacking from this decision.
If you are looking for breakdown of RFPs and the amount that has been allocated to them. This does not exist. This category is meant to fund proposals, which may materialize during the term that support the ENS ecosystem. If no suitable proposals or RFPs are proposed this money will not be spent.
Future retroactive grants have not been decided as of yet.
The retroactive grants were provided on the basis of value delivered to ENS ecosystem. We hold weekly calls on Mondays (6pm GMT). Anyone can present their existing project for the chance to receive a retroactive grant.
Yes they rollover.
A subgroup in the Metagovernance Working Group lead by nick.eth will be responsible for financials and reporting.
I didn’t want to submit an RFP until I have time to see it through to the end (I can work in earnest starting late August), but wondering whether I should submit the “Onchain Normalization” RFP as part of this budget proposal? If not, I can always submit a separate RFP whenever the time comes.
In the meantime only for this workstream’s q3/q4 I will vote to abstain from the proposal just to register a protest about how ENS gitcoin ecosystem round was handled.
I am hopeful that in the future we will find ways to improve both for the DAO and for projects of all sizes that use ENS and are part of the ENS ecosystem!
ENS ran an ecosystem round for GR14 with a total of $42k in matching funds available. The eligibility criteria for GR14 differed from the previous round, GR13, on the basis that the round had much less funding. GR13 had a total of $69k in matching funds.
The Public Goods WG stewards (who funded the round with funds from the PGWG, because there weren’t funds to allocate from the ENS Ecosystem WG at the time) approved an experiment to exclude grants with a lifetime contribution over $50k to see if it might increase the amount of matching funds that smaller/new grants, many of which are very specific to ENS, would receive.
I’m sorry your feelings were hurt. It is the ENS DAO Constitution (Article III), and not the feelings of Delegates, that is taken into account with the execution of initiatives such as an ENS ecosystem grants round with Gitcoin.
The intention of the ENS participating in a Gitcoin grants round is to support projects, especially those specific to ENS, with a small amount of funding (less than $7k) to keep building and adding value to the ENS ecosystem. The ENS ecosystem round is also a discoverability mechanism for the community and especially stewards to identify projects that exist, are adding value, and may benefit from continued support through a working group grant or a larger grant approved by the DAO.
The Future
The ENS Ecosystem WG budget includes approval for two $69k ENS ecosystem rounds for GR15 and GR16. I’m not aware of any exclusionary eligibility criteria (which is set at the stewards’ discretion) for GR15 and GR16 at this point, so your project, Rotki, will continue to be eligible for these future rounds, provided the ENS ecosystem WG budget is approved.
You are also welcome to submit a request for funding to the Public Goods WG or the ENS Ecosystem WG for retroactive grants outside of a Gitcoin Grants Round. For grants larger than can be accommodated by a working group in a given term, you can also put forward a DAO-wide executable proposal for a distribution of funds to Rokti on whatever basis you like.
No, he is the lead signer of the gitcoin-grants multisig, not a steward of the Ecosystem WG.
The role of the lead signer is to initiate transactions on the multisig funded with a specific purpose as specified by stewards in the WG budget, but transactions must be approved by stewards in order to be confirmed.
If the Ecosystem WG is funded, Matoken.eth could initiate a transaction to distribute the funds but a majority of Ecosystem stewards would need to confirm that transaction.
I imagine that, like the PG working group, the Ecosystem working group will discuss eligibility for Gitcoin grants rounds in the weekly calls before each round, which anyone is able to participate in.
Under Rule 3.5 of the Working Group Rules passed in EP12, Stewards have the discretion to fund to subgroups for a specific purpose.
While meetings may fall at an inconvenient time depending on geography, the lead stewards of each working group are always available (by DM on this forum or on Twitter) to liaise with by text or on a call so that your comments can be considered and represented in the weekly meeting in your absence.
