☎ ENS Public Goods – Weekly Meeting: 12pm ET/5pm UTC, Thursday – Term 6

1. Welcome ALL :sparkles:

  • Weekly dose of public goods goodness.

2. Jam corner with the PG band aka @Sov

  • Steve Ray Vaughn - Pride and Joy
    • (because Ethereum is our Pride and Joy :sparkles:)

3. Miscellaneous ENS updates of general interest

  • Secured a place in Buenos Aires for Devconnect - November 19, 6-9 pm.
  • ETHAccra hackathon at the beginning of September

4. The EF SFC team joins us to intro & chat about our collaboration

  • Talking more about EF + ENS collab.
  • Strategic grants have been funding projects with matching funding from EF
  • Excitement expressed about the collab and evolution from working in silos.
  • The collaboration is the outcome of two months of work
  • Vinay Vasanji leads the Strategic Funding Coordination team.
  • Aim is to increase the flow of information and funds from funders to projects
  • The team also aims to help projects surface that they’re in search of funding and getting credibility from EF to help additional funders get on board.
  • Building dashboards to surface projects to public goods funders and exploring mechanisms for sustainable funding.

Changes to EF grant process

  • The grant process at EF is shifting
    • Previously, grants were given through an open grant round and ad hoc grants surfaced by EF teams.
    • The process is pausing and will become more RFP-driven.
  • Teams will surface areas of priority, and a structured process will be in place for project applications and selection.
  • This will create a pipeline of high-priority domain areas
  • The process will be more structured, regular, and interactive

Collaboration and Benefits for builders

  • Projects approaching ENS for funding can be referred to the Strategic Funding Coordination team to identify alignment with upcoming RFPs.
  • This saves time for projects by helping them navigate the funding landscape
  • Shortening the time between inquiry and review can accelerate co-funding
  • Sharing project proposals among teams can provide builders with 2 grant reviews in one shot.
  • Previous EF grantees may graduate to a broader ecosystem of funders, with the team providing coordination and non-financial resources.
  • The collaboration allows for magnified impact and mutual support

Analysis

  • The EF is trying to determine which projects are essential to the broader ecosystem
  • Essential does not only mean technical infrastructure
  • Social infrastructure can also be essential too.
  • Examples of social infrastructure projects funded include Cyberpunk Congress, Magma (Africa Focused Developer Residency), and Shenzhen Researcher House.
  • Other areas include community initiatives, education (e.g., Web3 Bridge, Rare Skills), and research.
  • There is a public feed of announced grantees on the ESP Twitter handle
  • On average, there have been about 600 grantees per year
  • Budget ranges are based on need and scope

Ethereum Stories

  • Epoch 9 starts the 2nd week of October.
  • Applications are open until the end of the month.
  • It’s a collaboration between the EF team and the Octane team.

5. Open floor for all questions, proposals and other presentations etc.

Bybit Hack and Security Tool

  • David, with a security background, has been exploring options related to security incidents since the Bybit hack.
  • He is developing an AI-powered tool to identify addresses and determine user intent based on onchain data.
  • The tool uses decoded call data as input and can be modeled into a MetaMask snap.
  • Snaps offer additional capabilities to MetaMask that are not native.

ETHAccra update

  • The ETHAccra hackathon is two weeks away.
  • A webinar was hosted to onboard everyone to ENS.
  • The Hackathon requirements were given out.
  • Magma is also preparing for an event.
  • The magma event is on September 1st - 3rd;
  • The hackathon is on September 4th.
  • There will be a Builders day before the hackathon with overlap between the two events.
  • It might be interesting to get Joseph to speak at ETH Accra about public goods
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