Small Grants Q3 2023 (Public Goods & Ecosystem)

šŸ’¬ General Discussion
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Small grants are live for both Public Goods & Ecosystem!

Round Details

Submission Window:
September 13 - September 22

Voting Period:
September 25 - October 2

Payouts:
October 3 - 6

Prize Structure:

Ecosystem (15 ETH):

:1st_place_medal:5 ETH
:2nd_place_medal:3 ETH
:3rd_place_medal:2 ETH
:four:-:keycap_ten:: 0.7 ETH

Public Goods (13 ETH):
:1st_place_medal:5 ETH
:2nd_place_medal:3 ETH
:3rd_place_medal:2 ETH
:four:-:keycap_ten:: 0.3 ETH

Small Grants Changes

Thereā€™s a great discussion about rethinking small grants.

The key change we are experimenting with this round is the voting mechanism. Historically, voting was conducted using $ENS token-weighted voting. For this round, weā€™ve implemented a non-transferrable Working Group Grants Card. This card will be given to the following:

  1. Small Grants participants
  2. Large delegates
  3. Active community members
  4. Upon request

1 Card = 1 Vote, we expect to distribute around 300-600 cards for this round.

This experiment would not be possible without the community, thank you. We hope to keep evolving small grants to better serve ENS.

A special thanks goes @5pence.eth, @katherine.eth, @Coltron.eth, @vegayp, and @alisha.eth for their perspectives and support.

Lastly, @gregskril has been instrumental for all technical implementation. This would not happen without him, so if anything is broken do DM him on twitter :sweat_smile:

11 Likes
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Absolutely love this! Very glad to see the discussion around this put into practice/experiment. :clap:

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what does this mean? four to ten?
could you provide more detail about the cards?

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Prize distribution

1. Five ETH
2. Three ETH
3. Two ETH
4. 0.7 ETH
5. 0.7 ETH
6. 0.7 ETH
7. 0.7 ETH
8. 0.7 ETH
9. 0.7 ETH
10. 0.7 ETH

Thatā€™s ecosystem. Does that help?

On the cards, what kind of detail are you looking for?

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  1. Is it possible for one person to end up with more than one card? If so, how and why?
  2. Once we submit our grant proposals, how do we go about retrieving a card?
  3. Does 1 Card = 1 Vote mean that unlike the previous voting method, once I allocate my card/vote to a specific project, it CANNOT be used again, especially to vote for another project?
  4. Can you please highlight the main differences between the previous voting method and this card system?
  5. I donā€™t want to assume but will we be able to see the distribution of cards? Who earned what or how many and the reason? ex: Brantley = 2 Cards/Votes (1 ā€˜Large Delegateā€™ + 1 ā€˜Active Community Memberā€™)
  6. Can you please define in more detail what constitutes a ā€˜Large Delegateā€™ as well as an ā€˜Active Community Memberā€™?
  7. How will the cards be distributed to the participants?

I really like this idea; it just needs more clarity/transparency, less ambiguity. If the rules of the game are clear and everyone knows how a winner or winners will be chosen, it makes the game that much more fun. Thank you to everyone @slobo.eth mentioned I very much appreciate the work you all put in!

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Thanks for the questions!

One address cannot have more than 1 voting power. However, if somebody has submitted proposals from multiple addresses that didnā€™t get removed by stewards, it might be possible. (There is a period of time between submissions closing and the start of voting to clean out spammy/duplicate/ineligible submissions).

The address that submitted the proposal (assuming it is approved by stewards) will receive a card (ERC-1155 NFT) before the start of the voting period. No additional action is needed from participants.

No, we should have instead said that every Card holds the same voting power. The number ā€œ1ā€ is basically irrelevant and can be distributed to as many projects as youā€™d like.

Previously we used approval voting (all voting power applies to every proposal you vote for), now weā€™re going to use weighted voting and distribute the voting power evenly. Voting is powered by Snapshot, see their docs here.

Yes, cards will be onchain NFTs so anybody can view the owners. No address will have more than 1 card.

  • Large delegate = top 50 (see on https://www.votingpower.xyz/)
  • Active community member is more vague; weā€™ll start with some people that come to mind who might not otherwise be eligible (like active ENS-related Twitter accounts). If youā€™d like to make sure youā€™re part of that list and wonā€™t otherwise quality, feel free to send me a DM here on Discourse.

Cards will be a non-transferrable ERC-1155 NFT. Weā€™ll do a batch transfer before the voting opens. No additional action needed from recipients.

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Much appreciated @gregskril thank you for the thorough response! Last 2 quick things:

1- Regarding ā€œOne address cannot have more than 1 voting power.ā€ So to be clear, if someone happens to fall into 2 out of the 3 criteria (theyā€™re both a ā€˜Large Delegateā€™ AND a ā€˜Small Grants Participantā€™) they only receive 1 card, correct?

2- Does ā€˜Small Grants participantsā€™ mean theyā€™ve submitted a proposal for this current round only or are we giving cards to those who have participated/submitted proposals in previous rounds as well?

Thank you!

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Hi,

We are excited to try out the new voting method. Previous one wasnā€™t working out in general and itā€™s nice to see an iteration. We have a quick question and a quick comment:

  • Can regular grant holders apply for small grants? There were suggestions against generic grant holders participating in small grants so we want to make sure that we are not violating any guidelines when applying

  • This morning we had issues with the UI which was failing with code 401. Debugger suggested supabase hook returning a dead end @gregskril

Cheers
NameSys

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Yes you can apply for small grants @NameSys

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Correct

Previous rounds as well - at least the rounds in the last 6 months, possibly more.

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Thanks for the bug report - Iā€™ll look into it! In the meantime, feel free to DM me your proposal and I can manually add it.

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@gregskril Still getting that 401 error so I have sent you our proposal over DM! :pray:

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Question for the Stewards: Will the voting distribution be made public after the voting round has concluded? Pardon if this question has already been addressed elsewhere.

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The voting cards will be NFTs so it will be publicly visible who has one.

And the voting will use Snapshot as always which is also public and can be verified here.

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Thank you, Greg!

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I thought this was brought up that; if a voter casts a vote, then that vote is essentially used for that round.

The ability to cast your vote across multiple projects doesnā€™t seem to resolve or create a more accurate measurement of voter choice.

For example in the case of ENS governance tokens in previous method.

If a single voter;
being one address,
that is holding ENS governance token(s).
Let one (1) token = one (1) vote.
Let this address possess 10 tokens.
Let this round have 5 proposals.
Let this Address cast 10 votes across any amount of proposals.

Address casts 10 votes in favor of four (4) proposals of five (5) total possible proposals.

This method does not accurately measure sentiment of choice voting.

But if the vote casted is not essentially used and subsequently applied to multiple proposals we donā€™t see a measurable difference in choice as the weight of ten (10) votes is applied to the four (4) proposals. Each are weighted equally and are undescernabley differenciated in the voters favor.

Now if the addresses ten (10) votes are used when votes are casted across four proposals then we will see des erable difference in voting favor as the possible outcome of 10 votes across 4 proposals becomes:

Prop 1: votes= 1
Votes remaining=9
Prop 2: votes=2
Votes remaining=7
Prop 3: votes=3
Votes remaining=4
Prop 4: votes=4
Votes remaining=0
Prop 5: votes=0

Number of votes can not be evenly applied across selected choices of voter.
The vote must register as used or spent in the voting logic as if it were being placed in an arcade game until the round is reset and the tokens are then collected and then redistributed to the players.

Whereas

@
Prop 1: votes= 10
Votes remaining=10
Prop 2: votes=10
Votes remaining=10
Prop 3: votes=10
Votes remaining=10
Prop 4: votes=10
Votes remaining=0
Prop 5: votes=0

Offers no measurable favor in choice.

So how is this new method using 1155 cards providing a more accurate measurement in voting favor ? The only variable being changed is the unit of vote from 100k to 1 per se. Am I missing something or misread a rule in place?

Also I think we should be careful on dubbing grant funds as ā€˜prizesā€™.
Perhaps change the title of this post to clarify about the cars since the conversation has been focused on this

I hope I am transposing my thoughts correctly.

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Hey @accessor.eth,

Maybe I can describe this in a simpler way.

The NFT Card simply allows/permits you to be a voter in our small grants rounds.

Every voter has 1 vote to spend in the round, and they can break that 1 vote up however theyā€™d like across multiple proposals.

So, the following scenarios would be possible:

  • Voter A assigns 100% of their vote to proposal #2

  • Voter B assigns 80% of their vote to proposal #2 and 20% to proposal #4

  • Voter C assigns 20% to proposal #4, 50% to proposal #6, and 30% to proposal #7

  • Voter C assigns 10% of their vote to each of 10 different proposals

This type of voting leverages an existing snapshot strategy, and our Small Grants infra relies on Snapshot for a backend.

Hereā€™s an example of a recent round run by Epoch Zero that leveraged something very similar to this. Youā€™ll see the voters were POAP holders who each had a full power of 1 vote that they broke out across multiple choices in a flexible way.

I hope itā€™s clear now, but this is different from the previous method because there are no participants that are kingmakers due to their delegated $ENS voting power. In this scenario, every participant has the same amount of vote to give out however they see fit.

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So 1 voter card = alloted percentage of choice out of 100%?

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Hi @gregskril, Iā€™m facing an error named ā€œError 401ā€ while publishing a proposal for the ENS small grant. Can you please let me know how we can resolve this and publish the proposal?

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Hi @gregskril Iā€™m facing the same error while publishing. Since the deadline is very close, would appreciate your prompt help on this. Fingers crossed! Donā€™t want to miss this opportunity! :slight_smile:

Thanks a lot !