co-authored by @Coltron.eth, @vegayp and @simona_pop
The Public Goods Working group is proud to announce the Builder Grant platform, built in partnership with Build Guild.
Brief History of ENS Public Goods Grants
The Ethereum Name Service is recognized as a public good and benefited significantly from early funding through Ethereum Foundation grants in 2017. This support played a crucial role in the protocolās development during its formative years.
In November 2022, ENS achieved a major milestone in its decentralization journey with the establishment of the ENS DAO and the subsequent ratification of the ENS Constitution. Article Three of this constitution outlines the governance framework for how the DAO can allocate funds generated from the sale of ENS domain names.
Given that ENS owes much of its early success to public goods funding, it is unsurprising that the ENS Constitution explicitly includes provisions for allocating a portion of its revenue to the funding of public goods. This reflects a broader commitment to supporting the sustainability and growth of the Ethereum and Web3 ecosystem.
To achieve this mandate, a Public Goods working group was formed with the passing of [EP 0.4] and has been allocated budgets to be used towards funding Public Goods. Over the initial terms of the Public Goods working group, several initiatives were created by the Public Good Working Group:
- Small Grants: This focused on small allocations of funding with an emphasis on experimentation and crowdsourcing the grants review process.
- Growth Grants: Available for approximately one year this program focused on relatively medium-sized funding requests overseen by the Public Goods cohort.
- Large Grants: Focused on larger amounts of funding for more established projects with proven track records, with milestone-based payouts.
- Perpetual Public Goods Bounty: A rolling application focused on projects that presented at ETHGlobal hackathons or elsewhere that demonstrated promising benefits as a Public Goods.
- Other Rounds: Partnerships with the Giveth for a āBuilders Roundā and Funding the Commons Hackathon.
During the two-years that these programs have been available, the Public Goods working group has distributed over 1M in ETH and USDC to Public Goods grantees. In the relative scope of grant programs available from the ENS DAO treasury, this is a humble yet considerable contribution of resources, time and effort towards funding Public Goods and to provide a reliable source of funds for builders and projects.
Additionally, have the working group has evolved over time, Term Four stewards (@simona_pop , @vegayp, and @Coltron.eth) have gleaned the following insights related to Public Goods funding:
- Projects and Builders canāt solely rely on seasonal funding
- Fragmentation of working group grants programs lead to unclear pathways for grantees and prevent scaling of funding
- Gamification in systems such as Small Grants resulted in the repetition of grantees, and lack of grantee diversity
- Critical infrastructure (grantee interfaces) is as necessary as critical human infrastructure (education programs or outreach)
- The milestone system incorporated in Large Grants has helped achieve a higher level of grantee engagement and value alignment
- The working groups should actively seek to prevent voter apathy and projects of extractive nature
- Rubric system created by @coltron.eth proved to be a transparent and effective way to qualify and evaluate projects
- The Ethereum and Web3 ecosystem is generally unaware that the ENS DAO provides Public Goods Funding
- Transparency and community accountability are paramount to a well functioning public goods funding mechanism
Buildersā Grant Platform: A Unified Approach to Public Goods Funding
The Builders Grant Platform was created in partnership with Build Guild as a response to persistent challenges in grants funding within the web3 ecosystem. By consolidating funding programs into a single, milestone-driven platform, this project directly addresses issues encountered such as the fragmentation, lack of transparency, and reliance on seasonal cycles.
Hereās how the platform resolves key challenges:
Over reliance on seasonal funding: The platform provides a continuous funding model, enabling builders and projects to access funds as they achieve milestones. This supports sustained progress without dependency on rigid funding cycles.
Milestone-Driven Engagement: The proven success of milestones in the Large Grants program inspired their core presence. The structure promotes grantee engagement and alignment with long-term value creation goals.
Fragmentation in Working Group Grants: By combining Small, Growth, and Large Grants into one platform, the Builderās Grant Platform eliminates confusion and creates a clear pathway for grantees.
Repetitive Funding and Lack of Diversity: The platformās milestone system requires proof of work and value delivery, encouraging a diversity of projects by aligning funding with outcomes rather than repetitive grants to familiar names.
Preventing Grant Farming: Transparency and accountability mechanisms, such as milestone tracking and proof-of-work submissions, reduce the likelihood of extractive projects exploiting the system. By tying funding to progress, the platform hopes to promote genuine involvement and value creation.
ENS Public Goods Funding Awareness: By streamlining funding efforts, the platform makes it easier for the ecosystem to more easily tap into ENS DAOās public goods funding. The visibility of projects funded through the platform will hopefully raise awareness of these initiatives and increase accessibility to available funds.
We launched the new platform at frENSday in Bangkok and you can watch the video announcement here.
This is how the full process works here.
The platform is currently in beta, so any feedback is more than welcome. Our intention is to distribute and share this initiative to as many people as possible. Due to the value alignment mentioned with the ENS constitution, itās vital that this platform can be accessed by all builders and projects who provide substantial value to the Ethereum and web3 ecosystems.
Technical Information
The Builder platform is an open source project and you can access the repository here.
Relevant information:
- Built using Scaffold-ETH 2 (tech stack: NextJS, RainbowKit, Hardhat, Wagmi, Viem, SIWE and Typescript)
- Grants and withdrawals are stored on-chain. Weāre tracking the withdrawals to show them on the website using ponder
- Weāre also using an off-chain database to store users, grants and internal approvals / comments (drizzle with postgres)
- Deployment
- Website and database: Vercel
- Ponder: Railway
Finally, Thank You to the Build Guild team for making this effort possible. The Public Goods Working Group stewards and the Build Guild team look forward to any comments, feedback or suggestions. We expect further evolution and continued improvements to be made possible through collaboration with grantees and the broader community.