metadata: {"signature": "0x5557be71ce989d66e02537595178fc05fbf6481b511d87896ad56165bede2a2b23c1a911a540176f166122dfcb2baae72600906bd5a5b6a89af3042e6b6ce4041c", "application": {"round": "0x1b0caf40f491dce9c51e7e33d6e86112bb0bb91b", "answers": [{"type": "checkbox", "answer": ["Research on grant program design and effectiveness", "Development of Web3 Grants tooling", "Experiments with innovative funding mechanisms"], "hidden": false, "question": "How does your project contribute to the advancement of the Web3 grants ecosystem?", "questionId": 0}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "DAO Drops is the public goods arm of dOrg. In 2023 we launched DAO Drops first iteration, a pilot supported by the Ethereum Foundation to empower Ethereum users to allocate ecosystem funds to underfunded projects. If you want to know more about how we built this first drop, visit https://daodrops.io/ \n\nWe received a tremendous amount of positive feedback from the community, especially from groups that were interested in running their own rounds. As a result, we released our second drop: PairDrop. PairDrop is a reusable primitive that allows communities to intelligently allocate funds. It is designed to avoid common pitfalls of funding mechanisms like cognitive overload and favoritism, while making the process fun and painless.\n\nThis iteration empowers communities to engage in co-budgeting, directing funds to projects aligned with community goals with minimal overhead. The mechanism leverages random sampling and pairwise comparison, enabling large voter sets to allocate funds across impactful projects. The goal is to ensure a fair distribution that avoids popularity contests. Communities are also able to tailor the primitive for their own needs through a Voter Scoring Script that allocated voting power to individuals based on on-chain or off-chain datasets.\n\nOur upcoming public goods tools drops for granting DAOs, including a privacy-preserving DAO, a bot for public goods projects to answer common questions, assist with DAO onboarding, and help write grants based on past applications, and a forkable version of dOrg Passport to manage builder reputation and voting. ", "hidden": true, "question": "Describe your previous work or plans related to the Web3 grants ecosystem.", "questionId": 1}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "DAO Drops creates significant value for the Web3 grants ecosystem by empowering decentralized communities with open source tools. We are creating forkable primitives for communities to run their own funding rounds in ways that more intelligently capture the wisdom and experience of stakeholders in decision making.\n\nWe have published our research and methods with extensive documentation in our Gitbook and the githubs for each of our drops. Our team has appeared on several podcasts and round operator trainings, sharing our methodologies and experiments.\n\nDAO Drops adds value to the Web3 grants ecosystem by promoting innovation, community engagement, and equitable fund distribution with the web3 grants tools we build, and we want to keep building them with your support. ", "hidden": true, "question": "How does your project create value for the Web3 grants ecosystem?", "questionId": 2}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Since the project was launched, our experience with DAO Drops had  been feature in different podcasts, newsletters, twitter accounts and articles, here\u2019s a few:\n\nGithub: https://github.com/dOrgTech/DAO-Drops \nFull report of DAO Drops round 1: https://substack.com/inbox/post/114871442\nGitbook Research Summary: https://daodrops.gitbook.io/dao-drops-research\n\nOri Shimony is a founder of dOrg, one of the world's first legal DAOs. He is an expert in mechanism design, including founding the Mechanism Design Institute: https://www.mechanism.institute/ and is now working on agent-based modelling for further governance innovation.\nMagenta Ceiba is a founder of Bloom Network, a federated DAO that has a unique grants program to finance grassroots community labor, which happens in highly networked, decentralized ways. https://bloomnetwork.earth/view/announcement-local-action-rewards-942c6454c17d  She has also participated in multi-stakeholder governance processes for funding distribution across movement coalitions, where grantees and funders together strategize around most effective use of the funds. The experience informs her contributions to Web3 grants.\nOur development team are experts in building edge-of-ecosystem tooling in Web3, and the design team are specialists in accessible UI and branding. Many members of dOrg have helped out with our builds and the communications and legal sides of operating Web3 grants rounds.\n\nFeatures: \nWeek in Ethereum news: https://weekinethereum.substack.com/p/week-in-ethereum-news-january-14?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web \nDAO Times: https://daotimes.com/dao-drops-to-distribute-250k-to-projects-that-have-contributed-to-the-ethereum-ecosystem/ \nGreen Pill podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AplDLgAsqMA \n\nIf you want to keep diving into our social credibility, please take a look at our Twitter account: https://twitter.com/dao_drops and feel free to explore the full use case of how we built DAO Drops 1: https://www.dorg.tech/#/case-studies/dao-drops ", "hidden": true, "question": "Describe your team's expertise in your chosen focus area within Web3 grants. Include relevant experience, publications, or past projects.", "questionId": 3}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "See our grant listing for details. Our website, githubs for each grants community tool drop, research Gitbook, as well as appearances on podcasts and trainings, are all ways that we share insights, methodologies, and tools with the broader Web3 grants community. We're interested in being more closely involved with Cartographer Syndicate.", "hidden": true, "question": "How do you plan to share insights, methodologies, or tools developed through your project with the Cartographer Syndicate and the broader Web3 grants community?", "questionId": 4}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Our first two rounds involved no custom smart contract development.", "hidden": true, "question": "List any contract addresses with the associated network(s), EOAs, or deployer addresses your project has deployed.", "questionId": 5}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Yes: \n- Our first drop (DAO Drops) was built thanks to a grant from The Ethereum Foundation (USD 65,500 for research and build, and USD 250,000 for grant distribution ). \n\n- We have participated in Epoch 1,2,3 and 4 by Octant. From those rounds, we have raised (USD $107,760) and used (USD $31,578) to build PairDrop. \n\n- With the current funding, we will be able to release our next two drops and likely more", "hidden": true, "question": "Have you received any previous grants or support for your work in Web3 grants? If so, please provide details and estimated funding amounts.", "questionId": 6}, {"type": "dropdown", "answer": "Yes", "hidden": true, "question": "Please confirm that you have read and agree to comply with the ethical standards outlined in the eligibility criteria, including Gitcoin's Quid Pro Quo policy (https://support.gitcoin.co/gitcoin-knowledge-base/gitcoin-grants/general-questions/what-is-our-quid-pro-quo-policy)", "questionId": 7}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "No", "hidden": true, "question": "Do you have any potential conflicts of interest to disclose? If yes, please provide details.", "questionId": 8}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Here is an article we published about our most recent customizable Web3 grants tool, PairDrop: https://blog.dorg.tech/p/why-pairdrop-is-different-a-better?r=1jqqg4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web ", "hidden": true, "question": "Is there anything else you'd like to share about your project or team that wasn't covered in the previous questions?", "questionId": 9}], "project": {"id": "0x5a236aa6462a6bea777a4ecfba1d57d311b608f04eeebf756e67182b23f2e7c5", "title": "DAO Drops", "logoImg": "bafkreidqhxtrhejjc7m4a6xx53lp2jgfwljkzjcziigzfsdv6cj6eptyii", "metaPtr": {"pointer": "bafkreifxwfgwu4butnn7ybccnigicssm7yenlxi63dcbqnugnj3e2xmjtq", "protocol": "undefined"}, "website": "https://daodrops.io", "bannerImg": "bafkreiclsqairrtaav7wyqwj3cvlaarak43kdfwm7h3rlzi6uq6kapcoeu", "createdAt": 1722913704603, "credentials": {}, "description": "DAO Drops has developed web3 grants tooling and research to explore the power of distributing decision-making power over fund allocation, based on on-chain activity. We continue to develop tools, conduct research, and build networks to support Web3 grants managers and communities.\n\n# DAO Drops V1\n\nIn 2022, we developed DAO Drops V1, a pilot to explore the power of distributing decision-making power over fund allocation based on on-chain activity. The purpose was to assist intelligent, rapid deployment of Ethereum Foundation funds, beyond their small staff.\n\n- assigned voting power based on on-chain activity, referencing 3 data sets as an initial example to be forked and adapted\n\n- a playful, game-like UI to make the voting experience delightful. We received tremendous appreciation for this piece, nearly everyone found it easy to use and fun.\n\n- design thinking for long-term DAO-ification of the program\n\n- Stats: Distributed $250,000 in grant funding to 57 nominees. 277 voters (out of 40,000 eligible), median grant size $3,056, largest grant $18,185. Active contribution from nominees during and after the round for communications and grant design evolution.\n\nOur research and findings for DAO Drops is available for peers in the Web3 grants ecosystem to learn from. [https://daodrops.gitbook.io/dao-drops-research](https://daodrops.gitbook.io/dao-drops-research) . It includes a summary of the process we used to design a novel grants program, for reference for new grants managers.\n\n[![image-10.png](https://i.postimg.cc/k4RbyFx2/image-10.png)](https://postimg.cc/S2qRS914)\n\n# Project Curation\n\nDAO Drops V1 was an initial prototype, to be further improved. The main step that was intentionally a placeholder was the curation step. We used a centralized approach for V1, using dOrg team members to whittle the public nominations down to about 50 - the number we felt people could meaningfully read through without simply choosing their favorites. We found this approach to be lacking in several ways. Here are two decisions we landed on for how to improve it.\n\n1) We developed a V2 of DAO Drops called PairDrop, that uses pairwise comparison and a limited set of pairs, to allow more nominees while at the same time increasing fairness in evaluation. More on PairDrop in a moment.\n\n2) If we had been able to raise the amount of funds needed to run a second grants round ourselves, we planned to use the VC \"scouts\" model for curation. It's the initial approach we had spoken with members from the Ethereum Foundation about. In this approach, the grant operator team would reach out to managers of  Ethereum coworking communities around the world. This would achieve geographic diversity, and to the extent we would be able to effectively solicit a diversity of types of projects, would surface lesser known projects in the Ethereum ecosystem.\n\nWhile centralized in one sense, we felt the Scouts approach was the best thing for us to try next, to a) reduce the operational burden and expense of sifting through hundreds of nominations, and b) reduce the other vector of centralization, the curation/review board. Our long term plan for DAO Drops V1 was to dao-ify the curation process, incentivizing contributing voters and projects to collectively manage this stage in a way that continued to increase the surface area of types and locations of projects the Ethereum Foundation was able to fund.\n\nDuring DAO Drops V1, many nominees and other folks we talked to about our methodology told us they wanted to run geographic location-specific grant rounds. This could be seen as a form of curation - distributing a primary grants pool into geography-specific DAOs or round operators to manage. We had interest in this from Bankless Africa and Ethereum CDMX (Mexico City) specifically. We also had requests for even more specific rounds, for example the Colorado State budget for clean energy development, and a topic-specific use-case to curate a registry of hemp seed strains that are best for various kinds of applications such as carbon sequestration, textile production, building materials, etc.\n\nDAO Drops V1 as an open source grants primitive can be used for a maximally easy user interface for voting.\n\n# PairDrop\n\nTo increase fairness in evaluation and further reduce the popularity contest dynamic in many Web3 grants programs, we built an adaptation of DAO Drops that used pairwise comparison voting. It is available as a forkable app here: [https://github.com/dOrgTech/PairDrop](https://github.com/dOrgTech/PairDrop). The differences between PairDrop and Optimism or General Magic's pair voting apps are:\n\n- Voter points are distributed using a dynamic, adaptable script to scrape on-chain data that demonstrates addresses have various types of expertise and experience in Ethereum. (The algorithmic governance innovation from DAO Drops V1)\n\n- Round operators can customize how many pairs are selected. As few as five pairs, even with a low number of voters, successfully determines preference average.\n\n- Uses BudgetBox by Colony, a trusted machine learning model for generating a \"preference graph\" to normalize funds distribution based on voter choices. We believe this mechanism is an underutilized way for communities to harness their collective intelligence in an efficient and unbiased manner.\n\n[![pairdrop.png](https://i.postimg.cc/N0fVLLRJ/pairdrop.png)](https://postimg.cc/pm4k6WGz)\n\n# Next Steps\n\nThe DAO Drops team is still available to run grants rounds if we secure more funding partners. For now, we are directing the funds we raise into doing what we do best at dOrg, developing open source tooling for DAOs and communities.\n\nThe next drops we are working on include:\n\n**Privacy DAO:** In Privacy DAO the privacy of its members is paramount. The infrastructure is meticulously designed to ensure that each interaction and communication is encrypted and secure. Make decisions and allocate funds as a community without revealing the identity of participants. This is important for civic activism, human rights DAOs, and Web3 grants operators who want to experiment with getting funds into these hard to service areas. A specific example for reference: \"How might we finance Indigenous land defenders while protecting their identity and location, to safeguard them from being assassinated by mining companies.\"\n\n**DAO Onboarding Bot:** To further reduce the overhead of grant round communications, as well as the burden on small projects to write grant applications (+ loads of non-grants use-cases), one of our drops this quarter will be an instructions kit on how to build a RAG bot using AI, trained on your community's data. For grant writers, the bot can reference previous grant applications, knowledge materials generated by DAO members, code bases and more, to ease the burden of writing hundreds of grant applications a year, each with a specific frame as put forth by the grantor. Additionally, such bots can assist with DAO onboarding to help new members find resources, knowledge, and who to contact.\n\n**DAO Drops V1** as a forkable app.\n\n**Forkable Passport for DAO** membership and voting power. Based on dOrg passport that we developed for participation in our developer collective, it includes earning reputation, voting, skill credentials, and more. It can be used to support interoperability across grants ecosystems to assign voting power and roles.\n\nPlease don't hesitate to reach out if you want assistance building or have questions about what we found in our R&D through developing these offerings. We have deep expertise on the technical side, as well as decades of experience developing multi-stakeholder and coalition-based grants programs. The research from our grants development is publicly available for anyone working on public goods funding innovations. [https://daodrops.gitbook.io/dao-drops-research](https://daodrops.gitbook.io/dao-drops-research)\n\nWe look forward to participating in the Cartographer Syndicate. Thank you for your support!\n\nDAO Drops team at dOrg.tech\n\nMuath Juady, Ori Shimony, Marko Negroni, Magenta Ceiba, Andrei Taranu, Anita Caldera", "lastUpdated": 0, "projectGithub": "dOrgTech", "projectTwitter": "dao_drops"}, "recipient": "0xcD45e627E37B7f85266F4a9C6D3255f5f6448d6a"}}