metadata: {"signature": "0x102a15f59627f2ef2b8d9ff1e417560caae190a33efe06598f1113a102f10b4605013533c7f754e9f166c28178df313ae01955fe1ff1b89978f04b9812d4b91d1b", "application": {"round": "0xc1cffd1845deee83ab44cae123738a854593bcd2", "answers": [{"type": "checkbox", "answer": ["dApps & Apps"], "hidden": false, "question": "How does your project contribute to the advancement of the Arbitrum ecosystem?", "questionId": 0}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Grant Ships is currently wrapping up its pilot program - having distributed 90,000 ARB to Arbitrum Gaming projects -  and is ready to expand.  \n\nWe used our novel decentralized grant distribution mechanism to fund gaming projects that are building or migrating to the Arbitrum One chain. All applications, approvals, key events and fund distributions are recorded onchain and easily viewable on the Grant Ships app.  \n\nView the live app here: https://app.grantships.fun\n\nGrant Ships provides a decentralized, DAO-powered grants program that allows Ship Operators (subDAOs within Arbitrum) to make grant allocations in a transparent and fully accountable manner.  Ship Operators are held accountable by DAO and community votes which rate Operator performance. Performance ratings translate into relative funding levels in future rounds, with low performance resulting in being replaced by a new Ship Operator from the DAO.\n\nThe contracts that Grant Ships is built on will allow a truly decentralized grants program and DAO voting can be used to budget and allocate funds as sensed by the DAO in real time. ", "hidden": true, "question": "Describe your previous work or plans related to the Arbitrum ecosystem. How does your project strengthen Arbitrum's foundational infrastructure, improve developer efficiency, or accelerate the adoption of novel applications?", "questionId": 1}, {"type": "paragraph", "hidden": true, "question": "If applicable, describe how your project leverages Stylus or Arbitrum Orbit Chains. What unique capabilities or use cases does this enable?", "questionId": 2}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Jord (Jordan Lesich) Product Manager/Lead Developer.\n\nExperience: 4+ years building dApps for DAOs, full time. Founder of DAO Masons, core developer at DAOhaus, resident Engineer at BuilderDAO (nouns.build), contributor and member of Raid Guild.\n\nLinks:\n\n    X: https://x.com/JordanLesich\n    Github: https://github.com/jordanlesich\n    TG: https://t.me/Jordeth\n    Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/jord\n    ENS: dev.jord.eth\n\nUI369 (Matt Davis) Operations/Facilitator Lead\n\nExperience: Operations manager and founder at DAO Masons & DAOhaus (Public HAUS), former organizational design partner at HolacracyOne, 11 years of professional software development experience.\n\nLinks:\n\n    X: https://x.com/UI_369\n    TG: https://t.me/UI369\n    Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ui369\n    ENS: ui369.eth\n\nBoilerrat (Chris Wilde)\n\nExperience: Contributor and founder at DAO Masons. Contributor for DAOhaus (Public HAUS), MetaCartel and Public Nouns. Specializes in reviewing and writing grants.\n\nLinks:\n\n    X: https://x.com/boilerrat\n    TG: https://t.me/boilerrat\n    Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/boiler\n    ENS: boilerrat.eth\n\nGrant Ships:\n\nX: https://x.com/grantships\nTG: https://t.me/grantships\n\nDAO Masons:\n\nDAO Masons is a DAO-focused products and services guild.\n\n    X: https://x.com/daomasons\n    TG: https://t.me/daomasons\n    Github: https://github.com/DAOmasons", "hidden": true, "question": "Describe your team's expertise in your chosen focus area within the Arbitrum ecosystem. Include relevant experience, publications, or past projects.", "questionId": 3}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "https://gap.karmahq.xyz/project/grant-ships-2", "hidden": true, "question": "Please provide a link to Karma GAP, where you are tracking and reporting on milestones.", "questionId": 4}, {"type": "paragraph", "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": "We received a grant from Plurality Labs - now operating under Thrive/Thank Arb - for 154,900 ARB.  90000ARB was distributed as grants to other projects as part of our pilot round. \n\nWe were recently approved for a 50,000 ARB Firestarters grant from Thank Arb to continue development on Grant Ships. ", "hidden": true, "question": "Have you received any previous grants or support for your work in the Arbitrum ecosystem? 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": "Problem Statements and Solutions\n\nThis section aims to outline the problems we see with traditional grant programs and how Grant Ships provides solutions to each.\n\n### Problem: AIP Process includes massive voter overhead, risk, and lack of due diligence\n> Arbitrum's current AIP process requires most funding proposals to go up for a DAO-wide vote. This requires a huge amount of time, effort and politicking to win a grant and is only appropriate for significant funding requests, generally in the multimillions. \n\n- For the voting body of the DAO, this requires the consumption of large amounts of context to make informed votes on these massive proposals. It is impractical to use this process for smaller, targeted grants. \n- The pattern that emerges to address this is the 'Grants Council' - where a large amount of funding is given to another entity that can operate in a more agile way and make smaller, targeted allocations - leading to further challenges around transparency, reporting and capture.\n\n#### Solution: Recompose best of both worlds\n\n* Grant Ships combines and reconfigures the best of the AIP voting process and the centralized 'Grants Council' pattern. \n* It provides a way for the DAO to allocate funds toward a funding domain, and to hold elections for multiple Grants Councils to make distributions within that domain.\n* Arbitrum voters can periodically signal on relative performance of councils, automatically allocating funds proportional to the vote received.\n* This allows centralization of funds, without centralization of risk: The DAO has more influence over how funds are used.\n* Arbitrum can allocate funds without risking them entirely, instead trusting a contract built on Gitcoin Allo and Hats Protocol to steward the funds with checks and balances to keep the DAO in control.\n* This program can be used within a centralized Grants Council to democratize a portion of their funding, with levers for the DAO to stay involved. \n\n\n### Problem: Due Diligence on Grant Operations is Difficult\n\n> Centralized grants programs within Arbitrum struggle to provide sufficient insight into internal operations and funding allocations. Without external audits, it is difficult or impossible to verify and validate transactions. Audits are largely impractical. This is a risk to the DAO.\n\n#### **Solution: Transparent Onchain Activity**\n * By using the Grant Ships platform, allocators automatically have all key grants-related activity logged onchain in a transparent manner for review by the DAO.\n * Voters have a way to freeze funds or claw-back allocations if needed.\n\n### Problem: **Overhead, Waste & Redundancy**\n> Repeated actions that are performed among many circles could be delegated to discrete roles.\n   - Grant allocators are often overly focused on creating systems for recipient applications and tracking distributions in spreadsheets. They could instead be exclusively focused on scouting for and allocating to great teams and projects.\n   - Every grants program has administrative overhead for reporting, KYC/KYB, securing funding, and more. All of this could be delegated to a well-designed governance and contract system and done just once per community. \n\n#### **Solution: *Meritocratic Funding***\n- TCR voting at the end of each round lets an allocator's performance *at allocation* serve as its best bet to secure additional funding. This frees grants programs from the overhead of constantly applying for additional funding when they should be focused on effectively allocating the funds they have. \n\n#### **Solution: *Role Delegation***\n- We integrated Hats Protocol with Allo to provide clear role distinctions and appropriate division of responsibility.\n- Roles allow us to divide labor among different function calls. We now know, through immutable code, which role is responsible for which steps in the grant-giving process.\n- Roles can be revoked and reassigned as needed by the DAO.\n\n### Problem: **Voter Fatigue and Context Overhead** \n> Using a yes or no Vote for each Grant has way too much context overhead for the voting community and leads to voter fatigue.\n\n   - It's not practical to expect every voter to gain context and make informed votes on every grant.\n   - Grant recipients each have massive overhead to educate the community on why their proposal is worthwhile and also on the outcomes after funding.\n   - The high overhead cost inhibits the provision of numerous voter decision points, making more granular decisions impractical.\n\n#### **Solution: *Clear Decisions***\n\n- Grant Ships provides simple decision paths for the voter without the need for extensive study. \n- We replace massive context proposal voting with a series of smaller, targeted contextual votes.\n- Many granular decisions are delegated to representatives once, and the community only has to vote on their performance over time. \n\n#### **Solution: *Structure***\n\n- Rhythmic governance cycles create predictable, palatable demand for voter attention.\n- Responsibilities are divided across multiple roles (provided via Hats Protocol) with periodic review and associated voting periods available to provide accountability.\n- Hats Protocol roles span multiple contracts, allowing a greater degree of specialization; people can focus on what they're good at without duplicating work, absolving the voting community from making many small decisions.\n\n#### **Solution: *Isolation of Variables***\n\n- The A/B test environment provided by Grant Ships allows clean comparisons to be made between allocation strategies. The voting signal then determines the relative funding levels of these allocators rather than only allowing a binary \"yes or no\" on each issue.\n- All Ships start at the same time and allocate for the same duration before a vote (e.g. quarterly). All Ships operate within the same rules and produce comparable, documented results by the game end.\n- This provides a cleaner way to compare DAO allocation mechanisms and the efficacy of allocators.\n\n### Problem: **Undiscovered Potential**\n>  We are working in the dark. DAOs have no way of knowing who the best allocators and contributors are.  \n   - Monolithic grant programs have no point of comparison to weigh efficacy per token spent. \n   - Voters are only ever presented with the choice of continuing a grant program or killing it. This low-definition signal provides little meaningful or nuanced feedback for program managers. \n   - Without a regular assessment of performance, we aren't determining who is doing a good job.\n\n#### **Solution: *Experimentation and Adaptation***\n\n- Grant Ships currently supports direct funding via milestones. Direct funding is flexible enough that multiple Ships can try out different strategies to find out what works best. \n- Allo protocol allows the implementation of new strategies into GrantShips for additional experimentation (e.g. quadratic rounds, hackathon formats, etc).\n- Grant Ships provides an \"A/B\" test environment where we can more easily compare allocation practices.\n- Transparency and feedback from the voting community create an evolutionary factor that should lead to the best allocation strategies thriving and propagating.\n\n\n### Problem: **Friction and Uncertainty for Talented Builders**\n> Qualified builders often find too much friction and uncertainty to justify the pursuit of a web3 grant.\n\n   - As a builder trying to get funded by a DAO, a lot of time and effort is spent identifying communities with funding opportunities, researching what they need, building reputation, networking, courting delegates, generating proposals, and if they are lucky enough to get feedback on a forum, fending off trolls in the comment section.\n   - It's difficult to justify investing this time and effort, especially when outcomes are uncertain. Unless there is a clear path to getting a yes or no answer, most talent won't even enter the scene. \n   - With traditional grant programs, program managers are the central gatekeeper for prospective applicants. Since these programs are essentially monopolies, builders are completely at the mercy of a mostly unaccountable program manager. \n   - With direct DAO votes on grants, grantees are tasked with writing proposals to please the majority of the DAO (at the time of voting) and whoever is currently the loudest in the forum (at the time of discussion). Often this results in bland, omnibus proposals that are designed by committee. For contributors with a vision, this adds considerable friction as this process practically ensures their vision never comes to fruition.  \n\n#### **Solution: *Transparency and Clarity***\n\n- By leveraging Allo Protocol, we can provide a structured, predictable, and transparent step-by-step process. There is never any ambiguity about what to do next. \n- The Grant Ships UI allows candidates to fully understand the opportunities in front of them. They can quickly assess which program suits their talents. \n- Clearly defined roles and simple rules dispel uncertainty by providing transparent insight into the process as a whole.    \n\n#### **Solution: *Competitive, Merit-based Allocations***\n\n- Talented contributors have many programs to apply to. If they are displeased with the performance of one ship, they can apply to another. \n- In the voting round, ship operators are judged by the performance of their portfolio. The ships that seek great contributors will outcompete those who simply wait around for applications. \n- Ships will compete based on contributor experience. The ship that can provide the fastest response times, the best support, and even promotion will ultimately win the best contributors.  \n- Because Grant Ships splits the funding between smaller, more focused grants programs, Contributors never have to undergo the lengthy proposal process. \n- Contributions are judged once the round is complete. This allows contributors to build according to their own vision. \n   \n\n### Problem: **No Way to Win: Opacity vs Transparency** \n> Grant administrators can either invest a lot of time and energy in broadcasting their activities to the community, creating an overhead burden or they can stay more opaque and risk losing trust.\n\n- It's hard for program managers to make everyone happy. They can choose to focus on allocation at the expense of record-keeping to reduce overhead, but this creates opacity that may lead to suspicion and mistrust among stakeholders.\n- On the other hand, radical transparency is great for voters, but the program manager spends more time publishing funding decisions, outcomes, communications, timelines, updating records, and tracking transactions that are scattered through many walled gardens, among many organizations.\n- Even worse, all this work results in off-chain records that can be easily altered, deleted, or corrupted.\n\n#### **Solution: *Passive Record Keeping***\n\n- Grant Ships solves this problem by using the chain as the central source of truth. Records are automatically generated, and fully transparent to all \n- Record-keeping is a _passive side effect_ of giving grants. Onchain transactions which are linked to immutable offchain data create a mesh of rich, indisputable records that help illustrate any user's intentions and reasoning. \n- In the app, onchain events are aggregated into easy-to-consume feeds that provide full context and insight into grants program operations. \n- Additional content can be posted onchain by any actor within the system by publishing an *UpdatePosted* event.\n\n### Problem: **The Risk of Capture & Incompetence** \n> Choosing to delegate large amounts of capital to Grants Councils does not guarantee that the Grants Council will be effective or trustworthy.\n   - Grants councils are entrusted with a lot of power and authority over funding decisions and are often also responsible for reporting on their outcomes. Capture is possible, incompetence is possible, and oversight is difficult.\n\n#### **Solution: *Revokable Privileges***\n\n- Delegation of certain authorities is an effective and necessary pattern within a DAO, but there needs to be a meaningful way to revoke that authority when needed. \n- Grant Ships' integration with Hats Protocol provides revokable privileges, reducing the risk of capture and \"loyalty through sunk cost\" - see Spencer Graham's ['Anticapture'](https://spengrah.mirror.xyz/f6bZ6cPxJpP-4K_NB7JcjbU0XblJcaf7kVLD75dOYRQ)\n- Game Facilitators and Grant Ships can all be suspended or replaced by a DAO vote as needed.\n\n#### **Solution: *Accountability through Transparency***\n\n- Transparent allocation through automated reporting provides an incentive to be effective and trustworthy.\n- Broadcasting all meaningful events within the grant-giving process provides signal to the DAO for accountability purposes.\n\n\n#### **Solution: *Reasonable Safeguards***\n\n- Game Facilitators screen and approve allocator Grant Ships and, once approved, allow Grant Ships to initiate Recipient funding allocations.\n  - This can ensure DAO KYC/KYB standards are met for every recipient in a standardized manner, without relying on each allocator to do it right.\n- Checks and balances are provided because Game Facilitators approve grant recipient _allocations_, but Grant Ships handle _distributions_ at their discretion.\n  - With Allo, allocation and distribution are distinct actions and provide a 'two key' security mechanism.\n    - Allocation earmarks the funds for a particular recipient.\n    - Distribution disburses them only to that recipient.\n- Game Facilitators can apply Yellow or Red Flags to a Grant Ship in instances of rules violation or acts of bad faith.\n  - Yellow Flags are like a verbal warning, creating an attestation of the event with context for voter review.\n  - Red Flags also create an attestation of the event with context but additionally lock down the ship's ability to distribute funds.\n  - Both Yellow and Red Flags remain active on a Ship's profile until *resolved* by a Game Facilitator, but remain in the event feed as context for voters. \n\n### Problem: **Budgeting is Difficult** \n> Voting for every issuance of Grant funds, whether to a group of Allocators or an individual project assures that setting a regular budget in DAOs is nearly impossible.\n   - Without a governance framework or SubDAO that manages grant funds, only 'emergent' grant budgets are possible. i.e. Let's see what the DAO decides to spend and say that's what the budget was.\n   - Bulky grant proposals to the DAO create uncertainty and irregularity in funding rhythms. This makes budgeting difficult or impossible, as the DAO at any time could decide to fund a larger or smaller grants program, and that could change at any time with a newly passed proposal.\n\n\n#### **Solution: *Rhythm and Cadence***\n\n- The GameManagerStrategy contract can enforce a regular cadence of grant giving - a defined start time and end time for each round - that could be tied to different funding cycles (i.e. monthly, quarterly)\n- This creates a system where you could allocate a portion of sequencer fees to grants creating a reliable grants funding stream.\n\n#### **Solution: *Budgets and Funding Faucets***\n\n- Grant Ships functions like a funding faucet that can be filled by the DAO for eventual distribution.\n- Once the pool is funded, as many Grant Ships in whatever variety required can be spun up to handle distribution to individual recipients.\n  - With full adoption of the Grant Ships system it's reasonable to predict that fewer and fewer Yes or No grant proposals will need to go to Arbitrum DAO. Instead, funding streams could be designated for the Grant Ships funding pool. Grants programs could apply to be a Grant Ship and receive funding from the pool.\n  - Grant recipients can then apply to these Grant Ships to receive funds.\n  - Voters maintain influence and control through the regular voting and revokable privilege systems.\n  - This allows the DAO to create a budget for grants, that can be increased or decreased as needed.\n", "hidden": true, "question": "Would you like to share anything else about your project, team, or vision for the Arbitrum ecosystem that wasn't covered in the previous questions?", "questionId": 9}], "project": {"id": "0xa82ffe7c4b8ecc9178ee5239c3bde71aac5ab8bc6c6950b51db7c2b137e9495b", "title": "Grant Ships", "logoImg": "bafkreic2zeqpbwq55fz7fqkahgxvez2fpcvf5k6k55tsuesmd7ca3r7thu", "metaPtr": {"pointer": "bafkreiej44dvhyjul7kn6j7llkqsmhd32lbtjwpyntgrpg5w7vqyjg65sm", "protocol": "undefined"}, "website": "https://www.grantships.fun", "bannerImg": "bafkreiaoy4iq3ehjep4vmmjrymsgn6xqhdjn3n4acdo7dzkhd3t5e6qhsy", "createdAt": 1722119691255, "userGithub": "", "credentials": {"twitter": {"type": ["VerifiableCredential"], "proof": {"jws": "eyJhbGciOiJFZERTQSIsImNyaXQiOlsiYjY0Il0sImI2NCI6ZmFsc2V9..HiZehaog2b2jstPxdBt6PGLAw1rNJLpGA_vXlsDPl5Yj5JmtfcVgW8MRcOOAw-MJ7tlvYqm0wVUvNDBY5Qu5CA", "type": "Ed25519Signature2018", "created": "2024-07-27T22:33:52.545Z", "proofPurpose": "assertionMethod", "verificationMethod": "did:key:z6MkghvGHLobLEdj1bgRLhS4LPGJAvbMA1tn2zcRyqmYU5LC#z6MkghvGHLobLEdj1bgRLhS4LPGJAvbMA1tn2zcRyqmYU5LC"}, "issuer": "did:key:z6MkghvGHLobLEdj1bgRLhS4LPGJAvbMA1tn2zcRyqmYU5LC", "@context": ["https://www.w3.org/2018/credentials/v1"], "issuanceDate": "2024-07-27T22:33:52.545Z", "expirationDate": "2024-10-25T22:33:52.545Z", "credentialSubject": {"id": "did:pkh:eip155:1:0x27773b203954FBBb3e98DFa1a85A99e1c2f40f56", "hash": "v0.0.0:496agip09gfxZO9/SMZFSHX8owzG8m/fUZUC4Fk6nBc=", "@context": [{"hash": "https://schema.org/Text", "provider": "https://schema.org/Text"}], "provider": "ClearTextTwitter#grantships"}}}, "description": "Step into the cutting-edge realm of Grant Ships, a revolutionary game crafted to transform the distribution of community funding in the Arbitrum ecosystem. This platform stands as a testament to the influence of decentralized governance and initiatives powered by the community.\n\nIn essence, a Grant Ship functions as a subDAO, receiving funds each season according to its previous performance. The anticipation is that these funds will be allocated as ecosystem grants, further fueling the dynamics of decentralized collaboration.", "lastUpdated": 0, "projectGithub": "daomasons", "projectTwitter": "grantships"}, "recipient": "0x52774016ea6bd161a4BB6E232019C4bd704BB151"}}