Updated Discussion: Osmosis Grants Program Proposal
Based on positive feedback from the initial temp check discussion, we've reviewed the proposal and incorporated community feedback. We’ve also added some new sections to the post which outline the grants application process, compensation, and desired outcomes and KPIs. Finally, we put together our recommendation for the Reviewer Committee composition and renamed the program to Osmosis Grants Program (“OGP”).
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Summary
- An Osmosis Grants Program (“OGP”) should be launched to fund new community-built tooling and infrastructure, as well as commercial projects that can serve as future airdrops to OSMO holders.
- The OGP’s goal is to fund projects and tools that help Osmosis grow.
- We propose an initial budget for the program of up to 1,500,000 OSMO tokens for a 6 month program with quarterly community review. OGP is not obligated to spend this amount; quality always comes first.
- At the end of the initial six month term and then every quarter thereafter, the community can terminate the program via governance and any unspent OSMO tokens will be returned to the community pool.
- Reverie proposes monthly compensation of $70k while it is administering the OGP as well a $100k one time setup grant to permit best in class legal and operational setup.
- The program would be run by a Program Lead supported by seven reviewers, who also function as the multi-sig.
- We (Reverie) help DAOs design and implement strategies that allow them to grow more quickly. We have previously worked on various funding-related initiatives, including the Compound Grants Program and the dYdX Grants Program.
- As part of this proposal, we’ve included a preliminary version of the website, as well as an initial set of funding RFP ideas.
- Airdrops are a major part of the OGP’s focus; to find and fund promising projects in the ecosystem who can publicly commit to airdrops to OSMO holders.
Purpose
This proposal outlines the formal funding initiative for Osmosis: the Osmosis Grants Program. The main goal is to improve the long-term utility of Osmosis, through funding community members who are building value-add tools and infrastructure, and to create a robust ecosystem of incentivized contributors.
As of March 9th 2022, Osmosis has ~44M OSMO residing in its Community Pool. 32M of these tokens are from unclaimed airdrops which have been clawed back, so by the time the Community Pool has fully vested, it will have ~77M+ OSMO. At the current OSMO price of $10, this is a community treasury of over $440M right now and $770M once it has fully vested. These funds should be actively used to aggressively grow the protocol, increase user adoption, and expand the community.
The priority for any new DAO should be to find valuable full-time contributors and projects to become loyal, value-add participants in the ecosystem. A grants program can be a quick, low cost way to grow the Osmosis ecosystem by empowering participants to do things that add long-term value to the DAO. It can also directly support teams building on top of Osmosis. By significantly increasing the number of contributors, this can also serve as a launchpad to incubate working groups and further decentralize operations.
The OGP will allow Osmosis to spend the Community Pool funds more efficiently. Through this initiative, a contributor can easily apply to receive $5k-$500k of funding for the completion of value-add tasks which may be too small to be funded through a governance proposal. The fact that community contributors can get paid in OSMO is important –– by offering them OSMO, successful contributors will receive upside in the project, encouraging them to become active, long-term participants in the ecosystem.
There are two broad categories in which the Community Pool can be used to improve and build the Osmosis ecosystem:
- Community-focused tooling and infrastructure
The long-term success of Osmosis is contingent on its success as an AMM, as well as it’s utility as an independent, self-sovereign blockchain with strong security.
As an application specific blockchain, Osmosis can tailor its AMM user experience to best serve its users, making the experience as smooth as possible. This includes funding things such as analytics, tooling, infrastructure, growth and many more. Furthermore, the Community Pool can also fund ecosystem projects that are complementary to the core AMM, such as DeFi apps, synthetic assets, or even NFT/gaming projects that need a liquid market for their assets.
Additionally, there are lots of community-funded and owned infrastructure required for the long-term success of Osmosis as a secure, independent blockchain. If the community wishes for the Osmosis infrastructure to be used by other projects, it needs a strong set of staking, bridging, and relayer infrastructure that is easy to access, use, and understand. Up until now, much of this has been built by a core team and some community contributors. Creating avenues to get paid directly for this work will allow individuals without huge amounts of OSMO tokens or other revenue streams (e.g. staking) to begin directly contributing to the protocol. In this manner, we can continue to attract and incentivize community members (including those reading this post) to work on, build, and contribute to Osmosis.
2. Potential Airdrop Partners