One of the main factors in driving community activity and adoption of the Anchor Protocol is an active community where users continuously build on-top of the protocol. Proposals for receiving funding currently cannot be effectively engaged with due to the fact that there is no clear framework for evaluation and funding budget. As such, we will make an attempt at outlining a community spend framework. Many of the ideas below have been drawn from retrospection of various community and governance frameworks from other DeFi projects such as Curve, MakerDAO, Yearn, etc.
Summary
Anchor Protocol holds a store of ANC token in the community fund as a reserve to be used for the enhancement and empowerment of the Anchor Protocol ecosystem and community. The following document will provide frameworks that take the best practices from existing governance procedures.
We propose to split grants into two types: Ecosystem Development grants and Ecosystem Contributor grants .
Ecosystem Development Grants
The purpose of grants is to empower ecosystem teams to build necessary tools and infrastructure that are not provided at the launch of the protocol. Projects that are value additive to the protocol and/or make user experience better such as the creation of new smart contract applications that enable greater access across more markets or dashboards and other tools for managing their assets on Anchor Protocol are eligible for community grant funding.
When making an ecosystem grant proposal, the following major criteria should be adequately described.
- Relation of the proposal to Anchor Protocol
- Benefit and impact towards Anchor Protocol and Anchor community
- Status of the project (is it in a vague ideation stage or already in production)
- Profile of team and likeliness to deliver by the described deadline
- Potential of the proposal (viability, longevity, competition, uniqueness, accessibility, etc)
- Breakdown of costs (detailed breakdown of the usage of the funds for the proposed project)
Note that the descriptions are intentionally quite vague as the funds are meant to be quite flexible. Existing and completed projects are also eligible to submit proposals for funding if they can demonstrate the accumulated benefits to the ecosystem.
Grants in this category should roughly fall in the range of $1000 to $30,000 worth of ANC tokens.
Ecosystem Contributor Grants
Community grants are aimed at rewarding outstanding users that have significantly contributed to the improvement of the Anchor Protocol community. This category includes users that may have played important roles in shaping the outcomes of Anchor Protocol community decisions, contributed to improving the general level of understanding in the Anchor Protocol community, created content relating to Anchor Protocol, or helped out other community members.
Grants in this category should roughly fall in the range of $100 to $1000 worth of ANC tokens.
Community Pool Spend Proposal Evaluation Form
Evaluative Questions
- Feasibility - Does the project qualification match the current bandwidth and needs of Anchor?
- Dependencies - Does this project rely on other projects or does it potentially interfere with other projects?
- Slack - How does the project equilibrium look like once the project grows in size? What is the scope creep risk?
- Feedback - Does the suggested project have sufficient feedback or is more discussion required?
- Promotion - What is the plan to grow the project and how will the project engage internally within the community and externally?
- Resourcing - Which external parties are required to engage with this project (ex. Terraform Labs, Cosmos, etc.)?
- Maintenance - Are there maintenance issues? If so, who will maintain the project, and what is the cost associated with doing so?
- Skills - Does the project proposer have the required skills and background to be able to successfully carry out the project? Does he/she have a portfolio to cross-reference or evidence to demonstrate capability?
- Realistic - Are the project and the plan to execute expedient and realizable within the proposed timeframe?
Required Heuristics
- Deliverables Set - A short deck about the project and/or an MVP of a technical product wrapped into a realistic timeline
- Budget - The budget should be clear upfront with specific hours or values. Ranges should be avoided. Additional planned proposals for further funding should be also specified if possible.