[Grant Request] Utopia Labs

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Hey folks ( Kaito ) -

Thanks for your interest in working with the 0x infrastructure stack and community.

I appreciate your transparency around funding here:

@Utopia

We raised our 23M Series A last year - we believe this grant request is justified due to the differentiated swapping experience we aim to offer (cont.)

My concern is not about the team’s ability to execute, nor the value of this integration, (big fan of SAFE tooling & apps) but instead how this contradicts “Best Practices” as outlined in this post.

@nikita

Considerations and Best Practices

• In general, grants are not intended to subsidize projects that have already received substantial VC backing ($1M+ or equivalent)

This amount seems to surpass the initial limit proposed in @nikita’s Grant Lifecycle document.

It may be worth waiting for the community to further evaluate the parameters set in this fresh proposal before properly judging Utopia’s ask.

While we don’t believe VC funding should necessarily exclude a team’s ability to receive a grant, it is our goal to uphold the values and vision as agreed upon by the community.

Independent of this, it feels like a thorough, well-written application. Some aspects which I enjoy:

1. Clearly defined goals and dates → greater ability to judge the efficacy of the Grants
2. Transparency and honesty → leading to more trust within the team
3. Numbers and dashboards → can be used to audit the growth and usage, greater comps

Thanks for the patience here as we work to define the Treasury Grants Lifecycle in parallel!