Thanks for putting this together @nikita - super helpful imo to have this post that defines in one place, the lifecycle for grant proposals.
Migrating a discussion point that @fig started here about the role of grants to this thread since it feels more appropriate.
The sustainability of direct-to-the-forum (and treasury) Grant requests… IMO it is dilutive, shifting the purpose of Governance towards a grants program vs. product development, finance, and sustainability.
I agree that in the long term, direct-to-the-forum grant requests is not the most sustainable and other teams have had success with separating out this responsibility to not overburden voters with every request. That being said, I think that that is true when there’s a higher amount of grant proposals than we see with 0x Protocol right now which I certainly hope to see come true!
Other teams have segmented this responsibility, allowing Governance to focus on more high-value, contentious proposals… Even then, I am not convinced of the need for Grants in this stage of the protocol’s maturation.
The purpose of 0x protocol is to provide trade settlement for swaps - not to be Gitcoin.
Let’s focus on that goal instead.
I have a differing opinion here that actually at this current stage of 0x Protocol’s maturation, that a Grants program is particularly needed! There’s a lot of things happening in the crypto space but a limited amount of builder’s attention - from my POV, one thing 0x Protocol is lacking to have more high-value, contentious proposals is a overall mindshare/attention/awareness of the protocol that is needed to get to those conversations. There’s a lot of different ways to increase that mindshare/attention/awareness and I think that grants is one decently effective way of doing that.
I personally agree with you that the purpose of 0x Protocol is to be the settlement layer, not to be Gitcoin. That being said, I think we first need more people to build on 0x Protocol and make it better to achieve that goal.
It may be worth establishing some sort of guidelines:
- any treasury request above 50k goes to Governance directly
- anything less - goes to a sub-committee focused on Grant distribution
Totally agree with you here, but again, I think that setting up a sub-committee will be most justified when there is a higher amount of grant applications (major shoutout here to the 0xEVE folks who have been serving this role pro-bono bono for a while - doing that kind of work for free should not be the expectation)