Our last xGov discussions have led to several changes in how we’ll approach xGov proposals for Voting Session 4, focusing on supporting public goods development and fostering growth within our ecosystem. Here’s an overview:
Main Focus of xGov:
xGov aims to fund public-goods proposals ( Things that instantly add to the ecosystem (public or devs) just by simply being present. Explorers, knowledge bases, OSS tooling etc…) that contribute directly to the growth of our ecosystem.
Proposed Key Changes in ARC-34 for xGov Voting Session 4:
Introducing a new field, “funding_type” to specify whether your funding request is proactive or retroactive.
Introducing a new field, “email” to start the contract process
Each entity, individual, or project can submit at most two proposals (one proactive proposal and one retroactive proposal). Attempts to circumvent this rule may lead to disqualification or denial of funds.
Proposals must include clear, non-technical descriptions of deliverables. We encourage the use of
multimedia (blog/video) to help explain your proposal’s benefits to the community.
Funding will only be disbursed upon the completion of deliverables.
Proposals to fund marketing campaigns or organizing future meetups are excluded from funding considerations.
To enhance clarity and accountability, we’re asking proposers to detail the maintenance period, availability, and sustainability plans for their projects. This includes information on potential costs and the duration for which services will be offered at no or reduced cost.
These changes are designed to streamline the proposal process for voting session 4, ensure the efficient allocation of resources, and foster the development of valuable contributions to our ecosystem. We hope these updates will help us better achieve our collective goals.
We are happy to receive feedback on these proposed changes.
The next meeting will be hosted on discord the 14th of March 2024
I welcome these changes–thank you. How will they be enforced? Will, for example, AF notify proposers whose proposals do not align with the program focus?
Similar to the question above, how will this be enforced? I would prefer to see proposal disqualification before an ineligible proposal makes it into voting.
May I clarify if this means that no up-front funding is available for any type of grant, retroactive or proactive? (I proposed such a rule, so I would support this to entirely remove delivery risk from the equation.)
For profit or non for profit shouldn’t matter as both could provide an impact and provide public good. Some things are for profit, but are not close to the scale to be profitable. This is where retroactive grants can be really helpful, making impact equal to profit, as long as the community believes this is a valuable public good creating impact.
These are great changes but I am still very concerned about the voting structure / framwork of Xgov.
I don’t believe projects should need to submit proposals for impact delivered. The xgovs should determine the impact being made and reward those projects without them needing to ask / specify an amount. The amount a project is rewarded should be a function of how much impact they’ve created as judged by a panel of experts, not how much they ask for or think they deserve.
I don’t believe projects that haven’t launched can instantly add value to the ecosystem, and there is no way to judge or measure that aside from in hindsight. A project could ship with a ‘deliverable’, but that deliverable be to ‘reach mainnet and get 10 users’ and those 10 users be the developer. The project met it’s deliverable, but created no value or impact for the ecosystem. This is why judging impact is a much better barometer than ‘deliverable’, as deliverable could = no impact.
This leads to my third point, which is that Xgovs need to actually be experts or as close to experts as we can find, preferably with skin in the game. The fact you’ve locked your ALGO for rewards does not make you an expert in ecosystem funding nor does it add any ‘skin in the game’ as you’re being rewarded heavily for participating.
This is a good start. xGov aims to fund public-goods proposals
it should be made mandatory that all public-goods proposals should be made open-source.
If not the reason for the same should be explained so that xGovs can take an informed decision.
I welcome that you specify how you want to use the funds in the xgov grants, however please enable also other grants programs.
There are no active VCs on Algorand at the moment. I have tried multiple attempts to contact any of them, but was not successful with no feedback on project. I have won around 10 algorand hackathons and the next step to introduce good projects to VCs is missing.
I have been in accelerator and got 5k Algo ~= 5k USD back then, but these kind of money are not booster to start business. Its perhaps month salary for one developer in cheaper country.
Please create transparent framework from where any VC not only you whitelist can choose to fund projects.
I thought that you want to boost the ecosystem and not to limit active developers throwing ideas on what should be funded.
I believe the xgovs should be one doing decissions, and one person can have multiple good ideas from which xgovs can choose by voting.
I’d not consider the xGov program a program of validating many different ideas that potentially benefit the ecosystem. Neither xGovs nor traditional VC’s can see the future and know what will stick or what not for a community. It could even be that if you throw 5 ideas into xGov, 4 of them in the end would be a massive success. But the fifth is actually the one that was chosen (and fails to get traction).
Not to blame xGovernors, but it’s simply impossible to know as outsider what works and what won’t. The only proven way forward (imo) is build an MVP, get traction, listen to the users you gained and build it further from there. You can ask retroactive funding on basis of that, especially when building a closed/for-profit product. Nowadays building a MVP, test the waters and pick the most promising one can be done in less than a day. Why not try that first?
For the next session, it will be handled on the GitHub level; when someone submits a proposal, they will be warned if it does not meet the rules, and at the end of the submitting period, the proposal will not be added to the voting session if it does not comply.
But at the same time there were projects like “The London Bridge”:
“As the Algorand Foundation announced in February 2022, it will implement the London Bridge on the Algorand network. The foundation has dedicated $10 million for that. In essence, the London Bridge is a trustless bridge that would provide Ethereum compatibility to the Algorand network.”
An my “favourite” is: “The Milkomedia SupraGrant”:
" GEORGE TOWN, Grand Cayman, Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ – Milkomeda receives SupaGrant from the Algorand Foundation to develop its A1 Rollup for the Algorand ecosystem. This novel protocol introduces a user-friendly, EVM compatibility solution to the Algorand ecosystem and opens it up to the hundreds of thousands of developers writing in Solidity—the world’s most popular smart contracting language."
Can the above two be considered as a success? If yes, then what metric is used?
@StephaneBarroso Can the above decision be changed if Algo price continues to go up?
According to Coincodex, Algorand is now at the 52nd place, with 2.58 Billion “Market cap”, and USD 0.319707 price. Woouldn’t it be reaasonable to give the grants in some kind of stablecoin, not in Algo?
Is there a clear view for the xGovs, what should be done now, if they would have 10 million USD for development? @scholtz , please list only the 10 most important, with approximate cost!
If I would be in place of AF and had $10M to distribute for development, i would spend it following way:
Open source transaction explorer with algorand projects directory, tokens price listing
We need more AMMs… competition is good, and even though biatec clAMM is almost ready we need competition in place so that projects are pushed forward
We need more lending protocols. Folks finance is great, but not open source.
We need more wallets. Pera still does not have multisig for example… This means that they do not consider other as competitors. AF should stop priviledge one solutions instead of the others… AWallet has shamir backup, person can make account online, has arc76 support for email and password accounts and much more that other does not have, and yet it is not mentioned by anyone from the AF.
We need more bridges. Best would be the state proof showcase and something is already in development between voi and algo. Competition is needed there to cut the bridging fees and bridging time.
We need public algorand infrastructure - Public algorand indexers, public algod servers where anyone can submit txs. We need public servers where people can make their accounts online for free or when the incentivization will be in place perhaps can make even some yield. It would be great to have competition between such nodes.
We need to replace the wallet connect to some better technology which would not go through central servers.
We need much better voting systems then there are now. It must be possible to run efficient onchain voting for each code change proposal. Mainly to native algorand code but also to other algorand codebases. It would be great to have much more decision making onchain for example arc standardization, any strategic decision any payment… Algorand should be a DAO, not centrally managed corporation.
We need identity solutions. Mainly for MiCA compliant projects.
We need regulated Open CSD - central securities depository. We need the stocks issued as ASAs and traded directly onchain 24/7.
We need many more lofty.ai / globdrem.com type of projects. If we tokenize real estate rents around the world it would be great marketplace and would break traditional markets.
We need more RWA projects. It would be great if multiple people run projects like meld or asa.gold to tokenize gold. More tickets trading system …
We need national currencies as ASAs on algorand. I want to receive rents paid in czech crown directly on algorand in czech appartments.
We need launchpads. VCs must be able to easily find projects which will generate them yield or future capital gains.
I believe any of the point in this list can be developed under $100k. The launching it usually takes much more money as for example CSD need base capital 10 mil EUR, the e-money company for tokens need base capital 350k-400k EUR, and launchpads should be driven mainly by VCs.
I think the best way to spend the rest of the algos is to invest it into something that generates yield. For example if all grants programs all governance yield and the participation incentivization would be canceled and every algo till last drop would be invested into lofty.ai type projects (to buy houses and get rent), the AF would have money not just for next 6 years but indefinetly to cover also the security of the network, marketing, inflation and future investments.
It sounds like you are critical of the decision to stop up-front funding in xGov, but then you also seem to criticize past projects that were funded up front (through a different funding mechanism, of course, but still).
So, what is your point? Do you love throwing money at projects on little more than a hope that they work out, or do you hate it?
So, again, I’m not seeing what your point is. You think up front funding is bad, because it led to questionable spends in the past, but you are upset that they are stopping up front funding now? It seems like cognitive dissonance.
i think he meant to say that the way how AF can handle distribution of algos is quite inefficient
xgovs is better system where AF just set some rules and direction they want to go
and now Staphan thinks he needs to cut the idea creation and delivery and limit one person per entity which in my opinion is very bad
and the main thing is that AF plays with us the xgov game with drops while they distribute direct investments to specific companies they choose and basically continues with that inefficient bad algo distribution because they think they can do it better in private then than under public review process
If the funds are only sent after delivery, who will validate the deliverables? Still a council or an xGov vote? Think the second is better as the organization of a council seems complicated to me. Plus it will make the xGovs aware of the ecosystem progress and the result of their votes.
