Introduction
The below process is an outline on how the ecosystem DAO evaluates grant applications, all of the lists or processes are evolving and criterias could have been added and/or removed. The below description is to be indicative of the process and criterias.
Terms and/or organizational definitions of the process:
- Teams = sub group of DAO members (1-2)
- Advisors = DAO or Polygon experts in areas such as DeFi
- Grantees = Individual or organization requesting the grant
After a first phase carried out jointly and slowly by the entire genesis team we have decided to divide our group into teams to speed up the time from application to vote for all grant applications. This will help us reach out to grantees at an earlier stage to compliment or update their application. To ensure an even burden across teams we appointed TommyOlofsson as a Grant Funnel Coordinator, which will be responsible for onboard grants and divide workload among the teams.
For more complex requests all teams can reach out to our Advisors, which is among others the Polygon DeFi team, Polygon Studio team and key individuals both within the Genesis squad and ecosystem.
The aim is for the below process to be carried out in five days for projects where the application can be reviewed by teams and no meeting with grantees is necessary, for projects where the application needs to be updated the process will be re-started from the submission of the updated application
Steps of the evaluation process
- Reporting on the Polygon EDAO Notion page
- Publication of the request on the forum, excluding any personal contacts and details not to be disclosed
- Distribution of grant request to one of the teams
- Acceptance of the grant request by one of the teams
- Study of the request, in order to determine its acceptability according to the general criteria identified to date and the possible need to contact the project directly to clarify the milestones or review the economic requests
- Possible contact with the grantees, acquisition of new elements and new study of the updated request:
- The team can discard a project that fails the evaluation criterias and are not willing to change their request.
- Team can also choose to move the project directly to Polygon, this process will be outlined separately but does not need a genesis team vote
- Or the team moves to a vote by the genesis team
- In the event of a favorable vote, the team will contact the project and agree on the drafting of a short post about it, then sending the data to the multisig signers
- In the event of unfavorable vote, the team will contact the project to justify the rejection
Evaluation criteria
To date, the evaluation criteria identified are the following:
- Must contribute to the Polygon ecosystem in a clear way, and have milestones attached to the contribution
- Application is clear and answers all asked questions (Team background, funding etc)
- Unfavorable opinion for projects not yet started, which ask for a grant to start, as they do not demonstrate a sufficient level of “skin in the game” and it’s hard to evaluate impact on ecosystem.
- In the case of projects that have already received grants from Polygon in the past, it is necessary to determine how the previous funds have been spent and to determine the reasons why the new request is necessary