Bankless Dao Gitcoin Grant Proposal

Steward: @Jengajojo

TLDR

The conversation with gitcoin to have a bDAO ecosystem grants round has not reached any consensus. The next Gitcoin Grants round starts Sept. 7, 2022. Based on the discussion so far, the best course of action is to go ahead with a common BanklessDAO projects proposal.

This was posted in the #cross-collab[Discord] channel last week for all projects to add themselves to a common grant application.

Below you’ll find the text that we suggest should be on the grants page

" THE BANKLESS DAO MISSION…

BanklessDAO is a decentralized community coordinating and propagating bankless media, culture, and education. BanklessDAO launched on May 4th 2021 and it’s goal is to drive adoption and awareness of truely bankless money systems like Ethereum, DeFi, and Bitcoin.

Together The BanklessDAO community collaborates to create user-friendly onramps for people to discover decentralised financial technologies through education, media and culture.

The BanklessDAO community has a variety of projects, for the scope of this grant we are focusing on the ones which truly provide goods and services for the entire world such as BANKLESS ACADEMY, BANKLESS AFRICA and INTERNATIONAL MEDIA NODES

The projects listed below have contributors working on them since many months and although some of the project contributors earn governance tokens, the work being done far outstrips the existing remuneration. Second, and perhaps more important is that all these projects aim to help the wider crypto ecosystem and not just the Bankless community and hence are public goods.

BANKLESS ACADEMY

Bankless Academy was established by core contributors with the vision of onboarding one-billion people to the Ethereum and Web3 ecosystem. At the Academy, Users get knowledge on Blockchain, Defi, NFTs and how to navigate the Web3 multiverse.

Building Bankless Academy …

The team set to work on defining the protocol’s approach to written content and visual style, to bring personality to the brand that would act as the warm welcome hand to new users.

Since public launch, Bankless Academy has been refining its operations through Art/Branding, Product Designs, Content curation for incoming projects, Project Management and working with a great number of contributors.

Below is a quick tour of the recently launched ‘Bankless Academy MVP-II’ interface.

Each course contains key informations needed to thrive in the space. In the current iteration a POAP is awarded as proof-of-knowledge.

In the future we will be looking to integrate more media types into our dApp.

BANKLESS AFRICA

Our community is focused on promoting the bDAO mission. We leverage crypto-based creations like Bitcoin, Defi, NFTs etc. to tackle problems faced by Africans.

Achievement/Growth:

*Our podcast highlights projects and people making impact in the african crypto/Web3 Ecosystem.

*Our Newsletter provides well curated information on Bitcoin, Defi, crypto regulations, projects and web3 fundings in the crypto/web3 space in Africa.

*Our website help Africans access educational courses, It includes a link to Bankless Academy where lots of Web3 courses Live. Eventually this website will become a native-educational platform for Africans.

Website v1 here: https://banklessafrica.com/

*We onboard and train contributors with various web3 ethos, teaching them how to contribute in various DAOs and potentially bootstrap project ideas they have.

Some links to get into our community: @banklessafrica | Linktree

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA NODES (IMN)

Only 5% of the world’s population are native English speakers and roughly 15 % speak English on some level. The initial goal of the IMN project is to reach the remaining 80%. First by translating and distributing content about blockchain technology, DeFi, The Metaverse and Web 3. All links: https://www.banklessimn.xyz/

The International Media Nodes project believes in the liberating effect of going Bankless and what it can do for improving financial wellbeing and stability throughout the world. Creating and maintaining communities of people who do not speak English and educating them/opening the door for them to onboard on the Web3, is one of the most crucial pieces of infrastructure if we want the Web3 to be any different from Web2

The story so far…

In Q1 2022, the total audience grew by 52% as compared to the previous quarter and our total reach is over 40000 audience members in over 20 languages. We have over 100 active contributors speaking 20 different languages from all parts of the world. We have worked with prominent DAOs in web3 such as polygon, tribe and yearn.

Over the next months and years, as we continue to produce content we will also start developing local language communities which will develop web3 talent in local languages as well as organising events in different geographical locations to onboard more people.

Our Ask to the crypto community …

At the highest level, Web3 Education provided by BanklessDao stands to empower humanity with the informed decision-making required in our digital future. We firmly believe that we align with the vision of the Gitcoin Community, and that together we can work to slay Moloch.

We seriously can’t wait to show you what we have to offer this space.

Let’s Impact Together!

BanklessDao believes in the liberating effects of going Bankless and the impact our ideal can have on improving the financial stability and wellbeing of our world both in learning and translation. With the help of the Gitcoin Community, we will accelerate the spread of an ungated Web3 education for everyone.

Let’s help the world go Bankless"

Text ends here

We’ll figure out a way to disburse funds between the projects that are interested in the coming weeks

Do you generally agree with this text and proceeding to gitcoin grants with a common application?

Generally agree with all the points you raised here @Jengajojo

The Bankless revolution and education must go on

We all need to go Bankless. I agree to this proposal.

Lets do this all the way
totally agree

Let’s make this happen bankless!

Perhaps it might be good idea to let us know about why no consensus could be reached.

Gitcoin has a mechanism in place to prevent some of the projects from participating in the matching rounds. Projects like Bankless Africa and IMN were not allowed to receive additional funding during previous Gitcoin rounds because they were viewed as sybil attacks on the protocol.

We have been in discussion with Gitcoin trying to work around this issue. Technically, there is no sybil attack since all of these projects are separate entities with different teams, multi-sigs, websites, etc. However, Gitcoin views all of these separate projects as belonging to BanklessDAO and will not allow them to participate in the matching fund rounds. It boils down to the use of the Bankless name and affiliation with the DAO.

After no progress with the Gitcoin team, we decided the fairest thing for all the excluded projects is to share any matching funds received from 1 grant - the BanklessDAO Gitcoin Grant. This will allow the projects to receive some additional funding from outside donors. Although it’s not a perfect solution and projects may not receive the full benefit of QF, it’s a solution that offers more than they were receiving before.

This was posted in the #cross-collab[[Discord]] channel last week for all projects to add themselves to a common grant application.

There wasn’t a role ping to let anyone know about it. editing a post to include a new role does not send a ping.

Gitcoin team is open to a megagrant/ecosystem round for bankless, seems they’re waiting on us to propose a solution.

We’ll figure out a way to disburse funds between the projects that are interested in the coming weeks

That’s the most important part from project’s perspective, would like to see a plan for distro. QF allocation (implementation through a false allocation of coordinape – to projects, not individuals, this time)?

Thanks for the comments. We (@Icedcool @Ap0ll0517 @Tetranome @0x_Lucas @jameswmontgomery.eth ) have been in conversation with Gitcoin core since last month about this. Ap0ll0517 just summarised the output of the conversation.

We are not sure if we qualify for QF yet, will update everyone once this grant application is accepted. If you have a project that wants to be part of the common project framework, feel free to suggest the text in the doc linked in the discord thread.

Thanks for leading this Gitcoin Grant Proposal @Jengajojo.

I approve the proposal, but I have 3 concerns:

• @Humpty should also join the shared Grant since it’s a BanklessDAO project, or else we might not be able to apply because he is already using the spot for the DAO.
• I think it’s important to validate the distribution method before applying for the DAO Grant or else this could result in trouble. How do you see us doing this in a fair way?
• I agree with @iSpeakNerd’s concern, I don’t think the lvl2 tag was done properly, so projects didn’t get a chance to join.

Question
What are we supposed to do with our current grant? Can it stay active for direct donations but without matching?

Update
Could you update the Bankless Academy description with this? Thanks
https://www.notion.so/Bankless-Academy-Gitcoin-Page-099e44a9e7d1461dabf5cf632b40de72

This is true. We could open our own side round/ecosystem. However, we would have to fund that round with $25,000+. That would be the source of QF for any projects included in the BanklessDAO Ecosystem. This doesn’t accomplish the ultimate goal - open projects to additional funding outside the DAO. By opening our own ecosystem, we would increase our treasury spending more than we’re spending now.

If my understanding is correct, we can only have 1 grant eligible for QF. All other project grants can only receive the funds individual donors have given them, but no QF. In the group chat, I proposed that the BanklessDAO grant be the single grant eligible for QF and those funds get distributed evenly between all projects “under our umbrella.” I know that’s not perfect, but I think it’s the fairest and most inclusive. Right now we have a few projects which are receiving the full benefit of QF other projects are excluded. If we evenly distribute any QF received from the DAO’s grant, at least all project will receive some.

I made some copy edits, just to tidy it up. Hope that’s okay.

I’ve heard a few things, but just not totally clear. Is the proposal being updated to reflect that funding will go to all projects equally?

TY to the team, this i a great proposal

Thank you Jenga for submitting submitting this post and leading the initiative!

As you and I have talked about, I’m expressing interest in Bankless Research being added to this grants proposal as a project. The team is currently crafting a general gitcoin grants proposal we haven’t submitted yet. I’m sure it contains enough info for now to give the one reading it an overview of the project!

Looking forward to seeing and supporting this proposal on gitcoin grants web page!