Background
The grand goal of Perp is to eventually dissolve the foundation and transition it fully into a DAO. However to reach this we need to do things in small steps. This proposal aims to outline the first step is doing this through forming a grants program.
Given one of our aims is to become the base layer for other protocols to build on top of it makes sense to incentivise users to build on top of Perp. The aim of the grants program is to accelerate the adoption of Perpetual Protocol.
Much of this proposal has been inspired by Uniswap, Aave and Compound grants programs. We have also talked to lots of individuals involved with these grants programs to learn about early mistakes.
Proposal
Grant Types
We already have the concept of a bounty on our site. This links directly over to Request for Proposal (RFPs) in the grants world. Would propose to standardise the naming convention to be the same. Similar to other grant programs we should have one that is under the pure discretion of the committee and one which requires going through a more formalised public forum discussion and ending with some form of snapshot vote.
We then propose the following:
- <$50K - full discretion of the committee
- >$50K - requires going to the public forum
- RFPs - the price is set by the committee at the start
Funding
For funding of these projects it’s up to the committee and at their discretion if they want to create milestones for payments or not. Payment on delivery of milestones allows the grants program to stay lean and ensure that projects pivot if they are not fulfilling their initial goal.
All grants are priced in USD and then paid out in PERP. We will use a 7 day TWAP price as at the time of payout. For example, if we payout a milestone then we take the USD amount / TWAP price and send out the required amount of PERP. We expect there also to be up front payments to kick start grants but again this will be at the discretion of the committee
At a high level it may make sense for there to be at least milestones based on each ~10-20K worth of payments. There needs to be the fine balance between creating overhead and being able to quickly pivot where ideas or projects are failing.
Focus Areas
We propose the following areas that the grants committee focuses on:
-
Business solutions/integrations - anything that utilises Perp as a base layer. Some examples of this could include:
- Developing basis trading strategies leveraging PERP and YFI,
- Systematic hedging solutions for investors
- Executing integrations with other DeFi protocols to become primary PERP provider,
-
Tooling - building out any tooling that may be helpful for either makers, traders of token holders. Some examples of this could include:
- Dashboards
- Periodic reports on assets, business and initiatives
- Governance and treasury modules, etc.
- Tools and dev infrastructure for building trading bots
- Integrations with 3rd party tools such as TA charting tools
- Marketing - anything that focuses on explaining Perp and how it works as well as getting the word out to the community. This can be anything from design to written content
Budget
From previous vote there is about 500k worth of PERP allocated to the bounty program. We propose to utilise half of this, or 2M USD worth of PERP (~250K PERP at current prices) and have at 1M USDC per quarter cap over 2 quarters. Reviews can be done at the end of the quarter if need be.
Committee
Responsibilities
We propose that the lead will do the majority of the work with initial vetting, write ups and interviews. They will then present to the committee who will ask any questions and provide feedback.
One key learning has been the need for grants to get back to grantees and provide as much support as possible. Given this the committee endeavours to get back to grantees as quickly as possible.
Members
For the committee members we propose to have members fill out key areas that ensure we have full coverage to properly evaluate projects.
Core Team:
- Yenwen (Core team, Engineering)
- Nick (Core team, Strategy + Partnerships)
Early Investors
- Fiskantes (ZeePrime, Investor, https://twitter.com/Fiskantes)
- Vishal (Multicoin, Investor, https://twitter.com/kankanivishal)
Traders
- Brian (CMS, Trader, https://twitter.com/backbooked)
Community
- Lanre
- Snowsledge
- almccan
Edit1
Given there was some push back from the committee to firstly prove their value, some have proposed for the time being to update the comp from 300 PERP to:
- Base: 50 PERP per month
- Flexible : up to 150 PERP per month. Flexible piece depends on the volume and amount of work put in
The core team members and investors have agreed to forgo this payment