Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook

[Anonymous5]

Summary

• 1. We propose the launch of 1inch community grants program of $1M USDC spread across 2 quarters to fund a wide variety of teams building apps on top of 1inch in a transparent manner. Questbook is already helping Compound run and manage its grants program through delegated domain capital allocation model.
• 2. We additionally propose that this budget be managed by 4 individuals called D_omain Allocators._ These domain allocators would manage grants for a domain. These domains are strategic areas of focus for which the foundation wants to disburse grants
• 3. The performance of each of these domain allocators will be publicly viewable and auditable using rich dashboards. At the end of every quarter, the 1inch community can vote to replace, continue domain allocators or increase budgets for each domain allocator.
• 4. We (Questbook.xyz) will help facilitate setting up these domain allocators and provide the tooling to run the grants program in an efficient and transparent way. We have previously set up or currently setting up the grants process for Compound, Polygon, Solana ecosystem, Celo, and Aave.

Motivation
A grants program can help build a strong and supportive community of quality developers and projects that use 1inch. By providing support to projects, the grant program can incentivize and encourage development on the platform, leading to the creation of new and innovative applications and services that benefit the entire ecosystem. This will help to expand the reach of 1inch and increase its overall impact. Overall, starting a grants program for 1inch is a way to support the ecosystem, encourage development, and drive adoption.

Problems

Traditionally, most grant programs have a central committee that disburses grants. They typically run into the following issues:

• Committee blind spots - It is unfair to expect any grant committee member to have expertise across various domains. It becomes impossible or inefficient to judge projects that may lie outside the committee’s expertise and may still be valuable to the 1inch ecosystem.
• Inadequate Tooling - Lack of tools and resources to effectively manage an on-chain governance process. Lack of tools and resources to effectively manage the grant’s workflows on-chain. Most of the grant programs currently use spreadsheets to manage their workflows with hardly any transparency on the fund disbursals and application reviews.
• The Importance of Measuring Impact - Evaluating the impact of grant funding is essential for evaluating the efficiency of allocated funds and ensuring that resources are being utilized efficiently. Without proper impact measurement, the grant team cannot determine areas for improvement and is prone to repeat the same mistakes.
• Lack of Transparency - Often, centralised grants committees lack transparency in their decision-making process. This makes it difficult for applicants to track where applications are in the process and can lead to frustration and a feeling of being ignored.

Delayed responses : With a centralized committee, it can be difficult to respond quickly to the grant applicants. This means that the responses are often delayed, sometimes for long periods of time, which can leave applicants in limbo and feeling like their applications are being ignored.

Solution
Giving domain allocators the capital and decision-making powers can increase the efficiency of the grants program:

• 1. Individual expertise instead of collective blindspots
• 2. Distributed load instead of committee backlogs
• 3. Accountability instead of diffusion of responsibility

More specifically, the proposed structure will lead to the following outcomes:

1. 1. Increase in quality proposals - Measured by the number of proposals received per month and % of proposals accepted by the domain allocators. Questbook (https://www.questbook.app) is a desired destination for 20,000+ builders each month. We also have a dedicated team who is responsible for builder engagement and reviewing draft proposals before they are submitted to ensure high quality.
2. 
4. 2. Improved transparency: The delegates are held accountable for their allocation decisions, and the process is open to the community. This helps to ensure that the grants are being distributed fairly and transparently.
5. 
7. 3. More targeted funding: Delegate domain allocators allow the team to focus funding on specific areas or domains. This allows the team to prioritise the most important and impactful areas, rather than spreading funding thinly across many different projects.
9. 4. Better alignment with goals: The Delegate domain allocators method allows the 1inch team to align its grants program with its specific goals and objectives. This will help ensure that the team is working towards the outcomes it wants to achieve, rather than simply following a general approach.
11. 5. Consistent and timely communication - Between the domain allocators, builders and community members is a key part of any successful grants program. This will be measured by impact metrics such as turnaround time to give feedback on the proposal and make a final decision, the number of projects completing all the milestones. The data and performance across key metrics will be visible to the community.
12. 
14. 

In conclusion, funding their grants program using the Delegated domain allocator offers 1inch the benefits of decentralization, increased efficiency, lower costs, increased accessibility, and increased transparency.

Program Design

The program structure focuses on having community members as domain allocators. 1inch foundation will be required to set a budget of $1M to be disbursed by 4 domain allocators. Each domain allocator will be an expert in their specific domain and will run their domain on-chain for full transparency. The data and performance across key metrics will be visible to the community in order to evaluate the domain allocator’s performance.

The disbursement of the grant will take place on-chain from a multi-sig wallet controlled by the program manager & the domain allocator. The domain allocator will approve or reject proposals based on their evaluation. The program manager will then coordinate with the 1inch community to ensure that the proposal is aligned with 1inch ecosystem growth before signing the disbursal. The sole purpose of the multi-sig is to make sure capital is not being siphoned. However, the allocators are encouraged to make independent decisions regarding the approval of the proposal based on their expertise.

Every quarter, the grants committee and the 1inch community shall evaluate the performance of each domain using publicly available data. The outcomes could be as follows:

1. 1. Change the domain
2. 2. Change the allocator/program manager
3. 3. Change the budget

Active community members can also initiate a no-confidence motion to initiate a review off-cycle. This can be initiated by one of the active delegates on Snapshot. The program manager can coordinate this, if the situation arises, along with the active community members. The unused funds from every domain will be returned to the treasury at the end of 2 quarters.

Product Screens

Invite proposals to your grants program

**Anyone from the community can view and comment on the proposals **

Invite community members to review proposals based on an evaluation rubric

Make milestone-based payouts directly from the multi-sig

Track the performance of the grants program

1inch Grants Committee

The program will consist of

1. 1. A Program Manager
2. 2. 4 Domain Allocators

A Grants Safe, with 3/5 multi-sig, between the program manager and 4 domain allocators will be setup. We will then have 4 Safe’s for each of the domains with a 2/2 between the program manager and the specific domain allocator.

The funds for the grants program will flow from the 1inch foundation treasury into the Grants SAFE. This SAFE will hold the funds related to operational costs, committee compensation, and the grant budget. Funds that will be disbursed to the proposers will reside in the domain-level SAFEs. The program manager will be responsible to update the community about approved proposals and their details through bi-weekly community calls and reports over discord.
We have identified the following domains that are relevant to 1inch and domain allocators who are best suited to evaluate proposals after evaluating them on axes such as community participation on forums, discord and social media.

We propose the following set of individuals to run one domain each. **We are open to adding more domains and incorporating changes based on the feedback of the community. **

Domain Allocator Roles & Responsibilities:

The following will be the roles and responsibilities of the selected domain allocators.

1. 1. Time commitment per week: Estimated 25 hours per week for the program manager and 15 hours per week for the domain allocator, which might vary based on the number of applications. The program manager will ensure that the workload is evenly distributed.
3. 2. Program Manager:
4. a. Communication:
5. 1. Coordinate between 1inch team and the community regarding funding requirement
6. 2. Communicate the information regarding approval/rejection of proposals to the 1inch community regularly

          3.Attend community calls, actively participate in the community forum, and keep the community       updated and take their feedback on the program.

1. 4. Regularly update the progress of the grants program to the 1inch community over Discord and community calls.
2. b. Grants Program:
3. 1. Source good-quality proposals from developer communities
4. 2. Sign the transactions for the approved projects
5. 3. Ensure a quick turnaround time for proposers regarding their proposal decision
6. 4. Coordinate between the domain allocators to ensure that the workload is evenly distributed and take their feedback consistently
8. 3. Domain Allocator:
9. a. Review proposals received for their domains based on the rubrics set by the domain allocator.
10. b. Reject/Approve proposals and coordinate consistently with the program manager
11. c. Source applications by reaching out to developer communities in their network
12. d. Discuss program improvements with the other domain allocators and program manager during scheduled meetings

Compensation:
The grant budget will be $1M with $200k for each domain. The committee compensation will be $200k for 4 domain allocators and one program manager for 6 months. Note that this is the proposed budget. All unused funds from every domain and committee compensation will be returned to the treasury

P.S

1. 1. We are inviting applications for the domain allocator role for all the domains mentioned above. All interested community members and delegates can apply in the comments section of this post.
3. 2. All the payments will be done in USDC

Conclusion

What does success look like?

• Objective
• 1. The prime objective of this model is to have domains that align with 1inch’s priorities. This way the contribution of the projects as part of the grants program is directly adding value to the community and the token holders.
• 2. Increase in the number of proposals, projects being and projects live on top of 1inch.
• 3. Increase in the homegrown leadership to run grant programs (measured by the number of people running grant programs).
• 4. Increase in the community members’ participation to keep grant programs accountable (measured by the number of people looking at the dashboard and participating in the program)
• 5. Diversity in projects being funded across technologies, geographies, and demographics, to name a few. We encourage the community to regularly review the project domains during 1inch community call

• 6. Increased engagement in builder community’s

     a) Discourse

• b) Discord, Telegram
• c) Social media (Twitter, Reddit)
• d) GitHub, Radicle
• e) DAO Tools - Safe, etc.
• Subjective
• 1. Improved community involvement in the grants program.
• 2. Strengthened builders’ sentiment towards 1inch.
• 3. Enhanced 1inch’s brand recognition in builder circles.

About Questbook:

Questbook’s role in 1inch’s Grant Program

• Saurabh from Questbook will be the program manager. Thereafter, the program manager will be elected from the community. Saurabh was previously working very closely with the Program manager of Polygon, where he facilitated the disbursement of approximately $1 million in grants. Saurabh has received a grant from IoTeX to establish their grant program, and he works closely with the Program Manager of Compound Grants Program 2.0. Saurabh has spoken to more than 100 builders and teams over the last 6-8 months and understands what it takes to make a grant program successful - from both program manager and builder perspectives.
• Questbook Grants tool will make sure the workflows are systematic and transparent.

Product Flows

1. 1. Posting a grant - Link
2. 2. Reviewing and Funding Proposals - Link
3. 3. Settings - Link
4. 4. Communicating with Builders - Link
5. 5. Funding Builders - Link

Credentials

• 1. Questbook (YC-W21) is a decentralized grant orchestration tool, currently being used by Compound, Polygon, AAVE, Celo & Solana.
• 2. Saurabh from Questbook will be the program manager. Thereafter, the program manager will be elected from the community. Saurabh was previously working very closely with the Program manager of Polygon, where he facilitated the disbursement of approximately $1 million in grants. Saurabh has received a grant from IoTeX to establish their grant program, and he works closely with the Program Manager of Compound Grants Program 2.0. Saurabh has spoken to more than 100 builders and teams over the last 6-8 months and understands what it takes to make a grant program successful - from both program manager and builder perspectives.

Product Compensation

• 1. We are happy to let 1inch Community to use Questbook tool for free
• 2. However, for any specific asks from the grants team in order to run the process more smoothly, we charge for the additional features based on the development overhead. From our previous work experience: We propose a budget of $50K to be kept aside for specific features

Community buy-in and next steps
This is a temp check to gather interest to execute such a grant program during the bear market. We will also be involving more members from the community to identify the right domain allocators and the top 4 domains that are most relevant to 1inch.

[Nneoma_StableLab]

Here are a couple of my thoughts here.

1. 1INCH foundation currently has a grants program so it would be helpful to get a distinction between the two programs so applicants know where to go, if this grants program were to be implemented.
2. A few grants are now going through the DAO, so I do believe there is a place for this.
3. The domains should be discussed between the community to identify the few relevant domains. Do you have domains in mind that should be kept for 1inch DAO?
4. Do you have any domain allocators in mind for certain domains? Would they be self-nominated or nominated by another community member?
5. It might be better to start with a lower ask, maybe around $50-$75k per domain for the first two quarters → ($200-$300k) instead of the current $1 million ask. What do you think?
6. Does the program manager KYC all grantees once their application has been approved?

[Anonymous5]

Thanks for the feedback, Bobby.

1. We have suggested a few domains in the proposal, including Dev tooling for Limit order, Aggregation Protocol and Liquidity Protocol, New Protocol dapps and Ideas, Financial Reporting and data analytics, and Education Research. However, we are open to discussing and identifying other relevant domains with the community.
2. We believe that the community should have a say in the allocation process and thus, the domain allocators could be self-nominated or nominated by other community members. Once we have a final list of the domain allocators we will interview them and appoint them as DA. Hence, we have mentioned in the proposal that we are inviting applications for the domain allocator role for all the domains mentioned above. All interested community members and delegates can apply in the comments section of this post. What do you think about this approach?
3. The budget mentioned over here is going to be used for the next two quarters and the unused funds will be returned back in the treasury but we will definitely take the suggestion to start with a lower ask into consideration. You’re right, it’s better to start small, show success with a pilot and iterate the program over the next quarters. We can begin with $100K-$150K for two quarters per domain.
4. As for last question, yes, the program manager will conduct KYC on all grantees once their application has been approved. Just like how we are doing for Compound.

[Baer.eth_DAOplomats]

@Saurabh, thank you for making this proposal. A standardised way to approach the Grants will add a lot of mileage to the decentralisation of the DAO . that being said, here are my thoughts

1. the DAO is receiving many grants from ATM and probably will not see a spike pretty soon as the 1inch Foundation Grants are running.
2. The domains you mention can be tailored to the need of the DAO; we haven’t seen any proposals in some of the domains you mentioned.
3. I would consider combining some of the Domains, like opinions 5 & 6 together or 1&3 together.

and there is a simpler implementation of grants program, i think we can combine the both proposal if that make sense
https://gov.1inch.io/discussion/10134-1inchdao-grants-review-council

[FranklinDAO_Penn_Blo]

Thanks for this proposal Saurabh! We think that the scope of this is very appropriate and have had some problems with communication in the past with the 1Inch grants program (non-responsive/deadends). With regards to the specific details of the domains, we think the original $250k might be bit high and think that the $100k-$150k per domain trial run is more appropriate. Overall, some domains we think should be in scope are new protocol ideas and also data and financial reporting. From our perspective, we’ve been looking to get more and more involved publicly with 1Inch for a while now and this would be a great way of engaging, hence, we’d also love to be considered for a DA role.

[Nneoma_StableLab]

We appreciate the response Saurabh.

As far as we believe and from our previous work from Questbook, this would be an improvement over the other proposal presented to 1inch DAO regarding a grant program.

My only concern is that 1inch DAO is not that active and we might not be able to find relevant and reliable people to fill in these domains. I see @Penn Blockchain commented, who are recently active here and reliable in other DAOs, so they could be a DA.

You also mention that you interview the domain allocators, do you make the selection choice public, so the community can understand how you chose each domain allocator?

[Anonymous5]

As for combining some of the domains, we appreciate your suggestion and will discuss it further as we consider the best way to allocate resources and ensure efficient management of the domains. We can definitely combine domains 5&6 and 1&3. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Anonymous5]

1.Regarding your concern about finding relevant and reliable people to fill the domains, it’s possible that as the DAO expands and gains more visibility, more qualified individuals will become involved. In the meantime, it’s important to continue reaching out to active and reliable members, such as @Penn Blockchain, to fill in the gaps. Starting a grant program will motivate more individuals to participate in the community activities and contribute more in the 1inch DAO. We can have some good quality domain allocators out side of the community too. Like how we had Stablenode for multichain and Questbook for Devtooling.

2. As for making the selection process for domain allocators public, yes, we plan to do so. We will conduct interviews with potential DAs and consider factors such as.

• What is your USP (Skillset)
• What is your unfair advantage when it comes to your network and access.
• How will your Source application
• Time commitment
• Motivation to be a DDA
• Links about their work and their background