We want to inform the community that the grant committee has approved the following grant request on October 31st 2023:
Total grant: $70000
Payment terms: The grant will be paid in 30% USDC and 70% SSV based on a 7-day moving price average as of the approval date, re-calculated for every milestone.
Thank you 
—Grants Committee
can you provide more details about the proposal? At least, we have to see a proposal.
We’re waiting for the PDF version of the proposal and include it in the Notion post when received.
Hello @BumpyTale
I want to express my appreciation and support for what the GC is doing. I’d like to make a quick suggestion, similar to what @badkid mentioned:
We should focus more on transparency right from the beginning of each grant proposal. The verdict of the GC should be well published, and the debates and decisions should be carried out openly on the forum. Additionally, the community should be involved in analyzing the grants. Once the community has asked relevant questions, the grant committee can proceed with their evaluation.
This approach will enable us to support projects that the community wants.
btw, I don’t think it is good to deliver the payment at the very first. better to pay when they meet the milestomes since we have approved a lot of grants but few of them actually contribute to SSV network now.
Yes, sir, you are absolutely right. Distributing a 100% grant will allow the recipient to do whatever they feel like, even if they want to stop halfway or don’t want to continue with the grant. I understand the GC is trying to provide full support to these projects, but I fear that most of the projects won’t be able to accomplish what they claim when they apply. This may not necessarily mean they don’t want to continue, but it could be due to unforeseen challenges like
and other factors that may cause a project to stop progressing. This could be a significant loss for the DAO. That’s why milestone grant disbursement is essential. The GC will set specific milestones for the project. Within this interval, they should achieve certain objectives with 60% of the total grant request. Once these milestones are met, they should report back to the forum to confirm their progress. The remaining grant amount can then be disbursed.
We can choose to split the grant into
two milestones
Or into
three milestones
This approach will help us see the results and for projects unable to achieve the first milestone we can automatically cancel the remaining disbursement.
We had issues with the automation to notion. That’s why the final proposal PDF was not attached to it. I’ve corrected this manually, and we’ll conduct a cleanup tasks to make sure every entry has the proposal linked.
You’ll find all the answers to your questions in that PDF.
That’s always the case. No more upfront payments. All payments are linked to a milestone delivery.
We just approved the grant size. No actual payments are made. See the PDF for a breakdown of milestones, after which a payout will be made, but only in case of success.
I edited the proposal post. The payment will be actually made in 70% SSV and 30% USDC (in 3 tranches after each milestone is reached).
Note that in general we moved to a 100% SSV payment structure for all new grants, but the agreement with dForce was made before this change was implemented.
I very much like your engagement here. Always good to have community members taking notice of our work and holding us accountable.
That’s exactly how this and all newer grants are paid out.
We usually have three milestones and the below is how also the dForce grant is structured:
Milestone 1: full testnet implementation
Milestone 2: full mainnet implementation
Milestone 3: pre-defined TVL target reached (usually 25 validators)
Thank you @BumpyTale and @BenAffleck . This is good . I have also confirmed the proposal in the PDF, and everything is just as it has been said .
I have one suggestion. Is it possible that every proposal comes directly to the forum? Then we can give the community a specific amount of time to conduct their own research on the project and ask relevant questions.
Once the project is approved by the community and they want to proceed with it, the grant committee can also evaluate the project on the same forum thread to see if it meets the GC requirements.
I think this way the community is also involved in the evaluation process. They can appreciate the projects and the Grant Committee can evaluate the projects to see if they meet the GC requirements.
This is just an idea to involve the community in the evaluation process.
Thank you
I appreciate your ideas. However, evaluation of grants requires a lot of very specific knowledge and is logistically heavy. Because of those and other matters, the DAO has entrusted a grants committee with this task.
If the DAO wants a different mechanism, it must vote on it. Everyone is welcome to start such a discussion and propose a change in how the DAO handles grants.
The mistake that was made on this grant shall not happen again, and the final proposal needs to be attached to the announcement. I’ll ensure that the automation will be fixed and incomplete entries in the database will be corrected.
Thank you!
where we can see all grants?
I don’t think this grant can benefit SSV network.
I don’t see the team has the ambition to develop a good product when setting 25 validators as a target for the final milestone.
From the proposal, I think what they want to do is similar to frxETH v2 but frxETH v2 only requires 4e as bond while dForce asks 10e as collateral. How it will competes with FrxETH v2 when launching.
It’s crucial to understand that these grants are not investments but rather a form of support for early-stage development and are intended to catalyse development and innovation within the SSV Network. Moreover, with a few exceptions, grants do not cover the full development costs. It is a springboard for grantees to initiate their projects, with the expectation that they will invest additional resources to bring their visions to fruition. Upon completion of the grant, grantees are encouraged to seek further funding from the $50M SSV Ecosystem Fund, which is backed by leading investors and other industry experts, to help scaling their projects.
We are diligent in ensuring that recipients demonstrate not only the technical capabilities to execute their projects but also a viable plan to introduce their products to the market - or, in the case of existing products, to seamlessly integrate new solutions. The dForce team has convincingly presented these elements, both within their proposal and through subsequent discussions with the committee.
Regarding the target of 25 validators, this threshold is deliberately set to balance ambition with attainability. It is an encouraging yet achievable goal for developers to strive towards, ensuring they are motivated to succeed without being overwhelmed.
Thanks for your support! Here is the full version of our proposal for everyone’s quick reference!
