sCIP#3 - Introducing ecosystem and community grants and a Curve council

[charlie_eth]

Summary

Curve Finance is proposing to start utilising the community fund for ecosystem, DAO and community grants. Those three type of grants have the common goal of encouraging and developing the Curve ecosystem and empowering the community.

We are proposing to trial those grants for four months and this proposal seeks to approve the council as well as the budget for it. A new vote four months from now will give a chance to the council to demonstrate results and the DAO to reconsider the budget and/or put an end to those grants.

After discussions with other DeFi protocols, we strongly believe those grants have the potential to have long last benefit for Curve and its ecosystem.

Ecosystem Grants

Ecosystem grants aim at encouraging and developing the Curve, Vyper language and more generally the DeFi ecosystem. They are for individuals, teams of all sizes looking to develop tools, projects that could benefit from small to medium grants.

The following criteria are considered:

• How it relates to Curve and the Curve DAO
• How it may benefit and impact the Curve and the Curve community
• State of the project (is it some gibberish on a napkin or already in production)
• The team and how likely they are to deliver
• Potential (viability, longevity, competition and so on)
• How the funds will be used and why they are needed

These grants are quite flexible in how they are awarded with demonstrating benefit to the Curve system being most important. Existing and completed projects are also eligible particularly if they can demonstrate benefit to the ecosystem.

Grants range from $500 to $10,000 to be paid in 3CRV (LP token for 3 Pool).

A council of team and community members will be formed to assign those grants which may involve milestone based repeat payments depending on the scope of the project.

Community Grants

Community grants aims at encouraging and developing the Curve community and Curve itself and specifically rewarding outstanding users.

Those users may have helped create proposals that shaped Curve and its DAO, helped out users, contributed in a meaningful way to the community, created content, educational or otherwise, about Curve and/or benefited the Curve ecosystem.

Grants range from $100 to $2,000 to be paid in 3CRV (LP token for 3 Pool).

A list of recipients will be circulated publicly before they are awarded. If you would like to suggest a recipient, please message @charlie_eth on Telegram/Discord.

Proposal Grants

Proposal grants will reward users who create successful (non parameter) proposals (CIPs). Those users will be rewarded by $500 in 3CRV after the proposal is implemented.

To be eligible:

• CIP must be implemented
• CIP must meet standard requirements (governance topic, feasibility, viability)
• CIP must not be a parameter vote
• Signal votes are excluded
• Must not be a Curve team member

Budget:

This proposal will seek to secure funding of $30k per month for those grants from the community fund for a four months trial period.

Council:

The council to review those grants will be composed of the following people:
7 Curve team members: @angelangel0v, @michwill, @iamdefinitelyahuman, @kendrickllama, @Curve_Asia, @charlie_eth, @JulienBouteloup

9 Community members:
@jiecut, @Julien, @ON-DeFi, @WormholeOracle, @ne1k0, @Mentin, @puchojenso, @C2tP, @Kmpec80

You can find short bios about each member at this address: https://guides.curve.fi/community-council/
There are users who have contributed to Curve and its community in various ways since its launch.

For

We have spoken to other protocols like Yearn and AAVE who strongly believe those grants are truly beneficial to their ecosystem. We believe there is true value in developing the Curve and wider DeFi ecosystem as well as empowering our community and more importantly we believe it will truly benefit Curve governance and CRV holders.

Against

Community fund shouldn’t be used for grants

Poll:

Snapshot

The Curve team thanks the Yearn and AAVE teams for their help in developing those guidelines.

[ne1k0]

Nice, this should really help improve community awareness and perception while at the same time being a good investment.

[ON-DeFi]

I’m looking forward to working more closely together with CRV and looking forward to all cool ideas to improve CRV long-term.
Thank you for this opportunity.

[taariq]

Dear Curve Team,

Thank you for anouncing your proposal for the Community grant program.

I would like to identify three critical problems that will render the community grants program frustrating and limiting. My hope is that you’ll consider these issues and adjust the grant program so that it can compete and attract talent as well as new value to Curve. If the goal of the grant program is to encourage more building on curve, then the grant program should be designed as an accelerator-type program that will feature and market winning teams in the following ways:

Problem 1: Grant size:
The grant size of $500 to $10,000 is not competitive and should be increased to a maximum of $125,000. Here are the reasons why:

1. Substitutes: The best talent have substitute appeals to their skills and their time. The average solidity developer can secure up to $125,000 to $200,000 per year. To successfully attract the best talent due to substitutes available to the best talent, the award must increase. A maximum grant of $10,000 does not competitvely make it attractive for more than 1 developer to even doe more than 1 month of work for a Curve grant. If you want bigger teams to spend more time contributing to Curve, raise the grants to $125,000. This does not mean that the community MUST spend $125,000, but it does raise the stakes and it should attract better and bigger teams.

2. Continuity: Most protocol grant problems suffer from lack of continuity as a requirment for their grant pograms. This means that you pay for a grant, but no one talks about the project again or the project goes on to fork and implement a competitor to Curve. If you want to build on the grant program, then quality teams should see the grant program as an agreement for follow-on financing from Curve DAO andother investors. Great teams that deliver will most likely seek follow-on funding and continuity. Making their work available for follow-on investment menas greater continuity and participation in project upside.

3. Marketing and Promoting Curve: Grant winners of any grant over a certain amount, say $25,000 should be required to participate in a community day “Curve Demo Day” to show off their work, their results, and to encourage a possible investment round into the team for further development, if desired. Follow-on investment from Curve community is the best way that the community grant can convert success into further success. Lack of a performance requirement from teams will also mean that the best teams will attract follow-on investment elsewhere. Curve Demo Day should be 2x per year and all curve grant awardees are invited to participate, but required at grants over $25,000.

Problem 2: Feedback loops:
The grant program should be a positive feedback loop to encourage community members to take risks to build and extend Curve in bold and innovative ways. Thus, the grant program should encourage behavior that will build on Curve. If we expect curve to lock trillions in value in the future, the program should reflect that belief and encourage the appropriate behavior.

Problem 3: Investors:
Curve community is made up of investors. The grant program should build on their interest to further invest in Curve community projects that are seeking to build well beyond their grant reward. At the current grant size and grant structure, investors aren’t going to be much interested in small changes. Feed the Curve investor community and you’ll feed Curve features and building. This relates to the feedback loops above as well as the ability to keep community investing into Curve.

I hope that helps! Glad to help here further as well.
Cheers,
Taariq