SafeDAO

Title: Safe Grants Program (SGP)

Authors: @MetaGuardian, OG post from @netrunner.eth

Created: Wednesday 12th, April 2023

Please refer to the full proposal text on the Safe DAO forum: some parts needed to be removed to fit within the character limit on Snapshot:

• What metrics measure success against each Grant category?

• Role of Safe Ecosystem Foundation with the DAO and SGP

• Approval Process (within Grants Application Process)

https://forum.safe.global/t/sep-6-safe-grants-program-sgp/3213

Abstract

Taking into account previous submissions by netrunner.eth. This proposal outlines a Safe Grants Program (SGP) to be run by SafeDAO, with funding and administrative support provided by the Safe Ecosystem Foundation (SEF). If voted in by the SafeDAO community, wave 1 of the program would run for 6 months with a view to iterating on the program in wave 2, based on feedback and learnings from the initial wave of Safe grants funding.

SGP Mission

Grow a thriving community of contributors through funding ideas, projects and integrations. To support the decentralised growth and sustainability of the Safe ecosystem.

More specifically:

Drive development and usage on top of Safe, cultivating enthusiastic users and talented builders to increase and maintain Safe’s long term growth. Primarily driven by Safe{Build} and Safe{Growth} grants.

Bring the best and brightest community members into SafeDAO, members who believe in Safe’s constitution and the constitution goals. In turn, this will attract the best contributors to the Safe ecosystem. Primarily driven by Safe{Research} and Safe{Govern} grants.

Note: This grants program is not optimised to drive token utility, as token utility has not yet been ratified by SafeDAO. Instead, this SGP aims to grow our community that uses and builds on the protocol, which will in turn foster a more diverse and extensive ecosystem that a token utility model can be built upon.

Safe Grants Program - Wave 1

What work does it support?

Safe {Build} Grants

Goal: Get developers building out Safe as the default EVM wallet. Doing What: Build account abstraction integrations, developer experience, SDK packs, modules/guards, tooling and retail/hybrid/institutional projects. Primarily looking at early stage projects building on Safe. Milestones Needed: Benchmark and/or Critical (see milestones section)

Safe {Growth} Grants

Goal: Get people using Safe. Doing What: Usage incentive programs, user education, community growth, marketing campaigns. Milestones Needed: Benchmark and Critical

Safe {Research} Grants

Goal: Get people sustaining Safe. Doing What: Value capture programs, core protocol developments, R&D (e.g. Account Abstraction). Milestones Needed: Critical

Safe {Govern} Grants

Goal: Get people governing SafeDAO. Doing What: Increase delegate and proposer experience, governance tooling. Milestones Needed: Benchmark and Critical

What’s the program length and expected outcomes?

SGP will begin with a first wave lasting 6 months, consisting of an open period and a review period. The open period will be an initial 18 weeks of operational focus. The review period will be 6 weeks in which the SGP funded initiatives will be reviewed by the committee, token holders and delegates.

The wave 1 outcomes should be evaluated and a decision needs to be made on whether a wave 2 should commence at the 6 month deadline, after the review period. Each grantee should prove that they implemented their approved in-scope deliverables. Each grantee should prove that their project has successfully contributed to the increase of their Grant category metrics.

Subsequent proposals and grants can be formulated for follow-up work, in the event a Wave 1 grant engagement goes well and a continuation is warranted.

How much funding is available for distribution?

The Safe Ecosystem Foundation has committed $1,000,000 USD in grants - see here for original announcement. As a result, SGP Wave 1 will commit a maximum of $500,000 for the next 6 months, with a further $500k available to the program for wave 2. The grants program aims to significantly ramp up in speed and scale in future waves of grants funding, dependent on the SafeDAO’s feedback and learnings from Wave 1.

Contributors can apply to receive between $5k to $50k of funding per grant, however, the Grants committee can request exceptions from SafeDAO to exceed limits.

Ideally, the maximum number of grantee projects is 30, given the administrative overhead.

The allocated SGP budget has an approximate distribution* of:

• 40% of funds allocated to {Build} Grants
• 30% of funds allocated to {Growth} Grants
• 20% of funds allocated to {Research} Grants
• 10% of funds allocated to {Governance} Grants

Prior to the end of the initial 6 Month period of wave 1, a new SGP renewal proposal should be tabled by the Grants community for wave 2, using data and learnings collected from the SGP, to assess the program, and inform its next phase.

*As SafeDAO and SGP Wave 1, is in an early period of growth, the above split reflects the priority of Safe builders and users over research and governance, in order to give the DAO more value to sustain and govern over the coming years and decades.

Grants Application Process

Application Process

The specifics of the application process will be worked on by the Grants Lead and will be published for comments closer to the launch of wave 1 applications.

Grantee Milestones

Initial proposals should be focused on milestones over no longer than four-months.

Each grant proposer will be required to include a set of milestones by which the Safe DAO Community and the Grants Committee can judge the progress of the proposer’s project.

Milestones enable the proposer and the Community/Committee to achieve consensus on discrete indicators of good-faith effort to achieve the aims set in a proposal.

Each project may require benchmark milestones and/or critical milestones, based on its Grant category i.e. Build/Growth/Research/Govern. Inspired by Optimism grants.

Benchmark milestones mark important points on the proposer’s roadmap for accomplishing their aim, to demonstrate its potential success and allow the Safe community to monitor the grantees’ progress. E.g. our project will get X users by Y date.

Critical milestones demonstrate good faith effort to accomplish the aims set forth in a proposal, they give the Safe Community/Committee confidence that the proposer has taken actions consistent with those outlined in a successful proposal. On-chain data or other publicly verifiable information is favoured for the determination of critical milestones. e.g. “We will deploy X smart contract on Y date.”

Payment and Administration

Currency: 100% paid out in fiat or USDC via the Safe Ecosystem Foundation.

Due to current non-transferability of SAFE tokens, retroactive SAFE rewards to successful Wave 1 Grantees can be considered as part of Wave 2 implementation. The Wave 2 proposal, which would include retroactive SAFE Grantee rewards, will be reviewed and ratified by the DAO.

Any retroactive rewards would be subject to a two-year lockup period and is designed to encourage projects to participate actively in Safe governance.

Milestones: Project is specified into 1-3 milestones + final deliverables.

Upfront-payment: The proposer may request an initial lump sum to kickstart the initiative, but the lump sum may not exceed more than 20% of the total funding requested for the project unless the project timeline requires less than 3 months to complete.

Grants Committee

Grants Committee Structure

To ensure that the application process will be efficient and predictable, so applicants have clear objectives and timely decisions, propose that a Grants Committee (with a Reviewer Council) is set up to run the SGP operations, starting with 6 Grant Committee members.

Role	Expectation
1 Grants Lead	Full-time 40 hrs / week
2 Reviewers - Safe Core Team (at least one technical)	Part-time 5 hrs / week
3 Reviewers - Safe Community (at least one technical)	Part-time 10 hrs / week

This committee has a term of 6 months after which the program needs to be renewed by the SafeDAO governance

A stipend of 2000 USDC per month for community members (not belonging to the core team) will be given by allocating their time to reviewer responsibilities.

SAFE token rewards is not feasible as this point in time due to transferability. However, retroactive SAFE rewards for successful Wave 1 Reviewers can be considered as part of the Wave 2 proposal.

Grants Council Selection

A separate forum post will be created for SafeDAO community members to apply as one of the 5 reviewers (i.e. the Grants Council)

DAO members must post their application to the forum thread and commitment to the delegate code of conduct (pending publication by the Safe Ecosystem Foundation (SEF)

The details of the grants council application process will be posted at least 7 days prior to the launch of applications

Voting on submissions will be open for 2 weeks; reviewers with the most votes in each category will be selected for the role, and must acknowledge the selection publicly within 7 days of election, otherwise the next highest voted candidate will be contacted.

Grants Committee Responsibilities

Grants Lead - Isla Munro @1sla.eth - employed by the SEF

• Oversee the operations of the grants committee and distribution of grants. Ensure the grants program meets the strategic needs of SafeDAO and SEF.
• Develop a process, structure and standard operating procedure for detailed grants reviews, and perform interviews, where appropriate, with grant applicants.
• Work with proposers to ensure proposed milestones are clear, measurable, and achievable within the specified timeframe
• Streamline the application process. And manage payments and KYC in collaboration with the Safe Ecosystem Foundation.
• Steward projects and move applications through the grants process e.g. pushing Phase 3 grant applications to Snapshot, for voting by the Reviewers and ensuring documentation of voting rationale for each grant.
• Monitor progress towards milestones, prepare regular reports to communicate grant decisions at the end of the grants cycle.
• Assist teams on post grant support including connecting projects with auditors, liaising with the core contributors, providing marketing support, and other ad-hoc support
• Create a framework and evaluate ROI of each grant including following up on milestone completion.

Reviewers (the Grants Council) - appointed by SafeDAO

• Have the subject matter expertise required to evaluate advanced proposals
• A request for applications will provide further guidance on the specific skill-sets sought for the grants committee, and will be published in the Safe DAO Forum 6
• Be accessible to grants applicants, provide feedback, answer questions, and respond to comments. This should be done via public communication channels whenever possible. It should be clear to grant applicants how to get in touch with the committee.
• Provide transparency to the Grants Lead and community on availability for grants reviews for the 6 month duration of the initial program, and proactively inform of planned absences
• Discuss proposals openly and constructively in weekly grants review calls and provide feedback to grantees based on a to be defined grants review process
• Maintain a participation rate >75% on Grants Council votes
• Document voting rationale for each grants vote in a clear, professional manner
• Provide any information required by the SEF and/or the Grants Lead to publish regular reports and periodic updates in a timely manner
• Commit to spend roughly 10 hours a week on these responsibilities, with an expected higher capacity required at the beginning and end of the grants cycle

Conflicts of Interest Policy

A delegates policy and delegates commitment declaration is being developed by the SEF and grants reviewers seeking election will be expected to accept and adhere to these policies as part of their candidacy for grants council.

Some basic tenets that will be included:

• It is assumed that most people in the web3 community will have some kind of conflict of interest, thus transparency and communication is key -A declaration of key conflicts will be expected from the reviewers for any key roles / significant token-holdings with projects / protocols -Reviewers may not vote on grants for projects in which they have a declared conflict, e.g. direct role / personal benefit, direct competition etc.
• Indirect conflicts to be addressed individually in respective grants council discussion and documented in the notes on voting

Grants Council Consensus

1. A Snapshot sub-space will be created to allow the 5 reviewers vote on each grant proposal that reaches Phase 3 in the SGP approval process
2. 5 reviewers will each be given an NFT badge that permits them to assign 1 vote to each proposal that is setup on the Snapshot space. The space will be open so decisions are viewable to the public.
3. At a specific time of each month, the Grants Lead will push the validated Phase 3 proposals to the Snapshot space.
4. At the end of each month, all reviewers must record their votes and rationale on each Phase 3 proposal.
5. Upon the agreement of a grant allocation by the Reviewers public Snapshot space, the Safe Ecosystem Foundation will undertake the administration of the payment. Note: the SEF will first determine whether the proposal is accurate, secure, consistent with the purposes of the SEF and SafeDAO, and capable of being implemented in a legally (foundation and tax law) compliant manner.