Agreed
NFT’s are just getting started and havent even scratched the surface of what they can do. Not wanting to participate in them does not change this fact 
I couldn’t agree more, governance and defi incentives are pointless if we can’t sustain the protocols already built. I don’t know if this would pass but the more we can shift towards allocating funds for development the better.
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Regarding measure 1, why not both things? There has been grant programs running for a while and there’s also a 50M extra ALGO gap in the first semester of 2023 due to reducing the overall reward pool from 141M to 90M, those extra ALGOs could be used to support the development of new tools and open-source features as you mention. I think removing governance rewards completely is going to have a disastrous effect on the majority of retail users, there needs to be some type of passive income to motivate existing users and to gather new ones, and it’s even better if it helps growing DeFi (and TVL) at the same time
Regarding measure 2 and 3, I completely agree. I immediatly thought of Cardano Catalyst program as well.
The large majority of dilution goes to a small fraction of the wallets. There would be more incentive to hold a token that goes up in price based on the value the projects on the network provide than a uniform dilution that most of it go to whales.
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Couldn’t agree more, I’ve been saying for ages that we need to work in order to improve ALGO valuation, I’m just not sure if ending governance rewards completely and go for other types of grants is the way to get there.
But yes, I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of using existing resources to grow the ecosystem and ultimately maximize the ALGO coin value.
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Measure #3:
The NFT community is the heart of the Algorand community, and they haven’t been supported as much as they have deserved. I love the idea of earmarking funds to finally support them monetarily, but rather than spending the money on buying up existing NFTs from the secondary market we should invest in the future of NFTs on Algorand.
There isn’t anyone in the world that knows better than the existing NFT creators what the Algorand NFT ecosystem needs. I propose that we give grants to existing NFT creators to build open-source infrastructure to make it easier for new creators to launch their own projects on Algorand. There are several established players that have dev teams already and would the opportunity to make the ecosystem better.
I fully agree with this sentiment. Supporting NFT developers helps everyone. Many creators and community builders are not coders, and finding developers is hard and expensive. Although there are some open-source tools, they are not always easy to use or well-maintained and are generally rather limited.
There is thus currently significant friction to start and maintain an NFT project, which dissuades many.
300-600k algos when spend wisely could greatly reduce this friction, and enable a broader set of users and communities.
Focusing funding on development would also avoid concerns about biased panels, and accidental endorsements of NFT projects that “rug” down the line.
Providing funding for NFT development should also be more agreeable to those whole believe NFTs are “hype”, as NFT development will undoubtedly teach us lessons that are of use to the wider ecosystem.
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I think (and wrote earlier) that we need to further breakdown NFTs. Because some NFT projects have heavy developer involvement like NFD or Dust Identity. There is also a whole range of gaming NFTs. I see 4 high level categories
- Utility NFTs - domains, tickets, etc
- Gaming NFTs -skins, collectibles, etc
- Tokenized Assets
- Art NFTs
Personally I’d rather focus on utility or gaming NFTs. If we had to deal with art NFTs, I’d rather fund design competitions than grants. Do you have any examples of existing projects (even not on Algorand) that are doing something with Art NFTs that can sustain volume without external incentives?
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Really, really, really great points.
Can’t agree more with your opinion. Being a developer on algorand makes you in the best spot to judge what needs to be addressed/enhanced/changed. The foundation should focus more on hearing developers and their needs.
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I see 4 high level categories
- Utility NFTs - domains, tickets, etc
- Gaming NFTs -skins, collectibles, etc
- Tokenized Assets
- Art NFTs
Considering the proposal mentions “art” I believe this discussion refers to such tokens, although clarification would be helpful.
However, I’m not sure if “art” is the best way to describe these tokens, and I’d much prefer “community” tokens when describing art and digital collectables such as those tracked on https://www.nftexplorer.app/
Personally I’d rather focus on utility or gaming NFTs. If we had to deal with art NFTs, I’d rather fund design competitions than grants. Do you have any examples of existing projects (even not on Algorand) that are doing something with Art NFTs that can sustain volume without external incentives?
I think it is important to focus on community NFTs precisely because they are generally not structured like businesses and do not generate revenue, and as such are not eligible for Algorand Foundation grants. Instead, their value lies in building Algorand communities interested in things besides development and DeFi.
Community NFT projects are often run by individuals or small groups of individuals, as a hobby, alongside full-time jobs and most of the time they don’t have much volume and barely break even. Furthermore, while it is easy to point at “monkey pictures” as scams, people collecting these tokens generally do not buy them because they are getting scammed into thinking it will turn them into millionaires, but instead enjoy the art and being part of a larger community.
It is hard to define what makes community tokens valuable, but that is precisely what makes them exciting - these are grassroots explorations of web3 focused on social networks instead of money.
Hi everyone. I’d like to make a general point regarding not offering a ‘keep status quo’ option.
I completely understand that the Foundation wants progression, but like many here I do have an issue with the illusion of choice.
How about a compromise – add a third ‘status quo’ option to each proposal, which only applies if it gets a high X% of the vote? I’m not sure on the exact amount (maybe 70 or 80%?) but a threshold which makes it very clear that this is not a popular decision.
If this threshold isn’t met, it would be very preferable for these votes to go to a second choice (like an AV or ranked voting system). If that’s not possible, then the higher of the non-status-quo votes wins.
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Absolutely in agreement on #1. Whales eating up free rewards to dump on the ecosystem makes 0 sense to incentivize adoption which is sorely needed.
Careful (better) vetting of projects for grants should also be done. I.e. if ASAs are getting distributed in these projects then tokenomics should be reviewed to minimize the Algo community’s exposure to another “verified” rugpull. Many, many of the initial verified projects turned out to be cash grabs from developers who dumped everything during the bull run.
So far, every vote has been a binary choice so I wonder if that is a limitation. I have also been thinking that ranked choice might be better way to vote and came here to mention it… may be better for progress and with more preference, but I’m not sure ranked choice is technically feasible.
These are all excellent points and I would support these measures.
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I agree this is why I think the grant should be weighted towards tried and true teams that have already proven themselves. (NFD, Tinyman, Pact, Folks, Xbacked, etc.)
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I appreciate and largely agree with your alternative proposals and reasons for putting them forward.
I want to respond to this particular comment, which gives me concern that a grant program with your suggested “weighting” could become an insiders club that is difficult to break into. I think this comment, coming from a prominent developer-leader in our community, also risks discrediting otherwise-excellent proposals as self-serving.
The who’s-who list you mentioned already has a built-in advantage of familiarity and access to the Foundation and does not need explicit selection weighting to help them further. Teams and people from other chains and industries can bring talent, skills, and perspectives we need to create a borderless economy on Algorand, and these applicants should be given equal weighting in any process.
As someone who is still actively building a dApp despite being told by the Foundation to build on another chain if I want funding, I would probably stop work if grants evaluation was further weighted to “known teams.” That would be plainly exclusive and runs counter to the Algorand Foundation’s stated mission.
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I definitely understand your point, and I whole heartily think that developers that are new to Algorand should get their fair share.
I bring this up not because of wanting to build an insiders club but because the old grant system was full of projects of unproven developers that never delivered.
I am just saying we have developers that have proven to deliver, and if they are required to open source their code it will also help new developers to be successful.
The weighting mentioned was to just point out there are ways to increase the chances of success by betting on teams that have already proven themselves.
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Also, I am very sorry you were treated that way. I for one am very happy that you chose to build here, and if there is anything I can do to help please let me know.
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Measure 3 seems pointless. This would only temp raise the floor price of some nft project floors. It also makes the algorand foundation a NFT king maker via purchasing these projects.
Can we actually have the xGov write some proposals. I would also like to have governance be where we vote on permissioning new nodes. The main complaint i see from outside of the community is these centralized permissioning of these nodes.
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Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I understand what you are saying but I don’t think that should be what governance funds are used for. Governance funds come by inflating the circulating supply of ALGO. In the long run, they should come from transaction fees from the network. The goal should be to use those funds to invest in jumpstarting ecosystems that will be able to generate those fees sustainably once inflation is no longer available.
By your own admission, “Community NFT projects are often run by individuals or small groups of individuals, as a hobby, alongside full-time jobs and most of the time they don’t have much volume and barely break even.” These are simply not the projects that will accomplish the goal of making governance self sufficient. Once governance funds are sustainable, I’m happily interested in subsidizing projects without the goal of return on investment. I just think it is too early in the game to be doing that and we risk underinvesting in stuff that can pay for everything else.