Ideas to improve the existing funding applications template?

Hello all,

Why is the application template for xGov proposals so generalised and loose? I see the proposals all have different formats. Why? I think the xgovs and the rest of community are aware by now how 95% of all these proposals are completely useless or redundant, or just simply not effective from a long-term ecosystem growth’s pov, and can be filtered out better (this endless vertical scrolling UI doesn’t help it either. Need gallery format like other blockchain’s governance platforms). Can the FT team focus on this before this inefficient “decentralisation” treasury blows up any further?

• Project - you have established documentation practices like SWOT, Value-Proposition canvas, (long-term) Sustainability assessments, than just simply asking for benefits (do some of these funded proposals EVER conceived of the potential risks?)

• Finance - Again, numerous Cost-Benefit analyses out there. What on earth does it mean by proposing a lump sum with a generalised “roadmap”? Do the applicants even have a plan b/c I don’t see it in the proposals. Can be as general as ABC reporting format, for this initial screening, but the current proposals don’t even have this!

• Timeline - This might be the most mind-boggling part about this application process. No timestamps on these planned objectives? I thought something was structured after several requests on making the funding process into a milestone-based?

ARCs/assets/arc-0034/TemplateForm.md at main · algorandfoundation/ARCs · GitHub

I was also thinking about this.
We maybe need a section called ‘Idea validation’ where proposers are required to present evidence of market validation of their idea. Not only would this aid Govs in their decision-making, but also helps proposers gauge the need / refine their proposal.

Hi @ALGOnumberone - thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. We will review the application template for voting session 4 in preparation for a more strict process when we launch the platform in Q3.

We should also consider the recommendations made in this article, I believe this is written by @GhostOfMcAfee

Written by @fisherman.algo

Will the community be able to assist in rule creation?

Retroactive funding removes all the responsibility from builders to make these proposals, which often are completely lacking in real substance, and a total shot in the dark at what sort of value they’ll deliver. While I would debate the points above, I think it should just be nuked in favor of an RPGF setup.

RPGF allows the builders to focus on building and creating value / impact, not submitting proposals and waiting to see if they get funded.

If they’re successful in creating impact they should be recognized and compensated without needing to ask, allowing them to continue expanding their value / impact. Needing to spend anytime debating in the forums with people who know very little about the subject matter wastes a tremendous amount of builders time.

Xgov is horribly inefficient and underfunded and needs to be overhauled immediately.

@fisherman.algo

There is nothing in the xGov rules precluding any builder from submitting a funding request for something that they already built or are building. A few approved grants would fall into the retroactive category.

I assume you find xGov so terrible because we are not forbidding non-public goods builders from also applying.

Saying xGov is inefficient is too simplistic. It is a pilot program. It is a work in progress.

We, as a community, are developing a long-lasting tool that the whole Algorand community will benefit from directly or indirectly.

Your ideas are always welcome

Thanks @ALGOnumberone for creating this thread, we are indeed in need for an overhaul of the proposal template. I agree with all your points. We are def working to improve the template.

We have two types of grants: build and educate. These need different templates, as they deliverables will vary. We are working on it.

Just because it’s possible to get a retroactive grants thru Xgov doesn’t mean it’s substantial, efficient or effective. It’s a lot more than just me saying it sucks. I believe I outlined this in my blog which was in depth on why RPGF works significantly better than w/e Xgov is.

I know Xgov is a pilot and so far how is it going? Let’s reflect honestly.

You believe Xgov is the most efficient and effective process to fund builders? To have them waste their time writing proposals and arguing in forums about projects they want to build with no clear product market fit with people who never built anything and have no technical expertise? I really struggle to believe that and it feels like you just bat away my suggestions because it’d be more work to set up. We should aspire to design the best mechanism possible instead of just lazily continuing xgov because we tried it first and now scared of changing.

No, it is not effective yet, we will get there tho. The pilot is doing its job of uncovering the issues that we need to solve for.

Your blog is reflects one opinion, yours. A community is made of many opinions.

My opinion is that, nobody is forcing builders to apply for funding through xGov, they can crowdfund, get funding angel investors, join an accelerator, bootstrap etc. Each of these have pros and cons. Builders are choosing to apply for a grant because it might be the most convenient way for them.

We are not “lazily continuing with xGov” we are actively working to make it better.

Do you not understand the fundamental difference between the network funding public goods and going out and launching a token or raising from investors? These are radically different things, with different goals and objectives.

Builders are not choosing Xgov over other sources out of convenience, it’s the only potential source available for them. And many builders skip Xgov entirely because it’s not worth the time and effort to only get a few grand. It would cost more just to get it than it would be worth.

I’m glad you find your opinion valuable but as a builder I’m telling you that’s just flat out wrong.

I understand you, but it seems that you don’t want to understand that xGov is the first step.

I understand it’s the current system, and systems should change when they’re realized to be horribly inefficient…

I don’t understand how you can admit it’s inefficient, yet cling onto it like there’s anything of value to be salvaged. We cannot afford to delay these changes by months to years either. I don’t believe you understand how desperate things truly are for many projects. Maybe when everyone leaves the chain then you will admit this is completely failed?

I’ve acknowledged it needs to change, and I’ve confirmed that it is indeed changing. I don’t, however, succumb to FUD.
I’m going to end here, bc I don’t feel that this is a constructive conversation.

Calling my opinions FUD is truly disheartening. Thanks so much.

Another suggestion:
If a project would not like to open-source while applying via xGov, they have to give reason for not open-sourcing. If it is partial open-source, the reason for that has also to be described.
This will help xGovs to take informed decisions. Also much more transparency from the side of applicants.

It’s quite clear that xGov is a source of frustration for both builders and xGovs, which is why @fisherman.algo’s proposal has a lot of support in the community (I would venture to say it probably would pass in Governance if AF didn’t sway things by having a “preference”).

Regardless of the merits of his proposal, I think a lot of frustration is that xGov moves incredibly slow because it is tied to these 3 month schedules where we get slammed at things all at once, then wait 3 months to get slammed again.

Not only is it slow for getting funds out, but it makes change, testing, and reiteration extremely difficult. xGov may be the “first step” but it seems impossible to fix when we only take steps every 3 months.

It would also help to know what the new platform is that AF has in the works and whether it would be conducive to making this a more flexible and ongoing process that can be changed and reiterated quickly as we go.

The new platform will not have 3 months schedule for voting. Proposals will be voted on individually (not in a bulk session, like the pilot) and the process from proposing to voting will take from 2 to up to 6 weeks, depending on the size of the ask, eg. proposals asking for less than 50K Algo will need a review/comment phase of one week AND a voting phase of one week; proposals asking for more than 250K Algo will need three weeks review and three weeks vote.

We are planning on a three months schedules for a few things, like the inflow and outflow of xgovs.

Important to remember, we will present this to you next week or so in order to get feedback. There will be plenty of opportunities to improve this process, before and after the launch in Q3, as the platform will evolve alongside the needs of the community. Hopefully, by the end of the year you’ll be voting on the features you want and contributing to those features’ development.

Can we host a twitter space and discuss retroactive vs proactive grants? I really feel this needs to be discussed. Looking over the current Xgov proposals and the value and impact they’ll deliver is completely unclear. These proposed changes do nothing to address that.

Please do not tell me that retroactive grants are already possible as that isn’t my point. All grants should be retroactive. It’s much easier to judge something in the past than the future.

I support this. Let’s do a proper space to discuss about this.

Glad to hear this one. I’ve been asking several times for the past 1-2 years what was the justification of this arbitrary quarterly schedule that none of the other major L1s are adopting.

My 2 cent on improving xGov is that there may be a miscommunication going on b/w you and @fisherman.algo - have you had a chance to read his proposals on Medium? Are you against something specific? The current system is clearly inefficient and you seem to acknowledge, now the next step is to revise with different strategies.

I’d like to see “counter” proposals (preferably w a timeline for you to test this as a LIVE pilot) from the Foundation to that article to be discussed at the Twitter space, or how you personally envision xGov should evolve as to RPGF. Otherwise, i think it’s worthwhile to adopt and try as another pilot. So far I don’t see anything planned that is exceptionally superior than what he has proposed so the experiment is still valid.

p.s. I am not 100% onboard with all the proposed changes in the article but I’m oober curious how the officials react. I really feel like including Micali here would be such a timely, fruitful effort to ground the community again. His leadership/presence is dearly missed atm

Just my 2 cents as a builder and xGov proposer.

Besides the points described above, I think it would be a good improvement to update the ARC to at least cover:

No self-voting/double participation
Not saying it happens or not happens. But in general I think the ARC should rule out double participation. So you either are a proposer or an xGovernor. But cannot be both. Hard to control, for sure. But as long as there’s no rule for it, there’s also no morality clash. Plus once it’s defined, it could be leveraged by the community if they find out. This means, the entire team and affiliates are ruled out for voting on their own proposal. Let’s keep it fair.

One proposal per entity / team
In my opinion, creating multiple proposals is something that should be prevented from Q4 onwards. Many people think they have to create multiple proposals because of the uniqueness of their proposal. But if they want to create multiple things at the same time under their brand, they either propose in multiple periods or combine it in one proposal. If a person have multiple brands/companies: please don’t. There’s only one elon musk who’s capable running multiple companies at the same time. For all of us mortal beings, hardly possible to create multiple things of massive value at the same time.

xGov should fund projects with at least a MVP or some form of market validation
There’s one big rule in the startup ecosystem. If you are not willing to put down your own money and time at your idea/project, why should others?

I don’t think xGov is the platform to build out entirely new ideas from scratch. Meaning, crazy new ideas that sounds great on paper but are difficult to become sustainable in the long run. It would be sad to see xGov becoming the new AlgoGrant, where the platform is keeping certain open-source/closed source projects on life support. And once the funding stops (or skips a quarter) the building is put on hold. If the proposer thinks her/his idea is the next big thing, at least spend time yourself to build or pay for a MVP. Or get some market validation for the necessity of your OSS/product. Otherwise we risk funding a graveyard of unused OSS products or closed source projects.

None of this should be managed by AF of course. But maintained and guarded by the community.

Last point is the voting on basis of the ALGO’s a person hold. In my opinion blockchain opens up to financial inclusivity and fairness. But voting on basis of amount of ALGO, only shows that the votes with the biggest pockets mostly decides what gets passed. xGov should be about votes on basis of expert knowledge (what’s best for the ecosystem), not a way to buy yourself in to decide or compound your investments in any way. We have 10 periods of governance votes and 2 on basis of xGovs. We should be able to build a better committee on basis of the on-chain data rather than on ALGO’s held(?).

Thanks, everyone, I appreciate all your comments. We are hosting a twitter space next Monday or Tuesday to go through the new design.

You all have excellent arguments and in many ways they are aligned with the palnned changes.

I’d like to clarify that I read @fisherman.algo 's medium article and thought it to be good food for thought.

John, my objection was to the tone of your replies to this thread, not you or your ideas generally. We all have our bad days, and maybe that was mine. I hope you know I value you. A LOT.

We are building this for you, our community. We are trying to learn from past mistakes and implement things slowly, after careful, thoughtful consideration and with your input. Does that slows the process? Yes. Does that mean we should hurry? Not, if we want to build something that lasts. And, we are closer to that now more than ever.

Stay tuned for the X Space link. We will be sharing that on all our channels over the next couple of days.

Hey Adri,

Could you please take a look at this prior to the twitter spaces so we can discuss it?

Thank you!
John