[Formal Review 🌿] Radicle Ecosystem Growth Fund (EGF)

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This is the official draft and Snapshot poll for the Radicle Ecosystem Growth Fund (EGF) proposal. With this post, the proposal has officially moved into the third phase of governance. Please formally review the proposal and vote in the Snapshot poll by :rotating_light:10:00 GMT - Tuesday, February 22nd :rotating_light:

Overview

This proposal is to fund the Radicle Ecosystem Growth Fund (, an ecosystem fund governed by a “squad” of Radicle Core Team and ecosystem members an expertise in growth. The goal of the EGF is fund initiatives that drive awareness, engagement, and adoption of the Radicle stack. The proposed budget is $500k USDC (grants) and 10,123 RAD (compensation) to be distributed over the course of 6 months.

Description

The proposal is to start MVPing the Radicle EGF. The focus of which will be on funding initiatives that drive awareness, engagement, and adoption of the Radicle stack. We have very strong early signals of product market fit with users and platforms looking to join our ecosystem. Once these have been proven out with activated users and integrations we need to build a playbook to focus on scaling and optimising.

Radicle’s current focus is on building and growing adoption of a secure and uncensorable code infrastructure, collective code governance, and new ways to earn for open source. This “Growth DAO” will use all methods to grow adoption of the protocols and interfaces in this network.

Types of Initiatives

Initiatives can be proposed by any member of the Radicle community and must follow the same format as the format established by Radicle. They cannot be free-form. This is to ensure some level of equality when assessing multiple applicants.

We expect that in Season 1 of the EGF, most initiatives will come from the core Radicle team. Over time, the line between core member based initiatives and community ones should blur. This will be a key part of Radicle’s progressive decentralisation.

Scope

The first season will last 6 months. Proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Every 2 weeks proposals will be assessed by Committee Members.

We envision projects in the following categories

  1. Growth contributors
  2. Hackathon/event sponsorships
  3. Content/media channel sponsorships
  4. Educational content sponsorships
  5. Product driven growth development
  6. Gas reimbursements

Note: Details above are subject to change based on our experience providing grants.

Budget & Timeline

  • Amount: $500,000 (USDC)
  • Length: 6 months

Team & Responsibilities

Radicle EGF (Multi-Sig)

The below group will act as signers of the EGF multi-sig . The multi-sig votes here will act as both approval of growth initiatives as well as the funding of initiatives.

The EGF will be governed by a group made up for core team, community, and ecosystem members that have expertise in growth. We believe this approach balances fast decision making, guided by a deep understanding of what is best for the project. Having community and ecosystem members in the group ensures that community and ecosystem perspectives are represented as initiatives are proposed.

Members include:

Committee compensation

Non-radicle core members will be compensated with $2000 per month in RAD for their position on the committee.

What is total amount of compensation needed?
We use the following assumptions to find the total USD-denominated amount of RAD needed to cover committee compensation over 6 months.

non_core_committee_members = 4
grants_program_lengths_in_months = 6
monthly_compensation_usd = 2000
total_rad_compensation_usd = non_core_committee_members * grants_program_lengths_in_months * monthly_compensation_usd
total_rad_compensation_usd = $48,000

So we need roughly $48,000 worth of RAD to compensate committee members over the 6 month period.

How will we handle volatility in RAD:USD?
We start with the following information about historical prices over the past 2 months:

average_price = $7.96
standard_deviation = $2.27
perc_buffer_for_market_downturn = 0.2

So we propose the below formula to protect against large fluctuations downward in price:

RAD to Transfer = $48,000 / (AVG Price over 6 months - STD of price) * (1 + perc_buffer_for_market_downturn)
RAD to Transfer = $48,000 / ($7.96 - $2.27) * 1.2
RAD to Transfer = $48,000 / $5.69 * 1.2 
RAD to Transfer = 10,123

How will the conversion be made at the end of each month?

This will be paid out in RAD, with the conversion being made based on the average spot price in the last 7 days of each month. The payment will be made at the end of each month.

For example, if the average spot price were $10:1RAD at the end of the month, then each committee member would receive 200RAD for the month.

Why is there a 20% buffer?
Given the current market conditions and current price being close to bottom it is prudent to add a 20% buffer to required RAD.

What happens to funds not paid out to initiatives or committee members?
These will either be rolled into the next round or transferred back to the treasury if we decide to change direction.

Growth Lead

As mentioned in the forums, the Radicle Governance Working Group has been wanting to see a growth initiative focused DAO setup and this has been spearheaded by @nas (core team).

The EGF lead will also be complemented by a committee made up of core contributors + community members. Here’s what the Growth Lead role consists of:

  • Organising and processing initiative ideas: this will include ideas from core Radicle members or open applications from the community (e.g. requests for hackathon sponsorships)
  • Initial screening of proposals: Committee Members and Core Team members should trust that they will only have to assess proposals who have met a high bar.
  • Scheduling review calls: this will include scheduling calls between proposers and any relevant Committee Members and/or Core Team
  • Tracking delivery/progress: The Growth Lead will track and review delivery and ROI on initiatives to share with the committee and wider community.
  • Multi-Sig voting: the Growth Lead will communicate to relevant Committee Members when a vote for finalized work is in order.

The core goal of the Growth Lead is to build the Radicle ecosystem.

Program Structure & Process

Implementation

  1. EGF will be setup as a multisig (Safe → 0x60A22232D40486c8E6A7699d02Bdc01f37ACb22f)
  2. EGF members will be added to the multisig
  3. The members will contribute to and review a strategy for this round of the EGF.
  4. Initiatives can be proposed by core team, radicle community, or the wider web3 ecosystem using a templated markdown document

Application Process

Location: there will be an AirTable based application.

Process: it will ask the Applicant for information like their name/pseudonym, org they represent, GitHub, twitter or other previous work material. It will also ask for details on ROI for Radicle from funding their proposal.

Initiative Approval

The Growth Lead is to communicate Multi-Sig voting due dates and any required secondary assessments. Review meetings will occur on the last Friday of every month subject to Committee Member availability.

In leu of synchronous interviews, Committee Members may assess applicants asynchronously by providing written questions for the applicant(s) to respond to. This must be done in a timely manner (i.e. several days prior to when the final assessment takes place).

Once reviewed, an initiative will need final approval via a multi-sig vote on a project for the initial payment (see Payment section below).

Payment

Payment agreements will be based on milestone, streaming, or upfront basis subject to what is most appropriate for the initiative. We aim to use drips.network in order to transfer funds from the EGF to wallets specified by projects.

Purpose

The reasoning behind starting a EGF is to add structure, process, and automation to the funding of new contributors and community members that want to propose and see growth initiatives implemented. This will help us put our best foot forward in decentralising Radicle.

The purpose of this entire exercise comes down to three main goals.

  1. Growth
    Initially the efforts at the top of the funnel will be about growing an audience, understanding their reality and needs, understanding their blockers, and maintaining their engagement with the Radicle network. Whilst we build out the radicle stack to become invaluable and core infrastructure, we will need to leverage a number of tools at out disposal. Once we have started seeing adoption we should move towards starting to build our growth systems, models, and initiatives. Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue.

  2. Adoption/Activation:
    “The objective here is for more and more decentralised communities to use Radicle on a frequent basis for community-critical operations. This could take the form of using Radicle as an active mirror for their Github/Gitlab projects, using Radicle orgs for organisation management and releases or funding their operations through Radicle”

  3. Progressive decentralisation:
    Radicle is meant to enable the decentralisation of governance and contributions to free and open-source software. As a result, Radicle itself should be self-governed, self-funded, and self-built for and by the Radicle community. This also aligns with the third high-level objective of the Radicle Foundation.

High level KPIs

  1. Develop a clear strategy for growth of the radicle ecosystem that is repeatable and scalable.
  2. Number of initiatives funded
  3. Number of integrations by partners of ecosystem protocols

Relevant Forum Discussions

Reasoning & analysis

Pros

  • The pros largely follow the Purpose section above
    • Progressive decentralisation: almost by definition, a grants program decentralises
    • Team growth: the EGF can become a powerful channel for attracting community contributors as well as new core members
    • Network user growth: the EGF will bring in more developers wanting to use radicle and teams wanting to build on radicle.

Cons

  • There is a risk of projects not working out as expected

Technical implementation

Treasury Funding

  • Amount: $500,000
  • Period: 6 months
  • At the end of the period, the money should be sent back to the Treasury

At the end of the 6 months, a new season must be announced, go through the normal governance process.

The drafted on-chain proposal can be found here :point_down:
https://github.com/radicle-dev/radicle-governance/blob/main/proposals/start_funding.proposal

Impact

(Note: largely covered above in the Purpose section, so summarised below)

  • User Growth
  • Adoption/activation
  • Progressive decentralization: self-sustaining (community funded/community built) growth from community contributors
3 Likes
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This feels like a natural development to scale Radicle. IMO, the sooner we start thinking more strategically about growth and adoption, the better. Initiatives like this will be necessary if we really want to have “every DAO in the world using Radicle” (as listed as a main objective in the 2021 Strategy post). I feel comfortable with the proposed budget - feels like a good amount to allow enough room for them to explore funding various types of growth-focused projects (see below) while also sufficiently funding the committee.

Personally really excited about funding educational content sponsorships and gas reimbursements as I feel these address two barriers for more folks to being able to comfortably & confidently participate in the space. There is a lot of info flying around in a bunch of different format which makes it hard to navigate. Clear, simple content & documentation is crucial to growth! Gas fees are a turn-off for everyone, and taking away that burden will most certainly boost adoption and even make using Radicle more assessable for folks with fewer funds. (Hot take: your ability to afford gas should not keep you from accessing Web3!)

Also exciting to have another sub-DAO in the mix! It would be a great learning experience watching this group develop alongside the Radicle Grants Program and build best practices for future Radicle sub-DAOs! :seedling: :classical_building:

I will be voting in favor of this proposal. You can find my delegate address and other information here. I plan to vote on this proposal by Monday, Feb 21 at 12:00. Please delegate by then.

2 Likes
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I’m voting ‘For’ this proposal. I think it will provide a much more open & transparent approach to ecosystem funding. Additionally, I think beginning to experiment with running “subDAO”-esque structures is important as we start transitioning to the DAO.

I’m keen to use the EGF as a testing ground. It’s a good opportunity for us to identify best practices for operating community-run Treasury-funded initiatives and reflect on how we can scale these experiments to manage larger amounts of funds deployed by more independent entities.

Excited to start learning :blush:

2 Likes
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This proposal was PASSED unanimously in the recent Snapshot poll (see final results). :seedling: :dizzy:

This proposal will now move to the final stage of Radicle’s governance process. :ballot_box:

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:rotating_light: @Delegates The Radicle Governance Working Group has moved this Formal Review into the final stage of governance :tada: The proposal is now live for on-chain voting. Please refer to the following vote for info on how to cast your votes.