[Formal Review][RGP - 15] - Start the Drips Org

This is the official draft and Snapshot poll for RGP-15. Please formally review the proposal and vote in the Snapshot poll by :rotating_light:17:00 CET - Monday, April 24th :rotating_light:

Thank you for all your comments on the informal discussion thread. I incorporated your feedback and have adjusted this post accordingly.

Drips Org Proposal

Author: lftherios
Type: Org
Created: 2023-04-03
Status: active

Purpose

The team’s mission is to enable FOSS developers to financially thrive.

In short, the Drips Org is taking on the problem of FOSS sustainability / funding public goods. We develop novel protocols, tools and applications that enable new value flows for developers in order to receive funds from their users & supporters.

Annual Strategy & Quarterly Objectives

Q2-23

  1. Publicly launch Drips v2 contracts and application.
  2. Integrate social-linking (verified credentials + oracles) within the Drips app.
  3. Research multi-chain governance options in order to potentially deploy Drips v2 contracts on more EVM networks.
  4. Build & ship “Continuous Dependency Funding” experience within the Drips app.
  5. Build & ship “Awesome lists” experience within the Drips app.
  6. Continue to iterate on core experiences based on user feedback.

Q3&Q4 23

  1. Continue to iterate on core experiences (streaming and splitting funds, public funding profile with ability to send/receive/split funds) based on user feedback.
  2. Integrate the Radicle code collaboration protocol, with the assumption that it has a stable release.
  3. Conduct an additional audit, in the scenario that our Total Value Locked in the protocol increases above $1m
  4. Potentially deploy Drips v2 contracts on more relevant EVM networks (Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon)

Objectives

Our only objective for this year is to prove Product/Market fit for drips.network. We will know we have accomplished that when:

a. We see increased usage and retention on the below metrics and

b. We plan to conduct surveys with our users and follow the Superhuman approach (ie asking “how disappointed you would be if the service wasn’t around” and measuring “very disappointed %”)

The main metric comes from the Superhuman approach that I mention above. You can read more about it here: How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product Market Fit | First Round Review.

The key metric there is 40% of survey participants answering “very disappointed” on the question “how would you feel if the product wasn’t available anymore”.

Metrics

  • Monthly Value Transacted*
  • Daily Value Transacted*
  • Monthly Unique Addresses Transacting
  • Daily Unique Addresses Transacting
  • Total Value Locked
  • FOSS projects / Public Goods raising funds with Drips

*This includes value from gives, streams but not from top-ups. It also requires a price oracle for all ERC-20 pairs.

We plan to provide a public Dune Analytics Dashboard, so any community member can track those metrics. We also plan to provide commentary on how to read these metrics on our Radicle community updates.

Organizational Structure

We are establishing a non-for-profit association in CH, where all core contributors can become members. Decision making is based on one member one vote.

The Association is an independent legal entity with legal capacity. It is governed by Swiss law. The official language of the association is English.

The founding members plan to elect an executive committee (yearly term) that will be leading day-to-day strategy, execution & operations.

Founding Members

  • lftherios (current project lead)
  • json (product & application development)
  • jtourkos (product, SDK & application development)
  • everett (product & application development)
  • brandonhaslegs (design)

Contractors

  • IgorZuk (smart contract development)
  • Manuel (smart contract development)
  • earthwindfirewater (research & strategy)
  • LukeF (business development)

Communication

  • drips.network
  • Discord: a new Discord will be set up solely focused on Drips
  • Github: a new Github org will be set-up solely focused on Drips development
  • Twitter: twitter.com/dripsnetwork

Current repos:

Reasoning & Analysis

The Drips org is building and maintaining resilient and decentralized protocols, tools and applications that create new value flows for FOSS developers.

At the core of our work is the Drips protocol, a crypto native protocol for streaming and splitting funds on Ethereum. The Drips protocol provides continuous/recurring infrastructure for developers to receive and share funds with each other. We believe that it’s the most complete solution for developers to receive funds for their FOSS work in crypto.

Some of its differentiating factors are:

  • it’s optimised for millions of supporters (not for single streams)
  • has continuous settlement (or streams by the second)
  • it’s trust minimized and
  • comes with many handy features like programmatic splitting of funds, which allows for graph style routing of funds from one project to another

Reporting & Success Criteria

Success for us means impact on the FOSS ecosystem / public goods space.

In 2023 we want to see projects and individuals that contribute free and open source software and / or public goods raise new (additional) funding via our tools & infrastructure.

For objectives and metrics see section above.

With regards to accountability, all of our work and finances will remain public, so the RAD community can monitor our progress and spending.

Timeline & Budget

Monthly Totals
$384,696 $157,696 $157,696 $157,696 $157,696 $157,696 $184,696 $157,696 Annual Total: $1,520,566.55
Cost May 2023 Jun 2023 Jul 2023 Aug 2023 Sep 2023 Oct 2023 Nov 2023 Dec 2023 Totals
Contributors $137,784 $137,784 $137,784 $137,784 $137,784 $137,784 $137,784 $137,784 $1,102,271
Budget for New Contributors $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0
Skyline Digital Fees $4,134 $4,134 $4,134 $4,134 $4,134 $4,134 $4,134 $4,134 $33,068
Offsites (2) $27,000 $27,000 $54,000
Buffer $13,778 $13,778 $13,778 $13,778 $13,778 $13,778 $13,778 $13,778 $110,227
Audits $200,000 $200,000
Accountant Fees $2,000 $2,000 $2,000 $2,000 $2,000 $2,000 $2,000 $2,000 $16,000
Legal Set Up $5,000
Legal support fees $0
Marketing fees $0

Fund Management

We plan to use a multi-sig (gnosis safe with 3/5 signatures) with all current members as signers. We won’t use a bank account. Crypto to FIAT conversions will take place through Skyline Digital and that’s why you see the fees on our budget.

:sparkles:Snapshot Poll Results :sparkles:

[Formal Review][RGP - 15] - Start the Drips Org: This proposal has PASSED:ballot_box_with_check: with 5.5M $RAD in support of the proposal. It will be submitted to an on-chain vote this week.

See final results here: Snapshot