[PROPOSAL] A new vertical DAO and how we can improve NEAR Foundations grant process

Fortunately, the Near community is more aware of taxes, payroll, fees, etc., than anybody in the nf grant committee. We have the best crypto lawyers and accountants in community. So, don’t worry about the point.

As well. Having seen hundreds of not working apps that withdrew money (exit scams), I had concerns about due diligence skills in the grant committee.

We don’t want to see a new bunch of not working apps recommended by intermediaries who chase personal gain. .

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Agree with all the points and I have confidence that you and many from the ecosystem have the experience.

Either way the NEAR Foundation will have to do due diligence on the team members and the initiative as well. This will require time and will not be something to be executed immediately or at all, since they have the last say in who gets funding or not.

Also it is important to understand that there is a lot of failures when deploying capital to projects. Agree that there has been a lot of misses and scams, but no Foundation/Accelerator/VC is an exemption to this and it is an iterative process. Rinse and repeat, it is our job to call out the bad actors.

We cannot expect 100% success rates and there will be bad actors abusing the goodwill from the NEAR Foundation and also internal power struggles. All types of organisations face this challenge. We just need to acknowledge and help in anyway we can.

Again, the goal is to find a middle ground. Like I stated in my post, no one is discrediting anyone or the initiative. Just want for the ecosystem and the NEAR Foundation to meet in the middle.

Best!

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Hi everyone

Reading through all the comments and remarks I wonder if/why there is no way to set up a governance forum (including grant proposal, voting and approvals, etc) run by the entire community (=NEAR token holders).

This would be in the spirit of decentralisation and enable a community driven growth of the ecosystem.

Other protocols are able to manage this process in a smooth way, I don’t understand why NEAR community wouldn’t be able to do it, too.

The details of course would need to be ironed out, but this would give the community a fair voice (and vote) in directing and growing the ecosystem.
The voting would be fair, namely according to the number of tokens, as it’s with many other projects.

NF could focus on key projects such as infrastructure and “big brands”.

This would also resolve some of the mentioned delays or communication issues and in the long run would benefit everyone: NF, ecosystem, projects, community, etc

All transparent, decentralised and in the hands of the community, as Web3 should be (IMHO!).

Just a thought…

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Thank you chief :beers:

Sure, step by step, no rush from my part, the details can be worked out together, I also know the following is happening:

So, I believe the goal is to raise awareness and kick start a discussion about the Community vertical support for developers that we are missing. Cause NF Grant Process is a centralized one, and we want to support the Near Community grow with Decentralization.

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Absolutely it’s a good news for all the community of talent wich are working hard developing amazing new ideas and creating great technological solutions strenghten with Blockchain technologies using Near Protocol.

We are waiting and looking forward for next steps to follow up this conversation from the LATAM Community very interested to knows about the roadmap and following creating new solutions.

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We’re coming up on two years since MainNet, and the process is ever-evolving. We must remember that many experiments have occurred, some successful and some not. This is all still very new. Getting it right is better than getting it fast.

There is a principle that my wife has to give me a frequent reminder of: “Change doesn’t happen overnight.”

The sentiment the community is voicing has been there since the beginning, and Pagoda & the NEAR Foundation has always listened/adapted. Illia brought up community governance via a Ecosystem Treasury DAO some time ago, and he recently presented an updated version at ETHCC:

Action is NEAR!

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Correct, Near University was supporting MVP building through the Developer in Residence program which is closed now. And it was filling part of what we are missing now.


I want to make clear something @David_NEAR @Oliver.Near @claudioac @blaze and all other members checking on this thread:

→ Near Grants team has done an amazing job
→ I am very glad to be part of the Near Community growing the Near Ecosystem
This is a proposal to help build MVPs, supporting from the Community verticals, that is not meant to take over any of the Near Grants Team activities, but only what is not part of the scope

Agree :vulcan_salute: Please keep going :clap: :100:

Cheers for the great ecosystem we built, let’s keep it growing :beers:

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Thank you!!! In the 075 we have several members that are to this day in the grant purgatory! Have applied beginning of the year and to this day never heard a response. It;s the reason The 075DAO is going through this process so we can disperse funding

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their lively participation in this discussion.

In addition, I would like to mention from our side that we have in no way tried to discredit the NEAR Foundation or question their work with this proposal. I think that the NEAR Foundation is doing an amazing job of meeting the needs of the community that no other ecosystem offers.

What we also did not want to do is to bring about an immediate change, as we are aware that this will take time and that essential factors still need to be clarified.

What we wanted to achieve with this proposal was the awareness of a problem that we have noticed from the collected data and for which we believe we have found a solution.
We wanted to share this idea with the community to get input from the community, but also from the NEAR Foundation, to find together a way to achieve the overall goal of the NEAR Foundation: scalability, transparency, and decentralization.

I think we can agree that we are still not there, but that the NEAR Foundation is working hard to build the foundation for that and that the community is here to help achieve this goal.

I also think that probably everybody agrees with me that we are here to build and that such discussions are the foundation for any development. Because one thing is certain, the downfall of any community is silence.

We look forward to the NEAR Foundation’s updates on Community DAOs and hope that we can expect more transparency about development in the future. :pray:

Here are the topics we will cover in more detail next:

  • How does the Operations DAO will increase the efficiency of the NEAR Foundation?
  • What are the benefits for the NEAR Foundation and the community?
  • How does the Operations DAO ensure that the KYC is properly executed?
  • How does the council ensure quality is met?
  • How does the council ensure that milestones are met?
  • How will the council structure will look like in detail?
  • The Legal Structure
  • Compliance

Thanks, everyone! :white_heart:

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The best part is “compliance.”
At least you could disclose that you are applying for 50k and not Mintickt because Mintickt is your “project” considering you are the “founder”.

Should I delete this message? or do you report it too? Because public data sourced from the internet, in the name of the Near value of “transparency” cannot be reported on this forum… despite being public information. Somehow “privacy” is confused with censorship.

David here, working in the NF grants team. We will be communicating our takes and actions to the community based on the constructive feedback in the thread.

Thank you again for the constructive feedback.

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Here is a problem in the NF grants team paradigm.

You’re working for the community (not in NF grants team) which will use the apps and helps Near Ecosystem bring one billion active users.

Our current results. How much money did we spent on grants? Where is report?

Although we seem to have agreed that a certain amount of transparency should be expected, if you’re asking for a breakdown of grants and the dollar value associated with each project then you should temper your expectations.

I can’t think of any Foundation, or similar organisation, that would show a hand like that so clearly.

That said, I believe there is a transparency report in the works. But it’s certainly not going to be so granular that you can identify that x project received x amount of funding. That wouldn’t make sense from a competition POV.

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@David_NEAR I have submitted for a grant, I should to do a post here in the forum also? Thanks

Thank you! It is refreshing to see some initiatives on this issue. I’m sure it will give a lot of us a confidence boost if the granting process is efficient enough.

As an example, Near Singapore Guild was informed that their grant has been approved for an IRL community event initiatives. Though the event was a success, the grant have not been honoured after 2 month since the approval (they are still waiting for it now…) I don’t think this will be encouraging for the SG guild member to onboard projects :thinking:
Thread: [Report] Near Singapore Grand Kick-off Event was a huge SUCCESS

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The delay in funding was due to restructuring of NEAR Foundation that time and NF Grants team is different while Marketing DAO Vertical is different.

Hey, no requirement to do so but feel free if you want to intro your project :tada:

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Yes, there is a need for a solution in this area. While an EIR with NEAR Foundation I worked on a more decentralized grant process and proposal for a Decent Grants Lab with NEAR. Happy to share my findings and collaborate on this. I am interested to participate in DAO & Council.

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I have a DAO proposal. I’m getting to know the ecosystem, participating in ‘bounty’, studying the processes and methods for presenting projects.
The points made here are very important, from my perspective as a new member.
Thanks.

Wanted to post this here for reference: The NEAR Foundation announced a working group to move to community-driven self-governance:

Please join if you would like to contribute to creating a revolutionary framework for a self-governed on-chain treasury that is ecosystem-wide.

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