[Proposal & Final Submission] Catalyzing the NEAR Community Fund

Ecosystem Governance
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Project title: Catalyst: NEAR Community Fund Edition
One-liner: Re-imagining the NEAR Community Fund as a plutocratic DAO using a tailored version of the Catalyst DAO platform.
Project DAO: VitalPointAI DAO
Metagov Proposal: Metagov DAO - Proposal 21
Challenge area: Re-Imagining the NEAR Community Fund
Slides: Catalyzing the NEAR Community Fund Presentation
Repo: Github: Catalyst-NEAR-Community-Fund

Project members

  • Aaron (aaron.near)
  • Emmitt (emmitt.near)

Project summary

Having personally gone through many false starts/several iterations of the NEAR grant and community funding programs since their inception, I’ve developed a bit of an appreciation for how difficult/cumbersome it has been to actually submit a project and see it successfully reach a state of approval. While the entire process has steadily improved, I believe the NEAR Community Fund itself could benefit from the Web 3.0 tech it aims to help others develop.

In short, I’d suggest the NEAR Community Fund should serve as an example of what is possible in terms of community-led, decentralized community management/funding solutions built on NEAR using open web concepts vice relying on existing web 2.0 frameworks and tools to achieve its goals.

(It’s almost hypocritical to not be using a NEAR-based solution… :slight_smile: - hint hint.)

The Proposal

We are proposing to customize a Catalyst-based DAO to address the requirements of the NEAR community fund to more effectively/efficiently disburse resources in support of community initiatives. It will significantly improve the entire end-to-end project submission and management process in terms of user experience for:

  • individuals/organizations interested in submitting project proposals for community fund consideration of funding; and

  • those overseeing the fund through automatic processing/disbursement of resources for successful proposals.

It will initially be setup to mimic all the functionality the fund currently relies on Discourse to provide - all contained in one platform - no need to leave the web app at any point in the proposal submission, review, or approval process.

Features we think we can provide during the hackathon:

  • A suitable landing site for the app/community fund

  • Deployed to NEAR TestNet

  • Ability for anyone to submit proposals (using proposal deposits to limit spam submissions)

  • Some basic proposal categorization/searching

  • Standardized project/proposal submission requirements (attempt to make it easier for people to know what is required for the council/DAO to make a decision on funding or not)

  • Initial plutocratic setup (council-led - where each council member’s voting power is determined by contribution size) but with ability for community to vote on/change the DAO’s parameters

  • Everything happens in the web app - all content management (proposal details) and related discussion/resources are contained within the proposal itself (commenting, attachments)

  • Uses NEAR - integrated with NEAR wallet

  • Community features as being developed by Catalyst (at minimum: personas (customizable NEAR account profiles)

  • Time permitting - analytics support to provide an ongoing real-time quantitative information concerning the proposals/projects in the system

Catalyst is a project that has been in development for several months (and is itself a beneficiary of the NEAR Community Fund). It is an Aragon(esque) type DAO SaaS with community features built on NEAR (AssemblyScript, React). Among other features, it has deep integration with Ceramic.Network (IDX)/IPFS to manage the content for proposals that are typically linked to in forums in existing DAO solutions providing a much more seamless/easier to use user experience.

The DAO specific code of Catalyst has evolved out of a port of the Moloch v2 codebase on Ethereum to NEAR (in AssemblyScript).

More Info and Background

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  • Ceramic IDX - is an identity protocol for open applications. Catalyst leverages ceramic IDX and Ceramic Network (the dataweb for open information) to decentralize the information contained in the system.

moloch
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  • Catalyst’s DAO codebase started as a port of the Moloch v2 code from Solidity to AssemblyScript to run on NEAR. It has undergone significant change since then to provide the current set of functionality it provides, but it’s roots lie with Moloch.

Thanks for your time and consideration. Looking forward to the rest of the hackathon. Hackon.

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Hey @ALuhning , this proposal looks spectacular, however it expired on the Metagov DAO before we got around to voting on it (we later changed the voting period to 7 days). Could you resubmit? Reminder: the payout target should be a new Sputnik DAO that you’ve created, not your personal wallet, and the payout amount should be 30.

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Have edited the original post to include a link to the project presentation. Here it is as well:

Catalyzing the NEAR Community Fund Presentation

Metagov Proposal - Project presentation.

Thanks for looking - appreciate any feedback/questions you may have. Back to building.

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As a normie, I like how you’ve really taken into account usability and have presented a clear roadmap and user pathway. I also really enjoy ‘the made on NEAR for NEAR’ solution model you’ve presented. Nothing else, just wanted to share my appreciation! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Open Web Hackathon Project Submission

Catalyzing the NEAR Community Fund

One-liner: Re-imagining the NEAR Community Fund as a Catalyst-powered community run DAO to address challenges with identity, trust, and project completion from ideation to implementation.

Challenge area: Re-Imagining the NEAR Community Fund

Project DAO: VitalPointAI DAO

Original Metagov Proposal: Metagov DAO - Proposal 21

Final submission Metagov Proposal - Metagov DAO - Proposal 52

Slides: Catalyzing the NEAR Community Fund Presentation

Video Demo: Video Demo (version 1)

Repo: Github: Catalyst - Reimagining NEAR Community Fund

Live Site - Catalyst (Testnet) - https://catalystdao.com (currently pulling our hair out over some SSL mixed content configuration issues - check back if not working - and keep in mind it is Testnet and undergoes frequent updates - data may come/go)

Project members
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  • Aaron (aaron.near)
  • Emmitt (emmitt.near)

Let’s Review the Project Concept

Having lived previous experiences and iterations leading to the current version of the NEAR Community Fund, we had some ideas for improvement. Specifically, we imagined a fund utilizing NEAR Protocol and the open web tech it aims to support and bring into existence.

With those experiences and background in mind, and considering we were already working on a DAO SaaS offering (Catalyst), this Metagov challenge track was a perfect fit to customize a workflow for the NEAR community fund, power it by Catalyst and present a new way to manage governance and put a more accountable process in place to manage the fund’s resources.

We believe the NEAR Community Fund should serve as an example of what is possible in terms of community-led, decentralized community management/funding solutions built on NEAR using open web concepts and technologies. Our submission provides a possible option for that.

What We Proposed vs What We Achieved

Any good hackathon starts with incredibly lofty goals and this one was no exception. So, let’s see what we actually accomplished over last couple weeks vs what we thought we could do:

  • image enable individuals/organizations (other DAOs) interested in submitting project proposals for community fund consideration of funding

  • image give those overseeing the fund through automatic processing/disbursement of resources for successful proposals.

  • image mimic all the functionality the fund currently relies on Discourse to provide - all contained in one platform - no need to leave the web app at any point in the proposal submission, review, or approval process.

  • image A suitable landing site for the app/community fund

  • image Deployed to NEAR TestNet

  • image Ability for anyone to submit proposals (using proposal deposits to limit spam submissions)

  • image Some basic proposal categorization/searching

  • image Standardized project/proposal submission requirements (attempt to make it easier for people to know what is required for the council/DAO to make a decision on funding or not)

  • image Initial plutocratic setup (council-led - where each council member’s voting power is determined by contribution size)

  • image Ability for community to vote on/change the DAO’s parameters

  • image Everything happens in the web app - all content management (proposal details) and related discussion/resources are contained within the proposal itself (commenting, attachments)

  • image Uses NEAR - integrated with NEAR wallet

  • image Community features as being developed by Catalyst (at minimum: personas (customizable NEAR account profiles)

  • image Time permitting - analytics support to provide an ongoing real-time quantitative information concerning the proposals/projects in the system

Bonus Features

And, of course, when good ideas arise during a hackathon, we spend time going down rabbit holes. To that end, we also did a couple things we hadn’t originally intended to - simply because it made sense at the time:

  • image published npm package to easily bring Persona data for any Persona managed in Catalyst into any app

  • image setup our own Ceramic node for performance improvements when using Catalyst

  • image support for donations and tracking supporters (wasn’t part of our initial thoughts for the fund workflows)

Overall, pretty happy with what we managed to accomplish (right in the middle of final exams (Emmitt) and a busy time at work (Aaron) :slight_smile: ). And, of course, just because a hackathon ends doesn’t mean the project has to - it will continue to evolve and improve.

Summary

We are looking forward to presenting the project tomorrow. Has been a great couple of weeks thinking about governance and how DAOs such as the ones we are enabling with Catalyst can complement and offer self-organizing communities alternatives to other solutions also in development and/or at various stages of release and improvement (e.g. Sputnik v2).

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We are looking forward to see people experiment with the Catalyst platform to reimagine and customize organizations to meet unique community governance needs - much as we did while reimagining the NEAR Community Fund.

Last, but certainly not least

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Huge shoutout and thank-you to Metagov, NEAR Protocol, CreateBase and everyone else involved in the Open Web Hackathon. Was awesome to see DAOs being used in this context and the governance challenge track was either made just for us or some kind of crazy coincidence - was an absolute blast working on a concrete example for reimagining the NEAR Community Fund.

Catalyst Plug

Catalyst is a project that has been in development for several months (and is itself a beneficiary of the NEAR Community Fund). It is an Aragon(esque) type DAO SaaS with community features built on NEAR (AssemblyScript, React). Among other features, it has deep integration with Ceramic.Network (IDX)/IPFS to manage the content for proposals that are typically linked to in forums in existing DAO solutions providing a much more seamless/easier to use user experience.

image

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