Hey @BigM007, thanks so much for joining the discussion!
Right, the idea is that the Operations DAO like the Marketing DAO distributes funding directly to the projects.
Exactly. For now, the funding will be capped at 100,000. If more is needed and the Operations DAO is successful, then the consideration would be to increase the funds in the Treasury of the Operations DAO.
There will be nothing left over. 4 x 25k = 100k or 10 x 10k = 100k. The entire 100k will be used for projects.
Thanks for your response.
This is really amazing. I cant wait for this initiative to come to life.
Well done guys.
That is a very good idea to be implemented. I’m in several proyects and i see the weeks delay to get any response. Sometimes you never get a feedback.
Thanks for sharing it, actually we have daily questions, feedback, and also complaints on NEAR discord - ecosystem chat & grantee sub-channel about what you have mentioned!
Grantees keep asking about the grant results, milestones report, and partnership with the related projects in the ecosystem!
From the grant team, with the big quantity of grant applications so far, that’s the reason why grant team is stuck.
From the project side, we need a control system and KPI to make sure the fund is sent to the right place, the right people and require to achieve the concrete milestones (MVP, MVCommunity, TVL…) before giving bigger grants.
Due to those barriers, we, Operations DAO, would like to become the “Layer 2 roll-up” to speed up the process and enhance quality control.
Can you share a recent example, please?
Milestones must be followed to receive the next batch of funding. How would you be privy to what they are? This is not a public process.
Can you share examples that quantify this?
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Although I agree that, in the past, the grants team has encountered significant backlogs which has led to delays, and the processes were less than desirable, the recent reorganisation of the Foundation set out, in part, to address this.
A major concern of mine is the significant amount of checks and balances (from NF) that this would require.
If we can recall this piece of work which was going to be published by the Project Ops team prior to it being halted by NF team members. There are a few major issues with that:
If you had the mandate to go out and pursue this type of initiative, where would the burden of ‘keeping the information correct and of high quality’ sit? What, if any, backlash would the NF encounter if this team failed to do so and/or acted inappropriately in a ‘semi-official’ capacity?
Furthermore, I’m not sure if the scale of this operation has been fully considered. How will you fill the gap regarding:
Or will that be deferred to NF?
Is this answer just speeding up funding? I’d argue no.
The current lead time is ~ 3 weeks (correct me if I’m wrong @Oliver.Near ) which is a huge improvement from the ~ 8 weeks we encountered in the past. The Grants team is aiming to get this down even further.
Although I think the proposal is well-intentioned, I think it would make more sense for the Grants team to continue to settle into the goals of the reorganisation.
What rewards are the team (you & the others listed) requesting?
Hello community,
I do think this is an interesting proposal IF the ‘Verticals’ will continue to be the system of preference for delivering tokens, however this made me go back to this topic: House of Guilds: a new funding mechanism for Guilds
I believe there are issues that must be solved ‘at the source’. Sometimes adding extra layers to a specific process in the hope of solving its issues might cause the opposite effect.
As a community member, I would very much like to see ‘the maximum amount’ of clarity from NF at the fundamental levels, and it seems NF is trying to achieve that.
Sure David,
NearP2P the response was negative because the market condition, we submit a second grant with no response.
MusicFeast and Everyone Eats Entertainment since January of this year, waiting to sign up contract.
I agree with this proposal, personally I am in a development team supporting the guild of Malaysia, a project of Antonio called NEARBASE.io, and my first observation is the time to answer, my second observation is that when we finally had the technical interview, who interviewed us made some suggestions, based on this we present an approach to the suggestions that supports the form of execution of the development and we have more than a month waiting for an answer of YES they support or NO support, we are left in a status without response
Sounds like it was declined (the market conditions are the same)? Not sure if that would be eligible as it’s kinda DeFi, too? Maybe @Oliver.Near can chime in.
I spoke to EEE and they hadn’t submitted the grant application at that time IIRC? That was ~ a month or so ago.
Plus, it’s worth noting things have changed in the past ~ 1 month with the reorganisation for the Foundation.
When did they submit the grant form?
I’ll defer to the Grants team for these Qs as it’s more in their domain.
A native NEAR P2P, 100% decentralized and has not received support although Grant has been requested 2 times
Music Feast and EEE are the same project
Yes is Defi and we were referred to CypherPunk
Then they were intro’d to @Oliver.Near by myself on July 19th.
Appreciate you raising it and thanks for the example, but in hindsight, I don’t want to fill up this thread with too much discussion of single grant applications. Happy to discuss on another thread or in DMs (to the extent that the information is discussable).
Let’s discuss the proposal 
Sure David, rather thank you for your prompt reply.
Hello fam 
I know from different experiences in this process from different roles that this is common. I mean, even know about projects who get the funding and didn’t build anything.
The Grant team is doing an amazing job for partnerships and funding over $50k, but when it is about building MVPs, Grants below $50k, initiatives to keep updating the TIP BOT, or just adding NEAR to existing projects like Otoco.io, we could use a specific team for it. There is a distance between the Grants team with the small initiatives and disconnection with the community.
That document was a draft, it was not final… and it kick-started the creation of the following website:
Who later worked as a catalyst for the creation of a NEAR Community website from other members. This means that our team is pro-active, experienced, and is adding value not just with the creation of content but also by inspiring other NEAR members. 
We expect to function similarly to Marketing DAO.
Our legal status in this early stage is Delaware Series LLC.
In addition, we plan to work with developers who got certifications from Near University.
Operations DAO is focusing on development. We can improve quality compared to the ongoing distribution schemes by distributing funding after delivery and review.
@Kemal statements are backed up by data from 69 projects where there could be answer from 4 weeks to 17 weeks.
We know the Grants team is even improving their work, and we aim to fill the gap regarding small projects.
Again, the Tip Bot is very useful for community engagement, and it could have been upgraded and grown, for example, adding the possibility of sending other NEAR tokens, not just the native one. At the same time, little funding to kick start MVPs is out of the Grants team’s scope right now.
As this is meant to be a Community vertical, we all need it for development so that we will have support for marketers, artists, and developers. So, the rewards are expected to be similar to the Councils around the Community Verticals.
Hey Everyone, this is Ollie. grants program manager for the NEAR Foundation. I will respond soon with a detailed response to the first proposal however I wanted to address some immediate points.
The NEAR Foundation grants team has been working very closely with the EEE team and founder with a positive experience. I can not share details of the application as this is private to the founder however it has taken some extended time to put milestones together. The grants team was introduced to the EEE project on the 19th of July by @David_NEAR
I have looked in to P2P proposals since the start of 2021 and our records show market conditions have not been mentioned in a rejection email. The rejection email has redirected the P2P projects to apply to cypherpunkguild or proximity due to being defi related.
I am happy to investigate your specific case if you would like to direct message me your project details.
There is a mention of a few defi related projects in the thread and we put a detailed handbook together (which has been live for a few months now) with a section on what projects the NEAR foundation can support and re-directing projects to alternative funding methods: NEAR Foundation Grant Program Handbook - Public.pdf - Google Drive. The website also outlines funding sources: Get Funding – NEAR Protocol
EEE is on its way, and once connected to Grants via @David_NEAR things have been smooth.
Prior to that there were a number of changes in the ecosystem that had to be navigated, but since the we have been solid.
Much appreciation to the team!
@Kemal
Thank you for this thoughtful concept as well as the analysis. I/we are new to the NEAR Platform and founded Rising DAO. For Context for my points below – we are Silicon Valley-based researchers and communications strategists (worked with/at Google, Netflix, AirBnB, The Insitute for The Future, The Peggy Guggenheim Foundation) with a focus on the Creative Economy (a 2.2 trillion dollar economy) – we founded the DAO out of Rising Partners (a company based in SF and Rome – site launches next month.)
Rising DAOs goals are the following:
Explore all facets of the Creative Economy on the NEAR Platform through research, writing, trend-tracking on a syndicated platform
Publish “From NEAR the Edge”, a syndicated media resource with commissioned works, writings, research, podcasts, and events
Drive adoption of the NEAR platform by making it the platform of choice for artists, creators and innovators worldwide
We JUST came onboard to NEAR in the past month and received our first grant (2K USD) from the Creatives DAO last week.
So, as you can see we are not a tech play per see, but, as we see it NEAR is in the process of building a new planet and creatives are figuring out how to live on it . This gives us a slightly different, but meaningful perspective and we believe our value here on the platform will become crystalized as we organize and provide content ABOUT the players on the platform innovating creatively in the coming year.
So, all this is to say that:
Having a 25k Cap on funding per proposal makes great sense for us since we don’t have a huge build budget, but a REAL need for support in our growth and offering,
Having a team of people (as you described) who have true INNOVATION marketing and growth experience is critical for us. We are experienced and need true partners as investors (much like we have IRL) – we really really need experienced founders in positions of decisions around grants (NEAR Foundation CERTAINLY is this, though they are, as you say, slammed and our needs might not be crucial to them at this pivotal growth moment.)
Finally, I don’t actually think what we want to do matches the Marketing DAO at the moment – we need more foundational, innovation, and growth support that moves the needle in our space, which might loosely be called “Content Innovation” for NEAR.
(It does not seem the current Marketing DAO has deep experience in content innovation, cultural programming, or entertainment/media innovation and we REALLY need a team for this because content creators ARE coming to the platform).
So, please let me know how I might be of support, and if and when you will be accepting Decks and ASKS.
Best of luck, and thanks!
Sarah
@David_NEAR
@starpause
Forgive me, adding your entire team here: @FritzWorm @HaiVu