[UPDATE] Ecosystem Development DAO Vertical

Near Community and nodes Community Fund
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Hello Community! :wave:t4:

It’s been a busy past few months as we’ve rolled out the [New Process] Community Payouts (warts and all), and we’ve gotten into a routine. However, until we can make wholesale changes to the entire process - you may recall, we are waiting on some product developments and internal strategic decisions before we can - there are still small yet mighty improvements that can be made.

And while some of these changes will be installed behind-the-scenes to address the very manual aspect of the administration of the process, there is one public-facing item we will be installing effective today, April 1, 2022:


The Ecosystem Development DAO will be retired until further notice from the Community Payout Process as a funding vertical.


Why?

  • The Ecosystem Development DAO has only NEAR Foundation employees sitting on its council;
  • The Ecosystem Development DAO no longer has a clear purpose and never was able to get to the stage of having a clear funding guideline / structure that could be passed off to the Community (although many tries were attempted!);
  • The majority of arranged cases that would ‘qualify’ for the Ecosystem Development DAO have found or have been encouraged to find funding sources from other parts of NEAR Foundation or elsewhere.

What now?

  1. Anyone who has already been commissioned and received approval by the Community Team (@community-team) to proceed with work in some fashion for the betterment of the community, will continue to move to an invoice process until such time as that work has been completed / when we overhaul our entire payout process (:crossed_fingers:t4: end of June :crossed_fingers:t4:).
    The Community Payout process is therefore the same as outlined here except an invoice will be sent to community@near.foundation instead of posting an Astro DAO poll.

  2. Anyone who has not received approval for a payout by the former Ecosystem Development DAO or via the Community Team, and does not fit with the funding guides for the Creatives DAO or Marketing DAO, can:

  • still post their proposal under the ‘Community’ category here on the Forum if it does not fit with the funding guides for the Creatives DAO or Marketing DAO, or is not eligible for funding from NEAR Education

  • tag @community-team for review

    • keep the funding request to the Community’s established parameters: the standard maximum per proposal is USD $5,000, with special cases to be discussed if the proposal is especially valuable to the community
    • explicit approval will be needed from one of the Community Team members before proceeding to the invoice and execution of the payout
    • note: at any time throughout this process, the individual can already begin the Google Form submission and KYC, which will be mandatory as with all other payouts issued

A reminder that any proposals requesting USD $20K or higher will be encouraged to apply to the NF Funding for a grant .


TL;DR:

The Ecosystem Development DAO funding vertical has not been operationally sound for the past few months and is only adding confusion and an unnecessary administrative burden. The solution is therefore to retire the Ecosystem Development DAO as a funding option within the Community until such time as a clear purpose, strategy, and plan can be put forward by either the NF or anyone in the Community.

All mentions of the Ecosystem Development DAO within the official payout process will be edited and this communication will then be understood to be the most up-to-date.

Any questions or concerns, as usual, please sound off below!

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