Hey all! Thought I would give my input here as a member of the DEP, and especially as someone who has helped with community grants over the last 6 months and will continue to do so.
To this point, I personally see significant overlap between the goals that this program is seeking to achieve and those that the DEP has. DEP has funded, and will continue to fund, projects that touch all 3 of these tracks, especially under the new increased scope.
To the extent that there is an argument that the current program would somehow cover “gaps” in the existing DEP or fund specific initiatives that we have otherwise rejected in the past, I would echo the sentiment raised above by Antonio:
Just as the community as a whole should ensure that treasury spends serve a strong purpose, so too should a grants program (which manages community funds) ensure that grants and disbursements from the program serve an equally strong purpose, help grow the protocol and, ultimately, provide a strong ROI for the community.
When the DEP denies a grant application, we do so because we feel that this strong ROI doesn’t exist for the given application. This is either because:
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We’re not confident in the quality of the team or of the applicant, or of the application itself;
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The proposed project, while potentially interesting, does not justify the outsized funding request that the applicant is making, and the applicant is unwilling to reduce their funding request to a reasonable size;
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The proposed project is irrelevant to dYdX;
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The proposed can’t be successfully executed due to limitations of the protocol’s roadmap or development timelines (usually we like to stay in touch with applicants in this case, in the event that priorities change or the proposed project becomes feasible later)
The notion that we should add a second, overlapping grants program to the existing one to which DEP rejected applicants can turn for funding is highly likely to lead to wasteful community spending. It also defeats the purpose of having a grants program to act as a filter for quality funding recipients and as a gatekeeper to prevent runaway spending.
This not only increases the likelihood of wasteful spending on the grants side, but significantly increases the operational cost to execute that spending (to the tune of $35,000 per month).
While I greatly appreciate StableLab’s engagement with the governance process and willingness to try new things and put forth new ideas, I don’t believe that this proposal justifies the costs to the community.