Hello dYdX community! My name is Nik and I’m the founder of Grabber.
Grabber is a dApp designed to incentivize public reviews of proposals in dYdX governance, facilitate delegate discovery, and enhance individual voter participation.
Our platform aims to improve the way dYdX DAO’s governance and its users interact. We provide a consolidated platform for comprehensive proposal audits and delegate discovery, promoting transparency and engagement in the voting process. The way Grabber works is by gathering relevant information from various sources in DAO on relevant proposals and giving users an opportunity to use and rate said information. Our ultimate goal with Grabber is to create a stronger, more open, and efficient model for dYdX’s governance.
We have a strong team of 5+ people with a solid blockchain traction. Our research has been focused on user on-chain traction and incentive mechanisms. The technological stack we use includes Rust, React, Go, Python, Redux, and Typescript. We have a deep understanding of community governance challenges and actively work to address them.
We are looking to apply for the dYdX Grants program to further improve dYdX Governance and enhance the voting experience. This post serves as a request for your feedback on our proposal.
Project links
How Grabber works
Grabber aims to streamline the process of choosing the perfect delegate by adding interest and bringing in more individual voters, thereby lowering the expertise threshold for potential voters. Here’s a basic breakdown of how Grabber works:
- A decentralized competing group of experts who can create reviews of proposals and engage with their respective communities. The work performed by these experts will significantly reduce the need for voters to have a deep understanding of each proposal. Instead, the experts will provide concise and comprehensive reports, enabling voters to make informed decisions. Decentralization and competition within this group will ensure the quality of the reports and help avoid nonconstructive approaches or fraud.
- Experts which provide the reports can act as vote delegates, who will also be in competition. Their reputation is transparent through on-chain data and will be acknowledged and monitored both by the public and by Grabber’s smart-contract.
- The work of reviewers in Grabber is incentivized through voting power/dYdX tokens as rewards. The funding for these rewards comes from the projects themselves that apply for reviews, which in turn receive valuable feedback, easier onboarding, and enhanced traction within the dYdX ecosystem.
Interface sketches (More in full proposal)
(Project selection)
(Project interface)
Technical Approach
Grabber is a dApp product, which implements a unique integration of the Delegate Discovery Platform with a Review platform, aided by social rating elements. At its core, a permissionless smart contract system assures the implementation of conditions linked to rewards in the platform.
The smart contract facilitates the distribution of rewards, taking into account the influence and material of proposal authors on one hand, and voters on the other. In order to safeguard against fraud and at the same time make the system predictable to the participants, Grabber expectations are calibrated in the smart contract.
The reviewer’s reputation in Grabber is to be continuously calculated. We will provide an initial scoring (calculated manually), and then plan to rely on the community to highlight the parameters considered important for reputation on the platform (in order to dynamically combat fraud and manipulations).
Smart-contract allows to distribute rewards based on certain criteria and conditions for accounts of both the reviews and voters.
Reviewers:
- On-chain data based on the reviewer’s wallet. Transactions, amounts, time spent working with the protocol, frequency, etc.
- On-platform reputation: How many users cast their vote, their significance, etc.
Voters:
- On-chain data based on participant wallets. Transactions, amounts, time spent working with the protocol, frequency, etc.
This approach allows to
Such an approach allows us to implement the concept in a smart contract, making it predictable for participants while greatly minimizing the risk from various fraudulent practices. The platform seeks to robustly safeguard against:
- Bots
- Unfair Boosts
- False Reviews
- Review Inflations
Grabber’s incentivization
The reward for reviews should be proportional to the impact of DYDX voters: the more active DYDX users who regard the expert as top-tier, the higher their reward should be. By utilizing this reputational tool, collective incentivization could be implemented: funding for retroactive rewards would be allocated, with various experts competing for them.
Users will be able to vote on whose impact was most beneficial to them, thereby determining the reward’s distribution. The voting results will again generate on-chain events that will enhance the participants’ reputations.
Grabber’s ideal iteration involves financing the reward fund for reviews directly from the projects applying for those reviews. This arrangement promotes obtaining independent feedback from experts in a public setting, which benefits projects by providing them initial traction and facilitating easier onboarding. Implementing this principle fosters an environment conducive to high-quality, comprehensive contributions, as proposers would seek to ensure maximum value from their input.
Potential Impact
The value of Grabber lies in its capacity to gather information and streamline the voting process in DYDX’s governance. Specifically, it aims at:
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Streamlining Delegate Discovery: Grabber aims to enhance the process of delegate discovery and engagement in DYDX by providing voters with an accessible and streamlined platform that guides them towards suitable delegates.
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Motivating Participation: Grabber seeks to stimulate voter participation by reducing the time required for analyzing proposals. By leveraging a competitive system, expert members conduct in-depth reviews, enabling voters to make more informed decisions with less time investment, thereby facilitating more accessible and convenient participation.
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Engaging Delegate Platforms: Grabber fosters high-quality, engaged delegate platforms by incentivizing the public reporting of proposal research in a competitive manner. The platform also enhances transparency through a clear on-chain reputation system for delegates, helping to deter unscrupulous practices. The potential bribery aspect is also combated by making users responsible for reward distribution.
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Improving Visibility and Understanding: At its core, Grabber strives to bring about more fluidity in governance participation and lower the governance onboarding threshold. This improved accessibility is achieved by incentivizing comprehensive reviews, thereby simplifying participation for a broader user base.
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Project Onboarding: Grabber also facilitates the successful onboarding of projects into the DYDX ecosystem by making expert feedback more accessible to them, and by introducing these projects to the wider community.
Milestones
- GovPad
- GovPad Frontend update.
- Web3 wallets compatibility
- User spaces backend
- User inner scoring system
- Social verification engine
- Data mapping system
- Scoring datapoints
- Smart-contract administration panel
- Smart-contract
- Services
- Leaderboard and social toolings
- Competition engine
- Frontend
- Basic user spaces and data mapping systems (IPFS)
- Scoring + verification engine
- Smart-contract
- Administration panel
- Social toolings (accounts and Leaderboards)
- Public user spaces Frontend
- Public user spaces Backend
- User navigation system
- Leaderboard frontend
Public user spaces Frontend
Public user spaces Backend
User navigation system
Leaderboard frontend
Workload tables are available here.
Funding Request and Budget Breakdown
Milestone 1: $24 950.
Milestone 2: To be calculated
Milestone 3: To be calculated
Full Milestone breakdown here.
Conclusion
We see this project as potentially highly beneficial for dYdX DAO and are hoping to receive an opportunity to contribute greatly to this community and ecosystem.