Giveth Sandbox: A strategy to bring builders to collab on the Future of Giving

Proposal description:

The Giveth Sandbox mission is to support and accelerate blockchain4good, impact or tooling projects to become lego bricks of the FUTURE OF GIVING. This will be achieved by providing mentoring, tools, funds, network effects, and other resources to support projects in the form of an acceleration program.

In turn, this will deepen Giveth’s role as a building block in the convergence of blockchain, philanthropy, and impact.

Proposal Rationale

There are four main stakeholders in Giveth’s mission of building a culture of giving that rewards and empowers those who give - to projects, to society, and to the world: Impact makers (charities/NGOs), Donors, GIV holders & Builders. The first three are being addressed through Communications, Connect, GIVeconomy, and other Working Groups. However, most of the building work to revolutionize Giving is either performed by the Giveth team or in external projects with limited means to collaborate with us.

Decentralizing building to build faster and better

What if? Instead of building the Future of Giving by ourselves… we foster a community of builders and support amazing teams to create lego block solutions that together shape the future of giving.

Our Goals

  1. Decentralize Giveth development and integrate work delivered from external teams in the Giveth platforms, designs, and systems.
  2. Accelerate developments that are priorities for the Giveth Community.
  3. Create new sources of demand for the GIV token.

Deliverables & timeline:

Phase 1. Assess and improve.
  1. Decentralize Giveth development and integrate work delivered from external teams in the Giveth platforms, designs, and systems.

    Create a frictionless journey for builders on Giveth.

  • Create the “working with Giveth as an external collaborator” document. April 30th.
  • Assess current processes. April 30th.
  • Create a smooth journey document for Builders. March 13th.
  • Create a prototype offering. March 13th.
  • Develop the APIgiv. TBD
  1. Accelerate developments that are priorities for the Giveth Community.
  • Create a document of Giveth development priorities. March 6th.
  • Create a strategy document to bring builders to work into Giveth priorities. March 20th.
  1. Create new sources of demand for the GIV token.
  • Create a document with ideas for new demand sources for the GIV token. March 13th.
Phase 2. Pilot.
  1. Decentralize Giveth development and integrate work delivered from external teams in the Giveth platforms, designs, and systems.

    Create a growth funnel that attracts at least 5 external teams to work with Giveth in 6 weeks (May 23rd-July 1st). That would require these approximate numbers:

  • 50+ leads.
  • 15+ soft engagers.
  • 5+ projects accelerated.
  1. Accelerate developments that are priorities for the Giveth Community.
  • Having at least a third of these projects working on Giveth´s priorities. July 1st.
  1. Create new sources of demand for the GIV token.
  • TBD

Who will be the builders?

We will use builders as a broad term that aims to be technically and geographically inclusive. It consists of developers, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and all kinds of supporters in projects that are:

  1. Built on top of Giveth.
  2. Independent of Giveth and aims to connect with our Dapp or other systems.
  3. Tools that may support Giveth’s MVV.
  4. Other projects that are aligned to Giveth’s MVV. Not all the Lego Bricks need to be sorftware.

How will we work?

We will use the vertical liftoff framework to launch an MVP.
  1. Fast track advice process on the Giveth Forum. (DONE)
  2. Assess current processes
  3. Define shared values avatar (SVA).
  4. Define journey intervention.
  5. Create an outreach strategy.
  6. Design a customized offering.
  7. Map the avatar’s journey.
  8. Setting up the builder’s community.
  9. Fast prototyping and growth.

We will pursue teamwork and collective intelligence in all the stages.

Builders journey.

Leads. No mutualistic relationship yet.

  1. Outreach. Meeting them where they are…
  2. Landing page (Value in exchange for opt-in/growing the target list)
  3. Nurturing

Soft engagement. Participation in builder’s community activities

  1. Builders forums and activities TBD.

Giveth builders community. Builders are being accelerated at Giveth.

  1. Apply for Giveth’s launchpad through the Forum.
  2. The giveth community will decide if & how to support the projects
  3. Acceleration program TBD.

For our key activities, we will start working within the Communitas WG. Anyone is welcome and encouraged to join the Giveth Sandbox as a direct contributor, a project advisor or any other role.

How will we measure success?

By the end of the pilot I would expect the following KPIs:

  • 50+ leads
  • 15+ soft engagers
  • 5+ projects accelerated

Team information:

Lead collaborator: Cotabe (https://twitter.com/Cotabe_M, Profile - Cotabe - Giveth & Cotabe · GitHub)

Previous experience

I’ve worked with founders since 2018 in Socialab, Future Skills, Social Business Creation from HEC Montreal, Jenny Kassan Consulting and Robin Copernicus. By implementing all the learning and the Vertical Liftoff method we could launch an MVP in a few weeks and prototype fast to create an outstanding offer for builders. Especially since I believe Giveth is in a privileged position to offer more holistic resources to builders aligned to the Giveth Galaxy.

Looking for supporters & advisors.

Budget

We do not require an initial budget for phase 1, since I am already part of the team. However, for proper housekeeping, a budget can be assigned based on the number of hours worked by Giveth team members on the project. Furthermore, at the end of each month, budget needs will be reassessed. Initially, I will work at this 20-30 hours/week.

3 Likes

Hey Man I love this Idea, we really need to create some demand stream for GIV. These sandboxes around the world, usually provide a set of APIs to prove they are open to any changes, and test projects can play in these sandboxes to prove they can deliver value while avoiding conflicts with the main business and currant code.

So I asked @cquinterom096 and @renjer to provide these apis, and I named it as Apigive :railway_track: once we have it we can advertise it to the world that hey, come use our API, build your own UI, innovate and we may fund you on this. You can find it’s Epic here.

It doesn’t mean without standard API we can’t proceed, but I strongly suggest each team that enters a sandbox, have a kind of liaison or steward from the core team, if they want to cooperate inside the repo we are using, they have to follow standards, their code need to be reviewed and I do not support this idea because it slows them for an agile good product.

But I love we have this sandbox open to everyone with a clear documentation of this Apigive, sample codes, Web SDKs, sample libraries and something professional :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Sorry to be frank but I’m really lost in some of this vague business jargon.

What exactly would Giveth Sanbox do? What’s a typical use case or success example that this Working Group would achieve?

3 Likes

YES!! can’t wait to have APIGIVE

I think that it’s a much leaner interconnection to Giveth than entering our Repo.

In any case, I think it would take some time to start getting a pipeline of projects ready to interconnect. But I tag myself on the Epic to support :slight_smile:

1 Like

Hey Mitch, thanks for the full sincerity.

I understand the post can be ambiguous… but this is a feature rather than a bug. It’s meant to be intentionally broad and flexible, since we might need to pivot from the original idea to suit the purpose of the WG.

Giveth Sandbox will be a structured WG with the goal of bringing builders to collab in the future of giving.

Specific examples would be:

  • Builders that want to create a tool for GIVeth like @mendesfabio 's proposal to build Giveth info

  • Builders that want to interconnect their projects with ours like the giving block or in a future Impact Markets.

  • Dao 2 Dao collabs like FOX and CULT DAO with the Regen Farms

  • Non-technical builders with project ideas, looking for support on how to make them a reality.

I appreciate your question. Because as you can see here…

Some of the first things to do are to narrow down the interventions (the use cases) and customized an offering for those.

Hope this was useful. If there is still something that feels fuzzy, please let me know… This is work in progress

I sincerely hope you’re proposing to add a feature and not a bug. :laughing:

Right now I see a good chunk of these use cases already functioning inside of the already established governance processes and workstreams…

We have a clear proposal process for external teams to request funds from our GIVgarden - one only needs to look at our completed funding requests from the GIVgarden.(TrueBlocks, EVMcrispr, Docs Translations are all great examples)

We have two GIVeconomy workstreams currently handling technical tasks like launching regen farms and another for tokenomics and partnerships like $WATER and token swaps.

I see parts of this proposal already in motion in existing WGs. Giveth has been graced with a wealth of thinkers and ideas, but our bottlenecks are in the lack of managers and do-ers. Some of our foreseeable issues throttling expansion are:

  • Lack of support to integrate work delivered from external teams into our platforms, designs and systems.
  • Lack of leaders who understand Giveth and can take charge and manage organically emerging Working Groups.
  • Lack of good onboarding resources and existing contributor bandwidth to empower new contributors.

I’m not sure where and how Giveth Sandbox can rise to meet these needs but this is my honest opinion of where Giveth needs support the most!

2 Likes

Hey @mitch these are great comments.

I agree that these things are already happening and interact with different WG as Governance and GIVeconomy. However, none of these WG has as a core objective to promote and foster collaborations with external teams.

After today’s governance meeting and reading your comments I believe the proposal can be improved. I will add as key objectives to:

  • Decentralize Giveth development.
  • Nudge the development of solutions aligned with Giveth priorities (wording needs to be improved).
  • Support to integrate work delivered from external teams into our platforms, designs and systems.

Additionally, the other two key bottlenecks that you mentioned are not addressed by the Giveth Sandbox. But, I would be more than happy to contribute to them :slight_smile:

Hey Cotabe! Thanks for taking the initiative on writing this proposal and looking for ways to really improve our builder collaboration.

From the initial proposal, I support the general concept but think it’s missing clear action items/deliverables.

I like these key objectives and thinks it helps narrow the scope. Are you planning to create documentation/processes for this? Perhaps begin a “working with Giveth as an external collaborator” doc?

I think this might be a good place to start… sort of a consolidation of our development onboarding docs + MVV.

Are there any other action items that you are looking to get advice on?

2 Likes

Hey @karmaticacid thanks for the feedback.

This is a great idea.

I agree that it’s important to have clear deliverables. I will work on that.

2 Likes

I like it:-)

Some thoughts that might be useful. When I was trying to build a project in blockchain for good the problem I ran into was validating demand. Was i solving a real problem? According to Jobs To Be Done framework i talk to users before I build. Users are basically philanthropists in Giveths case. But I had a hard time connecting with crypto philanthropists online. Maybe at a conference would be better. Some guidance on how to validate customer demand could be a Lego block for innovators. Just an idea. Not all the Lego blocks need to be software.

1 Like

Couldn’t agree more.

I think the offering should definately include some lego blocks not software related.

1 Like

I love this proposal. I think collaborating with external teams is something we need to get better at. Hopefully we will with this work!

I am not sure it needs to be it’s own working group yet, right now just having you Cotabe as a point of contact is a huge relief, it solves SOOOO many problems! But that said, it might be nice to get updates in the Community Call. These External Collabs are really exciting and with Poingant Art, Impact Markets, Change, The Giving Block, Doingud, etc etc there is a lot to update on…

But maybe this just starts out as part of the Communitas WG and then grows out of it when it needs its own call and organization? It seems like most of the work will be in advocating for the projects needs with the development team and working with Comms on promoting the partnerships and working with other WGs as needed.

But this plan looks great and is a great path forward! I would turn it into a more formal WG in like Phase 3 or 4 when you are in a place where you need a team to help you execute on things.

1 Like

Hey Griff, thanks for the comments.

I agree that in early stages it makes much more sense to join an existing group. Communitas seems like a perfect fit. And only when we actually have a group, we can spin it out as an independent WG.

Hey everyone…

I am happy to share that this post has been edited to address the following issues that came up in the advising process:

@mitch 's concern about addressing Giveth bottlenecks

Now, it’s a key goal. Another key goal is taking into consideration the Giveth community’s priorities as @MoeNick has highlighted.

Additionally, the proposal now recognizes our workstreams and aims to ADD to them by actively attracting builders and make their journey more pleasant and frictionless with clear deliverables as @karmaticacid suggested. Including

and

The deliverables of phase 1 are here:

We will have a broad definition of builders as @kyleschutter.eth and @qqsong suggested, I totally agree.

Finally, it makes no sense to make a working group, before even having a group. So we will start as part of the Communitas WG as @Griff suggested. As long as @karmaticacid and the rest of the WG takes us :slight_smile:

1 Like