Quadratic Funding WG Season 3 Proposal

Hey all!

In an effort to improve our WG proposal process, we are trying post & vote on all proposals at the same time. As such, this post is kind of a repurposing of the unfulfilled Season 2 proposal with a little more information + a plan for what is effectively now Season 3.

The Quadratic Funding WG is responsible for all things Giveth QF. We built the Giveth QF product and since have been running rounds and iteratively making improvements to both the product & the process.

You can see our Season 1 WG proposal here and Season 2 (unfulfilled) WG proposal here.

In this post, I will break down our spending, earnings and achievements since Season 1, and our proposal for Season 3.

S1 Deliverable Status

In S1, we requested $36,360 to cover contributor costs to complete the following:

This proposal passed was posted in June 2023 & passed on July 17, 2023.

Deliverable Details & Further Progress

Since our S1, the QF product was successful built and launched, and we ran our MVP “Alpha” Round, completing all S1 milestones. We also ran a second “Optimism Round” & third “Giving Season” round successfully from start-to-finish, and ran our first two parter rounds “Buidl on Polygon” & “Meta Pool APAC” which are both nearly complete.

Here is a summary of results from these first rounds:

Giveth Alpha Round (July 18 - Aug 1, 2023)

  • Matching Pool: 10,000 xDAI on Gnosis Chain (raised from the Quadratic Force)
  • Donations: $11,737 raised from individual donors.
  • Engagement: 47 verified projects, 246 unique donors, and 919 total donations.

Optimism Round (Oct 9-23, 2023):

  • Matching Pool: 25,000 DAI on OP Mainnet (raised from the Quadratic Force)
  • Donations: $23,306 raised from individual donors.
  • Engagement: 125 verified projects, 388 unique donors, and 1,728 total donations.

Giving Season Round (December 19, 2023 - Jan 2, 2024)

  • Matching Pool: 25,000 USDGLO on OP Mainnet (raised from the Quadratic Force)
  • Donations from individual donors: $17,125
  • Engagement: 85 verified projects, 211 unique donors & 949 total donations.

Buidl on Polygon Round (January 15 - 24, 2024)

This was a unique round as it was our 1st partner-focused round. The entire matching pool was sponsored by Polygon and they chose the list of projet to include in the round. We ran the round & supported with comms, project curation & marketing.

  • Matching Pool: 250,000 MATIC on Polygon PoS (provided by Polygon Labs)
  • Donations from individual donors: approx. $160k (with recirculated donations not included)
  • Engagement: 206 projects, 2322 unique donors, 3240 eligible donations

[Meta Pool APAC Round] (February 19 - 29, 2024)

  • Matching Pool: 3.759463688 mpETH on OP Mainnet (provided by Meta Pool) (approx $10k at the time of sending it & upon round completion approx. $13k)
  • Donations from individual donors: approx. $2832
  • Engagement: 10 projects, 34 unique donors, 72 eligible donations

Combined results for above completed rounds:

  • ±$273k in total matching pool funds
  • ±$488k (matching funds + donations) towards funding projects through Giveth

Future Rounds

ENS Public Goods Builders’ Round (March 25 - April 8, 2024)

  • Matching Pool: 20,000 DAI on OP Mainnet
  • Donations: Coming soon
  • Engagement: Projects, Unique donors & Eligible donations TBD

In planning phase

  • Giveth Public Goods Round on Arbitrum - ETA April 2024, matching approx. $25k, approx. 80 projects
  • Arbitrum Builders Round - ETA May 2024, matching approx. $90k, approx. 100 projects

Spending

Our only real expense for QF is contributor salaries, as subscriptions & plans overlap w/ the dApp WG.

Season Date range Spending (on Salaries) Major Milestones
0 June 1 - July 1, 2023 $15,581 Built QF
1 July 1 - Oct 1, 2023 $22,991 Alpha Round Juy 18- Aug 1
1.5 Oct 1, 2023 - Feb 1, 2024 $44,139 Optimism Round Oct 9-23 / Giving Season Round Dec 19-Jan 2 / Polygon Round Jan 15-24
2 Feb 1 - Mar 1, 2024 $11,362 Meta Pool Round Feb 19-29, ENS Builders Mar 25-April 8

Reference: Giveth QF Budget spreadsheet

Earnings

We earn a % of every QF matching pool plus have gained some extra funding by driving donation traffic on Giveth, and experimenting w/ Giver NFT holder nominations.

Funding Source Total Notes
Funds gained from matching pool % fee $32,000 This is assuming MATIC price of $0.92 and including funds for all the aforementioned rounds (expect “planning phase” rounds)
Funds gained from Giver sales during Giving Season & Polygon rounds $3300 We sold 23 Givers at 100 DAI each on Mainnet during the Giving Season and an additional 10 during Polygon
Donations to Giveth during major QF rounds $2742 This is including donations to Giveth’s project during Alpha, Optimism, Giving Season & Polygon rounds
Total Funds raised for Giveth $38,042

Donations made on Giveth & Other Metrics

In order to save time on database querying troubleshooting (since @cquinterom096 is getting sick of my bugging him), here is some hacky math estimates on how much of our donations on Giveth are associated with QF.

  • From our stats dashboard it says that from July 1, 2023 - Mar 1, 2024 there has been about $666,391 of donations
  • This includes matching funds distributions from the alpha round, optimism round & giving season round, so subtracting those ($60k), donations is: $606,391
  • The Giveth project & Giveth matching pool projects were included above and include also some hefty donations from Octant distributions, so if I eliminate those from July 1, 2023 to Feb 1, 2024, total donations approx.: $394,000
  • The total donations from QF rounds (to QF eligible projects) alone are approx $11k+$23k+$17k+$203k+$3 = $257,000
  • And so, roughly, QF rounds were responsible for (like more than) 65% of the organic donations made to Giveth projects over the last 8 months since launch (and this is excluding donations made to non-QF rounds during QF round period).

As for verification, we haven’t been tracking very closely exactly how many verifications were related to QF, but to get an idea:

  • Verification applications process in December 2023: 40 (around Giving Season round)
  • Verification applications processed in January 2024: 185 (around Polygon round) - which according to @NikolaCreatrix & @WhyldWanderer is a record amount of applications for Giveth.
  • Verification applications processed in February/March 2024: TBD

Season 3 Deliverables & Budget

4 options are available - GROW, SUSTAIN, SHRINK and NO (WG halts or suspends activity)

Grow :arrow_up:

What we will do :white_check_mark:

Feature Development

  • Expand our backend & data analysis process to introduce Cluster Mapping for QF round results determination.
  • Fully audit & improve our data export for QF to ensure seamless bug-free execution.
  • Improve Admin bro to more easily manage QF rounds without devs & streamline curation process for less manual copy/paste type labour.
  • Complete the “archived QF rounds” & QF homepage issues so that users can more easily navigate existing and ended QF rounds.
  • Scope out bulk checkout “cart” feature - requested often by donors during feedback rounds

Fundraising, Accounting & Partnership Management

  • Perform regular & active fundraising to raise for the matching pools and attract new QF round partners
  • Manage and maintain partnerships w/ existing members of the quadratic force, providing updates to any received grants for QF rounds

Comms, Marketing & Community Building

  • Run twitter shill spaces for each QF round
  • Create round-specific support guides for projects & donors
  • Create & send social media content to support projects & attract donors for rounds
  • Create & send emails to support projects & attract donors for rounds
  • Provide support for donors & projects via discord, telegram & email
  • Build resources for nonprofits/project owners to make it easier for them to market QF to their communities (example)
  • Increase graphic design support for to guides, event announcements, round details & other comms for QF rounds

Ops

  • Project curation, round management, sybil analysis & funds distribution for all locked-in (and not fully completed rounds): Buidl on Polygon (Jan), MetaPool (Feb), ENS (Mar)
  • Round setup & execution work to ensure at least one QF round per month this season. (Apr, May, June)
  • Hire, onboard & train new PM for QF & gain support in creating an assembly line flow for running QF rounds
  • Collect, review & incorporate user feedback

Core Metrics :star2:

Matching pool totals Apr, May, June: $140,000
Number of Rounds Apr-June: 3
Donations in the rounds Apr-June: $100,000
Extra funding secured for future matching rounds: $20,000

:heavy_dollar_sign:Breakdown Estimated S3 (3 month) Cost
Feature Development $17,500
Fundraising $6,500
Comms/Community $6100
Ops $35,000
Total $65,100

Note: devops and services are covered by dapp wg but still needed for QF

Sustain :arrow_right:

What we will do :white_check_mark:

Feature Development

  • Fully audit & improve our data export for QF to ensure seamless bug-free execution.
  • Improve Admin bro to more easily manage QF rounds without devs & streamline curation process for less manual copy/paste type labour.

Fundraising, Accounting & Partnership Management

  • Perform regular & active fundraising to raise for the matching pools and attract new QF round partners
  • Manage and maintain partnerships w/ existing members of the quadratic force, providing updates to any received grants for QF rounds

Comms, Marketing & Community Building

  • Run twitter shill spaces for each QF round
  • Create round-specific support guides for projects & donors
  • Create & send social media content to support projects & attract donors for rounds
  • Create & send emails to support projects & attract donors for rounds
  • Provide support for donors & projects via discord, telegram & email

Ops

  • Project curation, round management, sybil analysis & funds distribution for all locked-in (and not fully completed rounds): Buidl on Polygon (Jan), MetaPool (Feb), ENS (Mar)
  • Round setup & execution work to ensure at least 2 QF rounds this season. (Apr, June)
  • Hire, onboard & train new PM for QF & gain support in creating an assembly line flow for running QF rounds

Core Metrics :star2:

Matching pool totals Apr-June: $50,000
Number of Rounds Apr-June: 2
Donations in the rounds Feb-May: $40,000
Extra funding secured for future matching rounds: $20,000

:heavy_dollar_sign:Breakdown Estimated S3 (3 month) Cost
Feature Development $7500
Fundraising $6500
Comms/Community $5000
Ops $31,000
Total $50,000

Note: devops and services are covered by dapp wg but still needed for QF

Shrink :arrow_down:

What we will do :white_check_mark:

Comms, Marketing & Community Building

  • Create round-specific support guides for projects & donors
  • Create & send social media content to support projects & attract donors for rounds
  • Create & send emails to support projects & attract donors for rounds
  • Provide support for donors & projects via discord, telegram & email

Ops

  • Project curation, round management, sybil analysis & funds distribution for all locked-in (and not fully completed rounds): Buidl on Polygon (Jan), MetaPool (Feb), ENS (Mar)
  • Round setup & execution work to ensure at least 1 QF rounds this season.

Core Metrics :star2:

Matching pool totals Apr-June: $25,000
Number of Rounds Apr-June: 1
Donations in the rounds Feb-May: $20,000
Extra funding secured for future matching rounds: None

:heavy_dollar_sign:Breakdown Estimated S3 (3 month) Cost
Comms/Community $5000
Ops $26,000
Total $31,000

Next Steps

Conclusions & Final Notes

  • QF has been an EXTREMELY big growth mechanism for Giveth leading to the significantly more donations, significantly more projects & even a small but promising source of revenue.
  • This proposal & the GIVeconomy WG proposal (coming soon) are dependent on each other in that, I manage both WGs. This proposal MUST pass with a “Grow” or “Sustain” if we wish to “Grow” the GIVeconomy WG… because I can’t make both happen without us bringing on more support.

This proposal will remain open for advice process for one week (and maybe a few days more) and will move to Snapshot voting with all other WG proposals for final approval from the DAO.

9 Likes

GROW GROW GROW! Becoming the meat & potatoes of Giveth!

2 Likes

Just to clarify this point this is because we need to hire someone to manage QF, correct? This would give you enough personal bandwith to manage what’s needed for the GIVeconomy.

Yeah exactly, over the past 6 months, I’ve spent about 70-80% of my time on QF. Managing & creating issues, managing parterships around it, setting up & running rounds, data analysis, communications, etc., and it’s come to a point where I don’t think it really needs me anymore to figure out all the systems for it. I’d like to have an active role on integrating a new sybil protection system, but I think I could delegate at least half of the work I do for QF and spend that instead on positioning GIV & supporting the economy.

2 Likes

Wow, that’s an amazing overview @karmaticacid. I’m with @JakeS - LFGrooooow! :smiley:

1 Like

Thanks @karmaticacid
I appreciate what you did these last 6 months for this WG a LOT.

QF is the engine of DApp Grow, and it’s a very critical feature that helps us understand the user needs, at least different types of users’ needs. Why? Because it solved the problem of fundraising for projects, it comes from a need and helps projects meet this requirement.

This helped us understand the power of the B2B2C model, that the projects themselves onboard and bring donors to the platform. I think it has lots of learnings for us that we can verify the assumptions we had.
We thought GIVbacks was a brilliant tool for bringing end-user to the Giveth platform itself, but it didn’t work. So focusing on project needs has worked the best in matters of growth when I review what we’ve done so far.

So I want to summarize my thoughts that if I were the Steward, I’d put some budget for market research and understand how this B2B flow can get better. what are real projects’ needs and what opportunities rely on there. So I can get some other business suggestions.

1 Like

Great feedback @MoeNick! As we are hiring a new PM to support me on this… I think we can put some work into understanding how to improve our B2B flow.