https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/LmJQvL22dMksElYKrW4fW5wDM0kz_3eArncISGaPbErRwRZ_ld1vzXd5sQNyh0uRPT6XEl-HenxrNVjGfhs_dut0P42kxbulA_VZqtSHqv8B5kc5BLpQA2o4Cw8TWVcWU9Gdv6VJoh7mYulBCA3SSpg
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đ§ In the context of this discussion, I want to raise the question of how do we perform retroactive funding to reward valuable ecosystem growth with minimal governance ?
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Thesis
- Governance results in centralization vectors for subject matter experts
- There is a cold start problem. Founders donât know if they should start to build something now without getting funded, because there is no clear way to get funded for impact later.
- Traditional metrics on dappRadar, flipside can be gamed, and we need to refine what is impactful as an ecosystem constantly
- Establishing measurable metrics that even if gamed still benefit the ecosystem will align the ecosystem to grow
- Often builders & founders who are shipping arenât the same people asking for non-dilutive grants, there is a âgovernance cartelâ issue
đŻÂ Objectives
- Get a higher rate of non-proactively funded teams to start building on NEAR with traction
- Create a minimal governance retroactive funding system that cannot be gamed with an initial pilot
- Create metrics from community sentiment that are not easily gamed and also translate to growth in revenue & network effects for NEAR
- Create a streamlined way to automatically reward projects retroactively based on ecosystem-aligned metrics
- Streamline towards an autonomous agent that can update metrics and allocate capital accordingly
đ Limitations
- This wonât proactively fund teams for clearly scoped projects that the ecosystem needs. Other funding mechanisms will exist for funding specific teams and funding initiatives. Meaning their is still a cold start issue of funding founders to build something to get traction.
- It is harder to track community-based metrics and the impact of developer tooling especially for closed-sourced projects
- Most of the people in NEAR who built something with traction have gotten grants or done a deal with the NEAR Foundation. It's hard to establish a program similar to the retroPGF program. In this case, we need to directly fund projects that havenât been funded and move to just traction-based rewards for retro funding.