AGD Recent work Update - thread

Aave Grants DAO
9

- October ‘22

Overview

Aave Grants DAO (AGD) is now about mid-way through the second half of its two-quarter renewal proposal executed back in May of this year. October has been a busy month with events in Bogata, reviewing applications, supporting recent grantees, and generally helping expand Aave’s ecosystem. This monthly update covers our budget spending, grantees approved, and events sponsored in this past month of October.

The current quarter began around the middle of August and will run until AGD’s next renewal proposal in the coming months. Below is an up-to-date timeline of AGD’s funding relative to this post for the month of October.

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Grants Summary

Total numbers for the grants program’s spending are listed below starting from mid-May of 2021 when the program began up until now.

  • Total Grant Applications Received: 1150
  • Total Applications Approved: 176
  • Acceptance Rate:
    • written(stage 1): 10%
    • video call(stage 2): 61%
  • Total Amount Dispersed: $5,833,038
  • Amount Dispersed This Term: $1,468,537
  • Amount Left to Disperse This Term: $790,363
  • Complete Milestone-Based Grants: 83%
  • In-progress/Incomplete Milestone-Based grants: 17%
  • Amount and Quantity Approved by Category:
    • Applications and integrations (70) ($2,390,000),
    • Code audits (2) ($120,000),
    • Committees & DAOs that serve Aave’s ecosystem (18) ($950,000),
    • Community (marketing and educational) (41) ($636,250),
    • Developer tooling (12) ($697,500),
    • Events / Hackathons / Sponsorships (12) ($210,000),
    • Other (8) ($394,900),
    • Protocol development (16) ($401,000)

October Approved Grants

This October we have received 106 grant applications slightly down from the 109 last month in September. Of the 106 applications received 16 have been approved for funding with 17 receiving awarded funds this previous month (some were approved in earlier months). In total, the 17 awarded grants amounted to a cumulative $137,340 in funding across single and tranche-based payments with $119,820 of that amount paid out this September. The 17 awarded grants spanned the eight standard categories we use with Application and Integrations being the most awarded, and Protocol Development second most awarded.

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The average grant size has been $18.2k with the most commonly awarded amount being both $5k and $3k. Listed below are the awarded grants for October ranging from largest to smallest by funding size:

  • Grant Name - $ total grant amount(payment type) - grant type
    • grant description - “grantee self-description”
    • use of funds
  • Financial Reporting - $65,000(tranche) - committees & DAOs that serve Aave’s ecosystem
    • grant to Llama DAO for financial reporting completed between May and July 2022 - an older application only being processed now
    • funds used to pay for financial reporting work produced for the Aave DAO
  • Blockchain Education Network - $50,000(tranche) - community (marketing and educational)
    • Blockchain Education Network (BEN) is creating an “Intro to Governance” course which intends to increase user adoption and voter participation and further decentralize voting power into the hands of young people from various diverse backgrounds
    • funds will be used to create the course and focus aspects around Aave’s governance
  • 100K BAL Acquisition - $42,200(tranche) - protocol development
    • project with the goal of submitting an AIP proposal leading to Aave DAO acquiring 100K of BAL tokens, driven by members of Llama DAO
    • funds used to pay for work leading up to, preparing for, and executing this proposal
  • iHelp - $40,000(tranche) - protocol development
    • iHelp aims to be a leading donations protocol using Aave to generate yield that will be directed to established charitable organizations.
    • funds will be used for code preparation, optimization, testing and the audit done by Certik
  • TuffDAO - $22,000(tranche) - code audits
    • “TuffDAO’s tVBT contracts are backed by a portfolio of Aave lending pool positions. This grant is set to be used for a contract audit to make sure we are airtight!”
    • funds will be used for a smart contract audit of tVBT contracts
  • Ithil - $18,000(full) - applications and integrations
    • Ithil allows DeFi users to run complex strategies with a single click, using their own and/or borrowed funds, on a variety of external protocols. The Aave strategy will allow users to provide collateral in their token of choice and receive boosted aTokens in return to their Ithil Vault - when closed the position will burn the aTokens and underlying notional + accrued earnings will be sent back to the user
    • funds will go toward the creation and audit of strategies build on Aave
  • Mercle - $15,000(full) - committees & DAOs that serve Aave’s ecosystem
    • Mercle is building a simplified user interface for contributors of crypto communities to engage, collaborate, start updating and collect contribution claims. An example would be Tally plus contributors’ data showing information on who has voted, how active they are in the communities discord and forum etc.
    • funds will go towards delivering a more insightful governance UI for Aave including features outlined in the inspiration for builders page
  • Risk DAO (Not Aave’s Risk DAO) - $12,000(full) - applications and integrations
    • “a collaborative framework for researchers to provide services around economical risk analysis assessment, developing open-source risk assessment tools and dashboards to stress test, monitor, and manage risk in DeFi lending and borrowing protocols, as well as L1 and L2 networks.”
    • funds will go to the cost of two devs building the proposed dashboard
  • Rain - $10,000(full) - other
    • “Rain is excited to receive a grant from Aave to begin allowing users to earn yield”
    • funds will pay for smart contract engineer work done to integrate Aave into the Rain product
  • Clutch Wallet - $10,000(full) - applications and integrations
    • “Clutch wants to onboard the masses into web3 and expose them to the power of DeFi. Decentralized money market protocols like AAVE play a critical role in the crypto ecosystem, and with the AAVE grant, Clutch will be able to develop core functionality that makes it easy for users to seamlessly participate in liquidity pools.”
    • funds will be used to build lending, staking and AMM features into Clutch Wallet
  • Rio Crypto Hub - $5,000(full) - events / hackathons / sponsorships
    • “Rio Crypto Hub can increase awareness of AAVE’s protocol in Brazil’s ecosystem :palm_tree::globe_with_meridians: We are looking forward to providing real-life experiences by gathering AAVE’s ghost vibes with Crypto Hub’s people.”
    • funds will go toward organizing and gathering equipment necessary for the events in Rio’s Favelas
  • Idential - $5,000(full) - developer tooling
    • will allow organizations to issue credentials to developers building in their ecosystems, with further integration it will be easier to discover developers that have the skills to build in a specific ecosystem
    • funds are for product development and server costs
  • Level Three: Web3 Education Case Studies - $5,000(full) - community (marketing and educational)
    • “Level Three: Web3 Educational Case Studies is a repository of open-source case studies to be used in University modules and courses. It begins with a case study of the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol Aave.”
    • funds will be used to help with research, editing, and a creating website
  • New Aave Governance UI - $3,000(full) - applications and integrations
    • “Alternative UI for non-DeFi-native users by DaoLens: DaoLens aims to simplify the experience of using Aave protocol for non-defi-native users. The alternative UI will handhold the users and make them understand every ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the protocol while using it. This project helps Aave expand their user base to folks who have little or no knowledge of UI. There are a lot of people who would get interested in using Aave if we remove the barrier of entry by providing a beginner-friendly UI to the core functionalities.”
    • funds will go toward engineering and design resources
  • Spicy Punks - $3,000(full) - events / hackathons / sponsorships
    • a restaurant in Ludhiana, India which is focused on conducting web3 meetups around DeFi and web3
    • funds will be used to complete 5 Aave community meet-ups within an 8-10 week timeframe
  • RociFi - $3,000(full) - applications and integrations
    • “RociFi is an on-chain credit scoring protocol for under-collateralized retail loans. RociFi received an Aave DAO grant to integrate its credit scores into Aave to enhance user-level risk assessment - akin to a micro-level Gauntlet - which could allow governance to offer higher LTVs to certain borrowers, thus enhancing capital efficiency and revenue.”
    • funds are for technical integration and marketing promotion
  • Next Vision - $2,000(full) - protocol development
    • Next Vision is a launchpad for up-and-coming web2 artists built on top of an adapted fork of APWine’s contracts. The platform will allow fans of web2 artists to fund their artist of choice with time and in return receive an NFT that connects them to the artists’ journey
    • funds will go toward developing an MVP within the next months

Just to specify the grants listed above and the ones generally coved in these monthly reports always follow the first payment of an awarded grant whether it’s a full payment or the first of multiple. Grantees labelled with the tranche tag after the amount indicate a grant that will be dispersed in more than one payment. In order to monitor progress and reduce exposure, grants over a certain size are paid out in tranches.

Events Summary

An up-to-date breakdown of AGDs total events spending since the start of the program is as follows:

  • Hackathon Bounties - $124,000
  • Main/Side Sponsorships - $664,895
  • Digital Marketing - $926,395
  • rAAVEs - $617,898

In total that has accounted for $2,333,188 of AGD spending and can be detailed further on our website here.

October Events

This October the main events AGD helped facilitate were rAAVE Bogota, Boysclub x Aave Grants, and the Aave booth that ran during Devcon Bogota.

Milestones this Quarter

This quarter as mentioned earlier began around mid-August. The allocated budget was $3M of which $1,468,537 has been spent leaving around ~$800k left to disperse.

Ongoing Updates

Of note, this November AGD will likely be putting up a renewal proposal which would aim to secure the continuation of the program for the next period so keep your eyes on the forum for that. Additionally, we have an exciting announcement coming up soon which will hopefully benefit all our previous grantees. Make sure to follow our Twitter and/or Lens to hear it first @aavegrants.

Lastly, as always, we welcome any ongoing feedback and are happy to surface any particular metrics the community would like to see.

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