[TEMP CHECK] Aave Grants Continuation Proposal

Governance
6

Overall, Aave Grants is a force for good in the Aave ecosystem.

That being said - I would propose some changes/have some questions for this proposal.

  1. $150/hr is a lot of money for reviewers imo - even if capped at 10 hrs/week. I’d suggest potentially reviewing this as it seems like excessive cost (even though I agree Reviewers do great work).

  2. The spend over the course of the previous proposal shows that a good deal more was spent on Events than Grants. Noted that this time youre proposing about 1mill for events vs 1.5 for grants - but this is still a hell of a lot of money spent on events which could have huge leverage if redirected to grants. If you think about this cost in terms of contributors the DAO could hire a large number of great personnel within that cost range. For a grantsDAO this feels problematic, especially at a time when so much could be done to work on things like GHO. Here your idea on subDAOs seems good and I dont think it should be held until later. Ideally events and merch would not be a direct mandate of GrantsDAO and would instead be its own subDAO with its own budget so there is more transparency and the DAO has more control over spending here. Im a fan of the merch and events and think they have a positive impact for Aave, however the current setup doesnt seem like the most cost effective or reasonable way to achieve this positive impact. @MarcZeller mentioned something along these lines here and received support.

  3. On increasing independence - we should see a timeline here and key metrics. Current and previous spend on AC team attendance + an actual plan to change this over time and by when, if that’s what is desired as is stated "Over time, AGD will look to take over these roles while executing at the same high standard.” Would be great to see KPIs here like you have in other areas.

  4. I am wondering on Events and Sponsorship budget - where does merch fit into this? is it in the Events Sponsorship section? and where are travel/accomodation/booth etc costs fitting in?

  5. On the overall breakdown "a Grants Budget (44.6%), an Events & Sponsorship Budget (35.0%), and an Operations Budget (20.4%).” is this a % breakdown based on the new budget ask? or does it also include money left over from last agreement. ie. are these %s of AGD total budget after approval of this, or are they %s of what is asked for now only (ignoring leftover money).

  6. The KPIs seem slightly weak in general regarding both grants and events and merch. It would be good to have outlined how realistic they are based on past performance, and also to have some indication as to what it means if they aren’t hit. I guess it will impact renewal, but itd be good to have some skin in the game on these KPIs.

  7. At a time when all service providers are receiving much lower pay than they used to from the DAO when they renew, I think it is also worth considering reducing the budget here to help maintain the sustainability of the DAO.

Overall supportive of what AGD has been doing. Bill is great and so is everyone I know who works for AGD. Some good ideas in here - legal entity and subDAOs for example! But would be interested in answers/responses to the above to inform my opinion as to whether to support the proposal in its current form or not!

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@Hazbobo – speaking to point one.

While I agree this number seems high, it is much less in practice.

This is a 79% reduction than what is currently budgeted on a monthly basis.

I’ll disclose from personal experience this has been much lower; around $500 a month. I do agree there may be an opportunity to change this to prevent ballooning expenses and limit variable pay.

For the rest of the points:

It seems like there is opportunity to separate events and general grants, or better outline the goals.

How are venues and events chosen? Who does these events benefit?

Looking forward to @0xbilll’s response here!

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8

The contributions of AGD have been important and we’re supportive of them continuing this work!

We agree that the Event/Merch related expenses should be a subDAO or a different DAO that closely collaborates with the AGD due to the existing experience. In our opinion, event exposure for Aave is extremely important on ETH centric conferences.

Another idea to consider here is hiring someone dedicated to events. This could be a part-time role as in general the events are less than 5-7 per year. Event organising can be a heavy workload when combined with Grants.

If the AGD is solely focused on Grants, we believe that the performance and output could be even higher.

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9

This makes sense and is good context!

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Absolutely thrilled to see this Aave Grants Continuation Proposal roll out. The level of detail in planning, right down to the KPIs, shows a lot of foresight. It’s not just about funding projects haphazardly; there’s a clearly mapped-out strategy here, which is incredibly reassuring for anyone vested in Aave’s future.

Speaking of strategy, the plan doesn’t overlook the human element—events like rAAVEs and hackathons. These events are as essential as the tech itself; they’re the breeding grounds for innovation and community cohesion. It’s great to see a balanced approach that values both technical development and community building.

One question though—any thoughts on directing some grants toward educational initiatives? This could serve as a powerful catalyst for bringing fresh talent into the Aave ecosystem.
Overall, I’m excited about the direction this proposal is taking Aave. It demonstrates a commitment to long-term vision and community involvement, which are key for sustainable growth.

Great work by the AGD team,
Diego,

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11

I support the renewal of AGD as outlined in this proposal. My experience working with the AGD team has been positive, and I believe they are doing a good job in stewarding the grant program for Aave.

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12

I do think that 150/h can be a lot but if its net (i.e. reviewer pays taxes and other costs from that) maybe its closer but agree could be done in less costs.

The events, drip etc are quite cost effective (and the quality) given the impact it gets and positive recognition - everywhere - (and quality). Aave has the best events, the best drip and culture, purely because of the planning and execution of these events. No one has been able to copy that.

These events are also activations for GHO, especially demand/use-case side.

Regarding the independence, what I would expect would be more towards 2024 (speaking from experience here on timelines).

SubDAO idea does not make sense, rather a more uniform proposal on what areas AGD (even name change to reflect that) should cover besides grants and who are the people who are responsible of those areas (again mostly 2024 timeline to think about). Main idea that there is for now budget separability and accountability, thats important.

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Appreciate everyone who has engaged with the proposal so far and provided initial feedback!

Big thanks to @Figue, @kohei, @koalabs, @dmars300 & @Sov for sharing their experiences as grantees.

@Hazbobo - thanks for your recognition of the positive impact that AGD has had. Happy to answer your questions.

  1. As @fig highlighted and as outlined in the bullet point after the maximum amount of pay you quote, monthly reviewer pay has averaged ~22% of the monthly maximum budget. If anything, reviewers are currently underpaid and we will look to change this going forward.

  2. Events and sponsorships will drive value to GHO - this is precisely the time to be supporting growth in the ecosystem and leveraging Aave’s position and ability to deliver the best events and continue spreading Aave’s culture.

  3. Relevant KPIs are included in the Operations Budget with establishing the entity by the end of the year and experimenting with at least one governance experiment. AGD will come back to the forum with a longer term and comprehensive proposal in 2024 as @stani suggests.

To be 100% clear, AGD has never covered the cost of attendance accommodations for anyone from AC. This is outlined in our previous events policy and highlighted above.

  1. The costs shown next to each event are the total cost of executing each event.

  2. These are percentages based on how the new funds would be allocated.

  3. Open to any suggestions for other KPIs!
    In terms of skin in the game for AGD, every proposal is a judgment on whether or not to support AGD. Other structures that Service Providers have used are performance based incentives which is something AGD can include if there is interest from the community.

  4. We agree and believe this proposal is well in line with a reduced ask. The current proposal is AGD’s smallest ask yet, with the upfront funding amounting to <22% of the previous proposal and the total funding including the stablecoin allowance equally <49% compared to the previous proposal.

AGD has followed the desire we have seen from the Aave DAO for treasury prudence across the ecosystem. Notably, there is a 53% decrease in the average grant size awarded so far in 2023 compared to 2022.

The sustainability of Aave DAO is also top of mind for us. For example, for our treasury, we access our stablecoin funds as needed via an allowance to ensure the maximum amount of interest is being earned by the Aave DAO.

AGD’s focus is on participating in and engaging builders at hackathons - this is where we have seen the strongest impact and return to the Aave ecosystem. AGD will sponsor and participate in larger hackathons such as ETHGlobal, so rarely has any decision making been around the venue. For the GHO Hackathon it was decided to do it online to allow anyone across the world to participate.

Across 4 hackathons so far in 2023, AGD has engaged with 30 different existing grantees, inspired 58 teams to hack with Aave and GHO, and awarded $31,000 in prizes to 19 of the top projects building on Aave and GHO. Since inception AGD has participated in 14 hackathons, awarding $150,000 in Aave and GHO specific bounties to 58 teams.

In terms of value, it is the whole Aave ecosystem who benefits from AGD’s event and sponsorship activities. AGD’s event summaries capture these and other details - I’ll highlight AGD’s goals across all events and sponsorships:

The overarching goal for AGD sponsorships at all events is to proliferate the ghost. This is done through:

  1. Brand visibility and community engagement - Make Aave top of mind
  2. Attracting and cultivating top contributors - Connect with the community
  3. Fostering innovation and supporting the development of new projects - Support builders

Yes, this is a solid idea. It is a role we previously had and it worked well. As we finish setting up the entity, we will look to expand the team including this and other roles.

Looking forward to more discussion. AGD is open to modifying KPIs for this current proposal and will commit to bringing the DAO a longer term proposal in 2024.

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Responding as a grantee, I’ll limit my comments to our experience of AGD and Aave as an organization while we worked on the Delegate Incentives Pilot earlier this year.

We were initially attracted to working with Aave because of the brand, technology, and the DAO’s composition. The organization is welcoming—a great mix of ambition, talent, and openness.

As I’m sure many will agree, DAOs appear to have simple interfaces, including channels, DMs, groups, and forums. Still, there are often multiple layers and relationships to navigate to understand the interface you require before you can interact in a productive way.

Aave has managed to build an organization that is both extensive and clean—all interfaces appear to be simple, easy to access, and well-defined. It didn’t take long for us to figure out how to participate.

After posting on the forum, we understood that we could apply for a grant and submitted an application. We heard back from a reviewer shortly after and scheduled a call. Once approved, we were placed into a telegram group and given all the necessary details and resources. All of our announcements were amplified by the team, and they ensured we were regularly promoted in comms. Seamless from start to finish.

Whenever a conference loomed, we heard from the team and were invited to come and meet them—I got to meet a few of the team in Tokyo, including @0xbilll, @0xmigi, and @stani. I felt incredibly well looked after—almost like we were part of the team. That’s a tricky asset to establish and an expensive asset to recreate.

Finally, Aave has one of the most captivating brands in the space—it’s an asset every project would like to have, and it extends far beyond the idea of a liquidity protocol. Events and Merch are clearly a vital part of that. Unless people stop attending rAAVE and trying to steal the merch, or you need to scale either operation, I struggle to see the upside in splitting them out.

I support the AGD renewal. :butter:

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16

Some points from my side, both high and low level.

  • The charade of a grants entity taking care of community growth (via grants per se, hackathons, etc.) together with marketing, events organization and merchandising of a brand like Aave needs to stop.
    Events and promotion services for the DAO should be taken care of in a segregated manner from grants, and by an entity that has shown strong capabilities on it, like @AaveLabs .
    The situation is so surrealist, that I frequently see sponsorship material like “Aave Grants DAO sponsoring X”: who sponsors is Aave, the Aave DAO. It is even ridiculous to raise the point.

  • Currently, there is approximately 0 connection between AGD and the majority of active contributors to the DAO. This could be perfectly acceptable if the grants entity would limit itself to its mandate: support teams/individuals building on top of Aave their products.
    The issue is that again and again, grants are given for quite invasive items, conflicting with ongoing (or even delivered) items of service providers. Some examples:

    • Funding research of Safety Module slashing, while actually, an engaged team like Llama was doing (publishing multiple blog posts here about it!).
    • Funding grant for RFPs research (?), having clearly 0 visibility on DAO procedures.
    • Proposing projects for hackathons tooling that was built by service providers. This happened with the debt swap feature, even when both myself and even a reviewer pointed out that it was already built. This points to a really serious problem of context and visibility in the leadership.

    The solution to this is pretty simple AGD should stop giving grants which have implications on other operations of the DAO.

  • Related to the previous, and regarding the point on the proposal of exploring RFPs, again, this is not and should not be the mandate of AGD. A grants committee does not have enough expertise to decide on RFPs at scale. This will degenerate into asking other contributors (like myself, which already happened) to participate in it, which will make the role of AGD completely useless in those regards.
    Giving precedents, personally, I’m not really willing to participate with the current leadership, no matter the framework.

  • Aave should keep an important budget and presence at events, most probably higher than proposed. The problem at the moment, after like 2 years is that the visibility is low. As other community members commented, it is totally unclear how events are chosen, based on which criteria.
    For transparency on an item I was involved in, a service provider (Certora) offered AGD the opportunity of a small sponsorship of the Defi Security Summit, arguably the most important Defi security event of the year. AGD declined, even if actually the community had a presence there (the team I’m part of, BGD Labs, talking about Aave).
    Additionally, I have the feeling that Aave promotion was order or magnitude stronger before AGD took control of it.

  • In this stage of the market, individual grants should be capped in size with no exception. Aave should not be giving grants to bootstrap projects: the DAO is not an incubator, its goal is to support projects, not to invest in them or pay all their bills.
    Having a bigger size requires monitoring for accountability that 1) AGD is not capable of 2) it should not be even targeted, to keep lean procedures.
    Most probably, the optimal way could be having 4 grant tranches of let’s say 2’500, 5’000, 10’000, and 20’000, which will even benefit the decision-making by reviewers.

  • Arguably, one of the most important benefits to grantees is the exposure Aave provides, in some cases, pretty certainly more than the monetary grant itself. What is the strategy for this at the moment?

  • The ask for a quite important sum on ARB and OP tokens raises the question, what exactly is gonna be the focus on that specific side? From my perspective, it feels totally arbitrary.

  • The discussion is going into the branches of compensation of reviewers which is totally empty, for several reasons:

    • The numbers are pretty acceptable. A budget to holistically run a grants program in a decentralized manner with ~10 people involved for an effective ~400,000-500,000 yearly is acceptable.
    • Being a review of AGD in the past, reviewers were precisely the lesser of the problems, with pretty high implications from their side. Operations efficiency was the problem.
    • Again, procedures are way more important, with things like: how is the history of reviewers of application X being investors pre/post giving the grant?
      Which mechanisms to avoid conflict of interest are in place?

  • Regarding the legal entity formation, who took this decision? Who is personally managing it? Which implications this has for the DAO in all senses?
    Commenting that things will be “like always” is unacceptable, without explaining in full detail everything to the community.
    The problems mentioned of not being able to enter into contracts, etc. on giving grants (?) are simply out of mind: Aave is a decentralized protocol, really serious entities are working with the DAO and never have any problem, but there is a problem to work with a grants entity just supporting developers?
    If the issue is on events, the solution is as mentioned: the grants entity should not be organizing events.

  • The topic of subDAOs feels not even debatable to me. The concept is lately pushed by MakerDAO as some kind of promotional grift with absolutely no substance. Extremely concerning to see anybody associated with Aave even propose it as an option.

Generally, I have the feeling that the pattern is repeating again and again: a proposal is presented to the community, not even so precise → all previous grantees support for a matter of gratitude and because they had a good experience with AGD (which I’m not denying at all) → fundamentals are ignored.

As a consequence of the previous, I’m totally against the current state of the proposal, it is time to change things.

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Hello,

The ACI appreciates the enthusiasm in the grant DAO renewal discussions. Our perspective on this matter isn’t black and white, and we’d like to share our nuanced thoughts:

Alignment with Service Providers:

Historically, the Grant DAO has felt like an isolated island, somewhat oblivious to the DAO’s broader needs and strategies. This has led to some glaring misses. So, hats off to the “AGD and Service Provider Alignment” section of the proposal. It’s about time.

On this part we echo @eboado feedback at 100%

Compensation:

The compensation budget is Fair. Skilled folks deserve fair pay. And taxes are a thing. More than half of the numbers you see out there usually get eaten by our best friends from the governments.
we have zero remarks on this part of the budget.

Grantee Support:

It’s lovely to see grantees like @dmars300 showing support. But let’s be real: AGD funded him $4600 for a series of videos that barely hit 500 views. That’s $8.6 per view. Loyalty is great, but this kind of support might be doing more harm than good.

Grant Budget KPIs:

  • The “Award a minimum” approach is problematic. Quality should always supersede quantity. If there aren’t enough quality grant applications, it’s better to carry forward the budget rather than spend it for the sake of spending. The mindset of “spend this budget or risk a reduced budget next quarter” is detrimental and the reason why most governments are deep in debt.

  • Speaking of the review committee, y’all are generally too nice. While kindness is a virtue, I, personally, am not afraid to decline proposals that don’t meet the mark.

Hence, I’m putting myself forward as a candidate for the AGD review committee to bring a more critical perspective.

Event & Swag Budget:

The Aave Companies Event & Swag team is unparalleled. No one in the ecosystem comes even close to the quality of their delivery.

We believe they deserve more than what’s currently allocated in the proposal. Their work offers incredible brand ROI.

However, the current funding structure, where AGD and the DAO indirectly partly fund by proxy the Aave Companies, is convoluted. If there are legal or other concerns, it’s time to clear things up and streamline this with a dedicated structure. the AGD is simply not a good match for this.

In conclusion, the ACI will vote NAY on any budget that doesn’t clearly segregate events/marketing/swag from grants.

Grant budget

On this topic, we greatly echo @eboado remarks.

Conclusion:

The ACI acknowledges the hard work and dedication of the AGD team. Their efforts have been commendable and have contributed significantly to the ecosystem. However, in its current form, the ACI will cast a NAY vote on this proposal.

NAY
NAY2949×2780 1020 KB

That being said, we are generally supportive of the AGD’s mission and believe that with some modifications, a consensus can be reached on this proposal having an effect on the vote we will cast.

We are eager to continue our collaboration with the AGD team and are optimistic about its future.

Furthermore, we cannot emphasize enough the exceptional work of the event/marketing/swag team. They are unparalleled in their expertise and deserve direct support. We strongly advocate for a separate proposal dedicated to them, and they can be assured of 100% ACI backing for budget proposal in the realms of what is currently proposed.

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18

Thanks for the response bill!

Generally I agree on costs after reviewing.

As others have noted - I remain convinced that events/merch is an area that can be improved. Everybody agrees they are of high value so this isn’t really the discussion - it’s more if the current setup is appropriate - to which i still agree with @MarcZeller and @eboado.

Also, on the extended 2024 proposal - why are we waiting until then to fully flesh this proposal out? I’m not sure why we can’t address these points now tbh.

A side note - On subDAOs (responding to @eboado) - I think the term subDAO is a bit of a misnomer. Yes MakerDAO has taken on the term recently for endgame - but actually “subDAO”s have a serious history within DAOs and can be successful. They are often simply just independent working groups. The point here is to have an independent events groups, hopefully AC. Ofc this could just be a service provider - but given subDAOs were mentioned in the proposal it also feels like it could be a solution (ignoring the name and just setting up) - technically AGD is a subDAO within the Aave DAO.

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Hi @0xbilll,

Overall, we are very supportive of Aave DAO having a Grants DAO and want AGD to continue. However, similar to others, we believe there is room for improvement. Rather than repeating some of the comments above, we will focus on different points.

TokenLogic enjoys working with AGD, and we are always willing to support AGD. Collaboration on GHO adoption feels like a key area for the two teams to focus on together. We are excited to see GHO featured in the AGD proposal; it is a key growth area for Aave DAO, and we would suggest removing the Quantity of Grants Awarded Metric. Instead, we would suggest developing GHO-specific objectives and measuring against those. The RFP lends itself to this approach nicely, but it does require understanding the GHO roadmap and having really good communication with Service Providers.

We believe the AAVE component of this funding request should be removed and replaced with another asset. We suggest replacing AAVE with GHO. Incentive alignment is a great point and something we recognize. However, like Chaos Labs, TokenLogic, and ACI have done, we believe adopting non-AAVE funding is the best path forward.

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20

Hi all, chiming in here as an AGD reviewer.

First off, I have a tremendous amount of respect for @eboado and @MarcZeller. From my perspective, they form the DAO’s strong backbone, and I agree with quite a few of their points (e.g. grant sizing should be smaller and focus on grants vs. events).

However, I did notice one inconsistency that I’d like to discuss as I think it is an important example.

  • Funding research of Safety Module slashing, while actually, an engaged team like Llama was doing (publishing multiple blog posts here about it!).

Context
I played a part in approving @XenophonLabs’s grant to research the Safety Module, which as a first stage resulted in this discussion.

Before funding the grant, since I was aware of @Llamaxyz 's work stream on the Safety Module, I reached out to the various DAO contributors that might have an opinion and tried to get their understanding of the workflow as I wanted to prevent funding work that was already being done. As part of that, I specifically reached out to @eboado and @MarcZeller as I know they are active contributors who might have more context than myself. @eboado had reasonable reservations given the potential overlap, and I didn’t hear from @MarcZeller on first outreach.

After some work to clarify how this work stream would differ from Llama where the @XenophonLabs team met with @HelloShreyas (lead’s @Llamaxyz), the team landed on these specific differences with Llama’s work stream and they came out of the conversation planning to collaborate with the Llama team on pushing towards an outcome:

So there are (at least) two parts: slashing percentage and pool composition. The simpler, less controversial of those is the slashing percentage. We want to do research to quantify, in dollar-terms, the sensitivity of the module to changes in slashing percentage, as well as demonstrate the optimal slashing percentage. Our preliminary work showed that this alone can lead to millions in savings, and our understanding is that this is not being performed from within Llama’s current research scope

With the additional clarification, I discussed further with @eboado and confirmed that he felt comfortable with AGD funding the additional research on a topic. After @XenophonLabs finished their initial research, I then followed up with @MarcZeller to see if he’d like to learn more and chat with the team. He then decided this was not his area to have a unique input on and asked that I direct Xenophon Lab’s questions to @MatthewGraham, who was working on this for @Llamaxyz at the time. Per the feedback, I connected the Xenophon team with Matthew so they could collaborate moving forward.

Fast forward a few weeks, and it becomes clear that @TokenLogic contributors @MatthewGraham and @Dydymoon, who were working on the Staking Module upgrade for @Llamaxyz, are moving forward under a different flag. This complicates things because based on initial discussions that the @XenophonLabs team had with @HelloShreyas, they agreed on a collaborative path forward, whereas discussions with Matthew and Dydy were a bit more argumentative. This is likely worsened by the fact that getting funding from the Aave DAO has become competitive, and @TokenLogic is now pursuing funding from the Aave DAO and listing their work on “Safety Module Improvements” under their current and future work streams. So I’m assuming they feel somewhat territorial regarding the Safety Module.

Conclusion
I attempted to communicate clearly with all engaged members of the DAO and get their thoughts before ever approving a grant for any research on the Safety Module. I hope the outline of events above makes it evident how difficult navigating DAO contributors and politics can be, expecting no overlap or perfect efficiency in contributions is too idealistic. Furthermore, in my opinion, no one entity should have an unchallenged monopoly on a work stream.

TL;DR
While I agree that duplicate efforts (e.g. building the same tool twice) should not be funded, I think that funding competing ideas is important and should be encouraged such that the Aave protocol doesn’t settle for suboptimal or noncompetitive services.

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Well, in that specific case, I would say the problem is for Llama to agree on “collaborating” with a grantee when there was a paid mandate from the Aave DAO for them to do the same.

Regarding my feedback on the item, I actually had/have no criticism of what Xenophon Labs delivered, as it was quality work. When I was asked about it, I just mentioned that their proposal was reasonable.
However, pointing to feedback from contributors like myself or @MarcZeller as some kind of “well, it is your fault”, just tries to create some scapegoat: let’s be clear, same as by participating on this thread, I give feedback to anybody on the ecosystem when I was asked for a matter of community collaboration, but I have no obligation to.

Regarding duplication of scopes, it simply makes no sense because the vast majority of people involved in the process have 0 skin in the game. That creates a situation in which everybody is happy with it because the consequences are only for the DAO.
Additionally, I don’t think anybody voted for AGD to decide on high-level duplication or not of scopes; definitely not me.

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Thanks for the feedback @eboado and @MarcZeller. I’ll outline two major changes AGD will make to this proposal and then address the more pointed questions and feedback.

Events Separation

After speaking with @AaveLabs - they are okay to move forward with a proposal covering the work outlined under the Events & Sponsorship Budget and beyond. As such, we will remove this from the scope of this proposal and AGD will only focus on the activities outlined under the Grants Budget.

This will remove the Events & Sponsorship Budget ask from the proposal. We will also reallocate the Digital Marketing spend that was proposed to be carried forward.

@TokenLogic - AGD will switch the AAVE portion of funding to stables to be in line with some other Service Providers. We agree supporting GHO’s price stability is important and will pledge to convert a portion of the stables holdings to GHO as mentioned. We appreciate your overall support for AGD and look forward to collaborating more in the future.

Based on the above, the new ask for this proposal is:

  • $400k in ARB
  • $328k increase in stablecoin allowance

Refocus Grants Funding & Introduce $20k Max Grant Size

Given the market conditions and feedback, lower grant sizes makes sense. This is something that has already been reflected in AGD’s activity as the average grant size awarded so far in 2023 is 52.8% lower than the average grant size awarded during 2022. This shift can be made more explicit by introducing a new $20k max grant size for all grants. AGD will double down on supporting thousands of new teams and developers to build on top of Aave and GHO by helping to kickstart their growth with small grants.

I’m sorry to hear that it’ll be difficult for you to work with me in the future. I hope the continued success of AGD will change your mind and we can still maintain a working relationship.

It’s important to note that Request for Grants is meant to be more general and focused on higher level areas and impacts AGD is interested in. The idea is to balance giving direction to builders (e.g. apps driving GHO demand) with ensuring the team is still in full control of the vision and creativity behind the project.

We did reach out to other Service Providers for input. We don’t agree with the negative perspective surrounding engaging with other Service Providers, and believe collaboration with other teams is beneficial for all. If it is a personal concern relating to myself, perhaps we can have a different point of contact for AGD and BGD.

Currently, we help grantees amplify their messaging or updates on social media (X, Lens, Mirror, Substack) and host Spaces/AMAs to engage with the Aave ecosystem around large updates from grantees. AGD also empowers grantees to leverage the “Aave Grantee” brand and funding as a stamp of approval to increase their reputation.

More can always be done to support the exposure and distribution of different grants we award and is something we will continue exploring.

We are open to receiving funding exclusively in stables or other tokens. The reason we proposed ARB is that AGD was mentioned multiple times in the conversation around how the Aave DAO should deploy the ARB and is in line with the community’s preference to use the ARB in multiple ways.

The OP was received based on an application that was made to Optimism and outlined spending the OP to grow the Aave Optimism ecosystem.

Being able to interact with the real world is only one of the motivations behind establishing an entity. The main thing is having legal protections and clarity for contributors. The legal entity itself was mentioned and included as an explicit budget item in our last proposal.

If there is demand from the community to have a say into operational decisions of AGD then we can clearly outline all the information and present it on the forum in a separate proposal and let the community make the decision via Snapshot.

We agree that quality is more important than quantity. AGD certainly did not fall victim to the mindset of “spend this budget or risk a reduced budget next quarter” as we presented this proposal with a large surplus compared to what was previously budgeted. That said, we can understand the concern and although it is not how the KPIs were envisioned we will remove these KPIs from the proposal.

I want to clarify that based on my experience, I would expect a new budget proposal from @AaveLabs to be larger than what is outlined in the Events & Sponsorships Budget. Historically, AGD has likely underpaid based on the quality of work received. I believe providing fair compensation for the work is part of the desire behind this change.

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23

Just to clarify, I don’t think there’s a fault here. It’s still my understanding that the direction @MatthewGraham and @Dydymoon are taking things is not the exact same direction that @XenophonLabs wants to take things. So from my perspective, it wasn’t funding the same work. It’s funding competing ideas that impact the same Staking Module.

I just don’t want to see a world where “Provider A” has full authority on “Module X”, and funding for “Provider B” isn’t allowed to allocated to an idea that impacts “Module X” because it would challenge “Provider A”. This is what I’m pushing back on. Nothing else.

The context I provided in my prior reply was to illustrate how difficult it can be to determine what is duplicating work vs. not.

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Hello, the ACI has no additional remarks or concerns with the AGD proposal in its current state and will support the proposal.

I look forward to continuing working with AGD.

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Thanks Marc. AGD will share an updated post on the forum and move to Snapshot.

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