Disclaimer: Current AGD reviewer, started the OG Aave grants program, previously dev at Aave genesis team. I speak in a personal capacity having been in the grants space and involved in the Aave ecosystem for a few years.
Interesting proposal and discussion (especially the first time posters coming in on this thread!). I’ll try to be clear and up front:
- The proposal and discussion leads me to believe that the OP has never run a grants program, participated in a grants program, or evaluated early stage projects (at scale).
- The suggestions in the proposal sound logical (and academic), and lack some real world experience of what the impacts or benefits of the proposal would bring.
- However there are some interesting points that could be seen as feedback for AGD, which I’m sure will be taken into account by various people.
If we put aside events and merch funding for a second, Grants funding is about providing support to projects and services that help grow the Aave ecosystem. It is not about transparency or ‘decentralisation’ of the process or to have every community member evaluating every project that comes into the pipeline. Grants funding is about providing support to projects, and in turn, helps grow the Aave ecosystem. Due to the nature of grant funding, a lot of the projects are speculative. Yes, some projects may not become successful, but they still add to the ecosystem via knowledge, sometimes open source code, and general awareness. It is easy to retroactively call a grant ‘bad’ when the project has already failed, but it is much more difficult to evaluate projects and support them when their success is not so clear. This requires expertise and experience from the reviewers, who need to evaluate it independently in a non-political manner, without the noise from potential ‘lobbying’ or perceived transparency of a ‘360’ view.
A well functioning grants team only works well if the team is nimble, can move fast, and act independently. Less (processes) is better in this case.
Transparency comes into play during the renewal of AGD’s budget, which Bill (and previously Shreyas) have done a great job with on the forums. If there is more transparency of AGD’s spending or processes, then it should be asked/enquired about at these times. More information while AGD is executing is not necessarily helpful or beneficial for the community, as it creates distractions and requires context and explanations, which would further distract the AGD team and community. Too many chefs in the kitchen… etc
Having said that, OP brings up an important point about reviewer terms. I’m supportive of some type of evaluation of reviewers and more involvement from qualified community members. This, however, is a nuanced topic as has already been mentioned by others (knowledge, expertise, experience, etc). Decentralisation is a progressive process, and like the Aave DAO itself, AGD should be progressively decentralised slowly and purposefully. Adding or removing reviewers, or changing the process of how that is done, should definitely become more clearer for everyone, but it shouldn’t be rushed. I would support a pilot program of bringing on 2-3 reviewers via a new process.
Last point about Questbook (or any other grants software): OP has shilled Questbook to other communities so that makes me question their underlying motives and interests. Besides AGD having already tried Questbook and deciding not to continue with it, why would AGD use an on-chain grants platform? OP mentions Snapshot and other tools, but those tools solve actual real world problems for the DAO. Questbook doesn’t solve any problems for the DAO (although it may for other orgs), and just adds further complexity.
AGD has great custom tooling built in-house. There is no need for extra complexity and layers to be added to the process, let alone extra expenditures. The custom tooling already enables a lot of transparency, as can be seen on Funded grants. If more info on grants is needed, I’m sure the AGD team could implement it, since it is custom tooling and they can move really fast.