MolochDAO Grants June 2022
Learn about the grantees!
Coordination isn’t the sacrificial fire, it’s the cool water dousing the flames. Lets remove the offerings upon Moloch’s altar and make use of them.
Throughout April and May, we saw another successful MolochDAO grant round. Congratulations to all recipients! We appreciate everyone who came to the forums to submit a proposal and all community members who engaged in the discussions.
The next grant round is scheduled for early August, so get something good together. Bring us delights about Ethereum and coordination and slaying Moloch, so we can give you some of this ETH.
Below are grant descriptions from the proposals. The links will bring you to the grant proposals in the forum, where you can find all the other goodies, like scope details, cost breakdowns, team lists, community discussions, and project links.
DAOStar One
A group of DAO folks from Aragon, Moloch, Gnosis, Abridged, Tally, and Metagov were chatting at MCON 2021 and someone asked, “wait, hasn’t someone already built a standard for DAOs?” When we realized that the answer was “no”, we decided to start building it. The roundtable emerged out of the effort to build the standard.
There are lots of reasons for a DAO standard. The current EIP working paper outlines a DAO URI and JSON schema, similar to tokenURI, with several immediate use-cases, including DAO discoverability, legibility, and proposal simulation. Additional working groups within DAOstar One focus on multi-chain standards and on identity within DAOs.
DAOstar One, as an organization, is committed to producing, governing, and supporting interoperable standards for the DAO ecosystem. As a neutral industry body, it also supports education and research around DAO use-cases, the development of DAO reference implementations, and other public goods within the DAO ecosystem as called for by its member organizations. We built it to house the first DAO standard, but we believe it has an important role in coordinating the fast-growing DAO ecosystem.
Smart Invoice
Smart Invoice builds trust between payer and payee by creating a secure neutral channel for transferring money. The payer proves their commitment by locking money in the contract, and controls when it is released to the payee. No middle party, no leap of faith, and you don’t even have to use the word escrow if you don’t want to.
Several RaidGuild members built the current beta version of this tool for use internally in our DAO. Since that version, we have expanded its use for all of our client work and it has become an integral tool of our operations.
Our goal is to expand and improve upon the existing internal tool and create a tool of global utility that will facilitate workflow and ease of client/provider interactions for the greater Web3 freelance community.
This proposal is to fund the necessary tasks to move Smart Invoice out of beta and make it more accessible to all freelancers and DAOs.
Ethereum Cat Herders
Ethereum Cat Herders is a group of individuals, working together to support the Ethereum core developers and the larger Ethereum ecosystem with research, project management and other aspects of communication and coordination. Recently we celebrated Ethereum Cat Herder’s 3rd Anniversary.
A summary of tasks performed in the year 2021 is published as Review 2021: The Ethereum Cat Herders.
ECH is the only working group whose primary focus is coordination and project management around the Ethereum protocol. It also acts as an onboarding resource for newcomers who wish to contribute to the community.
Black Sky Nexus
We are currently a small collective of writers, researchers, artists, and technologists who are launching Black Sky Nexus, an open-source wiki and zine, for the purpose of developing relevant resources to promote greater engagement and community around the following topics: large-scale networks of cooperation; open-source resources for new crypto explorers; the role of technology and privacy in the evolution of human rights; how crypto can benefit the arts and vice versa; new modalities for healing the ecosphere; humanity’s relationship with the cosmos.
In seeking funding for Moloch DAO, we would like to receive funding to create 3 research reports and 3 articles/guides.
Reports:
- Recommended Ecosystem Action Items for Greater Privacy in Ethereum
- Development Guide to Increase Decentralization of Crypto Tools and Maintain Cypherpunk Roots
- Blockchain Network Decentralization Rating
Articles/Guides:
- How to anonymously contribute to a DAO
- Privacy considerations for transacting in cryptocurrency
- Survey of zero-knowledge cryptocurrency protocols, apps, and tools
Mycelium Research
Mycelium Research currently has a tab on the Mycelium website that is devoted to long-form educational resources that walk the reader through the difficult details of various topics. The aim of these articles is to be the one-stop shop for explanations of a particular topic. All of the articles are written by a researcher who thoroughly understands the topic, and is accompanied by illustrations and FAQs.
Each of the articles that are written will contain extensive technical explanations, accompanying illustrations, and a frequently asked questions section.
We are taking a strong position again hand waving away the details that are difficult to explain. We won’t write about a topic until we have a very strong understanding of the content.
Apache Tuweni
Apache Tuweni is an Apache Foundation software project which defines multiple libraries for Ethereum and Secure Scuttlebutt. Tuweni has an Ethereum client in the works.
Last year, Tuweni benefited from a grant from MolochDAO to develop a JSON-RPC proxy server. This year, Tuweni is closer to becoming compatible with mainnet, with its own EVM, its own blockchain repository, and its ability to sync.
ReallyBoringGuild
Grant Operations: yep, that’s us, the vampire bats, locked in the cellar, and the ones getting this blog out to you.
If you would like to know more about MolochDAO grants, please see the handbook or join us in the Discord.
