240620-0800_ UAGP update (Uniswap-Arbitrum Grants Program)

APLsdcOttr13min

Alex Lumley, Savvy DeFi

00:02

It's now recording.

Speaker 1

00:06

Amazing. Thank you for your help there, Alex, appreciate that. So yeah, appreciate your guys's patience as we sort of sorted through the technical difficulties there at the start. For for those of you who are still with us, I'll just quickly run through a little bit of context on sort of how the spaces came about, and what we hope to get out of it. So to start off, we wanted to take a moment about a month ago in our in the USGP, at sort of a midway point, to reflect on the program and gather insights from the participants who are closest to us. And also, from anyone who came in conversation with you sort of had touch points with the UAE GP, to dig and see if there were really any gaps that we were missing within the ground within the operations that, you know, we didn't see as program managers that needed to be filled. So we spoke with delegates, you know, applicants, grantees, of course, and really anyone in our sphere, we came across some conversations on the ground or in calls, who hadn't known about the IGP, or who had more involvement in new IGP, and had opinions that would sort of help us inform how we were doing. Obviously, we feel like this is an important part of the process. And getting direct reflections from the people on this tradition faces today would be would be super helpful. So that's sort of one of the insights that we hope to get out. Just in terms of the agenda, we're first going to talk about some of the learnings that we've had recently, and we've shared some of these on the UniSwap forum already, I'll run through them and just give a little bit of a verbal overlay. And then we'll talk about the Midway survey that we did with the grantees and the USGP. And just really quickly gloss over some of the high level takeaways from that exercise. And then finally, and obviously, maybe one of the most important parts is we'll open the floor for questions and and feedback on the program. Yeah, I guess maybe just without any further ado, hopping into the learning. So these are some of the, you know, the takeaways and the learning points that came honestly from from different MCs, within our operation and from a handful of different places. And we chose these ones in particular, because we feel like these are some of the more tangible learnings that are important to share with the community. And you know, hopefully, if anyone else is running a grant program and listens to this recording, or is just interested in how grant programs work in web three, specifically, cross ecosystem grant programs, which we hope are going to be bigger and more prevalent going forward, they can take something away for their own practices. So the first is just reporting alignment. Originally, when we when we set out with the UNDP, it was a six month program, and we decided on trying to report every month, we we realized that sort of through the processes of work, like running this monthly reporting. And given the focus of the UNDP on projects that are building more sustainably and building for a longer term focus, we realized that the longer feedback, feedback loops associated with these projects meant that there weren't many updates, many salient details to report on a monthly basis. And because of that, we felt like a you know, requiring projects to report in the depth of detail that we think is important to convey to the dowel in terms of transparency, we decided to switch to bi monthly reporting, which allows grantees more focus more time to focus on their core work and build out their projects. And then, and also it reduces the risk of burnout for the people consuming in the reporting. So whether it's delegates or just anyone in the community who is interested in keeping track of the progress of the grantees. The second piece of the second learning rather, is the unique position, or the wage gap as a cross ecosystem grant program means that we're not only just looking at projects, which worked in both ecosystems, but also sort of playing within the infrastructure of both ecosystems. Meaning that you know, sort of navigating the different infrastructures ecosystem, both infrastructures and UniSwap, and Arbitrum. And obviously, with UniSwap, it's a little bit more straightforward. There's Aaron from the New South Foundation who handles grants. But when you look at Arbitrum, it's obviously a little bit a little bit busier with a handful of different grant programs run by a handful of different people, and all sort of focused on slightly different but sometimes overlapping areas. So grantee, it can be difficult to you know, navigate in code, but also a grant managers perspective, it's hard to know which program or which projects are sort of applying where and and because of this, we decided to put together a cross ecosystem grant sort of alignment channel with all these different parties. And we found it really useful to sort of identify any of the gaps and make sure nothing and no project or anyone slips through the cracks. And also it's been quite helpful in stopping any double funding You're sort of mitigating, you know, project being funded by three different grant programs just because there was no communication between them.

Speaker 1

05:07

On top of that, it's also been a very helpful practice for sort of sense checking operations for all of us and, and really aligning on best practices across all these different programs. There's been lots of valuable learning sharing there. The third piece, and I'll start to move through this a little bit quicker now is providing specific evaluation feedback. So this is a learning that came out of some of the discussions with prospective USGP applicants, and was specifically more focused on feedback towards, you know, assessment decisions made by the US up so while before, we had always readily provided feedback upon request regarding our assessment decisions, and provide a transparency into the rubric that was used to grade these projects, who had asked for capacity reasons, it just wasn't feasible. To do this. For every project given, you know, we're now sitting at over 140 applications and programming total. But you know, sort of through our conversations and appreciating the applicant perspective more, and realizing the opportunity to also help all of the applicants sort of regardless of if we ended up funding them or not, we now provide detailed feedback based on our rubric to every applicant. So everyone who applies sort of regardless if we accept them or not reserve great is on the on the for assessment rubric, like sort of categories for the UA GP, and you send this over with a grade and sort of a general comment. And hopefully, this helps, you know, helps them build in the right direction and sets them up for to receive funding down the line, if that's something that's still important to them. The fourth and final learning I'll share before going into the Midway survey is, you know, largely as is the nature with cross ecosystem grant programs, there's a large range of projects that can sort of fall under the scope. And this was something that we were really intentional about. And through our RFP and application flow design, we tried initially at our best to reflect this and keep it open ended as to not exclude any of the projects, you know, sort of, just by dint of design of the program, of course, it's a little bit of an impossible task. And we received some feedback from people trying to go through the application process that it was a little bit difficult to fit their project specifically into, you know, the application questions. So, because of that, and then taking some specific feedback points from anyone who was willing to share, we use the opportunity of our extension, which happened about one or so months ago, to simplify our questions and really streamline them in a way that has helped we believe has helped make this process a little bit more open and and streamlined for all applicants. So I'll pause there before before heading into the Midway survey, which sort of follows along the same lines as the learnings and our objective being at the midway point to get a sense of how we were doing, get insights into any gaps in our program. And obviously, you know, sort of the grantees of our program are ones with some of the highest context on sort of how we're doing into the nitty gritty of our operations. And also, we distributed a survey to nine approved grantees at a time. And this is about one or so months ago, now, maybe one and a half months ago. And I think, you know, an important caveat at this moment is obviously, people tend to be biased towards the people giving the money and funding their projects. So yeah, please just take all of these outcomes that I'll share with it with this with a grain of salt. And again, I won't dive too much into detail if you're interested to read through the surveys all on the UniSwap forum. But basically, just as I've been talking for a while the grantees have ranked there's a faction within the program really highly as 9.2 out of 10. And given the feedback we received, this is largely due to sort of the strength of communication from the program, as well as a general alignment with their expectations and sort of the hopes that they wish to get out of the program. Perhaps the most important metric for us of all of these, the one we tracked is all of the survey grantees rank, their willingness to recommend the program to their peers, and to their colleagues as a 9.8 out of 10. So I think a strong indication of this, we felt of sort of how we were how we were progressing at the time. So I mean, like I said, if you're interested in reading more about the survey, it's all on the forum. And also, we're open to answer any questions that you may have. And I know I've been talking for a while now. And I realized we had some delays, which sort of pushed the timing of this back. And we're sort of coming up on time. So I want to give them enough time for the AMA and feedback portion. And just quickly to contextualize this section of discussion. So it would be great sort of as a sample of those in some way interested or involved in the raise up to have your opinions, your feedback, or your questions about the USGP. And maybe beyond that. We'd be curious to hear what you field is important to you about the UA GP or even more generally, about grad programs in this industry. And anyway, with that, I'll turn the floor over, just feel free to request to speak, and I'll give you the opportunity. But yeah, thank you for listening.

Alex Lumley, Savvy DeFi

10:24

So I'll just say I'm, I'm looking at the USG up from there, like for my protocol Savvy, as well as a few protocols that I'm advising. And honestly, I think it sounds like you guys have done a good job like a great job. I've only been looking into it for the past few days, and I've really heard about you. But in my, there's a lot of information to go into. And to dive into. From my perspective, I'm just trying to figure out okay, how do I best understand what Savvy can do what these other companies can do? And how does it overlap with like, what you AGP is doing, and I really appreciate how much reporting you guys have done. And it helps me understand what you guys care about, and then how that maps to what is on our roadmap and where there's overlap. So I honestly wish more more grant programs were as communicative of you as as you are, in terms of what they like and what they don't like, and the reasoning. So it's been very helpful, even even for a future applicant.

Speaker 1

11:24

Amazing, yeah. Thank you for that feedback, I think, yeah, sort of highlighted that through the discussion is, it is a little bit difficult just by being across ecosystem grant program as well, you know, projects who maybe strictly focused on UniSwap are strictly focused on Arbitrum or some degree in between those two has come to us with sort of questions about where do I fit into these RFPs. So yeah, well, as you mentioned, we're always happy to hop on telegram or hop on a call and answer any specific questions and maybe do some shaping around the applications obviously it's not possible with all applications but as a as a friend of the program, feel free to reach out

Speaker 1

12:08

if there's any other questions, feel free your feedback feel free to raise your hand otherwise Bernie I'm not sure if you had anything to add to the discussion

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