Quick Grants

Overview

These are small seed or experimentation grants to support builders and contributors who have ideas on how to help realize the priorities of POKT Network. Innovation in POKT should as much as possible be permissionless.

Quick Grants (formerly known as Sockets) are open to anyone in our community with initiatives that have measurable outcomes for which we can hold them accountable. They are meant to get contributors to focus on what really matters - generating impact through work and execution.

Quick Grants are spun up quickly to support action and experimentation, and are wound down just as quickly once they stop generating ROI for the DAO, or the experiment has concluded.

Request a Quick Grant

Join the POKT Discourse forum and publish your Quick Grant proposal as a +new topic under the Build/Quick Grants category. Community members will likely provide feedback.

Grant proposals must support one of the 5 Ambitions of the latest DAO Era. In addition, your proposal must set out the following:

  1. How it supports our 2024 ambitions.

  2. The expected impact; it's against this that you'll assess the success of your work when you self-report to the community.

  3. Description of your planned work and any previous work relevant to your ability to execute your proposal.

  4. Requested value of grant: (this will be set/approved by PNF)

    • Trial: $500 for a short trial

    • Experiment/Initiative: $1-2K, reviewed and paid reviewed monthly for the life of the experiment

    • Immediate Impact: $2-4k, reviewed and paid monthly for the life of the experiment

  5. Link to where your work will be stored or reported (Notion, Github or in your forum topic thread)

  6. POKT Wallet address for payments

  7. ETH Wallet address for stables stream

You can learn more about Quick Grants and the broader "Grants, Rewards, Opportunities & Work" (GROW) program where they originated here.

Quick Grants - Mechanism Details

  1. Quick Grants are fully self-directed.

  • Quick Grant applicants must be able to complete their work without PNF assistance, or where the work is contingent on others, applicants must ensure their cooperation before applying.

  • Quick Grant recipients must be able to fulfill their commitments each month. This can be a challenge - being self-directed is not for everyone. Where necessary, they can get help from others, but they should not expect any from PNF (though PNF will lend support where it can).

  1. Quick Grants need regular reporting and regular reviews to be effective

  • PNF uses a new impact evaluation and reporting tool called Karma Gap. Grant recipients are asked to open a grant in Karma here to track their work. Please follow the step-by-step instructions here to add your grant to the POKT Community in Karma GAP.

  • Contributors whose Quick Grants are approved before the 25th of the month must self-report by the last day of the same month. Failure to do so will result in automatic closure of the grant during the review cycle.

  • PNF’s Head of Community will review all Quick Grants during the first full week of every month and leave an update in the forum.

  • PNF will close Quick Grants that are not delivering impact, or reduce funding where impact falls short.

  1. Your historical impact (aka reputation) affects payment structure:

  • If you’re new to the ecosystem or have no proof of previous impact, your first payment will be made after your first successful monthly Quick Grant review, that is, where your work is found to have had the promised impact. Failure to report will result in automatic closure of the grant and no payment will be made.

  • If there is no impact, your Quick Grant may be closed and a one-time payment may or may not be made at the discretion of PNF. The goal is to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of the system, but at the same time not discourage innovation and experimentation.

  • Upon first successful review, you’ll move to the same payment mode as other contributors: a daily payment stream from the DAO that continues until the Quick Grant is closed. The first payment, however, will be in wPOKT.

  1. The value of a Quick Grant is evaluated and approved by the Foundation. We want to ensure that the value is in line with the expected impact.

  • Quick Grant applicants should suggest a pay rate for their Quick Grant, though PNF will have the final say. If PNF balks at the suggested rate, the applicant is free to negotiate or withdraw.

  1. Quick Grants will start on the 1st and 15th of the month, and will be paid in stables. It can take PNF up to about five days to set up a new grant.

For a good example of a Quick Grant, with reporting and community feedback, see the POKTNews Socket.

We're looking at ways to better evaluate impact, so please stay tuned as we explore other tools for measuring, transparency and accountability.

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