Community Grant Committee Election

[sicco-moonbeam]

The Revised Grant Program called for the continuation of the Community Grants Committee, with its own separate budget. The August Committee update has highlighted the work the committee has done since the Revised Grant Program was launched. At the same time, the committee was put in place for a 6 month term and that term is now coming to an end.

As explained in the Revised Grant Program, the non-Foundation members are compensated for their role (which is a significant time commitment). While the existing non-Foundation members have done amazing work; other people have expressed an interest in participating in the committee as well; and in the interest of decentralization and transparency, it would be best that the non-Foundation members are elected.

Grant Committee Election

The current committee consists of 5 community members:

• 2 Foundation Community Grants Committee Members

• 3 Non-Foundation Community Grants Committee Members

The proposal is to hold elections for the 3 non-Foundation committee members, and that the following election process be followed:

Election process:

• There are 3 positions that non-Foundation committee members can fill:

  • Technical expert: an individual with applicable skills in blockchain development, solidity programming, security auditing, tokenomics analysis, and understanding of decentralized protocols and consensus mechanisms.

  • Ecosystem expert: a member from either the collator community or someone actively building a dApp on the Moonbeam ecosystem and familiar with the dApps, bridges, dexes, lending protocols, games, NFT marketplaces in the Moonbeam ecosystem and capable of identifying gaps.

  • Business expert: An individual with applicable skills in evaluating financial performance, market position, competitive advantage, project team composition, and growth potential.

• Anyone interested in participating should create a “Grant Committee Candidacy” post on the Grant Proposals forum, by September 22, 03:00PM UTC and following the format outlined below.

• This includes the 3 existing non-Foundation members.

• The community will have 1 week to provide feedback on the candidacy posts and ask additional questions of the applicants (September 29, 03:00PM UTC).

• A weighted snapshot vote will be organized starting October 2nd at 03:00PM UTC and ending on October 9th at 03:00PM UTC.

• The vote will include any eligible candidate that applied for any of the 3 positions.

• The candidate that receives the highest weighted vote for each position will be inaugurated into the Committee

Format

The post should use the following format:

• Name: Name or identity of the applicant

• Timezone: Timezone applicant resides in normally

• English Language proficiency: English language proficiency (based on the IRL scale)

• Committee Position: The position they’re applying for

• Qualifications: Qualifications and experience applicable for the position they’re applying to

• Background: Moonbeam background and track record

• Code of Conduct: Applicants should affirm that they are in good standing in the community and will commit to upholding the code of conduct.

• Experience: Practical examples of being able to remain an impartial arbitrator

• Motivation: Motivation for applying

• Conflicts of interest: Disclose any potential conflicts of interests they may have that could impact them evaluating certain types of proposals

• Availability: How much time you can commit to the committee (anyone unable to commit a minimum of 10 hours will be automatically disqualified) and whether you have any general restrictions that would get in the way of attending regular meetings.

• Supporting information: Any other supporting information

Eligibility Criteria

• Eligible applicants need to match the following two criteria:

  • Minimum IRL 3 proficiency in English

  • Capable of spending the minimum of 10 hours per week

Trust level 2 on the Moonbeam forums is recommended but not required.

Term:

Committee Members will serve until a new election is held. A new election will be held no later than March 31st, 2024.

Compensation:

Non-Foundation Community Grants Committee Members will be compensated $2500.00 USD monthly for services provided to the committee.

[flyingguineapig]

Regarding the “Trust Level 2” on the Moonbeam forums eligibility criteria:

This is a way of selecting people that are involved in the Moonbeam ecosystem and trustworthy. This is a great criteria, but how about expanding this to either a high Forum trustlevel or another recognition of participation like a (senior) ambassadorship. This would open the doors for active members that might not have participated yet on the forms, but did participate in different ways in the ecosystem. This way we maintain the criteria result, but we might expand the possible participants in the vote.

I would love to hear thoughts on the idea.

(I’am myself an example of someone who would benefit from this change, so I will be biased. That is why I would like it to hear if other people agree with this idea)

[turrizt]

hey flyingguineapig, great to see you here! I truly believe that it’s the duty of a senior ambassadors to be actively involved in the forum. after all, it’s where all the essential info about the network’s updates and happenings is consolidated. so, if a senior ambassador hasn’t reached Level 2 on the forum, it might be worth questioning how actively senior ambassador is contributing to the network’s development

[sicco-moonbeam]

I think @turrizt 's comment about ambassadors being active on the forums is a fair one - I definitely agree with that feedback. That being said, we’ve had a number of people reaching out indicating the TrustLevel 2 is preventing them from applying and we do want to see more candidates apply; so we’re going to drop that requirement.

[jose.crypto]

certainly not everyone participates in the forum although many can give their opinion in other ways (tg, discord, calls)

so given the low participation, yes I think it would be good to remove the trust level requirement

although it would be good if the candidates became more active since then

[Lordglmr]

I think we need stricter requirements for this critical role, including Trust Level 2 and additional criteria for the next election.
It’s worth brainstorming.

[sicco-moonbeam]

The snapshot vote for the Community Grant Committee election is now live; you can find it here:

https://snapshot.org/#/moonbeam-foundation.eth/proposal/0xd33a117265301c7bef3e51d5ce4aca3b6fb5de6bb1dcde1d786dd34dceacbc2a

The vote will be open starting October 2nd at 03:00PM UTC and ending on October 9th at 03:00PM UTC.