Moonbeam Grants Committee Community Update - October 2024

Governance
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Hi everyone,

I’m here with your grants committee community update. Hope you enjoy and please feedback, especially if you want to see improvements.

The newly elected Grants Committee began its term on October 1st. I want to cover specific details about the process leading up to the committee’s launch. For more information on the election and overall process, check out this forum post on the Season 5 Grant Committee Election.

In the new season (Season 5, with each season running for six months), I was elected as the Ecosystem & Community Relations Expert. This role adds special responsibilities to my standard committee duties, particularly around using communication tools to increase community transparency on committee activities. You can expect at least one forum post like this each month, along with additional community engagement—such as participation in this Moonbeam Governance call on grant committee activities.

Before we dive into October’s activities, please feel free to comment if there’s something specific you’d like to know or see from me. Your feedback will help us improve our communication by highlighting the topics you care about.

What Happened in October?

Team News
Every new season starts with onboarding for new committee members and discussions on recent process changes. We welcomed several returning faces, including myself (Jim Farley), Rafael, Marin, and OnlyDeFiGuy. Additionally, we added two new committee members with extensive ecosystem, community, and technical experience: Neal and Code. These new members adapted quickly, and if you haven’t already, take a moment to view their backgrounds in the links above.

The committee also includes three Moonbeam Foundation members who provide guidance, enhance diligence in grant selection, and offer leadership through Sicco from the Moonbeam Foundation.

This season brings several process improvements to enhance the grant selection and implementation process. As an example, in the previous season, all members were required to attend every proposal call with applicants. While this gave everyone a strong understanding of each project, it sometimes delayed application processing. To address this, this season has two teams of three community members each, assigned to separate calls and balanced by their strengths, ensuring a mix of experience on each call.

Every call will also include at least one, but usually 2-3 of the Foundation committee members, and the amount of time and effort that Sicco, Thiago, and Prassana put into the workings of the committee can’t be overstated – it is truly deserving of admiration. The new adjustments have worked well so far, and the Friday review calls which all members attend have become more dynamic, as each team is eager to learn about projects discussed on the other call.

Grant Review Process
Not every grant application reaches a full committee review, which includes a one-hour call. Applications undergo an initial screening to halt projects that are deemed needing further development and this is handled outside of the committee. Also, for these updates I will refrain from giving the specific names of rejected projects or approved ones that are still in the milestone agreement and contracting phase.

For projects that aren’t yet ready for grants, we encourage further development in the Moonbeam ecosystem and find that publicly naming them at an early stage may be discouraging and work against this development. For approved projects, we hold back names until formal agreements are in place to avoid disrupting the process and so that they can focus on the critical, immediate steps.

Projects Reviewed in October and Outcomes (Where Applicable)

  • DeFi / RWA – A dApp platform offering European investors frictionless options for investing in Latin America. This grant was not approved, though the committee encouraged them to continue building on Moonbeam to realize their vision.
  • NFT – A marketplace aimed at decentralizing property development and construction projects with lenders. This grant was not approved, but the team was encouraged to continue building on Moonbeam.
  • Gaming – A multi-chain, story-based clicker game adding a Web3 twist. The committee decided to not approve this grant and urged the team to explore further Web3 integrations in the game.
  • DeFi – A decentralized infrastructure platform focused on automated liquidity management and reward distribution for DeFi protocols. This grant was approved, as the committee felt it would complement existing DeFi teams within the ecosystem while building its own traction. Milestones have been agreed upon, and you’ll hear more from me about them soon. [S5A]

These are all the projects for October, and keep in mind that the first and last month are typically slower due to outgoing and incoming committees. On completion of the first week of November, we’ve already reviewed or scheduled more than the total in October.

If you’re a grant committee applicant or interested in learning more, please leave a comment here, and I’ll follow up. More updates next month, including some surprises so keep reading and commenting on the Grant Committee updates…

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Thanks for this ETA :slight_smile:

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hey Jim, thanks a lot for the update! the community has really been waiting for updates like this!

it would be awesome to hear how past grant recipients are performing, especially if any projects are close to launching or have reached milestones that could drive demand to Moonbeam

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Jim, this is a very engaging write-up! Thank you for sharing the processes behind the scenes - onboarding new members, welcoming a new MBF member, division of labour among the committee - all very informative. Thank you!

I’m wondering if projects that were not approved would come back with the feedbacks incorporated into their products. Have you had such cases when a team listened to what the Committee had to say and come back saying “Here, we did what you suggested. Give us a grant!” :laughing: I think I would have done that, haha!

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Thanks for the feedback @turrizt. I’ll catch up with @melissa_crypto so that I don’t front-run anything, but I do have some teams in mind. This also will take a little coordination with them, too, and I think something good can be added to future posts. Great suggestion.

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Hi @lina.k.m thanks for the feedback! I think there may have been one or two in the past 2.5 years, but honestly I can’t think of anything off of the top of my head. Typically, what happens is the committee will feedback “the milestones aren’t right, we would like to approve it but we need to align on <x,y,z>” and the teams are pretty good about working together to find common ground. I’ll check with some other folks if there have been any flat out rejections that came back.

The truth is it can be hard for teams to receive a rejection, understandably because most are very personally invested in their projects, and when they move on I don’t think they really look back.

There are some instances where teams continue to build on Moonbeam even after being declined for a grant, and in my opinion these are some of the most committed teams in the ecosystem. I would love it if they were to prove the committee wrong (and still build a successful project on Moonbeam).

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