This post is meant to reflect on my time in the Grant Committee and help provide some insight for anyone interested.
The last 6 months I was part of the Moonbeam Grant Committee as a non Foundation Member. This was the first time I ever participated in anything like this. I originally learned about the Committee while applying to it ourselves as Evrloot and was quickly surprised by the professionalism we encountered. Anyone building in Web3 can quickly attest, how chaotic and unreliable alot of teams and big companies can be. Our interactions with Moonbeam have always been flawless though, really showing the dedication and passion the whole team puts into this!
So when @0x_thiago asked me, if I was interested in applying for the Technical Expert position, I didn’t hesitate for long and jumped in.
The only thing I see room for improvement in, is the election process. While I don’t have a proposal for the perfect solution, I see the weaknesses in it. It doesn’t really matter how competent or qualified you are (it does to a certain degree of course) it mostly matters how well connected you are and if you can rally enough people with big enough GLMR bags to vote for you.
On the one hand this obviously means that you have a certain reputation in the space and there are people that believe in and trust you, on the other hand, it makes it almost impossible for anyone from the outside or not well known to get into the Committee and I am a big proponent of different perspectives and opinions.
One solution could be the Foundation setting quotas. E.g. One person outside of the Moonbeam Ecosystem has to be part in each iteration of the Committee.
Another one could be that the Foundation reserves the right to straight up select one non Foundation member themselves (this obviously opens up another can of worms, but you get the point).
So how was it being part of the actual Committee?
I genuinely enjoyed the day to day of being a part of the Committee alot. It mostly consists of doing due diligence on projects that applied and having the actual calls, where you get to ask questions and poke holes.
On Fridays we would meet up and discuss how we felt about the the calls of the week before we would take anonymous votes on the proposals.
@siccomoonbeam and @0x_thiago created an incredible environment for discussion and you could feel that they were genuinely interested in the input of everybody in the Committee.
It’s incredibly interesting and insightful seeing who applies to the Committee and where the general sentiment of the Ecosystem is moving towards.
I was surprised by how much is going on behind closed curtains and how much effort and time the Foundation spends on creating an environment where teams on Moonbeam can thrive. I would love it if those efforts would be communicated more to the outside, maybe in a monthly blog post or something. Because it would make anybody reading it extremely bullish and appreciative of the Moonbeam Foundation!
In the end I can say that it was a huge honor to be part of the Committee and that I recommend anyone who is an expert in their respective field and has some spare time to apply!
Luuu