State of Web3 Grants Report: Reflections & Directions - Bangkok 2024

[Music] all right thank you thank you um so yeah really excited to get into some Grant research today the panel I believe is specifically focused on the stateof web 3 grants report uh so we're mainly going to center it around some of the takeaways and learnings from that uh and you will see some uh skillful hopefully dilly-dallying for until while we're waiting for an and can officially get started but I think maybe we can go ahead and just start doing introductions and hope that uh we'll have the full panel when it's time for uh for Ana so I'll just do a brief one uh as mentioned I'm Eugene I'm currently at scroll but the main hat I guess I'm wearing on this stage is with metago uh and the grant Innovation lab which I have the pleasure of working with uh Ben and an as co-authors of this paper as well as some others who are here today uh so yeah just really excited to share some of the learnings from this the state of web 3 grants so with that maybe let's just go down the line and do some quick intro so Ben can you kick us off yeah hi my name is Ben I'm the lead at the white3 Consortium and through this and through my role at at ra Guild we kind of like got in touch and then I joined metov Grand Innovation lab um where you know I was at the sidelines for long when it came to the pre state of Grants report but we were working on the grant maturity index um and we saw very clearly the overlap of we got the state of web three grants now let's look at how mature are they actually and let's build an index and yeah that's why I'm here and that paper also just recently came out and you should read it because it's great um hey everyone um my name is Mahesh morti I'm the founder of uh Karma we uh we have a product called uh Gap it's a granty accountability protocol um it's used by many Community Grant communities um to hold their granes accountable um to track their work their milestones and um measure impact and for granes uh this is a great way to build up a reputation and then uh attract more funding so that's G hello oh oh I got this one yeah I have to like I think this is a good volume no I noticed this the other day too like there was like one panelist that those just really loud um you know I'm generally already pretty loud so you know we don't need to overdo it um my name is Anker I am the ecosystem growth lead at the Stella development foundation and recently also have become a contributor of the uh GRS Innovation lab from from metov so very excited for that um my team leads the uh ecosystem growth or like the Stell Community Fund which is an open application grants program for uh projects building on Stellar to go basically from from zero to zero on development and growth um so yeah happy to share a bit more about what uh on the Grant's uh report later awesome yeah thank you all for for helping us get kicked off so I think in general you know with this report uh between last year's and this year we've covered a bit over 20 different programs uh and there have been a lot of learnings at the same time we're in crypto so something that was released in September is already as good as 10 years old uh so but nonetheless I think it's worth diving into some of the trends that we did pick up there uh and I think it's also very much fair game if you're hearing any kind of buzz about new topics ideas uh also feel free to bring that up but maybe now we'll start with you an and go in reverse order down the line and I'm going to keep doing that uh but yeah to just start off with what are some of the general takeaways and trends that are kind of most top of mind for you uh in relation to the Grand space right yes yes I mean in terms of like I'll start with uh give a bit of background on the I guess you already gave a bit of background on a report right when I left uh yeah so I wrote the the octant report and honestly it was a really great experience too because you were able to like I'm always in my own little ecosystem like you know furthering kind of like what new like review guidelines looks like what governance looks like um but then actually going out and looking at other structures which really helpful and I think some of the like things that we I mean across the space space across I think 13 or 15 programs that we looked at I think one one was like the uh impact measurement and that you know everyone's saying like oh yeah the impact is this but actually what they mean is output of the grand program because like if you say like oh we have distributed like you know for instance like SCF has distributed like 32 like million uh in xlm let's say to 500 projects that is not like an outcome that's an the output right so what does that actually mean what does that contribute to and I think a lot of grand programs are still figured fing out what that uh actually means and how to also measure it across the space and then impact I guess is a whole other thing that um yeah we we'll need to like revisit um but that was like the one thing I think also and there's a few other things uh that stood out um that we can uh yeah that we can help with and improve across the space um from my point of view looking at the report from last year I think there was one last year also I yeah um it feels like the Grant programs are maturing for sure like there used to be just the spray and prey approach um thankfully not anymore um and for me I'm talking from a granty point of view like I've received a couple of Grants and back when we were like getting grants from public good for building public goods and now things have like improved in so many ways like they're asking like exactly like what are you just building was like what they used to ask now like there's programs asking like how do you plan to measure impact like there's still lot of ways to go with the impact measurement but I think um they're asking the right the program operators are improving and then they're asking the right questions so it definitely we have come a long way in in just in the one last year so yeah that was my biggest takeaway I think I'm I'm not disagreeing by the way what I said I do agree with that too but there was still like some room to grow yeah quite a few steps to take more but yeah agree even the groups that have been granting for 100 years have room to grow so yeah it's that's a NeverEnding reality um I I like that you said they seem to mature um so like they really do and that we that we were able to to measure maturity in in some capacity like is Testament to that however I would say the last year has been a bit of a weird state for for web3 Grants because we saw consolidation and even though the web3 state of the web3 grants report grew in terms of coverage like the programs that kind of lead the pack they really did mature and they they did consolidate but in terms of experimentation it's it it got a bit more nichy and my hot take would be that you know we three grants shouldn't mat sure too much because then it becomes very bureaucratic and we don't want to end up in the spot where the European Union is right now yeah I mean that brings up an interesting point of sort of what does it mean to mature as a grant program and there's the element of like you can just go in the more bureaucratic d uh direction of just you know you want to issue more grants so that just means more layers of bureaucracy but I think and I guess maybe if we maybe the question that I'll pose to you three is you know when we're sitting here or wherever the next de fund will be a from now is uh hopefully reviewing the 2025 state of web 3 grants report um like what do you think we're going to be talking about a year from now right what does it mean for us to be maturing or changing in the space and I think already since you know we started writing this year's report which was in kind of marchish april-ish through when we released the port in September I mean right this summer especially with some of the arbitrum programs like we saw huge issuance right like the the oprp gf3 which was I think December January right that was like 100 million op total like we just saw these Behemoth programs happening and it feels like everyone's kind of taking a maybe we should take it down a bit um and you know like we saw a lot of prospective grants and that's kind of like the main starting point is we want to Grant people to do a thing but like R pgf was the first and now like through retro XYZ uh at gitcoin we're seeing more experiments so yeah I guess maybe a forward-looking question for the three of you to kind of continue this Trends one for a little bit what would be your guesses of one kind of change or maturation or however you want to frame it but yeah how do you think things are going to change between now and a year from now um um because I started with the whole maturity thing I'll take this first tab at it um I think just like Grant programs asked these projects like okay what are you building what are your Milestones are you hitting these Milestones I think Grant programs themselves have started saying okay this is what we want to accomplish but I think as they mature it'll become more fine grained uh goals so we want to allocate a million dollars and for that million dollars this is what we want to get out of it like these many applications built which gets this much traction um this much tvl this much transactions like I don't think anyone is saying that today uh but I feel like that's what they I hope they say just like you're holding the grand projects accountable like programs also become accountable that way by putting like numbers on it at least um so at least that that's my initial thing or and hope yeah I think I would I would definitely second that because like if you think about it right in a way like we don't really know as an ecosystem what we really want and that's a problem because we are expecting that somehow from the project but as an ecosystem I mean obviously like we have higher level missions like oh yeah you know we want the ecosystem to grow like you know to connection to go whatever but we don't actually set concrete like a metrics even just like a yearly goal for like well you know or it might be like oh I mean I know like even just the a few years ago it was like literally hey Ana can you like distribute like $10 million in like excellent to like about like this amount of the project and I'm like sure yeah yeah whatever but then I realized wait a minute like like sure when I do that it doesn't actually mean that there's actually like value for the ecosystem because I could distribute it to like you know projects that are totally unrelated obviously that's not what we did right but I think in terms of like when we think about and hopefully this is what we'll discuss the next Defcon it's like well actually measuring maybe even comparing Grant Roi per Grand program I would love that we were able to do that but and to be in order to do that we'll need to like I think each Grand program should adopt some kind of theory of change approach right and I know if you've been you know like talking about this a lot um but it's actually like well what are the outcomes and then what are the outputs and then what are the activities that we're doing in order to actually get the input um of the projects that we're looking for so yeah I would love to discuss like hey actually like my gr RI is better than yours because of this and this and that right now we don't even know what our grant r y is so we you know we can only speculate so I would I would think that earlier you mentioned that you know we we're seeing outputs and yes in web three we we want things to be disruptive we want things to be now and and totally different um um but I think in one year from now we would actually start seeing the impact and the outcomes of like this year's grants and you mentioned theory of change I would say like I was speaking earlier to another individual in the space and they were posing this question like what is your theory of change and and I think it should be in incremental like we do baby steps and through passing like by putting one foot after another we actually get where we want to be and really keeping track of like the path we walk as as Grand operators as donors to these Grand programs but also as Grand applicants together we then can look back and we actually see the change but until we are there it's not going to be that obvious yeah as much as I and I've been barking up the theories of change tree for for a while now I uh my personal prediction is that there will be zero formal theories of change a year from now unfortunately um we can change that you know like we can actually have a theory of change to change that particular statement so but it's it's interesting because oh did you want to jump in no I was just going to say I think it's and especially like now being cuz you know like when we started all this and even as we were releasing the report I was just jumping into scroll so like I I'm early days in industry I've more been on the observing and nonprofit side for the last four or five years so um it's much easier to like be on the that side and criticize of like why aren't you doing this like academically rigorous logical thing and then you get there and you're like oh just getting all the stakeholders at the same table for this conversation only happens at offsites and then when we have offsites it's like priority 37 because of all the fires we have to put out as an organization and so I would love for it to happen if there's anyone who's like launching an entire project protocol I think the earlier you embed theory of change thinking into your mission uh kind of structuring an organization and design right even projects that have a clear like what are you trying to accomplish in the world what is different if scroll Stellar ethereum whatever like most companies don't actually say here's how I want the world to be different it's we grow so the world's better right and like there's a huge logic leap between like us growing and the world being better and like yeah I I would love to see that change but I think we should start a poly Market um like we should we should put something on there come back next year and see who gets the money I'll take I'll take the other side of the bed okay I think there will be some all right we we'll plan this out right after but um I want to dig into this question of impact and I think it's one that's top of mind for everyone I know in the report we kind of met uh mentioned the fact that uh impact is a highly misused term in the space as an was alluding to before most groups canate impa with the outcomes right and if taking like a program evaluation approach uh you have resources that fund activities that produce an output like something emerges usually the Milestone you committed to as a grantee people interact with whatever that produced and then that's the the outcomes that happen and then that playing out over years is what produces impact and so I guess for the three of you what what either have you been seeing from the impact side that is giving you hope that we are going to be more nuanced about this and have actual better outcomes um versus and you can pick your do you want to be more optimistic or pessimistic here versus what are you kind of seeing as a fundamental blocker something that people AR aren't getting something that's falling on deaf ears yeah so which direction youall want to go with we'll we'll go down the lineing I can I can take a terribly pessimistic stance on that so I make it easier for the optimists maybe um so like when we look at what Grand what a grant like the term grants actually mean and it means that you found something where the outcomes are uncertain you don't know what what will come out of it and that's why it gets funded because you want to change something and you can't change if you know what what's going to come out of it um you can estimate and you can approximate but you never know for certain and the reason why I'm pessimistic is because I've been writing quite a bit of EU Grand applications and like the impact and and outcomes and outputs section is there quite extensive and it's been established for quite some time but it doesn't really do anything yes people and academics will talk to like local stakeholders and they will get like the Civil Society involved they will get companies involved but at the end of the day it is still a grand so people don't know and people will optimize for this impact section and we we need to be conscious of that when we're giving out grants that shouldn't mean that we shouldn't hold projects accountable to their outcomes outputs and impact I agree with that and I will but I will also take The Optimist I think S as I as I usually do because I'm generally like optimistic person um I actually believe we'll see a lot of change over the next year because we have seen a lot of change over the the past year it just in the number of conversations that have been happening across the space with impact and the sheer fact that there's literally like 10 talks that are like on real world impact or something like in this very conference right and so like I guess my theory is the more like the same people kind of talk to each other they'll feel embarrassed the next time they'll talk to each other about the same topic and realize no change has been made and and I was like oh we should actually oh sorry I shouldn't curse but we should we should actually probably do something about this instead of just talking about it right so like you know I have that natural passion I think we just talked about this as well right where it's like all right well let's actually think about this cuz like there's a road map the main blocker as well we need actually to put some effort and time into and coordination into like actually like figuring out on some kind of Baseline with one another but from that I think we can actually like once we figure out what the sweet spot is not going too deep cuz it's just too hard and it gets really messy and incomparable but not too high levels so there's actually somewhat of a depth and we can actually somewhat measure it to some you know real world change in the world or S goal or what whatnot um and yeah I think like that's like the main thing I think that will uh it will go well and I also think if we can then agree upon that we can perhaps even agree upon well there's impact on the project so like let's say project can then I I was just talking about this earlier project can let's say like hire a team to do like build XYZ feature that we can already do pretty well right with Karma Gap and I'll let you talk about that as well but then we have like the ecosystem output that's generally like verifiable I think where it gets tricky is the real world impact uh right whereas it's like all right now you're in the like traditional world of impact investing and then you know you open up all the different Ro room holes and problems associated with that um but once we have kind of like we can say like well like Grand like Grand ta that wellknown project that so so on ecosystem but like had really high like uh real world impact you can say like well that was a successful Grant right and that can actually tie into somewhat of a grant Roi and so I think we can logically get there um we will need to coordinate I know that you've been working on a framework so I'm going to like hit you up on that and then uh yeah we're just all bit more open-minded and not to like you know like focus on our own ecosystems I think we can do it yeah I mean I don't have anything more to add I'm an optimist and we ourselves are working on many things so I'm very hopeful U we'll make more progress by next year yeah and I guess to add to The Optimist side cuz I I agree with the pessimist Tendencies but at least one uh point of optimism is at least seeing that there's new tools emerging that can help with some of these elements you know I think the fact that we have Karma Gap that we have impact Gardens that we have all these different tools it's actually getting more and more realistic to a understand what how far can we get with these tools and what's missing from them that's still needed to get it and those are like the baby steps in in making progress and getting there but I know we're we're getting towards the tail end uh of our panel together uh two last questions um so one is just on the systems of support side so we recognize that grants are great everyone especially building something it's great to get money you kind of need it uh but that's usually not enough uh and it's important to provide other types of support so I'd be interested in going down maybe starting with you onen coming down of just what you've seen that's one type of support for grantees that you think think more Grant programs should be thinking about yeah you can also like read all about this in the stateof web 3 reports of course but I think one key differentiator that we have seen that uh people add like accelerator type or incubator type or even like boot camp like short boot camp type of uh like programs to their to their um to their like Awards and their grants and this actually helps uh like uh actually improve that Grant Roi quite a bit because it you can still you don't have to like connect with people oneon-one you can still do it in somewhat of a programmatic approach which is necessary for Grants um and also due to like some of the decentralization aspects to it but you can really like help projects figure out like what they're going to build and actually like it it can on sell we have like something called Kickstart it's 5 days uh we sent anyone to it who doesn't have like a really great product Market fit or really great plan to build yet and so they can actually figure out during those 5 days well actually like uh they either have like a fully like MVP buildt on Stellar or they realize actually this is not a great like ecosystem for me at all cuz I'm looking for something like you know like I don't know some other chain to like build on um and that has been really helpful in actually having a lot more impact and this when actually we see those grantees um then get the grant funding they're able to scale a lot quicker so like people that actually got started that then get a grant are able to like much more frequently get also like an investment from our investment team for instance so we can see really uh yeah that I think people more Grant programs are realizing that and if you haven't done it yet definitely do it I think Octon 2 had a really great accelerator recently there was a lot of hype upon uh I wasn't able to get too involved yet but we'll do next time but uh but yeah so that's what I would say yeah like from for me from a just as a granty point of view are someone building a product I really wish programs really Shield our projects like they're giving the money so just I mean the two things to a good product like you build a quality product and you get distribution right distribution is something they should they can help like they should be Shilling all the projects a lot like who they funded which surprisingly they don't do and I don't understand why um so I I really hope um they do that I think that's that's the only one I have so I think it is for for grantees speaking to to some and like knowing from my own experience it's very important that like they feel like human beings not rob what filling out forms um so the human aspect of well let's let's have a webinar I mean you know there are many webinars and you know webinars are not going to save the world but they they do make people feel like they're they is human on the other side of this application and giving feedback like you know it is hard sending out rejection letters but you know they are very valuable um giving feedback and and not making grantees fill out one and at the same form over and over again so supporting like the composability and reusability of information that needs to be there anyway I think would help ship the process along awesome and with that time is unfortunately up but if anyone wants to geek out on grants please feel free to chat with any of us later and yeah let's just have a round of applause for the panelist and for Eugene w [Music]