On June 30th, the dYdX Foundation hosted a discussion on Discord with Reverie regarding general updates on dYdX Grants Program. Topics included updates on dYdX Grants v1, an overview of dYdX Grants v1.5 Proposal, and an AMA session with the community.

A redacted transcript is available below:

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Just to get things started. Thanks everybody in the audience for tuning in. Just a quick overview and background before we get into it. My name's Josh. I work in Operations at the dYdX Foundation. Today, we have an open AMA and chat with Reverie. And for any new community members, Reverie is the organization that initially requested funding to start the dYdX Grants Program, and successfully completed version one of the Grants Program earlier in the last epoch or the epoch before. Reverie recently put up a dYdX Request for Comments (“DRC”) to extend funding in Grants version 1.5, which is the subject matter for today's AMA. We are hosting this AMA to provide the community an open forum to discuss what the next iteration of Grants looks like and hear from Reverie about successes on the Grants version one, as well as what they look forward to on the next iteration of the Grants Program.

In terms of process, I have some prepopulated questions that we collected from the community that we will run through with Reverie after they give a brief intro. After the pre-populated questions are done, we want to open this up to an open community dialogue, so we are looking forward to hearing your questions then.

When we do open it up for community questions, just please raise your hand through Discord and I'll bring you up on stage to ask your question. Just general housekeeping rules as per all of our AMAs - please be respectful and please no discussion of token price or anything like that. Same rules as on our forums.

So with that, I will pass the mic over to Reverie to give a brief introduction. Over to you guys.

Carl (Reverie):

Yeah, sounds good. Thank you, Josh. I see a lot of familiar faces here, so I will really like to re-introduce ourselves given that I think everybody knows our position and what we've been doing with dYdX on the grants side of things as the grants lead.

So I can give just a quick update on V1, given that it is still technically ongoing from an existing grants perspective. We're still working with the existing grantees, the ones that haven't completed their work to complete their projects. We're also actively providing feedback on the ones that are nearing completion, keeping them accountable and making sure that they deliver on the expectations there.

We should have a couple completed grants this week - we're giving final feedback on them. So that'll be nice. I'll be sharing that update probably by the end of the week. We're still on track to have a 100% completion rate. So it's pretty exciting. And we should have a lot more still coming through, and probably hopefully lots of high impact ones.

Otherwise, in terms of applications, we're still getting a good amount of applications, which is great. And we're still actively monitoring those and responding to people in a timely manner. Obviously, we can't commit to anybody now, given that we don't have the budget and we don't have the community backing for V1.5 yet. So we're just letting them know that the applications aren't outright rejected, they're just being put on hold for the time being. If we're able to move forward with V1.5, then we would pick up the conversation and see if we really would be able to move forward. But yeah, it's great that people are still applying and we definitely have a few solid applications that are looking promising for V1.5.

With the grants getting completed, we're also looking at compiling a lot of data around different analytics and different success metrics for each grant. How it makes sense, depending on each grant obviously, will vary. But looking at areas like how many people are using a tool that was built? If it's GitHub, did it receive a lot of stars? Is it being cloned a lot? If it's an online tool, is it being visited regularly, or a website, is it being visited? If it's a newsletter, how many readers do you get? Did you get a lot of subscribers and that sort of thing?

And with that, we're going to hopefully be able to generate a neat report that analyzes what we think were successful versus less impactful in order to then be able to better understand and dig into which grants actually work and that do deliver a high impact, and which ones do we think work, but don't actually do much. For example, maybe some of the tools that are being built, while they're really cool, the community just wasn't interested in using them. And then, we can get a better understanding of V1.5 through that. So we're hoping to get that report out by next week. We want to wait for more to get completed, so we get more and more data, but we can release an initial analysis.

The new website was also completed. You can go ahead and check that out at dydxgrants.com. Let us know if you have any comments or feedback. Obviously, we're always super receptive to getting community feedback on everything. If you think something could be better on that website, please let us know. We also added the selection criteria on the website. So if you now go to the application page, if you hit apply now, you'll see it starts off with our selection criteria. We had received a comment from the community about wanting more transparency around how we select our grants. And that kind of gives you an idea of the questions that we ask ourselves and what we look for in an application when we consider it.

So that's the state of V1. And so obviously, as everybody knows, it's been put on pause due to funding constraints. And so we have now come out with this V1.5 proposal, which is the topic of today's discussion. So V1.5 is effectively a larger scaled but narrowed down vision of V1 grants. And so feel free to obviously check out the discussion. I imagine most of you have already, but if you haven't, then you can check it out on Commonwealth.

Initially we have a proposal for a budget of about $8 million in $DYDX, which we've split out across these different categories. The goal is to really keep doing what we've been doing with V1, but make it a lot more efficient, leverage the lessons that we learned in V1 and all benefit from the operational backend that we've been building. Obviously, we set up the Guernsey Purpose Trust, which initially caused a lot of delays on payments. It stopped us from being able to diversify the funds into $USDC - that's been done now. We have an operational structure and foundation for us to be able to launch a much more efficient program through V1.5.

We also hope to leverage the Grants Program to really benefit the protocol and the community as we move towards this big migration to dYdX v4. By the end of the year, obviously, we think the grants can really have a big impact, and we are starting to work with contributors in the Cosmos environment. There's going to be a couple changes to the committee through this grant, just kind of as can be expected just based on needs and space.

Obviously I think that kind of covers it on V1.5. I think everybody here, again, just looking at the crowd, I think we've all had a chance to look at it. So I'm really appreciative of all the comments that everybody has left and keeping the discussion open. And then we just kind of wanted to give everybody a chance to talk about it live versus having to go back and forth over comments.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Yeah. I appreciate you going through that, Carl. I know we have a lot of our regular community members and contributors here and super, super happy that you guys were able to make time to jump on for an open discussion and dialogue.

I think two interesting things that you guys have had to deal with specifically is just like, I think one is like market downturns and the other one is the announcement about dYdX shifting to Cosmos. Could you maybe expand a little bit more on how two of those things impacted Grants V1.5.

Derek (Reverie):

I think in terms of the market downturn, the most obvious way it's affected us is just affecting our ability to fund new grants. So I think that's been the main one and sort of why the program was put on pause. In terms of 1.5, it's also resulted in us just having a smaller scope and focus compared to our original plans.

When we started this program back in the fall, the intention was, depending on how dYdX was doing, depending on how the market was doing, scale up and down as appropriate and as needed. And yeah, it was always the plan where if the market turned and revenues were decreasing across every DeFi protocol and everything, to have a smaller, more focused program that can operate super efficiently and do it in a very capital efficient manner.

I think another element of that is just ensuring the program has enough runway and enough capital to operate in whatever market condition. And that's why we added the 25% buffer into the budget. And yeah, it's something we are very cognizant of and always thinking about, because not sure if everyone here remembers, but when we first launched V1, the original budget was around $6-7M in $DYDX for six months. And it turned into roughly $2-3M within a matter of months. I wish we had diversified earlier. Setting up the Guernsey Trust took a lot of time, and it took us some time to just get that process moving. So fully expect that to be easier this time around, but just wanted to share some of our transparent thoughts around the market and how we've planned around it for V1.5.

And then in terms of Cosmos related things. I think honestly, we too have a ton of questions, and I think there are for us as well, more questions than concrete answers. But in terms of how we've planned around it for V1.5, I think the most important thing is that it's going to be a massive, pretty fundamental change in everything. I know the goal is to keep the core UI and user experience and trading experience the same. But the backend, the actual infrastructure it's built on, potentially how governance is going to work, and the other tools and resources that the community has worked on (education, marketing, validators) - a lot of it's going to have to be rebuilt or converted.

And I think it means a few different things. I think first and foremost, it means that existing projects and things we funded we'll need to just basically figure out and work with grantees to figure out how to make the most impactful for V4. I think some of this, it's very doable, such as some of the content marketing is transferable. I think for some of the backend stuff, like governance related tooling and other stuff built on existing Ethereum open source stuff, it'll be a bit more challenging. But it is something we are actively considering.

And then I think the other thing is over the next six months, I think there will be more clarity on what the community's role will be in V4, and what the architecture will look like. And I hope the Grants Program can play a role in shaping that and leveraging our background and our knowledge in the Cosmos ecosystem to make that transition as smooth as possible.

I think we have a lot of questions, too, honestly. But I think there are ways of preparing for it and I'm anticipating it to be quite an interesting experiment.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

One follow-up question, would you guys mind expanding on professional or personal experiences with Cosmos and the Cosmos ecosystem?

Derek (Reverie):

To set context for everyone, Reverie works with a few different protocols. We help them with various types of things, such as grants programs, charter diversifications, liquidity incentives, growth programs, general strategy, sometimes legal and operation. And we have previously, and currently are working on some protocols in the Cosmos ecosystem.

One of them is Osmosis, as some of you guys pointed out. And it's something that neither Carl, nor I have extensive experience on. To be honest, I have a little bit more context. I've spent some time there, but other members of the Reverie team not on this call have spent a ton of time digging in and really are very knowledgeable about that ecosystem. I think over time, over the next few months, again, as there's more clarity on what the community should prioritize and what grants can and should fund, we will leverage more and more of that knowledge that we've built up as a participant on Cosmos.

I think in terms of Osmosis, it's interesting to me because I think it's actually quite complementary to the work that we're doing here. Again, it's easy to say that, "Oh, the Reverie team has their focus divided between these different projects. They're not dedicating their full time and energy to dYdX." But I actually think it's the opposite - because of how we've learned and gone through some of the learning lessons of Cosmos, some of the unique idiosyncratic parts, that is knowledge and things that we will share with the community, and we will hopefully apply.

This is just my personal opinion, but I think Osmosis and dYdX are very complimentary protocols. Osmosis is focusing on spot, and dYdX is focusing on perpetuals in terms of architecture and design. Again, I just don't know the full sort of image of what dYdX V4 will look like, but judging by some of the comments that have been said publicly, and by the blog post, I think their positionings within the ecosystem will be pretty different. Obviously like dYdX is focused on off-chain orderbook and building the best product. There's just parts of the Cosmos ecosystem, like IBC, smart contracts, and other things that I would be surprised if dYdX touched.

So I see them ultimately as pretty complimentary things. I think the success of one helps the other. And I think and do hope that our previous experience in Cosmos will be useful here as well. We don't have all the answers, but I think we have some knowledge.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Awesome. Thanks for going over that. There were a few comments about Reverie's time and attention towards dYdX. I think for everybody who doesn't know, do you maybe want to share how Reverie is structured and just in terms of how attention is paid to the different ongoing projects?

Carl (Reverie):

Yeah. So I can start there if you want. Just to speak for myself as the one who's been mostly leading the dYdX Grants Program from the Reverie side, obviously with a lot of help from Derek and a lot of help from other members of the community, I have had no interaction with Osmosis. Derek is the one that has some knowledge as to help setting it up. I've been fully focused on dYdX and getting other projects outside of the Grants Program set up, like the new asset listing and some other working groups that we're working on, and keeping my attention pretty much entirely on that. So now that we are doing this migration, I've been bothering my fellow coworkers at Reverie for information on everything and seeing how we can poach their grantees basically to work on dYdX stuff.

But as Derek mentioned, it's going to be very complimentary. And I kind of have that springboard in order to feel like I have a significant head start in my understanding and contacts that we can reach out to, and understanding of the operational processes that's going to happen when we're moving on to a Cosmos-based network, and stuff like that.

Our attention is really fully dedicated towards the protocol that we're working with. And then we only work with a couple of others really. In the past we've worked with some others, but right now we only have a very select amount. And that's because we really want to dedicate as much of our time as possible towards bettering that protocol and that community. That's how we judge ourselves, and that's kind of our whole mission as a firm.

And so for me, it's been entirely on dYdX. And then Derek, I don't know if you want to add your personal perspective.

Derek (Reverie):

Yeah. Just to add on, the first thing I'd say is that we've spent more time I'd say on dYdX as a firm than any other protocol we've worked with. We've spent time on other protocols like Compound and Uniswap in the past, we've created governance proposals, we've worked on different initiatives. Those are no longer really ongoing. We spend maybe a few hours a week, a month, honestly. dYdX is the protocol that we spend the most amount of time on. And we don't anticipate that changing going forward.

I think the reason it's so interesting to us is, again, just Carl's background as having spent a bunch of time at Genesis, we really understand the product and some of the key stakeholders. So I think there were just a lot of natural synergies. And yeah, again, Reverie's five people. Myself and Carl have been the community members that have been most focused on the Grants Program and interfacing with you guys. But as other members of the team have contributed in other ways behind the scenes, in terms of legal, operational, as well as other things. So I know that sometimes it might be a bit unclear about how big we are, what our focus is, but I just wanted to shed some light about how we operate.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Awesome. I wanted to ask you to talk a little more about the new budget and the inclusion of a buffer. Also, could you talk about the importance of diversification to ensure that DGP V1.5, if it is successful and gets funded, can continue operating if there is an extended bear market or an even further market downturn?

Do you guys just want to take a few minutes to describe how you're planning to approach diversification if the proposal is successful?

Derek (Reverie):

Yeah. I will try to answer this question without talking about the $DYDX price. I think generally, diversification is important, as I said before, to make sure that the program can continue to operate in any market condition. We have done diversifications in the past. You can see the details on the website. We went through an OTC desk, which was helpful. And then going forward, we will, again, explore whatever option is best for the DAO and the community.

I think again, we've spent a lot of time thinking about diversification, both in terms of how much and how to do it. There's been excellent community research on it as well. We funded some grantees to work on this. So I think it really has multiple benefits for the protocol to de-risk from the native protocol token, and have some stable coins to make sure that operations can be funded, for both the Grants Program, as well as other initiatives that we fund.

Again, I think a big reason the Guernsey Trust is so useful and frankly the main reason that we actually went through the extensive process of setting it up and operating it, is for cases like this.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

The DRC noted that one member of the community is going to be included on the Grants Committee. Do you maybe just want to take a moment to describe the types of background or type of community member that you think would be a good addition to the Grants Committee? And maybe just touch on that aspect a little more. Because I think the Grants Program overall has only gotten like two or three applicants so far. So we just wanted to shed a little bit more light on that if possible.

Carl (Reverie):

Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned earlier, we did look at changing up the committee a little bit, which is going to be a regular occurrence probably, just to keep it diverse and then make sure that we have active members as part of our committee. And we thought it'd be really great to get a community member on there in order to have somebody representing the community with more hands-on experience engaging across the protocol and having a better understanding of it. And be able to speak on behalf of the community, not just acting as a kind of industry expert who also has a high level of security and trust.

And so in terms of backgrounds, very diverse. There's not like a set qualified person that we're looking for. We really just want somebody who's going to be trustworthy, responsive, available, and timely in their responses and in their multisig signings. It's become quite a meme across crypto Twitter, getting a multi-signature transaction out is probably like the hardest thing you can do in this space.

So we really just want somebody who's going to be super active. We got, like you mentioned, a couple of applicants already, two both very strong applications. Alexios obviously has a good understanding of the Grants Program, and that's a strong point for people to have is already knowledge and experience and solid understanding of the mission and how it works, given that part of the responsibility for a committee is reviewing each funding match before they're approved in order to make sure that we're not going crazy with our funding amounts, we're not funding any conflicting interests, we're making sure that everything is aligned in order to really be in the best interest of the protocol. And so a high level of integrity to that end is also important. But background, nothing specific. Really just an active community member who's going to be there to work with us, is the highest quality.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Yeah. Thanks for expanding on that. I think it's great that you guys are opening that up to get some more community representation, specifically an active community member. I want to leave a bunch of time for everybody in attendance to leave questions. But I think the last question from the prepopulated bunch is when you look at the budget allocations for V1.5, if the proposal is successful and gets funded and Reverie is able to spend all of the funds in the budget, what does success look like, I guess, is just a short version of the question for Grants V1.5?

Derek (Reverie):

Yeah. I think the most important thing for any kind of capital allocation grant is really just how much usage does it drive to the protocol, whether it's number of users, trading volume etc. I think in terms of specific initiatives, the most impactful ones are, like education and trader tooling are difficult to link to Trading Volume.

But I think in terms of things like new assets, incentive, provisions, modifications to the staking pool and other things like that, I think those are very clearly and directly tied to some of the key metrics that someone would use to evaluate dYdX's positioning in the market.

And the other thing I'd highlight is the budget request, it doesn't mean that it is like, we're going to spend 100% of it. That's not the intention. The intention is if there aren't high quality things, if we don't get the applicants or projects that have met that standard, the budget isn't just going to be spent. So I just wanted to clarify that.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Awesome. Thanks for that overview. And thanks for clearing that up. So, that's it for the prepopulated questions that were posted on Discord and in the Grants channel that I recorded. I'm going to open it up now to any of the dYdX community members in the audience who have a question. Please put up your hand and we'll bring you on stage one at a time here. I see we have a couple. So Alucard, bringing you up right away. Thanks.

Alucard (dYdX community member):

I don't know if you guys had a chance to look at Antonio's thoughts that he posted recently to Commonwealth, but I just wanted to ask you what your guys thoughts are on his comment, and where do you think maybe a middle ground lies in all of this?

Derek (Reverie):

Yeah, I'll take a shot. And Carl, if there's anything you want to add, feel free to jump in. But I think Antonio's comment was very helpful. I think as the founder of dYdX Trading, he obviously has a helpful opinion and perspective I think for everyone. I think during a bear market, it's just good practice to be frugal. Survival is always the most important thing. I do think that they also provide an opportunity to grow and for protocols to aggressively grow market share. So I'm planning on responding to his comment. So yeah, I think generally agreed that focused spending is always the priority, especially in a bear market.

In terms of V4, I do think a lot of the grants that have been funded, and we will continue to fund areas which need to be redone for V4. Some will be easier to do than others. So yeah, keeping it smaller and more focused for now makes sense.

In terms of the operations of the grants and the specific funding and the prioritization, I want to think about it a bit more and I will put together a response. But yeah, Alucard, I'm looking at your response here as well. I do think the Ambassador Burrows Program is important. It's doing good work. There's a lot of potential to do even more and better work. And yeah, I do think giving the program the funding it needs and ensuring it has budgets, not just for the members, but so you guys can create useful things, that is to me important.

So not sure if there's anything else that would be helpful, but that's my quick reaction to his thoughts. But I'll be putting together a longer one on the forums.

Alucard (dYdX community member):

Yeah, appreciate the response and looking forward to the longer response and that. The point I want to make for everybody here listening is I think as we move towards V4, and as you mentioned, a lot of the content and a lot of the documentation is going to have to be redone, I think it's important that we have operations.

I think it's important the Ambassador Program is well funded, because that will give us the ability to really move dynamically and in a more agile way, and adapt as new information comes from V4. Content has to be done quickly, rather than relying on a lot of small grants to do a lot of the stuff that needs to get redone. I would argue the Ambassador Program and the people working there and the working groups can take care of a lot of that work as it happens. Yeah, just the point I want to make, but appreciate you guys answering the question.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Awesome. Thanks Alucard. Derek, Carl, do you have any follow up there or can we move on to the next question?

Carl (Reverie):

No. Yeah. Definitely the last comment makes sense. The Burrows Program has been super helpful to that end, and we look forward to continuing to see all the awesome work being done, and we absolutely think that like the Grants Program can continue to fund all the work. And like Derek said, give not just compensation, but also additional funding to take on these projects, like part of the migration stuff. So, yeah, I totally agree.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Awesome. Thanks. Moving on to ModYModX. Feel free to ask your question(s).

ModYModX (dYdX community member):

Derek and Carl, thanks for taking the time to do this. This is super useful. I just wanted to go back on the earlier comments in regards to the Osmosis platform being complimentary to dYdX. I have a very vague background on it, and my reading of it basically is the Isotonic launch, which is basically the margin platform and lending. However, in their announcement, it is highlighted by Sunny, the founder of Osmosis, how Osmosis aims to go towards the perpetual market eventually. Now, Sunny having such a high involvement in the Osmosis ecosystem and Cosmos, it kind of creates a conflict of interest, whereby I just want to ensure that there isn't any kind of basically involvement with Osmosis that would cause friction later down the road.

I can forward you that article just so you can see their roadmap. But I do agree with what you said that having those builders in the Cosmos ecosystem and building on Osmosis could be beneficial for dYdX. But I do see along the roadmap of Osmosis that there will be conflicts later down the road, because as we try and compete for market share of users, and especially if the dYdX, say, post V4 launch, decide to aim to launch their own spot exchange as well. I know Antonio mentioned his main agenda is perpetuals, but he did also highlight that he has other products in mind as well. I just wanted to gauge your thoughts on that.

Derek (Reverie):

Yeah, it's a good question, and thanks for bringing it up. It's something we're very cognizant of. I think that every liquidity venue in crypto is in some way competitive. Whether you're centralized or decentralized, it doesn't matter. I think Uniswap is in some ways competitive with dYdX, is in some ways competitive with Coinbase, with BitMEX, with FTX, and with Osmosis.

So I think it is a fair comment. I do think every founder of an exchange is always going to say that they want to basically touch all of these different areas. I can tell you that Osmosis is not doing isotonic lending, it's not on their roadmap anymore, and they're focused on spot. It doesn't mean they won't do margin and lending and build it in in the future. But again, I would be surprised if they did perpetuals anytime in the near term. I genuinely don't know if they will do it in, let's say five years or something. But I don't think they're more competitive than any other spot exchange in crypto, to be honest.

ModYModX (dYdX community member):

Okay. That makes sense. Thanks for that. And I just want to go on record to say, I was telling this to Carl, but I think the Grants Program is definitely needed, and it's very important to boost the ecosystem through it. My questions that I post on the governance forums, they might seem hard, but I keep iterating that I'm very supportive of what the grants team are doing and what they're trying to establish going forward. So I just wanted to get that out there as well on record.

Derek (Reverie):

Great. Thank you.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Yeah. Thanks so much ModYModX. I appreciate the feedback and good questions. Moving on to Arturica22. I'll just bring you up on stage here quickly.

Arturica22 (dYdX community member):

So I don't have any questions. The session has been very clear and useful. I just want to leave feedback. You know, the Cosmos network has made significant progress in various fields. I'm glad that dYdX is now available on this network. And thanks for your work guys.

Derek (Reverie):

Hey, we haven't done anything. It's been the dYdX Trading team.

Carl (Reverie):

Love the enthusiasm though. Definitely, we're all super excited for this. But yeah, we're not going to sit here and take any credit for that.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Awesome. Thanks for the positive feedback, Arturica. I guess, yeah, just a quick reminder on that, definitely separation of powers or separation of the entities, dYdX Trading has no affiliation with the Grants Program. Also, the dYdX Foundation is also a separate independent entity who is the steward of the $DYDX token, its mission is to build out the dYdX ecosystem, make sure that the ecosystem is self-sustainable. And when V4 full decentralization comes around, to make sure that that ecosystem can really grow on Cosmos and succeed.

Carl (Reverie):

James had one in the dYdX Grant AMA that I'm happy to touch on real quick. The question was, can we touch on how the Grants Program plans to market different initiatives grant participants produce? Also the program itself. The main thing that we've been working on there was the website, so that we now have a more reliable place that we can direct attention towards. And we can start to work on search engine optimization using that website, which was part of the grant that we had given to Alexios originally. And now that we've launched the website, he's working on that so that when you start to Google grants and stuff like that, dYdX Grants comes up way earlier in search results than hopefully others.

Obviously we're going to keep tweeting and we're going to keep promoting these grants. We haven't been the best at using Twitter, especially recently. We're going to revamp that a lot now that we're getting more completions and making sure that people have a reliable place to access tools that have been built. So if you go to the website, for example, you can click on funded grants, you can click on tooling, and then you can toggle the completed one. And there you'll see tools that have been completed.

Now, there's definitely still work that can be done there. We can add a search thing, we can add what kind of tooling, like do you want a trading extension, are you looking for kind of like analysis? Or we have some simulators that were built. So are you looking for a trade simulation?

The idea is, there's a lot more that we can do, but that's kind of the direction that we're going toward. We want to have a very reliable directory where people can just log on and have access to all these, and that way we can market them across Twitter and in different places, and always have this website that is more reliable than the Notion page that we have been dependent on up until very recently. So that's kind of what we're doing on that end.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Awesome. Thanks for the update. ModYModX, I saw you unmuted. Did you have a follow-up question?

ModYModX (dYdX community member):

I just had one additional question. I was just going through the grants website and I was just wondering, how many funded grants that are uncompleted have deadlines? Because one thing I'm worried about is currently in V3, we have a runway. So if someone completes their grant, it can be useful because it can be used for the current V3 platform. But say, for example, a grantee in the last month of V3 decides to wrap up their project, would they have any implications or would you still pay the amount that was promised to them?

Carl (Reverie):

No, definitely, like most of them are coming up on their targeted completion milestones. So this doesn't go for the newsletter and more qualitative grants. For example, we have the Messari Quarterly Report grant. That obviously won't end until the end of the year or until the last quarter. And I can't remember when the last quarter was. And the newsletters and stuff like that. But the ones that are building tools, we fully expect those to be wrapped up within the next month so that they can still be very useful to the community.

Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I still think that a lot of them will be useful to the community, even in a V4 launch where it's fully independent. I still think that there's going to be some use cases for it, and people will be able to do it.

And our grantees have been just super eager and excited to work. Whenever we have feedback, they're always implementing them. And they're always very excited with the projects that they're doing, so I fully expect them to be very happy and willing to migrate as much as possible to the new platform and so that their tool can be continued to be used.

And then that's kind of like the spirit of grants, right? These are passion projects for a lot of them, and they're doing this to build their portfolios, they're doing this because they're really interested in the problem. And so they don't want to just see their project die either. They've put a lot of hard work into it. And so I really expect a lot of them to update their projects in order for them to stay relevant and to be able to benefit their community.

ModYModX (dYdX community member):

Okay. That's interesting to know. That's good. And would they want additional payment to upgrade it?

Carl (Reverie):

We'll obviously be addressing that as it comes, if it makes sense. If, for example, one of the tools is being used a ton and the community really wants it, and the grantee thinks , or we can come to an agreement that there should be some sort of conversation for the work that's being done to migrate it, then yes. But, yeah, we're going to have to decide later on obviously. But I wouldn't expect a very sizable grant for migration. It might not make sense, but there's probably some room to make sure that they're fairly compensated for any time and work that they're doing.

ModYModX (dYdX community member):

Okay. Gotcha. Thanks a lot.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Great question. Again, just a last reminder, if you do have anything you want to add to the discussion, please put your hand up. So we have AX07, just bringing you up now.

AX07 (dYdX community member):

I was wondering with the current plan that Antonio gave on the thread, how would it affect you guys? Would you accept that 500K or is that not enough, so you wouldn't do the job? Also, for the Ambassador Program, would that be enough for the Ambassador Program to keep on going and to get more recruits? Or is that going to die off? Because I've seen a little bit of a discussion there and that Alucard was talking about. And yeah, I was just wondering about that.

Derek (Reverie):

That's a good question. I think, again, similar to my earlier comment, going to Antonio's comment, obviously super helpful, is a ton of context. And yeah, we will take it back on our end and revise as needed. Again, honestly, I'm not sure. I haven't thought it through all the way yet. But it's definitely helpful information.

AX07 (dYdX community member):

Right. And for the Ambassador Program, how would it work? I've seen you have 17 people working on the Burrows. So how would it work? Like the hourly rate would go down or... I don't know.

Derek (Reverie):

So I don't have a specific number now for you, aside from what we've put out on the post for the Ambassador Burrow budget. I will say that I think speaking for both Carl and myself, that we want to see the Burrows Program succeed. We want to see it fully funded and operational, and for this to be able to maintain both the existing talents and work in initiatives that they find helpful. So, yeah, just keep an eye out for a comment from us about these very things in the next day or two.

AX07 (dYdX community member):

Yeah. All right. Perfect. Thanks. Cheers.

Derek (Reverie):

And yeah, we can keep going. I can stay past the hour mark, if there's a lot more questions. Which there might be.

Carl (Reverie):

I don't really have a hard cut-off either. Happy to stick around. James had a question in the chat about overpricing. Definitely some lessons learned there in V1. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that we priced everything perfectly.

There are absolutely some areas where the team, myself might have overcommitted on the funding side, and we're taking those lessons and applying them to V1.5 now to make it even more competitive and make it even more efficient. I don't want to single out grants and grantees that we're going to overpay, so I'd rather not go into that, but just to address it, we definitely have a lot of lessons that we learned from V1, and that's why we think that this V1.5 can be even more efficient, and can be even more high impact because we can now apply everything that we've learned from V1, where we had a bit of a more general mission as to like, we want grow to protocol, we want them to be able to benefit the community and the protocol, and we want to attract more contributors.

Through that, we wanted to make it a competitive program by paying good grants and making sure that people are excited to come work for dYdX. But now that we're narrowing in our focus on these specific problems that we've identified, that you can see in the post, we can better align our funding and better align our expectations from our grantees. And so we expect it to become a lot more efficient. And yeah, capital. Better capital allocation.

Alucard (dYdX community member):

Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to answer all our questions. I got one more. I Want to get your perspective on retroactive grants, and perhaps how those could potentially evolve in the Grants Program and be used or not used at some point?

Carl (Reverie):

Yeah. Great question. Personally, I'm a big fan of retroactive grants. We issued only one retroactive grant in V1, Parad0xPrince, the paper that he wrote on building a future financial system and kind of governance system for the dYdX DAO. I'm not sure if you guys have a chance to read it, but it was great. He spent a lot of time and we worked with him on feedback, but he hadn't applied it in any capacity. He just was doing this on his own time. And then once it was out, we decided that given the amount of work that he had put in and revisions he made to that paper and everything, he was fully entitled to receiving some compensation from the community.

So I am a big fan of retroactive grants. I think that people should feel that they don't necessarily need to apply and be approved to contribute to the community and to the protocol. They should feel as though if they spend time and dedicate hours and build something or write something or partake in some capacity that they should then be rewarded by the protocol.

That's kind of like the mantra, like the ethos that we want to put out there. We want to be fully supportive of community builders and we don't want to just be restrictive like, oh, you have to be approved in order to be compensated and in order to receive some sort of reward and acknowledgement of the work that you've done. No, we want to be fully inclusive and make sure that if you have an idea and you can't wait to get started, just go at it, do it, and start working on it. Chances are, if you're that passionate, you're going to do an awesome job and build something really cool, and then we will be more than excited to make sure that you get fairly rewarded for the work that you've done.

Alucard (dYdX community member):

Awesome. Thanks for answering that. A follow-up on that, what level of impact would you guys be looking at in terms of rewarding those retroactive grants to community members?

Carl (Reverie):

Yeah, it obviously varies based on the grant and the work that's being done, but if we can just within reason say that the community has benefited and substantial work was put into this, then I think it has a strong case for receiving a retroactive grant. But obviously it's case by case, and we would scrutinize it quite in depth because we don't want to be seen as just giving out retroactive grants for somebody who puts up a post, right? It can't just be something real easy, either. It has to be something that really benefits the protocol and the community, and has pushed things forward in some capacities. Unfortunately, it's hard to answer that, because it's going to be case by case, but I think you can kind of see where I'm going.

Alucard (dYdX community member):

Yeah. That's fair enough. Thank you guys.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Awesome. Thanks Alucard. Okay guys, I know we are five minutes over time. Really appreciate Derek and Carl coming on. I'll give you guys one last chance to throw a hand up, request to speak, put something in the chat. And if not, we will close the AMA for today.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Derek or Carl, is there a specific timeline for next steps with the proposal? I know there's a Snapshot proposal and an On-chain vote required eventually. Derek (Reverie):

So there's no specific timeline. I think for us, the focus is now on just responding to the community's questions, integrating that into the proposal and the budget. I think again, the post we put out was to spur discussion and we want everyone to have a look and we wanted to give it the amount of time it needs to breathe a little bit. So yeah, we will come back and share updated thoughts and make sure we reply to every single one. I think the goal is to move forward in a matter of weeks. So I would say we want to move forward hopefully in the next week or two.

Joshua (dYdX Foundation):

Awesome. Thanks for that update. Okay guys, going to close out the stage channel now. Thank you again.

‍