S6. Ep. 1 - Grants As A Service W/ Bernard & Shawn

Transcript

welcome to the green pill. network podcast in September green pill will be hosted by the cartographers a high context community of individuals and teams dedicated to advancing the web 3 grants ecosystem they'll explore the web 3 grants ecosystem with topics ranging from novel funding mechanisms Grant councils and governance to emerging trends like Ai and direct to contract incentives this series seeks to bridge theory and practice by examining real world examples and featuring discussions with those who are closest to the action the next voice you hear will be sa who contributes at getcoin and founded the cartographers sa will be hosting this entire season and I think that it's going to be a great season because Sav brings deep experience in web 3 grants

and capital allocation I'm excited for you to hear some of the perspectives from him and his guests without further Ado the next voice you'll hear is Sav enjoy all right welcome guys it's good to have you on the show today jump into some introductions uh Sean you want to kick us off yeah you sa great to be here with you today and yeah I'm looking forward to today's conversation quick introduction I've been introduced to blockchain 2015 full-time in crypto since 2017 and working in the grant space for probably about the past three years spent some time over at index Co-op learning how to do governance spent some time over at gitcoin doing governance and now I work over at an

organization called Thrive protocol where we believe in a world where where anybody who creates value should be justly rewarded for their contribution and that means that we focus on our partners we want the top blockchain ecosystems we help them maximize their treasury impact and we also look for the best Builders and we help the best builders get the funding they need so they can make a difference in web 3 so s I'm really excited to be here and have the conversation with you and Bernard today nice nice Bernard give us a little bit about yourself yeah 100% and yeah thanks first of all for orchestrating Stu I think great format and and big fan obviously bringing you know people

together in this space more and more myself I'm Bernard co-found of ARA uh we are a strategy firm in governance if you will um so we work with a lot of Foundations and sometimes STS directly uh to build effective governance systems um and what it really means is a couple of you know larger topics that we typically involved in are governance design Capital allocation growth which I think grants you know Falls on and then larger strategic initiatives wherever you know foundations or D want to take a step back and really think through more complex problems one more public work I think you you seen the spaces in in Unis Swap and arbitrum safe and AA and then we have some you know more direct involvements with with other ecosystems on on the side uh our little

Edge and this is where sometimes is a bit difficult uh explaining the whole setup is that we're connected to an investment banking firm in crypto uh where we support Founders on Financial transactions and this is m&a larg of token launches or or secondaries obviously sometimes tough to understand but you can think of me as the the governance guy with a with a team attached I think the the grand s for us a very interesting one we started out with developing a cross ecosystem grants program but really from a conceptual angle and thinking through okay how to design a new type of grant program and then really got more into the weeds of okay you know how to set up operations that that work more seamlessly and since then going and deeper and and now landed here with with you too and looking

forward to the episode nice nice well anyone that knows me knows that grants is something near and dear to my heart I probably need better Hobbies um but I'm excited to talk with you both about this today um I spend a lot of my time working around this subject um so yeah let's jump into it so today we're going to be talking about the spectrum of Grant Services really what this comes from is you know for any that's been in the space any amount of time uh many of the grant programs really started with the ethereum foundation and some of those those organizations that started you know grants across web 3 and now there's literally hundreds of programs today some of those programs are more traditional Grant programs giving out direct grants some of those is use novel funding mechanisms and then some of those are even convertible grants Equity

based or they're looking at different ways that they can allocate incentives even at a contract level so as we've seen that proliferation of different programs you're also seeing a trend around uh service providers in the space so service providers around treasury management professional delegates Dow governance but this episode's really about Grant services and grants as a service as you see more incentives and Grant programs proliferate more and more organizations are looking at ways that they can either augment or fully Outsource the function of Grants to another organization and that's kind of what the three of us do in different ways with the organizations we represent here so first I think let's jump into it and this is a question I've got for you Sean because I definitely want to hear your answer to it maybe your perspective

on like what are the challenges faced by in-house Grant organizations today teams that have tge or they've uh got a treasury that they've got to look to allocate they're thinking about the best ways to allocate that obviously grants is you know something top of mind for many of those what are the challenges that you see and and how are you you seeing them address those you know it's funny it's like I belong to an organization called the grant professionals organization and it's an inreal life Professional Organization here located in the US and they have a lot of the same problems that we do in web 3 they've just had more time to document those problems but if we think about it the centralization of making all these decisions can mean that it is an it could be either efficient or it

could be inefficient and what I'm seeing in web 3 is it's horribly inefficient if we look at the ROI on our grant programs it's terrible and that could be any number of reasons from we're not clear on what business objective we're trying to drive forward we're not clear on what the objective is we're not clear on our vision we're not clear on our mission we're we're not clear on which one of the strategies should be driven forward so that could be one case another case could be that we don't have the right decision makers deciding how to allocate those funds and as a result we're giving money to the wrong projects the final piece that I'll mention is we're not clear on what success is and what that means is I can go give away hundreds of thousands of tokens but at the end of

the day what did I really get out of those hundreds of thousand tokens and in some cases I've heard you know hey we spent money for a great party yeah you got something out of the party you made some great relationships but is that spend necessarily better than that app that was developed that no one's ever gonna see so there's a Litany of problems that we're struggling with in web 3 the Silver Lining I will say is if I go and compare ourselves to the my peers at the grant professional association we are putting in changes way faster than the in real life world so the problems that we're struggling with right now we're going to solve them in record time and I think there's going to be a time when IRL is going to come back to us and say my gosh look at what

they're doing over here and they're going to learn from us that's what I'm excited about what we're doing at TH protocol too is like having the ability to connect the builders the funders and the community all together in a way that all three of them win and at some point in time web 2 and IRL is going to pay attention to us and that's going to be part of the rocket that gets three billion crypto users totally yeah you know grants I definitely see as something that on the surface many can look at it as marketing you know maybe like a veiled form of um you know VC um but when done correctly and you understand the ROI that you want to get out of it you know you can make some pretty good impact and with the fact that we have one chain we have these

transparent systems we have the potential to be able to surface that kind of impact verifiable metrics really better than any other space today right I also agree that the the community in web 3 around grants kind of the grant nerds like like ourselves and you know others out there it's passionate Community you know where we're definitely looking at ways that we can solve these things and improve to touch on the ROI topic right that's something I'd like to turn over to you Bernard especially with your background like when you think about you know Roi like what are some things that you've thought through Etta maybe give some examples some of the programs you worked with I asked this because I saw the reports from U AGP and the grant program that aretta ran there and I was pretty

impressed with kind of like how you define that at the outset and that you've been tracking towards that Roi you know for that program over time 100% And couldn't agree more on you know some of the things that Tron obviously mentioned and I think we are very nent States when it when it comes to Grants in in crypto still right like we try to learn a lot from the traditional ecosystem uh we have good instances of collaboration meeting IRL at conferences and I think these are always super fruitful discussions and we're getting there but it's baby steps right and I think there are a lot of things to improve still so ouri I think the the high level thought that we always have is more t in to specific demands um and when saying that I mean I think what we've done a long time in crypto is this

like one size fits all okay grants you need to give out grants to builders support Builders uh give out a token somehow fuel growth through that so that approach was taken from one ecosystem to the other with like little you know iterations overall we have new funding mechanisms and so on and are experimenting a lot but still when it comes to thinking from first principles I think we can do a better job and what we typically do and I think you guys as well on the coincide with the brand model canvas which I think is a is a great approach is really thinking through okay why are we doing grants right and it's not always ecosystem growth another case might be we want to raise awareness of the ecosystem we want

to raise engagement in the community sometimes it's even more Nu and thinking through okay we want to establish bonds with another ecosystem or we might even have a financial you know return interest as you mentioned before there are new you know mechanisms uh thinking through that so what we typically try to do is getting really clear in type of objectives before starting out and then really differentiating in terms of what do we want to achieve as a program and set ourselves metrics and then what should uh achieve as grantees uh and then hold us to it right and I think this is the toughest part um and it's a movement right now I feel in the market that people come more to the realization okay we actually should be more rigerous although it's always very Normy very web

to right like who other the guys tracking and Reporting it's this like boring thing nobody wants to hear right uh but I think we are very you know big proponent and also know you guys on on your side Sean are doing more and more in that regard so that's you know I think amazing to see to put a bit more of this rigor in you know tracking meaningful metrics and Reporting them to the outside and what we all do to move away from that okay let's spray out funds and then we're happy because we we've done something totally yeah you know i' I'd like to talk a little bit about the evolution of how we got here you know as I mentioned earlier you know it really started with ef there were some early Bitcoin Grant zcash others um but as the ethereum ecosystem is

proliferated and either in and other ecosystems like salana you've seen Grant programs really start to scale and it really started where I started to see Grant Council spinning up I think a is is a really good example of that early on when it was llama and the team over there that proposed the first AA grants Dow and you know spinning that up and you know you start started to see more of a trend that way where it wasn't necessarily a separate service provider taking on you know the the Outsourcing of Grant programs but you know there started to be ways that taking on more of the elements of Grants and incentives and these types of things were decentralized out to the community and then over time as that approach has

grown you've seen the rise of different servic providers and I think that there's a range of those on the getcoin side of things like we're primarily known for developing novel mechanisms helping people to fund what matters to them as we say um but then more and more creating a Services layer on top of that to make sure people use the tools well they achieve the impact that they want and then when you take that up a layer there's kind of like the process side of it right like how do you optimize Drive efficiencies and ultimately there's the people there where you know Consulting and advisory type services so if you get to kind of that model right of people process technology um maybe starting on the technology side talking a little bit you know from the getcoin side of things

and how that relates to verifiable impact which I think is what you guys are doing really well at Thrive protocol today right I know personally and as someone who worked you know contributed to getcoin as well Sean sometimes there's questions around quadratic funding right and like was how were those funds allocated you know well and is there ways that we can kind of verify the impact of those over time right so could you maybe talk a little bit about like what Thrive does what their verifiable impact means to you and how that approach could even be applied to different funding mechanisms to kind of blend credibility show the ROI those types of things yeah so it's interesting there's a couple different vectors that are crossing there one of those which I appreciate about quadratic funding is the ability for the community to help

decide what should be funded and also the interesting waiting that the algorithm behind Quadra IC funding which allows the whales to be somewhat a little bit dampened and the volume of potentially the minnows actually escalating their voice I appreciate that and the reason why that's important is that the technology helps us to not over index on any one specific stakeholder group and I think that's what's interesting about quadratic funding what I appreciate it always about gitcoin now I think that's the interesting component about where we are in this web three spaces we do have the ability to quickly iterate on different types of algorithms that are appropriate for this specific use cases however even if we have communities making decisions in using different algorithms are we rewarding at

the right point in time now what I mean by that is are we rewarding people or are we paying grantees at the point of impact when they're delivering value that becomes the challenge and what I mean by that is if we're clear upfront with our grantees to say you are going to be rewarded on this Milestone this Milestone this Milestone and here are the characteristics that are required for that Milestone we can then take those grantees who are achieving milestones and continue to fund them throughout their cycle as opposed to go do some work show me a report and then you get a big pile of cash right which is a great way of destroying a lot of value one of the things that we're proud of at what we do at Thrive protocol is for those foundations for those Dows who

are recognizing that you know grants may not be their core competency and it could be more of a distraction and it could be an expensive distraction our ability to come in and say we understand or we with the client we help to understand what are they trying to drive we'll go help bring those Builders use their Community to validate when those Builders have reached those points of value creation and they should be rewarded and so being clear up front what needs to be happening in each one of the milestones and if you hit that Milestone you can demonstrated and the community agrees with it whatever that badge holder could be whether that's a council whether that's a a small group of subject matter experts or whether that's a community at large at that point in time we have a we are able to

make a decision of was value delivered and if it was value if the value was delivered we can make the payment by taking that approach it becomes abundantly clear where people are developing product that is actually going to be used and where there's lots of vaporware we can identify those a lot faster yeah maybe talk me through a little bit on the verifiable impact side like what does that actually look like with Thrive today how are you achieving that you know how does the protocol kind of Technology you know work and then what's the people process layer that sits on top of that so it's interesting as we go through and mature through the different algorithms that we're using and through the different the technology that we're building I'll start at a very basic layer so for example one of our

Milestones could be at Milestone 3 you need to take a product if there's a builder are you moving from test net to to main net right and if you're on Milestone number three and your Milestone says I have run my series of tests and and we're now moving to main it we can verify that on chain and say okay you've completed that step and in addition to that if we're say at the point of at test net what tests were run who in the community actually participated in those tests and we have the ability to incentivize testers in the community to go in and use the product that these people are developing and say is it working yes or no so that's part of the problem that Builders have is that they can create a great product but they don't have the great testing mechanisms or they don't have

the builders or they don't have the users who are going to go use this thing we can help bring those people together remember I mentioned that we can bring together the foundations the people who need to get work done the builders who need the funding and also the community the Rabid fans who want to go help the community move forward bringing those together to say help us evaluate has this met its Milestone or not and if it has met the Milestone they get paid if it hasn't met the Milestone all right let's keep working at it or if you're unable to do it let's cut that project at that point in time versus wait until the very end and pay out a bunch of cash interesting but when you hear all that I mean how does kind of verifying that impact Milestones those types of things

you know work on on your side today and what's the potential you see maybe over the next year I think what we found generally and when I think about this uh what should be manual what should be automated that's always in my hand I I know you guys are probably on the on the side of like building this huge you know infrastructure on top which I really appreciate also you know to plug in at times and so on we always think about when you design a program that needs to be custom made that needs to be very manual so that's the first step the second step in terms of execution processes uh reporting and so on ideally standardized to the mech and then the third layer knowledge or inside generation needs to be manual again so how we think about it in the end is the

first step of you know customizing we need to be or what the program should be and also what the outcome metrics should be for one specific program needs to be very manual and what we typically do is you know taking our time talking with the foundation with key stakeholders and the Dow uh with the research team with Builders and so on to really figure out where the grand programs sit and then Define those outcome metrics based on that and this can be very different from one grand program to the other depending on you know what needs to be achieved and can you know very widely from uh Community satisfaction score on awareness creation on the you know one side of the spectrum to decent tvl on a

very tangible quantitative measure on the other side of the spectrum really depending on the grand program I think the key thing that we found when it comes to reporting these metrics is while you know standardizing the process and making it as easy as possible for one the operator but also the grantees to to report and to put this in a standardized format and ideally that format is not only standard in the one grand program in a dow but across five programs in a dow which we aren't there yet but I think that's the the vision at least we have to not you know um create a burden or for people to trying to you know dedicate their mindspace for every new grand program and and you know come

up uh needing to read through different measuring metrics and so on um what we really found helpful after reporting is taking a manual approach again at the third level and really Digest on what came out of this because the tricky thing is what we're trying to do is we try to put 50 builders in our predefined box and the Box might not always be fit for purpose right it's this like analogy or I think the story with I don't know if you know it the penguine and the school that the teacher says you're rated by flying and everybody else flies and the Penguin can fly but he has other qualities right so I think the third level before we are at this fully

automated version we always have to you know consider the outcomes your perspective and and consider what has been done what hasn't been done and so on and it's quite nuanced at times so uh we don't want to wave kind of the the flag okay you've done it you haven't done it you get the money you don't get the money but really also making space for people to do meaningful work that might not fit the the boxes or might go go sideways two months in we all have to REM that that flexibility and I think that's a a big part of the the work that we're somehow trying to fit in balancing standardization and manual assessment and I think we're always on the verge on being too manual at times but I think that you can see in our reports in terms

of the you know flood and sweat that goes into some of the creation of those it's apparent for sure right for sure and that actually kind of leads me into the next question a little bit when you talk about clients and kind of service that way I'm curious from both of you like how do you find your clients what does that sales process look like when you engage with them yeah so maybe give the audience a little bit of perspective that way maybe I'll start with you Bernard the framing of this already with like BD or deal flow the grants part of our whole unit is more I would say whenever it makes sense and what I mean by that is what we typically try to do and I think from what I've been observing from the outside TR is doing a a similar approach but we really want to

be engaged in the ecosystems that we um work with and you can see that in arbit where we don't only run a a grant program but we also done a strategy Sprint on m&a and we've also uh are now in discussions and thinking through a financial strategy for the Dow so our approach is more we serve specific Dows or ecosystems on a strategy layer if there is a case for Capital allocation or grants programs that need to be improved or revamped then we like to come in because what we always see is you need to have an it's a mean by now High context nobody likes to use the word anymore but you need to have high context in the end and knowing what's

going on who are the stakeholders where did we head in the last six months so what do we need to change and only then I think we start to think through okay is a grant program a case here or it isn't right so we have less this like say BD approach but more um you know just applying it when it makes sense and if not we try to fix other problems that are more apparent in in a specific ecosystem that's you Sean what's your perspective on that so it's interesting I'll say that there is a certain maturation process that has to happen before clients are ready for services like ours I think in web 3 there is no lack of confidence but sometimes there's a lack of competence right and it takes a certain amount of understanding from a

dow or from a leader to realize that we've got plenty of people that are willing to jump in and do the work but are they really going to do do they have the skill set necessary and required to go do the work we've got brilliant people in web 3 and given enough time they're going to figure it out by using a service provider you can skip that learning phase and go right to the ability to quickly make an impact very fast and that's really where our deal flow starts is understanding what their business needs really are and in many cases helping them to articulate what that business need is I won't say it's the first time they' done it but we try to do it with a fine enough point to where we're clear and they're clear when we get to the point of agreeing on what

the metrics are then if we nail those metrics it should be a no-brainer they should be necessarily happy they should be happy with the work that we're delivering and sometimes it takes a bit of that because especially in the Dow World you've got six different people and maybe they're not completely aligned with what the organizational objectives are right so starting first with getting clear is what is the organizational objectives understanding are they trying to build community are they trying to drive Community or they trying to bring Builders to the ecosystem or is it are they looking for as Bernard mentioned almost like a marketing function right so it's understanding what the real needs are based on that using our common approach we can address any one of those three needs helping to get Capital allocation quickly reached helping to bring community in and engaging the

community or based on 140 some thousand contributors and Builders already in our system we've got a short path to reach to the builders um and bring them into brand new ecosystems the beauty about this is that at some point web 3 is going to get to the point to where we recognize the power of the network and that means someone like Bernard who's a governance expert doesn't need to be only working with one protocol we'll have governance experts that can work across many different protocols and we'll have builders that are working across many different protocols and that's where the power web 3 is going to come from and that's what I'm excited about I definitely find it interesting with my background um you know worked at a traditional systems integrator and um Even in our largest clients they were

centralized you were talking to the director of it or the SE Suite right I find it interesting that in web 3 there are some very large clients that are foundations more centralized organizations but some of the ones that have the highest propensity for Grant programs you have a thousand customers right because it's like everyone in the Dow you have the foundation you have Labs you have current stakeholders I mean it's a very different approach I find it exciting personally uh it's chaotic at times right and sometimes maybe it doesn't seem fake if that's a fair way to put it but it's different type of approach you know that's needed especially in some of those larger organizations and I know you know both you guys have great perspectives on that

right you talk about interoperability Sean and and I think that just as we're building systems that are interoperable I mean that's kind of like the promise of one chain I think that you know these teams can be interoperable and we've even seen that you know from a gitcoin perspective working with with both of your organizations hopefully soon we'll see an opportunity where it it's the three of us together right you know working on an opportunity that way um so maybe kind of touch on that a little bit like what do you view as like the collaboration between service providers how does that look and you know Bernard may be asking you that question because you're very active in the Dow governance space and grants being only kind of like part of what you do but you also have

like the treasury the Dow governance side of things I mean how do you view collaboration and like what's the the challenges right now to that and what's the potential you see in web 3 between service providers it's an interesting one also to seeing that unfold right now in the space in terms of you know where people are heading when in the beginning many you know start with this like okay we are running rant programs and then you see very nuanced uh developments on on you know specializations across the ecosystem generally what we believe or we are a strong believer in this thesis of being the best in what you do and ideally then plug in the pieces together what I mean by that and that refers a bit to what I mentioned before right like on the design or strategic side we

like to come in and think things from first instance and think through okay there's a new type of grant program we want to set up the cross ecosystem grant program that we've done for UNIS arbitrum is an example where we thought okay what does a grand program look like that has a dual mission of benefiting two ecosystems and should strengthen the bond really that conceptual layer strategizing uh you know can be anything but really designing Grand program fit for purpose when it then comes to curation we might not be the best in the weeds right you need a group of people with technical abilities or deeper technical understanding on different rfps that we might have framed out um so ideally you plug in people that are more

knowledgeable than than us and are more specialized on on the service to to be plugged in um and that I think you can think through on all the different elements of a good Grand program right like to make the example or close example here the grand stack or the infrastructure behind it is obviously also not our strong stance but your strong stance right and this is how we collaborated in the past really working together and we share our demands our insights from what we need from a practical perspective and you share your insights and you know what's technically possible and how can we make this you know work like a machine with these different parts together to also close the loop with with Sean to you know make them make him part of the party how it

worked also in the past I think you guys have a very unique approach on you know being the first layer working directly with the foundation taking a larger chunk of capital and then really think to okay what should be five sub programs right and I think you label it pluralistic Rants and uh uh sorry if that's the the wrong use of the word but that's how I always understood it and we then really come in at a layer and thinking through what these programs should be on a very you know specialized level so I think um in that regard the kind of house builds itself together with the right elements and we're a big fan of specializing on these things to really create the the biggest value I think the the challenge here is obviously collaboration um can mean a lot of things but in the end our experience is

working repetitively with similar providers obviously creates a lot of value over time and the first project might be a bit you know you might stumble a bit uh working Styles need to align we're all human beings we all have different cultures in our organizations um and We R might run our businesses very differently so the first the second project is still this getting to knowas um for us but then the more you work together over over months and years the more seamless this house or Machinery can work together even with five different parts in it and yeah I think this is really also the beauty of the space the the ways are short everybody knows each other we meet uh each other in IRL I think it's it's just a lot of fun and like plugging that

together and testing it out if it works if it doesn't work do you have any perspectives on that Sean I know that you know thrive in my opinion sits at an interesting place um you know as Bernard mentioned around you know kind of being uh almost like a connective tissue right in terms of like collaboration where you have you know the funding if it's visualized in my mind it's kind of like the funding mechanism beneath thrive in in many ways right like how the capital is actually allocated whether that be a direct Grant or some more novel funding mechanism and then you have more of you know the people layer above Thrive and how you're verifying that impact and matching you know that impact to how the capital was allocated and kind of like you know surfacing some of those outcomes right yeah so it's interesting

our Approach at Thrive protocol is recognizing that I mean we exist to help these blockchain communities maximize the ra on their um treasury allocation but in addition to that as I mentioned before it's like giving those Builders an outlet to express their creativity and deliver that new novel mechanism that's going to bring that three billion normies to crypto right which is what we all need and in addition to that helping those communities to get engaged and to create value even on an individual one-on-one one contribution at a time microscale now the thing is like those communities those Builders and those networks those blockchain communities

they don't exist in a vacuum they exist in a total web 3 ecosystem and right now our total web 3 e system is Tiny compared to in real life right so there's a couple different vectors one is recognizing it is true that all Tides will lift all of our boats right and there is so much work to be done that there is no reason for any one of us to be in direct competition with each other because because we're not we're in competition to bring all of those three billion users into crypto that's what our objective is and should we we all should be focused on that not taking bits and pieces from each other that's not the point right part of that Network effect is recognizing where we are today having those close relationships s we

worked together you know Bernard we met together um and we just happen to be all in in a podcast together right it's part of the unique circumstance of where we are in this watershed moment and this technology and this ethos that I think is really going to change the world and that's what one of the reasons why I'm really excited to be here because we have the mechanisms right we've got the technology we've got the ethos sit in place and we're struggling through historical baggage of how do we learn to behave as a network versus a series of individual Enterprises so sorry s that was probably a little bit more philosophical than you're looking for but that's kind of how we think about it there's no right man that that was excellent right um I definitely see like even you know

talking with friends when I explain what I do you know when you mention you work in crypto the automatic assumption is that you're some kind of day trader right and so to be able to kind of like explain no it's Capital allocation right and there's you know when a treasury is generated there's only so many things you can do you know with the tokens in that Treasury and you know grants is like an essential part grants and incentives an essential part of growth in the crypto ecosystem you know I also find it interesting that with traditional Grant giving organizations I mean many of them are pegged to Fiat currencies right which aren't as subject to the ups and downs that you see with tokens in a treasury right and so every

time you disperse one of those grants you're creating cell pressure right or you may be and so it's that much more important that you make sure that the ROI is there and ultimately it has positive impacts over time to the ecosystem versus negative impacts or that could have you know a real hit to kind of just like treasury value and sustainability over time right so the last part I want to jump into is the one that I've been looking forward to the most right is like uh to quote AE um since I'm I'm sitting in his chair doing the podcast um he uses the term a lot you know like where is the puck going right and really what that refers to is like where are we going with all of this you know from from the crypto kind of Grants and incentive side of things for

me personally I'm very interested in um more kind of like the the side of direct contract incentives intense markets you know more automating incentives based on the onchain impact some of the things that we talked about earlier I also see more of a trend around convertible grants and so you know as ecosystems develop they want to have some way that those Grant funds could potentially be converted into equity and provide returns you know back to the ecosystem you even see optimism doing some interesting things with the super chain and you know wanting super chain partners that may receive some of those OP incentives over time to you know pay that back and then that benefits the whole of the collective right and so those are some of the things that I'm

watching and I find most interesting you know I'd be curious both yours perspectives on that so May Bernard I'll start with you yeah 100% And it's funny I had to I had to smile a bit when you mentioned the convertibles um idea because largely I think the big or where the park is moving is to more tangible value creation and it's obviously a big word but I think the big movement is okay in the past we've just allocated a lot of Grants kind of you you need to have a grant program as an ecosystem let's allocate bunch of million of GRS and then everybody's happy right I think the big movement now is the question is ARS it's a bit similar to you know BC when the crypto Market is down suddenly they want to see traction suddenly they want to see what's actually happening

with our funds and I think we are at a point with Grant programs in the market that this is where we see a lot of the conversations heading and I think it's twofold one is obviously on the operation side where personally obviously very excited about might seem boring for other people but really institutionalizing tracking uh you know uh and Reporting finding new standards of measuring outcome and then finding new standards of also reporting the outcome moving away from classical Forum po that nobody wants to read because they read 10 Forum po a day to you know more digestible pieces reports or automated tracking embedded in a in a dashboard and so on so I think that's that's one part and the second part is also new uh Grant mechanisms as part of

value creation I think one is you know different funding designs and and there are the poster boys uh of crypto retro I think I don't know if it's even hot anymore or you know it's if there's another you know hotter thing right now but then also conversations about uh not only wanting to see value in terms of outcome but sometimes also financially and I think there it becomes really interesting and you mentioned convertible grants into Equity is a is a Hot Topic that that also we we've been discussing um more and more lately really thinking through okay what can the ne next level of brand programs look like that maybe have the AIM also for financial well immediate Financial value generation and turning grants into to

equity and then you know supporting grantees to to raise VC funds and taking a part of the the grants as uh shares in in the company and then also on other ends more direct payouts connected to protocol additions or or contracts people are developing so Bing in fees that feed into a grand pool again to create self sustaining Grant programs is also something that I think is picking up more very early nobody has done it ever but I think this like idea of financially s sustaining Grant programs or financially rewarded Grant programs certainly something that you know I think we will hear more from in the in the near future what do your thought Sean I I think Bernard put it extremely

well and so Bernard I'm going to Echo a couple things that you had mentioned in a slightly different format but I think you're very spoton when you mentioned that we need to get better at rewarding um value creation right and that's it we need T tangible value cre and that's what we need to reward and that's what we need to pay for we need to get better at doing that and I think most of the grant providers and most of those working in Grants get that and are moving towards the ability to say what makes sense to reward versus what makes sense not to reward and let's get better at that and let's cut out all the sybles and cut out all the same project that's been dipping the same thing in 16 different places right so let's get better at making reward rewarding people

at the point of value creation I think in our space Innovation is just going to happen right and I see in the grant space there's so many different ideas that are being run right now innovation's going to happen the thing that I think that is going to be a Tipping Point at some point is people will say hey so after the grant has been done and after some kind of impact has been done how are we scaling what has been built because Builders can build but they don't know how to scale always right that's the piece that I think we've missed and I think that's going to become a new focal point not this year probably next year once we've finished getting really clear on rewarding people we actually creating value then we're

going to recognize that they need help scaling right we need to help them bring users to whatever they create to help them get that product to get critical mass to get momentum behind it so it becomes an next Unis swap because I'm pretty sure we've developed the next Unis swap which is sitting someplace unused what we need to do is we need to stop that so we need to say if we've got this big pool of projects execute the big pool of projects rewarded value creation and that 10% that can change the world let's put some fire let's dump some gasoline on that let's make those things explode I think that's what we're going to see not this year probably next year because that's the point to where we can start bringing in I'll go back

we're not building for web 3 we need to be building for web 2 we need to be building for those people who are outside our own ecosystems and don't go to the confer conferences and the way to do that is find the projects that are developing for that and dump gas on them yeah and I definitely see a lot of potential I mean even when you think about open source software I mean you know I'm an idealist that way I think that crypto in many ways is kind of like the Natural Evolution of this open source software progression that we've seen for decades now and even with all of like the the human progress right that's been Associated to that over the last 20 or 30 years open source software still mostly relies on Legacy fundraising mechanisms and it's largely underfunded I mean that was in many ways

kind of like the impetus for getcoin right was like Kevin realizing that open source software devs are under incentivized for the work they do and surely there's a way that crypto can help them to get coins right and I think to your earlier Point Sean there's definitely a passion you know in the industry right now around this group where we still have a long way to go but I think that the systems that we're building and just the focus that we're putting on the topics of Grants and incentives and impact and how do we do better that way could surprise people and it could be one of those things that you know really crosses the chasm right as it were from crypto to kind of like IRL in terms of ways that crypto can really contribute and grow the world in a positive way right at least that's my

hope so we're actually over on time which means we had a great episode so we'll get to the wrapping it up here key takeaways right so Bernard I guess to turn it over to you if there was you know one key takeaway you would kind of have from from this episode and just the work that you do that you'd like to leave the audience with what would that what would that be it's not necessarily a key take away from from our discussion but I think what it all boils down and I think it's a bit a human argument in terms of collaboration what we're discussing now is very nuanced right like we all of us P similar things on a daily when we go through the different layers of what we're working on right like we design programs we manage them or execute on them and then we learn

from them what I found and I I think I shared this observation also with you is that every time we come together IRL and somebody's hosting a red Workshop there's a lot of things that we are taking away but then we go into our little silos again and like heads down grind through until the next conference there are obviously many inent and and all of us are working on more platforms and and collaboration mechanisms that we set up regular calls and and do more knowledge sharing and so on but I think this is something that is such a you know low lwh hanging food still and you know can lose a lot of the value creation still because in the end we're working on similar problems um everybody has very nuanced view on different topics and this says and I think we're

all firm Believers of the rising tired floods all about Theory right we we're super early there are 110 problems to be fixed that we all think uh about in the morning under the shower every morning and I think it's just a you know crucial time now to get together more and push each other achieving them and solving individual parts of of this and yeah I think that's the thing I always have have top of mind and uh very exciting future obviously ahead I think in the next you know friends always ask me how early are you guys in crypto and like GRS and so on right like and I still believe it's like five years 10 years down the road to be something that we all can be super proud of and say okay that's a very well old machine in Grants now and we figured it out and so you

know very excited to to be on the journey also together with you guys for the for the years to come well put Sean what about you I think the key take away for me is for the Community to recognize it's not the objective is not Distributing Grant funds the objective is rewarding value creation and when we get to that point of recognizing that's the turning point then we're all going to get better at making sure that that's the point that we're actually rewarding value creation and the other piece that's related to that is that at some point our technology is going to grow beyond the capabilities that web 3 needs today and we are building the foundation that's going to help Capital allocation

across the world this is going to change the world I'm convinced of it and our governance processes are moving so fast and The Innovation is so fast we just have to think bigger we have to think that let's build for web three not built for web two and those foundations these Grant processes that we're putting into place Capital allocation that we're putting in place we have to be focused on not building for us but building for iro if we do that then we're going to change the world and that's kind of what I'm sure a large chunk of us are here for the big thing I look at is I mentioned earlier in episode there's this old adage people process technology right I think sometimes actually I think a lot in crypto we over index on technology right like we want to build things we want to continue to build on

top of these networks and that's great and there's lots of cool things that we built but I see more of the potential and even like in this discussion it's proven it to me even more that it's really people process where we have even larger opportunities around because we're in ways we're kind of overbuilding technology and we're not thinking enough about the outcomes right the ROI like all of these things that are more people and process Centric than like the tool you know like you can interchange different tools but if you don't know how you're going to use those tools to achieve what you want and how you're going to work with people to do that a tool isn't going to do you much good right and so it's definitely encouraging to see the the groups that are rising up around this you know I agree with Sean

I'm a little bit idealistic that way uh as well but uh I think it's it's kind of a big deal I probably wouldn't spend so much time around this stuff if I didn't think that so yeah you know I appreciate both of you coming on the show today um it was a great conversation I appreciate you working with me on my first time hosting a green pill um and so definitely appreciate it you know uh and looking forward to getting this out to the rest of the audience so thanks guys have a good day thanks L guys nice job s [Music]