Research will focus on two primary areas within the crypto space: Incentives Programs and Grants/Public Goods. I will be tracking these and my findings in on this site. Some details on how these are defined for the purposes of this resource are below 👇
Definition: Grants are defined as “an award, usually financial, given by one entity to an individual or a organization to facilitate a goal or incentivize performance. Grants are essentially gifts that do not have to be paid back, under most conditions. In the crypto space these grants can be for a variety of purposes, some of which might serve The Common Good.
Public Goods are traditionally defined as a commodity or service that is made available to all members of a society. In the crypto space these services are administered by a diverse group of individuals, projects and organizations and paid for collectively through a variety of means. Public goods must also be must be non-rivalrous and non-excludable.
Funds: Grants and Public Goods Funding is primarily from foundations today (the shining example being The Ethereum Foundation). Programs and initiatives available from for profit entities like DAOs and decentralized protocols are a fast developing (and exciting) space that we will be exploring with our research. Like Ecosystem Funds, the incentives may be quantified in native tokens specific to the network or project but they are usually quantified, today, in $USD.
Governance: Grants and public goods funding is, by nature, an award given by one entity to another. These are typically governed by a formal process of review and approval that requires human interaction. New types of governance for grants through mechanisms like quadratic funding are emerging in our space that we will be learning more about through our research.
Definition: Incentive programs are defined as any collection of funds that are awarded based on development of new ecosystem projects, current project ports, or weighted performance (usually measured by TVL).
Funds: Incentives Programs may include funding and support from a variety of sources including Venture Capital (crypto native or traditional) foundations, and/or protocol specific liquidity incentives. The incentives are sometimes quantified in native tokens specific to the network or DAO who distributes them or may be $USD or some stablecoin equivalent. These programs could also come with additional requirements on recipients including equity share and may have value add accelerator programs attached (usually in the case of VC.)
Governance: Incentives programs may be governed in a programmatic way where incentives are automatically dispersed based on specific criteria or they may be governed by a formal process of review and approval that requires human interaction on proposal review and allocation of funds.
In addition to capturing the above pieces of information on public database I will be publishing articles from my newsletter, The Sovereign Signal, along with sending out corresponding tweet threads so please subscribe and help support the cause!
You can see the most current list of published articles and such Research Reports
I would appreciate any and all feedback and am open to discussions if anyone may want to help with this project. I specifically need anons that are willing to help dig for information as listed above and assist in building out the database.