OceanDAO Round 22 is Live

65,000 USD in OCEAN is available for Web3 data economy projects!

Hello, Ocean Community!

OceanDAO is a grants DAO to help fund Ocean community projects, curated by the Ocean community. Anyone can apply for a grant. The community votes at the beginning of the month, retroactively, rewarding the projects that contributed the most value to the ecosystem.

Round 22 has 65K USD worth of OCEAN, or 200K OCEAN available, whichever is larger in USD terms. (Calculation is on October 10th, 2022, at midnight UTC.) 55K USD is available via the regular grants program, and 10K USD is via our micro-grants run by Algovera AI.

Round 22 Dates

• Proposals Submission Deadline is October 11 at midnight UTC
• Add OCEAN to Voting Wallet by Proposal Submission Deadline.
• Two-day proposal Due Diligence Period ends October 13
• Voting Starts on October 13 @ midnight UTC
• Voting Ends on October 17 @ midnight UTC
• Funding Deadline on October 30

All times are midnight UTC.

OceanDAO Evolution

We are tuning OceanDAO towards these goals:

• A culture of contributing. Biasing to those who are engaged with the community and who are aligned with our value-add mission.
• Quality outcomes. Rewards flow to contributors (with OCEAN) who are effective at delivering results.
• Improve DAO efficiency. More efficient capital spending, yet lighter tracking overhead

We aim for OceanDAO to stay minimal (just grants; no treasury) and get more minimal yet; and double down on more automated incentives with lower governance attack surfaces (veOCEAN & Data Farming).

Towards this, the OceanDAO R21 post described some recent steps for R21 and planned steps for R22. While that post targeted a move to retroactive grants, upon deeper investigation we have found it to be high operational overhead, which we have instead focused towards veOCEAN. Therefore we are not moving to retroactive grants at this point in time.

We are moving towards these goals in other ways. First, in the vein of minimal OceanDAO, we are winding down the Parameters WG due to the low scope of governance, low turnout, and ongoing engineering work to further minimize governance. And, the OceanDAO Engineering WG will streamline to use of its OPF internal label as the “Nile” team.

Second, we are shifting more community budget to veOCEAN & Data Farming (more automated, yet aligned objectives), and away from grants (higher governance touch). Therefore, R22 total grants will be 65K USD worth of OCEAN, and R23 total grants will be 45K USD worth of OCEAN (both including 10K USD to Algovera micro-grants). Max funding amounts have been tuned proportionally. The increased funding to veOCEAN & Data Farming will lead to higher APYs for staking OCEAN and curating Ocean data assets. The piece “OceanDAO Is Going Fully Decentralized and Autonomous” has further details.

Round 22 Specs

• Total funding of 65,000 USD (min.)
• 10,000 USD will be allocated for Algovera AI micro-grants.
• 100,000 USD max. per project in a lifetime
• 100,000 USD max. per team in a lifetime (not including Advisors)
• Funding ceiling per tier, in a round (max possible that a project can request in a round) :
• New projects — 3K USD (New project: never previously received a grant from OceanDAO))
• Existing projects — 6K USD (Existing project: have completed one grant from OceanDAO)
• Experienced projects — 12K USD (Experienced project: have completed two or more grants)

Grant Funding Categories

OceanDAO provides grants for a variety of project types.

• Building / improving applications or integrations to Ocean
• Community or developer outreach (grants don’t need to be technical in nature)
• Unleashing data
• The building or improving core Ocean Software
• Improvements to OceanDAO itself

Submitting Proposals

We encourage you to submit proposals early.

To submit proposals, use the Proposal Portal. A tutorial is available here.

Proposals will then be published on Ocean Port. Port is also where voters can read proposal details and ask questions.

All proposals that meet the essential criteria are then submitted to Snapshot.

Proposals that receive support from the DAO voters receive funding, shortly after voting concludes.

Teams can reach out to the Project-Guiding Work Group, here for any guidance or assistance.

Please, do not submit proposals through Ocean Port directly anymore as you will run the risk of not having your proposal accepted.

Project Standing

If you have previously received a grant, you must update your Grant Deliverables inside each proposal to remain in Good Standing, to stay eligible in future Funding Rounds. The Project Standing Dashboard has details.

Funding Tiers

Funding Tiers are achieved by teams delivering on their grant promises, to unlock higher funding ceilings.

The Funding Tiers are:

1. New Project

• Funding Ceiling: as described earlier
• Requires: No one in your project has ever received a grant from OceanDAO. Open to all.
• Benefits: Earmarked. Receive feedback during the application process. Introduced to related projects. Receive support during voting.

1. Existing Project

• Funding Ceiling: as described earlier
• Requires: You have completed 1 or more grants.
• Benefits: Same as above. Receive promotion via Newsletter, Twitter, and other channels. Receive support during voting.

1. Experienced Project

• Funding Ceiling: as described earlier
• Requires: You have completed 2 or more grants.

The amount requested is in USD; the amount paid is in OCEAN token.

Earmarks

“Earmarks” means that there are funds available exclusively to the groups listed below, without having to compete. For example, New Teams (Outreach) have 6,000 USD available without having to compete against other projects. Beyond that amount, they have to compete.

• 3,000 USD For New Teams (non-outreach)
• 3,000 USD For New Teams (outreach)
• 12,000 USD for 2nd/3rd Time Teams
• 12,000 USD for Core Tech Initiatives (listed below)
• 25,000 USD for General (all projects)

Core Tech Earmark & Initiatives

There is specific tech that the core team and Ocean technical community would love to see built. Here’s the list for R22. It’s earmarked, therefore building towards it gives you “air cover” wrt competition.

You can find us in the Core-Tech WG discord channel.

Other OceanDAO Features

Quadratic Funding: Instead of projects receiving a binary grant (either 100% or 0% of what they asked for), all proposals will receive grant amounts relative to how much engagement they received, while still abiding by other rules such as Earmarks and Funding Ceilings.

Minimum USD amount: Projects can set a minimum they are willing to accept, and return the funds if they are insufficient. This drastically increases probability for receiving a grant, on top of Quadratic Funding. (You can reduce your Deliverables commenting in Port, if you only receive a minor part of your overall requested budget.

Voting Boosts: Quadratic Voting helps distribute voting power better. The more projects you vote on, the higher your overall voting power becomes. In addition, you can now visit the Web3 Portal, register yourself with BrightID and receive a 400% voting boost.

Voter Delegation: Voter Delegation allows participants to delegate their decision making to ecosystem members they trust, easily assigning their voting power to other addresses. More info here.

Funds recycling: Any funds remaining inside an Earmark will be recycled into General Grants rather than burned. If there are any funds available at the end, they will be moved back into the treasury.

Working Groups

Here are the WGs:

• Core Tech Working Group
• Outreach Working Group
• Ambassadors Working Group

Ocean Discord has a channel for each WG. The pinned message will have WG meeting times, and other key info. WGs typically meet weekly or bi-weekly. When a WG meets, it’s in its respective discord voice channels. Anyone can listen in. More info.

Town Hall

There are weekly OceanDAO Town Halls, where OceanDAO WGs report progress. Also, any team in the Ocean ecosystem can request to present and share their progress.

Claiming Grants

You can claim your grant from the OceanDAO website. Please find instructions here.

OceanDAO Ecosystem

Visit Ocean Pearl to learn more about each project, track updates, get an overview of the grant process, and follow the Voting Leaderboard.

You can also find all Funding History & Round Data here!

Thank you!

Follow Ocean Protocol on Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn, Reddit, GitHub & Newsletter for project updates and announcements. And chat directly with other developers on Discord.