Introducing OceanDAO
A grants DAO curated by the Ocean community, for growth & long-term sustainability
Introduction
Hello Oceaners!
Ocean has been following a journey to full decentralization since its inception several years ago. We’re pleased to announce a key piece of that puzzle: community-led funding in the form of a grants DAO that we call OceanDAO. It closes the loop on a “snowball effect” feedback cycle where the health of OCEAN and the Ocean ecosystem rises as the usage of Ocean goes up. We call this the “Web3 Sustainability Loop”; this blog post has details.
Today we’re pleased to announce the release of OceanDAO, and its first funding cycle.
OceanDAO is a grants DAO to help fund Ocean community projects, curated by the Ocean community.
OceanDAO is a great way to get involved:
- As a project: If you’re looking for funding to build something, do outreach, or unlock data
- As a curator: If you’re an OCEAN holder & want to help steer the future of Ocean, you can make an impact by learning about proposals and voting.
Highlights
OceanDAO Funding Round 1 has these actions and dates:
🐡 Project proposals — post a proposal following this template, to OceanDAO Discourse.
- Proposals open on November 30th at 12:00 pm GMT
- Proposals deadline on December 14th at 23:59 GMT
🐟 Discussion — at OceanDAO Discord and Town Halls
🐬 Voting — vote on Ocean Snapshot. 1 OCEAN = 1 vote.
- Voting opens December 15th at 12:00 pm GMT
- Voting ends December 21st at 23:59 GMT
🐙 Grants — Each winning project will receive 10000 OCEAN from OceanDAO. There will be 5 winners: the top 5 highest voted proposals.
- Funds will be disbursed to grantees within 24 hours after voting ends.
Future Funding Rounds
OceanDAO future Funding Rounds 2, 3, 4 etc are planned monthly, starting in February 2021:
- Project proposals — due by 23:59 GMT on the 1st day of the month.
- Voting — closes 23:59 GMT on 4th day of the month.
- Funding — funds will be disbursed within 24 hours after voting ends.
- There may be variations in: amount of funding, # teams funded, and action steps themselves.
The OceanDAO wiki has the links and up-to-date information you will need, to participate as a project team member or as a community curator.
Project Types
OceanDAO funding is for projects of these types:
- Build / improve applications or integrations to Ocean
- Outreach / community (grants don’t need to be technical in nature)
- Unleash data
- Build / improve core Ocean software
Project Criteria
When proposing a project, these are the two criteria to keep in consideration: (1) ROI towards growth (2) aligned with Ocean mission. Projects that fail (2) will not be considered for voting. Once voting opens, only criterion (1) remains. Let’s elaborate!
Criterion (1). On average, value added to the Ocean ecosystem must exceed the grant value spent.
- That is, the average “return on investment” (ROI) must be > 1.0. Value added by a project is hard to know in advance. Some will fail; others will succeed and bring 10x value. But this must hold true on average across projects.
- Motivation: We want a “snowball effect” for ecosystem growth, where more funds granted leads to more funds available for grants in the future. This will happen with more network revenue or a rise in OCEAN.
- This page has more information on Expected ROI.
Criterion (2). The project must help to promote the Ocean’s mission & values (or at least not work against them).
- Mission & values. Ocean’s mission is to equalize the opportunity for people to access data. Ocean’s values, and further details, are here.
Minimum Proposal Requirements
Anyone can propose a project to OceanDAO. However, to be considered, you must have at least 5,000 OCEAN in the same Ethereum wallet as listed in your proposal by the time the proposal process ends (December 14th, 23:59 pm GMT). If selected for a grant, this will be the same wallet where you will receive your grant funding. This helps to filter towards people with a vested interest or “skin in the game” in OCEAN — that is, Ocean community members. Ocean Protocol team members will verify.
Discussion Venues
There are two main venues for discussion: text chat-based at Discord, and videochat Town Halls.
Discord: Navigate to the Ocean Protocol Discord and join the OceanDAO channel. Here we welcome all conversation and questions OceanDAO related.
Town Halls [Link]. These are regular videochat events among community members, open to all. It’s a great place to get to know the community. Here you can ask questions, share proposal feedback, and more.
The first Town Hall is Wednesday, Dec 2 at 16:00 GMT.
See the Town Hall page for information on future calls.
Voting: Details
Voting will take place on: vote.oceanprotocol.com
Implementation
- At proposal deadline (December 14th at 23:59 pm GMT), Proposals that meet the “Minimum Proposal Requirements” and “Project Criteria” will be migrated to the OceanDAO Voting Page.
- Vote with your OCEAN Tokens. 1 OCEAN = 1 vote.
- In order for your vote to count, you must have the OCEAN already in the non-custodial wallet you plan on voting with before the vote opens (December 15th at 12:00 pm GMT). This is so your existing OCEAN balance can be counted. Voting from exchanges is not supported.
- Your wallet address can only vote on one proposal. If you would like to vote on more than one proposal, you will need to fund your multiple wallet addresses with the respective amount of OCEAN before the voting opens.
- You can only vote with the OCEAN tokens in your wallet. You will be unable to vote with OCEAN that is deposited as liquidity in Ocean Market, Bancor, or otherwise. It is your choice if you would like to remove liquidity, vote, and re-add the liquidity back later. Risks come with removing liquidity (impermanent loss etc). This is up to you to manage. In the future, we aim to support voting without needing to remove liquidity (e.g. vote with BPTs).
How to Vote
- Navigate to the OceanDAO Voting Page.
- Once voting begins you will see the active proposals on the ballot.
- Connect your Web3 wallet containing your OCEAN tokens.
- Select the proposal you wish to vote for.
- Click “Vote” and sign with your wallet.
- Vote percentages will adjust accordingly as votes are counted.
Grant Details
Grant Recipients
In Funding Round 1, each winning project will receive 10,000 OCEAN from OceanDAO. There will be 5 winners: the top 5 highest voted proposals (additionally, to receive a grant you must also receive greater than 1% of the vote).
Funds will be disbursed to the grantees within 24 hours after voting ends.
Funds for OceanDAO currently come from Ocean Protocol Foundation (OPF). Future funds are earmarked to also come from the 51% Ocean token supply (details here).
Non-Grant Recipients
If you were not selected for a grant in this Funding Round, we highly encourage you to continue to stay involved in the Ocean community. You are appreciated! There are future OceanDAO funding rounds on the first of every month starting in February 2021, and other opportunities to receive funding.
On OceanDAO Evolution
The best practices and technology around DAOs are still evolving. OceanDAO’s strategy is to “bake slowly” — to ratchet up value-at-risk over time, to give space to learn and for technology to improve. Accordingly, the amount of funds per Funding Round may vary, and OPF reserves the right to make changes in general. The aim is: if OceanDAO creates positive value, then the funds allocated to OceanDAO will go up.
Shipping OceanDAO completes “Goal 4” in the 2020 product plans, on schedule. The label “V4” will be reserved for future software releases.
FAQ
Is voting from exchanges possible?
No. Make sure to have an OCEAN balance in a non-custodial wallet before voting opens on Dec 15.
How does Ocean relate to other Ocean funding programs (Shipyard, Data Economy Challenge)?
They are complementary:
- Shipyard offers grants curated by the core Ocean team.
- OceanDAO offers grants curated by the broader community of OCEAN holders.
- Data Economy Challenge (DEC) offers prizes curated by expert judges from the community.
- More information is at: https://oceanprotocol.com/fund
Is Ocean a governance DAO? Can we use it to change parameter x?
No. OceanDAO is exclusively a grants DAO which gives funding for community-proposed projects. That’s it.
Is this Ocean V4? If no, does that mean you didn’t complete your roadmap?
The roadmap laid out shipping OceanDAO as Ocean Goal 4 / V4. In shipping OceanDAO, we are fulfilling Goal 4 and the promise of the roadmap. However, we are now reserving the label “Ocean V4” for future changes to Ocean smart contract software.
Why not quadratic funding? Quadratic voting? Conviction voting? Futarchy? …?
These are all great ideas. Currently we constrain ourselves to using readily-available tooling with a minimum of experimentation needed. None of the ideas listed fit that criteria. However as DAO tooling improves, we hope to be able to try out new ideas.
Are there plans for a governance DAO?
Not at the present. This is also because, for Ocean, PRs or forks are generally more appropriate anyway, see below. Let’s see how things evolve. For changes to:
- Ocean Market code, then make a PR, or fork and make your own version.
- libraries like ocean.js, then make a PR, or fork and make your own version.
- the datatokens contracts: there is virtually nothing to change since they’re so simple. Basically just ERC20.
- the pool contracts, fork it, change it, and deploy as your own version. We *want* more types of pools in Ocean.
More OCEAN tokens are in circulation via the grant rewards. Does this really bring more value to the Ocean ecosystem? What are the benefits of OceanDAO?
OceanDAO is a grants DAO with the purpose of growing the overall value of Ocean Protocol. Investing in the Ocean ecosystem is a critical aspect of this goal. See The Web3 Sustainability Loop for more details.
The OPF has Ocean tokens, will they use them to vote for proposals? Will it then be a centralized system where the OPF chooses what will get funded?
No. The OPF and BigchainDB will not be voting.
