Attributes
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Author(s): @Olshansky
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Recipient(s): Students, learners, speakers or educators in the Pocket community
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Category: Imbursement
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Fulfills: N/A
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Related Installments: N/A
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Asking Amount: 10,000 POKT / month
Summary
As the Pocket community grows, there is an opportunity to support different community members to further education, disseminate knowledge, and financially support those involved in the Pocket ecosystem.
This proposal asks the DAO to allocate funds that are periodically sent over to the Foundation, which will accumulate and can be released on an as-needed basis per the discretion of the Foundation.
Abstract
Various projects and initiatives are looking to further education in the crypto ecosystem [1,2,3] via DAOs or other means. Grants have also been commonplace to enable community members to build projects at Pocker and elsewhere [4].
Large projects with sizable grants require a proposal and decision to be made on a per-project basis. Still, there is an opportunity to support smaller initiatives without the overhead of a DAO vote every time.
[1] https://academiadao-manifest.studio.site
[2] https://www.developerdao.com
[3] Scholarships – Blockchain Research Lab
[4] https://www.blockchaingrants.org
Motivation
Pocket’s first conference (infracon.org) is taking place next week at the time of writing. It will have attendees and speakers from different locations, companies and backgrounds.
Some speakers and attendees can comfortably afford the travel and accommodations personally, others have them reimbursed by the parties they represent, but it may not be universally true.
Compensating things such as travel accommodations for specific speakers will create a significant overhead if it requires a DAO proposal every time, given the size of the scholarship/grant.
The expected ROI from supporting students & educators is intangible but can have meaningful dividends (technical, cultural, etc.) down the road. I believe that as long the budget is reasonable, it is worth the risk and investment.
Needs Being Met
N/A
Budget
The initial request is to allocate 10,000 POKT that will be transferred from the DAO reserves to the Foundation on a monthly cadence. These will accumulate and be deployed at the Foundation’s discretion as needed.
Rationale
Given the volatility of POKT’s price, it is hard to justify an exact amount and frequency, so the budget outlined above is just an initial proposal and should remain flexible.
A smaller periodic allocation or a lower frequency will also be reasonable and could be amended as market conditions change. I’m curious to hear what other community members think.
An alternative consideration could be to use POKT’s 30-day moving average and allocate a USD sum (e.g. $2,500) equivalent in POKT every month.
Dissenting Opinions
- Discretion of funds allocation to Foundation - “Micro-grants” or “micro-scholarships” will not have a significant financial impact on the Pocket ecosysten, making it okay to bypass a DAO vote every time.
- Budget - As the price POKT falls and rises, a POKT denominated allocation could potentially become insufficient or overly large. Therefore, a USD equivalent using a 30-day moving average given some pricing Oracle is a practical alternative that accounts for market turbulence.
Deliverable(s)
A document or featured web page could be used to track eachi micro-grant allocated from the scholarship fund to keep track and showcase how these funds are managed.
Contributor(s)
This idea was generated through offline conversations with certain community members including @JaureguiA.
As a first recipient of a micro-grant from the Scholarship fund, I would propose Tyler Kell (@relyt29) from Cornell Tech who will be speaking an Infracon 2022, on The Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3)
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Copyright
Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.