# Grant Ships Proposal

## Table of Contents

- [Purpose](#Purpose)
- [How The Game Works](#How-The-Game-Works)
- [The Arbitrum Strategic Framework & Grant Ships](#The-Arbitrum-Strategic-Framework-amp-Grant-Ships)
- [Game Structure & Players](#Structure-&-Players)
- [Delegated Arbitrum Voters](#Delegated-Arbitrum-Voters)
- [Referee Team](#Referee-Team)
- [Game Facilitators](#Game-Facilitators)
- [Grant Ships](#Grant-Ships)
- [Grant Recipients](#Grant-Recipients)
- [Hats Protocol](#Hats-Protocol)
- [Game Process](#Game-Process)
- [Step 0 Setup](#Step-0-Setup)
- [Step 1 Allocation](#Step-1-Allocation)
- [Step 2 Voting](#Step-2-Voting)
- [Incentivizing Engagement: Vote Modifier](#Incentivizing-Engagement-Vote-Modifier)
- [Funding Request](#Funding-Request)
- [Expected Duration](#Expected-Duration)
- [Team](#Team)
- [DAO Masons](#DAO-Masons)
- [Who We Are](#Who-We-Are)
- [Project Plan](#Project-Plan)
- [Milestone 1](#Milestone-1)
- [Milestone 2](#Milestone-2)
- [Milestone 3](#Milestone-3)
- [Milestone 4](#Milestone-4)
- [Amendments](#Amendments)
- [Additional Reading](#Additional-Reading)

## Purpose

Grant Ships is an ‘evolutionary grants game’ where Grant Ships (grant-giving subDAOs) compete to best deploy capital in the Arbitrum ecosystem.

The long-term vision is to establish a self-sustaining, community-guided grant allocation system that can function seamlessly without central planning.

The game serves to boost awareness of diverse initiatives on the platform while ensuring a more inclusive governance structure, where anyone can propose a Grant Ship or curate the performance of existing Ships.

By incorporating game mechanics, we've made involvement both engaging and straightforward.

## How The Game Works

This document includes a detailed description of the core game mechanics. If you would like a TLDR, we recommend reading the '[2-minute read](https://hackmd.io/Kn1h9OhhTaGEYx2vn9I99Q?view)' version of the Grant Ships game to get an understanding of the basic mechanics.

## The Arbitrum Strategic Framework & Grant Ships

Grant Ships is aligned with Arbitrum's Strategic Framework in many ways.

### The Arbitrum Strategic Framework
> **Vision:** Fuel financial sovereignty
**Mission:** Spearhead the evolution of decentralized technologies and governance
**Strategic Priorities:** World-class Devrel, Governance Optimization, Future Proofing and Community Growth.
**Values:** Secure, User-focused, Sustainable, Ethereum-aligned, Socially Inclusive, Technically Inclusive, Neutral and Open.

### Grant Ships Alignment

1) **Vision & Mission alignment:** This is a community-run, iterative, decentralized grants program - promoting financial sovereignty and governance evolution.
2) **Strategic Priorities:** Each grant application is required to identify which Arbitrum strategic priorities they are in alignment with, providing a signal for grant ships and voters to aid with evaluation.
3) **Wordclass Devrel:** Incentivizes funding of projects that bring users to Arbitrum and broadcasts progress in a transparent way - keystones of Devrel.
4) **Governance Optimization:**
- Provides clear channels for voter signal to directly impact fund allocation without hefty proposal cycles
- Evolve better allocation systems with voter signal as the fitness function.
6) **Future Proofing:** If the game gains momentum and maintains funding, it could run forever in a decentralized way, continually evolving its allocation strategies to adapt to changing circumstances.
7) **Community Growth:** An accessible grants program is a major attractor of talent and interest.
8) **Socially Inclusive:** Anybody can be a grant ship, anybody can curate grant signal as a voter.
9) **Technically Inclusive:** Uses modular technologies from the larger web3 ecosystem.
10) **Neutral & Open:** Clear path toward full decentralization with community vote assigning all roles, privileges, and responsibilities.
11) **Secure:** The game includes checks and balances to avoid scams & rugs.

### Game Structure & Players

[](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/HJZRFASZp.png)

#### Delegated Arbitrum Voters

- Vote to elect Grant Ships in the setup phase
- Vote in Grant Ship allocation rounds to determine the efficacy of each ship
- Vote to revoke roles from teams that are not acting in the best interest of the DAO. For example, if referees are abusing power or not acting by their mandate, the DAO can revoke their role and elect new Referees.

#### Referee Team

- Review Allocation Disclosures from Grant Ships to ensure they are not malicious
- Send fund allocations to projects as per request from Grant Ships
- Minting allocation Hypercerts in the same transaction. This helps voters review the impact before the Allocation Voting Round.
- Flagging Grant Ships that not operating by the rulebook (Yellow Card, Red Card). The token or Attestation structure is still TBD.
- Hosting live Minting Events where they approve Allocation Disclosures (Mints HyperCerts and sends funds to projects)

#### Game Facilitators
- Responsible for deploying voting contracts, elections, and airdropping voting tokens
- Responsible for Marketing and Promotion
- Designing and iterating on Vote Modifiers and Game Design
- In the first iteration, the Referee team and Game facilitators role may be held by the same entity, depending on available funding/community interest.

#### Grant Ships
- Responsible for signaling their Allocation Intents (disclosures)
- Capturing enough Grant recipient details and including them in the disclosure
- Ensuring Grant Recipients disclose progress on work completed

#### Grant Recipients
- Responsible for building
- Responsible for posting updates

#### Hats Protocol

Hats Protocol allows DAOs to create organizational structures that are capture-resistant, transparent, and efficient.

A Hats structure is a network of non-transferable ERC-1155 compatible tokens. They allow a DAO to build a ‘tree-shaped’ role and permission structure where each token can manage the tokens below it, but not above. Placing the ‘Top Hat’ on Delegated Arbitrum DAO voters ensures that the ultimate decision-making power is granted to the most decentralized player in this game.

By offloading operational authority and responsibility, Arbitrum DAO needn’t be burdened with every decision – only revoking authority when needed.

## Game Process

### Step 0 Setup

[](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/HySALCBZa.png)

Before the first round of Grant Ships can begin, the game requires:

1) At least 3 manned "Grant Ships."
- Each Grant Ship is a team or individual who has stepped forward to allocate grant funding to promising community projects.
2) A selection of community projects that request funding through the Grant Ships Program.
3) A small team of Referees to administrate the game.
- These referees are given limited authority to initiate fund distributions on the request of Grant Ship teams and to issue "yellow and red cards" that serve as warnings and penalties for Grant Ships who violate rules or guidelines.
4) A small team of Game Facilitators to set up the game.

**Process:**
- Elect initial 3 Grant Ships (Joke Race)
- Accept project applications
- Select Referees (Manually assigned by Game Facilitators for season 1)
- Finalize vote mod system
- DAO Masons volunteers to serve as Game Facilitators for round 1, ideally adding in other ecosystem actors to learn the role.

**Why?**
- Elections create a decentralization vector and encourage voter community participation.
- Three is the minimum number of ships needed to have meaningful comparisons between allocation strategies.
- Referees ensure that every allocation is disclosed onchain. Choosing trusted actors for the first round will get the game going, and set the standard for future referees.
- Referees ensure that we are not sending funds to bad actors.
- Vote Mods are primarily to incentivize participation so they need to be defined and broadcasted early.

### Step 1 Allocation

[](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/BJ-EwArWp.png)

**Process:**
- For round 1, Grant Ships are given an equal amount to distribute.
- Grant Ships signal which projects they would like to fund and for how much by creating **Disclosures**
- Refs review the disclosure, send funding, and mint a **Hypercert** for the Grant Ship's allocation. The HyperCert will be used later on to review an allocation's impact.

**Why?**
- Ensures proper disclosure
- Provides a check to ensure that a Grant Ship isn't abusing their permission
- Minting Hypercerts and sending funding in one batch allows Refs to create a ritual (Minting Mondays) where they can broadcast the funded projects and gather attention.
- Hypercerts also allow the Voter to assess the impact of funds spent (ie. Domains)

### Step 2 Voting

[](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/SJC_P0B-6.png)

**Process:**
- Registered ARB holders (delegates or self-delegates) are airdropped a voting token equal to their ARB balance + a "Vote Mod" that rewards participation.
- A vote on Grant Ships is held using Allo's Donation voting strategy with the airdropped token.
- In future rounds, Grant ships receive a percentage of the total funding pool in proportion to the amount of votes they received.

**Why?**

- The DAO vote is the 'fitness function' that decides which ship is allocating effectively. We want more capital in the hands of effective allocators.
- Allo's donation voting strategy allows us to modify voting weights off-chain and experiment with better allocation models. We will always show users how we arrive at these numbers.
- We intend to use vote weight modifications (Vote Mods) to incentivize participation and engagement with the game while maintaining the influence of the Arbitrum token.
- This fulfills the promise of "community curation" that allows the voters to signal which projects and allocation strategies were most effective.

### Incentivizing Engagement: Vote Modifier

Using Allo's Donation Voting strategy, we are afforded the flexibility to modify and provide bonuses to voting power.

By incentivizing voters with extra voting power (in addition to their delegated ARB voting power), we have the opportunity to shape voter signal in a way that supports the DAO's mission and strategic objectives, while also incentivizing engagement.

- **Voter Participation Bonus:** Voter participation history. Voters receive a higher score for voting in previous rounds.
- **Voter Awareness Bonus:** We provide a voter bonus to any address that subscribes to our Push notification channel. It would also reward those who had subscribed to the GovMonth channel. If we can find a fair and programmatic way to reward users for subscribing to the Grant Ships Twitter, we will also reward them for that.
- **Active in Arbitrum bonus:** Voters receive a slightly higher score for having participated in other Arbitrum DAO proposals.
- **Retrospective Analysis:** Determine which voters made accurate calls on project efficacy, and amplify those voters temporarily. This is a later-term experiment.
- **DAO Selected Strategies:** The DAO could choose to experiment with a variety of tools such as quadratic weighting and correlation discounting. This would also be a later-term experiment.

#### Enhancing Voter Engagement

In addition to direct incentives for voters to engage with Grant Ships, we have formulated a comprehensive media strategy that maximizes transparency and intrigue.

Here's how we plan to get the word out:
- Ritualized, weekly Twitter spaces where we send the funding allocations live. We will also use this time to have live interviews with Ship operators or projects to keep the content engaging and interesting.
- Regular updates using the Thank Arb Push notification channel.
- Regular updates on the Grant Ships Push channel, our Twitter, our Farcaster account, and potentially a Grant Ships Farcaster Channel on Warpcast (if we can demonstrate enough interest).
- A live, onchain feed of our progress as we build (DAO Masons already uses this mechanism internally). This will be reported daily.
- Weekly Grant Ships log on the Arbitrum forum to track progress and gather interest. We will post a dev-log here as we build the product, as well as information about the Beta test once it is live.

## Funding Request

In order to account for market volatility, we are using a DCA ARB price of $.856 for the last 2 months.

**Total Product Request:** (Grant Ships Game, Promotion, App): 54,900 (47,000 USD)
- Milestone 1: 11,700 ARB (10,015 USD)
- Milestone 2: 31,500 ARB (27,964 USD)
- Milestone 3: 11,700 ARB (10,015 USD)

**Total Beta Testing Round Request:**
- Milestone 4: 10,000 ARB + 90K Grant pool funding (85,600 USD)

**Total:**
- Product Request: 54,900 ARB
- Beta Testing Round Request: 100,000 ARB
- Total: 154,900 ARB

## Expected Duration

Total Project: 16 weeks
- Milestone 1: 3 Weeks
- Milestone 2: 6 Weeks
- Milestone 3: 3 Weeks
- Milestone 4: 4 Weeks

For a complete breakdown of our planned schedule and tasks please see our [Planning Board](https://github.com/orgs/DAOmasons/projects/17/views/5)

## Team

### DAO Masons

DAO Masons is a small service DAO with big ambitions to transform decentralized governance. Our mission is to create new mechanisms, strategies, protocols, and applications that will vastly improve the overall output and efficacy of DAOs.

#### Who We Are

- Chris Wylde
- [Github](https://github.com/boilerrat)
- Roles
- Project Manager
- Community Lead
- Protocol Integrations
- Jord
- [Github](https://github.com/jordanlesich)
- Roles
- Product Manager
- Lead Engineer
- Wireframes/Designs
- Game Design
- Matt (UI369)
- [Github](https://www.github.com/UI369)
- Roles
- Game Coordinator Lead
- Game Design
- UX/UI Development
- Marketing

## Project Plan

### Milestone 1

- **Whitepaper**
- This will be an expansion of the original [Grant Ships whitepaper](https://hackmd.io/Kn1h9OhhTaGEYx2vn9I99Q?view), that outlines the methodology and technical details of the game. It will be a high-level document outlining the structure, integrations, and gameplay of Grant Ships.
- Understand Arbitrum KYC and legal concerns for grant-giving
- Include technical specifics for all integrations and the architecture of the application.
- Output
- HackMD Docs
- Published using a Web3 onchain publishing platform. (ie Mirror)

- **Product Prototyping**
- Proof of concept code for key integrations (Hats, Hypercerts, Allo)
- Integration testing
- Wireframing main layouts
- Creating a rough application architecture

- **Promotion**
* We'll broadcast our intentions, progress, and learnings to our audience. Let people know what we're building.
* Output
- Twitter tweets
- Spaces Q&A
- Schedule podcast appearances
- Weekly dev log in Arbitrum discourse

### Milestone 2

- **Create Rulebook**
- This will be a Gitbook "rulebook" for the game, available to all participants to provide details on how the game works.
- Output
- Gitbook Rulebook

- **Dashboard MVP**
- The dashboard is a one-stop shop for everything required to interact with the game.
- Output
- Deployed, working MVP
- Any custom subgraphs
- Features
- Grant Ship viewer
- Grant ship roster w/funding levels
- Information about each project funded (Hypercerts)
- Penalty alerts (yellow & red cards)
- Referee dashboard
- Issue cards (yellow/red & hypercert/green card)
- Voting dashboard
- Registry of ships
- Display previous votes
- Users can vote on ships
- Displays results
- Displays proposal timing, allocations, and rules
- Display current Voting Token balance and vote modifiers.
- Bonus:
- Convert subgraphs to Goldsky and integrate with Push Protocol to create a live notification system.

- **Recruitment drive begins**
- During this Milestone we will plan the recruitment strategy to bring Ship Operators on board so they may get a start on planning how their ships will sail.
- Output
- Referee team screening
- Initial ship team screening
- **Promotion**
* We'll broadcast our intentions, progress, and learnings to our audience. Let people know that we're building.
* Output
- Tweets
- Spaces Q&A
- Podcast appearances
- Weekly dev log in Arbitrum discourse

### Milestone 3

- **Complete Dashboard**
- Dashboard App to be completed and tested.
- Live app deployed under Grant Ships Domain
- Request load testing
- Donation Voting allocation
- **Complete Rule book**
- Gitbook Rule book completed and made live.
- **Initial Teams Established and Trained**
- Initial Referee Teams selected and trained on how to interact with the game. Referees will understand their roles and responsibilities in the game and understand how to interact with the app.
- Initial Grant Ships Teams established and trained. Teams that will be awarding Grants will be established and taught how to interact with the game. They will be given the tools they need to design their ships and start playing.
- **Fund dispersal mechanism**
- Referees serve as a "governance facilitator" enforcing rules and suggesting improvements to move into elected roles, and then a decentralized mechanism (anyone can be a referee).
- **Continue Promotion**
- During this milestone, we plan to enact our promotion plan to the fullest, to maximize visibility.
- Output
- Twitter
- Spaces
- Podcasts
- Weekly dev log in Arbitrum discourse

### Milestone 4

- **Beta Testing**
- The Players:
- Referee Team Enabled
- Grant Ships Enabled
- Project Applicant Pool finalized
- The Game:
- Day: 0 Fund the grant pool w/90K Arb
- Grant Ships signal allocations w/30K each
- Coaching, Guidance, and Tech support from the facilitator team
- Day: 14 Funding allocations funding
- Day: 14-28 Gather signal from voters on allocation efficacy

## Amendments
#### 10/27: As per Shawn's Request
- Changed $ to Arb in funding request
- Amended funding request to include Milestone 4: Beta Test
- Added Milestone 4: Beta Test description
- Added Arbitrum Strategic Alignment section
- Edited "Incentivizing Engagement: Vote Modifier" section w/Outreach plan

## Additional Reading
- [How Will This Project Be a Success?](https://hackmd.io/@DAOMasons/BydPIMw-a)
- [What Could Go Wrong?](https://hackmd.io/Iz6Ub49SSwGjI9C4IA2WEA)
- [Voting Modifers](https://hackmd.io/txM4_1CwSKytJtfqX9z51Q)
- [Flywheels](https://hackmd.io/98q3KiqVS6OlQw1Y5WGqZQ)