# Proposal Raid Guild <> GitCoin
## Grants Stack | Allo Protocol | Direct Grants

Raid Guild is submitting the following proposal to develop a Direct Grants flow in the user stack. The brief from the client can be found [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yniob8Zt8dU2iTMYpznsFXMQNCE8Uhr6bfQSS7FqPNk/edit).


## Scope

The goal of the research and development cycle is to enable direct grants on the Grants Stack and/or Allo Protocol. Recently GitCoin has been decentralizing their funding mechanism and had seen interesting effects during the Alpha round and is currently running the Beta round. These and previous rounds have focussed on quadratic funding. Historically, large amounts of funding are made available via direct grants so it's a natural evolution for the Grants Stack to expand the scope of their funding flows.

Grants Stack aims to be the go-to solution for funding rounds, from the creation of rounds to (or soon to be) the payout flows. The code is of high quality and established a pattern of extendibility. However, it's currently optimized for quadratic voting funding rounds. The biggest challenge lies in providing an intuitive flow for funders, projects and communities to set-up, apply to and interact with grant providers and grantees. We propose the development of direct grants rounds with a big focus on an appealing UX. Additionally, community tooling for aspects like voting and engagement needs to be identified and integrated. Finally, we see room for expanding the Allo protocol with custom voting and payout strategies to scale in a decentralized manner.

## Team

**Travis** (earth2travis): UX researcher and DAO engineer
**Travis** (TW): UX researcher, UI designer, and DAO engineer
**Peter** (Tufnel_Enterprises): Full-stack developer
**Jip** (Jip): Full-stack developer
**Matt** (mr_bluesky): Full-stack developer
**Ken** (bitbeckers): Project and account management

## Development Strategy

We want to follow GitCoin in the 6-week sprint cadence and will allocate time for two 6-week development cycles. Since the focus in the first cycle will be on research, feature refinement and building the walking skeleton, we leave the details of the second cycle intentionally vague. We commit to delivering a proposal for Milestone 2 at week 5/6 of Milestone 1.

Raid Guild operates as a skilled band of mercenaries joining forces to deliver on Raids. We form ad-hoc raid parties suited to customer need. For workstream purposes we've identified **UX** and **Development** but we operate as one squad.

## Milestone 1: Research, Refine, Prototype and Build a walking skeleton

### Goals

Overall, the project plan involves an initial groundwork phase, followed by user flow and site map development, integration analysis, interviews and analysis, prototype development, prototype refinement, and backlog preparation. Phase two focuses on the "rage build," integration of front-end UI, and QA testing and UX tweaking. Throughout phase two, there will be two distinct testing phases to ensure the final product meets expectations.

### Deliverables

**UX**:
- Personas, User Stories, Flows, Red Routes, Sitemap
- Raw data from interviews, testing
- Analyzed data from researchers
- Interactive low fidelity prototype (Figma) informed by UX research

**Development**:
- Walking skeleton of direct grants flow

**MVP**:
- Prioritized development backlog for 2nd milestone

### UX process

#### Phase 1:

**1. Initial Groundwork (Weeks 1-2):** E2T
   - Identify top 3-5 notable grant organizations (e.g., Metamask/Consensus, Uniswap, ENS, etc.)
   - Cold call and schedule interviews with representatives from these organizations
   - Collaboratively work on interview scripts and other preparations
**2. User Flow and Site Map Development (Weeks 1-2):** TW
   - Analyze UX information provided by Kevin and create user flows
   - Develop a low-fidelity site map for developers to start researching technical requirements
**3. Integration Analysis (Weeks 1-2):** E2T+TW
   - Identify necessary integrations (e.g., Airtable, Notion, etc.) and existing grants stack
   - Determine specific functionalities and integration points
   - Pose technical questions for developers to begin researching solutions
**4. Conducting Interviews and Analysis (Weeks 3-4):** E2T+TW
   - Conduct interviews with representatives from grant organizations
   - Decompress interview notes and perform affinity mapping
   - Develop project scope and begin fast-and-dirty prototype development
**5. Prototype Development (Week 4):** TW
   - Create low-fidelity wireframes in Figma based on interview data and client specifications
   - Test wireframes with developers to align on technical feasibility
**6. Prototype Refinement and Backlog Preparation (Weeks 5-6):** E2T
   - Clean up prototype and make it presentable for client
   - Populate and prioritize backlog for developers
   - Reconvene with client in Week 5 to provide progress report and pitch/approve the second phase
   - Aim for a proof-of-concept by the end of Week 6
**7. Conclusion of Phase One (Week 6):** E2T+TW
   - Finalize a clickable, low-fidelity prototype
   - Finalize prioritized backlog with developer input and constraints

### Development process

#### Phase 1:

1. Extend round manager to support milestone payment functionality
   1. PayoutStrategy
   2. VotingStrategy
   3. update subgraph
2. votingStrategy support one round of single votes with no value attached (stage 3 voting)
3. payoutStrategy contract to enable milestone-based releases
4. E2E payment flow: Safe --> Allo Protocol --> grant recipients
5. Application with milestones creation functionality
6. Direct grant creation flow
7. Admin dashboard in Grants Explorer

### Cost Milestone 1

UX: 75,000 wxDAI
Development: 35,000 wxDAI

---

## _Milestone 2: Implement prioritized features and validate UX_

❗  Milestone 2 details will be determined during Sprint 1 Therefore we refrain from proposing exact cost and details. However, we outline our highest-level understanding of Sprint 2 for conversational purposes.

### Goals

- Implement prototype into walking skeleton
- Integrate tooling in Grants stack
- Validate -and adapt- UX with user testing

### Deliverables

MVP: Direct Grants MVP

### UX/Design

- Speculative Phase 2: Price TBD

  **1. Rage Build (Weeks 7-12):**
     - Developers build a walking skeleton during the first few weeks of Phase Two
     - Travii's's work on incorporating the existing visual design system and branding into the prototype
     - Travii's's create a front-end backlog while developers work on the skeletal structure
     - Handoff the front-end UI and perform QA testing and UX tweaking
     - Bring the project to completion by the end of the 12-week timeline
  **2. Testing Phases for Phase Two, in Two Parts:**
     - Begin testing with the client using the clickable Figma prototype (weeks 7-8)
     - Schedule user testing sessions with selected users (weeks 7-8)
     - Conduct additional testing with the built product, involving original or new participants as needed (weeks 9-10)
     - Use testing data to validate and justify the developers' work

### Development

- Implement prototype into Grants stack
- Integrate (community) tooling in Grants stack (for instance Snapshot and Discourse)
- Expand Allo protocol with applicable voting and payout strategies.

## Speculative MVP Deliverable

- MVP implementation of direct grant, mostly defined in Milestone 1
- Validation of wireframes
- Code matching the standards currently in the Grants Stack
- Full-stack testing
- The code will NOT be audited, but ready for audit.

---

## **Budget**

|Milestone|Cost|Time estimate|
|---|---|---|
|1|$110,000 (UX: 75,000, Dev: 35000)|6 weeks|
|2|TBD|6 weeks|

_Note:  The above figures include administration and project management. Time estimate is from RaidGuild project kickoff, but is flexible based upon feedback._

## Escrow payment

Note that payment is in wxDAI on the Gnosis (xDai) network.

**Please reach out if you have any questions about this process.**

Verified payment of **110,000 wxDAI** into Raid Guild’s [Smart Escrow ](https://smartescrow.raidguild.org/)will initiate the project.

Smart  Escrow allows for milestone based funding and the Raid Party will  continue development as long as each ongoing milestone has been funded.  We will request funds for upcoming milestones be added prior to starting  any work.

Upon  agreed upon completion of each milestone, we’ll ask for release and  funding of next milestone. With Smart Escrow, any address can fund  Escrow.

## In case of dispute

If you lose confidence in the Raid Party at any time, you may `Lock` the remaining funds in escrow.

If you do not release funds upon completion of deliverables, the Raid Party may `Lock` the remaining funds in escrow.

In both cases, the `Lock`  triggers the arbitration provider (i.e., LexDAO) to review the dispute.  Based on their review, the arbitration provider will decide which party  should receive what amount of funds, and will send a transaction to the  escrow contract that will transfer the appropriate amounts to each  party.

We sincerely hope this won’t be the case, but all parties are protected nevertheless.

**We look forward to Raiding, please reach out with any questions or concerns!**

## References

[Consider & Explore Brief](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yniob8Zt8dU2iTMYpznsFXMQNCE8Uhr6bfQSS7FqPNk/edit)

[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/charm.public/user-content/7a8b633d-7253-4d26-9a94-8492f7df80c0/b33fe810-11a4-4962-b769-1032217c36ad/rg_swords.png)