CosmosHub: A Grant Program for the Cosmos Hub: Funding the ATOM Accelerator DAO

Summary

With a properly funded community pool (following prop 88), we believe it is the right time to launch one or more grant programs to serve community contributors and builders around the Hub. This is a community spending proposal seeking approval to fund 588,000 ATOMs for the ATOM Accelerator DAO Grant Program.

Note: The program was formerly referenced as Cosmos Hub Grant Program (CHGP) and Orbital DAO.

Grant Program Overview

With the ATOM Accelerator DAO, we seek to boost community participation and unlock its collective intelligence by encouraging individual and team-based initiatives. The ATOM Accelerator DAO offers an alternative, native source of funding for the Cosmos Hub and removes some of the burden on public governance. This program has more funding flexibility and also allows proactive allocation of capital through the development of in-house investment themes in collaboration with the community.

Grants will focus on open source code, public goods, and ecosystem initiatives that create value for ATOM holders.

The existing Hub issues that can be solved through this program are:

Insufficient funding of public goods;
Idle capital in the community pool;
Growth risk aversion;
Low support of teams already growing the Hub; and
Losing developers to other L1s.

The grant program solves these problems through:

Liaising between decentralized teams;
Minimizing risk through due diligence;
Supporting teams already growing the Hub;
Bringing new developers to the Hub and;
Efficiently deploying capital to ensure R&D & growth at the Hub.

The Team

A. Reviewer Committee A team of 7 will be on the Reviewer Committee in charge of allocating grants. These 7 people will each play a functional role on the team, with the goal of creating a high-performance team, and also will steward the Multisig ensuring accountability in the approval of grants.

- Program Manager: Youssef Amrani . Core contributor Cosmos Hub, Economic Committee of IST stablecoin, previously community analyst at Messari. To lead program structuring, strategy & outreach

- Program Manager: Better Future . Previously ran Ripple Accelerator. 20 years in software, incubators, accelerators and seed investing; Stanford Ph.D. To lead program structuring & team processes.

- Technical Lead: Luke Saunders , Chief Technology Office at Delphi Digital (Labs). Incubated projects like Astroport & Mars Protocol on Terra.

- Reviewer: Mikey L , Business Development at Cosmostation (currently also Multisig on Osmosis Grant Program)

- Reviewer: Dilan Asatekin , Imperator founder also acting as Lead Data Engineer at Osmosis

- Reviewer: Reena Shtedle , Head of Business Development at Citadel One

- Reviewer: Xavier Meegan , Chief Investment Officer at Chorus One

The Reviewer Committee will be supported by a Program Coordinator, Ben Davis , who brings 15 years of digital marketing experience and will assist with website, marketing, community and program processes.

B. Oversight Committee The Oversight, Accountability & Transparency Committee represents an opportunity to raise the bar and improve trust within the community. Oversight and accountability have often proved to be missing pieces in blockchain governance. That is why we want to adopt an innovative approach where there is an oversight and accountability function built in from day one as an integral part of the grant program and not something that would be implemented ad hoc. By establishing a flow of information about workings and status of Atom Accelerator DAO Grant Program, the entire Cosmos community can then be in a position to evaluate the efficacy of the program. The Oversight team consists of three members:

Senior: Jason Choi : Founder of angel investing collective Tangent. Hosts the popular Blockcrunch podcast. Formerly General Partner at Spartan Capital.

Auditor/Controller: Patricia Mizuki , formerly PwC auditor, over 10 years in audit, risk management and process improvements.

Coordinator: Recruiting underway

TIMEFRAME

Here are the different steps we envision for the implementation and bootstrapping of the ATOM Accelerator DAO Grant Program:

- Months 0-2: set up the organization, create the program & workflows, setup website and proposal intake system, and build-up social media presence

- Months 2-9: Grant program in full steam, proposals are coming in, being reviewed, and being funded, and most of the budget is assigned to grants

- End of Month 9: Oversight committee to produce the grant program end of mandate report Following the grant program end of mandate report, the community can either (a) Maintain confidence in the team behind the grant program and renew the mandate, or (b) Terminate the program, in which case unspent funds are returned to the community pool

OUR STRENGTHS

The strengths of our program are as follows: Experienced & special-purpose team Oversight function for community transparency Support a plurality of grant-programs and can liaise and coordinate effectively Primary goal to drive value for ATOM

Recipient: cosmos1jggracsvp6fkw0ktf544lpda6dwrrxggx9a20n

Amount

588,000 ATOMs

Note on Amount

The amount of ATOM requested represents less than 2 months of community pool replenishment rate following prop 88 which increases the tax from 2 to 10%.

Link to the Forum post: https://forum.cosmos.network/t/funding-the-cosmos-hub-grant-program/8965/107

Voting

By voting YES, you indicate support for funding the ATOM Accelerator DAO that will be managed by a multisig committee of 7 members.

By voting NO, you do not support this proposal in its current form and refuse to fund the ATOM Accelerator DAO.

By voting ABSTAIN, you formally decline to vote either for or against the proposal but want to contribute to the quorum.

A NoWithVeto, indicates that you consider this proposal malicious or harmful and would like to see depositors penalized by revocation of the deposit, which contributes towards an automatic ⅓ veto threshold.

Prop 95: A Grant Program for the Cosmos Hub: Funding the ATOM Accelerator DAO