Campaigns
What Happened?
The intent of Catalyst is to learn how to run a decentralized innovation program. Among the many variables in the experiment are the Campaigns – funding categories that define the scope of proposals that should be funded. To try to “decentralize” campaign-setting, the campaigns themselves were something that could be proposed and voted on. Campaign proposers didn’t receive direct funding if they won, but they could suggest what they thought the scope and budget of the campaign should be. Campaign ideas that won the vote in one round of Catalyst became the funding categories in the next.
The problem with this mechanism was that it created unpredictable and uneven results. Companies and communities would start to gel around a Campaign idea, only to have that whole category disappear in the next funding round. Fledgeling projects would be left without a plan B to fund their next phase of innovation. Examples of these were Africa-centric projects and global community hubs. In one round of Catalyst, these were squarely in-scope, and in the next, they had no campaign to call home! Another issue emerged to my eye in Fund 9, where it seemed there was a LOT of overlap in scope among the winning Campaigns for Fund 10. On one hand, it did show what kinds of scope the voters really valued. On the other hand, it’s possible that voters didn’t really intend that the range of campaign scopes to be quite so narrow.
The final issue with Campaigns was that sometimes there were just too many. Twenty or more different Campaigns was just more than any individual could keep track of, or understand. The problem of too many campaigns challenged proposers, reviewers, and voters alike, limiting how effective anyone could be in a given role.
What’s Next?
After a series of category scoping workshops with the community, the Catalyst team has defined five new overall Campaigns for Catalyst. These have been dubbed as follows
- Cardano Use Cases
- Cardano Open: Developers
- Cardano Open: Ecosystem
- Catalyst Systems Improvements: Discovery
- Catalyst System Improvements: Development
The Campaigns are intentionally broad, and will provide some welcome predictability from fund to fund. At the 2023 Cardano Summit in Dubai where this update was announced, there was also the introduction of a new idea called “Working Groups.” While the structure, format, and roles of Working Groups is still being defined, people who have been around for a while might recognize it as a potential reinvention of the erstwhile Catalyst Circle concept. Look for a Proposal from the Catalyst Team in one of the “Catalyst System Improvements” categories in Fund 11 to potentially launch Working Groups. As it relates to this topic, one of the potential roles of Working Groups could be to advise on Campaign Scope in the future.
Active Projects
What Happened?
In early rounds of Project Catalyst, the processes around project reporting, auditing, and payment schedules were a bit loose. When Lido Nation started participating actively around Fund 6, we did some reporting on project completion stats, which were shockingly low. Some of these cases could have been people taking advantage of the system. However, we also know that earnest and busy people might be inclined to deprioritize reporting paperwork in lieu of just continuing to build! Be that as it may, accountability and communication is critical to Catalyst’s success.
What’s Next?
Starting in Fund 10, Catalyst set the expectation that no project is to take more than 12 months to complete. In Fund 11, they are expanding on this by setting some qualifications for past proposers: Proposers in Fund 11 must not have any open projects from Fund 7 or earlier. At this point, given the Catalyst gap year, those projects will have had more than two years to be completed. If the 4-fund lag is maintained, it will eventually catch up a bit and enforce the standard that anyone with an outstanding proposal over 1.5 years old should not be submitting new ideas. Proposers in Fund 11 with any open projects must show a track record of 6 months of consistent reporting on them. This pattern would demonstrate good accountability, and that the amount of work they’ve bitten off is manageable.
Proposers who do not meet this criteria will not get their ideas through to the ballot.
Leftovers
What Happened?
Project Catalyst funding is divided into different “pots”, which we call campaigns. When voting results are tallied, the ada in each pot is awarded to the most-winning proposals in the campaign - until the money starts to run out. Then, some special logic kicks in. If there is only 10K ada left in the pot, but the next most-winning proposal has a budget of 15K ada, it will be passed over in favor of the next-most-winning proposal that has a budget of 10k or under. When there are no more passing proposals that fit the amount of money left, these funds are earmarked as “leftovers.” After the first round of winners is calculated for all campaigns, the leftovers are then pooled and awarded to the most-winning proposals across all campaigns that didn’t get funded in the first round of awards.
What’s Next?
I’m not aware that the strategy for awarding leftovers was seen as problematic, in itself. Indeed, it allowed some well-favored proposals to get funded. However, the Catalyst team saw here an opportunity to impact an area that has been noted by the community: the desire for Catalyst to fund new ideas and new participants. In Fund 11, leftover funding will exclude the “Product Track” under Catalyst Use Cases. The idea is that this will redirect leftover funding to grassroots and early stage projects, rather than to acceleration of existing projects.
Scope Alignment
What Happened?
In past funds, the Catalyst team has always exercised a certain degree of oversight during the proposal submission process. For example, Proposals with blank fields or nonsense text might get archived; proposals that seemed to be in the wrong category might get moved. These actions got a mixed response from the community. Sometimes the decisions seemed capricious, or weren’t well explained. Why is a central authority muddling about in our decentralized experiment, we wondered? Looked at another way however, we have the fact that our decentralized experiment still has some wrinkles in it. Letting a designated leader take the lead in ironing out a few wrinkles might be a service after all.
What’s Next?
In Fund 10, we officially voted in the longtime Catalyst leadership team from IOG to continue service as the official, elected authority to run Catalyst for the next year. With the authority vested by this appointment, the team has made it officially known: Catalyst Team will apply fund rules. If proposals are submitted in the wrong track or are clearly out of scope, the Catalyst Team will notify the applicant to suggest an alternative. Otherwise, unsuitable proposals will be withdrawn before Community Review ends. I don’t imagine that everyone will agree with every executive decision that is made by the leadership team, but clear communication about the plan is a great place to start.
Onward!
Every round of Catalyst has its ups and downs. There is sure to be some excitement, some scandal, and some great new ideas. Let’s jump into the sandbox and see what we can build together!
great write up. thank you ♥️🔥🌱