Please describe your proposed solution.

Treasury systems

The Web 3 Association was established to help with the ongoing support and improvement of treasury systems across web 3 ecosystems. Our focus is to continuously identify how any part of managing and distributing a treasury system can be improved.

Relevant focus areas

There are a number of different parts involved in a funding process which is used to distribute treasury funding. Our approach to supporting and improving treasury systems consists of selecting a focus area at a time and conducting deep research and analysis to identify suggestions for improvements and opportunities for existing treasury systems to consider. We have outlined a range of different relevant focus areas for treasury systems in our contribution roadmap. For the funding process these potential focus areas include funding sources, community prioritisation, funding initiative types, proposal assessment, community decision making, voting mechanisms & approaches, funding distribution mechanisms, tracking progress & completion and finally measuring impact. In terms of the funding system itself these areas include the funding categorisations & weightings, processes & scheduling, roles & incentives, system & process changes and constitutions, policies & values. We expect this list of focus areas to expand in the future as we identify other important areas for consideration when managing and distributing a treasury.

Knowledge resources

The core contribution outcomes from the Web 3 Association are the creation of knowledge resources. Knowledge resources are created through deep research and analysis on different focus areas and their purpose is to provide insightful and actionable information about how treasury systems can be approached. The following list covers what type of information can be included:

Research

• Data, facts & statistics - Aggregating the data, facts and statistics that exist about treasury systems and breaking them down into the relevant focus areas of concern.
• Solution research - Identifying the different treasury system solutions that exist and how those solutions approach solving each problem for the different topic areas.
• Aggregated resources - Bringing together the relevant existing information about different focus areas which will include any relevant research literature and reports, articles, blogs and any other insightful informational resource.

Analysis

• Insights & trends - Analysing all of the data, facts and statistics that exists to identify trends and insights which could provide useful learnings on the current state of different solutions and how they have been changing over time for different metrics.
• Case studies - Conducting studies to look into treasury systems either at a high level to do overview comparisons or more deep dives that look in detail at certain focus areas and what is happening across the industry.
• Product analysis - Exploring how different problems could be solved with different technical, product or design choices and what ramifications those approaches may have on improving treasury systems. Analysis can help with identifying what existing approaches are effective and easy to use and where further experimentation could be made.
• Literature review - Reviewing the existing literature available against the up to date insights and trends to evaluate how current research could be better applied to existing treasury systems. Alternatively this could also result in identifying when more research could be conducted that could be beneficial to treasury systems due to new learnings from recent insights or real world usage.

Suggestions

• Experimentation suggestions - Applying the results of the analysis to help identify what new approaches could be explored and trialled in treasury systems that look promising as potentially effective solutions. Any results of these experiments would feed back into the iterative loop of conducting further research and analysis to better understand what the more effective solutions are to different problems for treasury systems.
• Implementation suggestions - As certain solutions have a growing amount of evidence of their effectiveness suggestions can be made towards how other existing teams could implement those solutions. These suggestions could be data structures, processes, algorithms, open source software or any other technical factor or product consideration.

Shared learning

The Web 3 Association is adopting an approach focussed on shared learnings. This focus aims to help improve the amount of collaboration and the speed in which learnings are identified and shared across ecosystems. Instead of competing with existing teams by creating duplicated treasury system solutions the intentions of adopting an approach focussed on shared learnings is to instead provide a supportive structure that helps existing teams building treasury systems do so more efficiently and effectively. The Web 3 Association can be seen as a supportive organisation for the Catalyst team by helping identify and present any new learnings discovered in the industry. These can then be used by the Catalyst team and other Cardano communities with treasuries when iterating and improving their own treasury systems.

There are a number of benefits for adopting an approach that prioritises shared learnings. These include helping with creating faster learning outcomes, being more cost effective, increasing the amount of collaboration, reducing duplicated & wasted effort and helping to inspire new solution approaches. The benefits of the shared learning approach are covered in more detail in our shared learning approach documentation.

Web 3 Association background

The Web 3 Association has been created from the same contributor who started PACE. An example piece of work that matches this solution approach of creating knowledge resources would be the funding categorisation analysis and funding categories work. This research and analysis work was completed through the PACE organisation. Instead of PACE spending more significant effort trying to compete and create new solutions that same effort was directed towards doing deep research and analysis around a single topic area and then turning that into knowledge resources with insightful and actionable information. This analysis has led to the Catalyst process being changed in fund 11 due to the suggestions made from this work. It is from this experience that we identified the larger opportunity to improve and change existing treasury solutions through the approach being adopted by the Web 3 Association.

How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Addressing the challenge brief

The challenge brief has the following relevant aspects which are relevant to this proposal:

• 1. proposals that help with systemic improvements (technical or procedural) to the Project Catalyst processes.
• For this proposal this is relevant and achieved through the knowledge resources created which will provide insightful and actionable information on how a funding process could be improved and also can include suggestions about where further experimentation could be explored.
• 2. Proposals that are academic research that clearly defines a known Catalyst specific problem space to identify facts and/or clearly stated opinions that will likely assist in solving Catalyst specific problems.
• This proposal would be completing deep research and analysis which would help bring together academic research when this is relevant for whichever focus area is prioritised at the time. These efforts can help in bringing light to suggestions and opportunities for Catalyst and other treasury systems based on the academic literature that is identified and reviewed. In the future the Web 3 Association may participate in academic research but this is outside the scope of this proposal.
• 3. Proposals that are detailed studies of a Catalyst specific subject to discover new information or improved understanding.
• This will be achieved through doing deep research on existing treasury solutions. This research will help with the creation of case studies with evidence concerning what is and isn’t working for the different approaches being taken and where any new learnings have been identified in these ecosystems.

Benefits to the Cardano ecosystem

The main benefit of our solution approach is the ongoing creation of insightful and actionable information about improving treasury systems through knowledge resources. If our resources can achieve that outcome then the suggestions and information provided will help with making meaningful improvements to treasuries like Catalyst and some of the community treasuries growing across the Cardano ecosystem.

Our proposal scope focuses on helping the Cardano ecosystem better understand the ways in which community prioritisation, funding initiative types and proposal assessment can be approached. Our resources will include research around identifying trends, suggestions and areas worth exploration for these different treasury systems in the Cardano ecosystem. Even small improvements to any treasury systems in Cardano would represent large opportunity for increasing the rate of growth of these ecosystems.

A focus on shared learning across ecosystems can also help with generating faster learning outcomes, creating a more cost effective approach for improving treasuries, increasing the amount of collaboration between teams building treasuries, reducing duplicated & wasted effort when trying to learn more about approaches to treasury systems and finally can help with inspiring new solution approaches. Achieving these outcomes would be beneficial for the Catalyst funding process and other treasury systems in the ecosystem.

Opportunity to improve ecosystem treasuries

This proposal has the opportunity to make very meaningful returns on investment if the resources we create help lead to any percentage improvement of how funding is distributed in Catalyst and other ecosystems. The example above looks at the Cardano treasury which currently has well over 1 billion ADA under management. If the community distributes 10% of that treasury a year then even a 1% improvement would represent over a 1,000,000 ADA gain for the funding process. These values help to highlight the scale of the opportunity for our proposal to provide benefit to both the Catalyst funding process and the wider ecosystem for communities building their own treasury solutions. Treasury systems are a flywheel growth lever for blockchain ecosystems when those ecosystems are able to manage and operate their treasury effectively. Over the long term the effectiveness of these treasuries will increasingly determine which ecosystems will become sustainable and which ones fail.

Historical example of benefits provided

The funding categorisation analysis work is a good example of detailed research and analysis around a specific focus area relevant to the Catalyst process. This work identified issues with the challenge setting process which was currently being used and then helped with providing sufficient evidence that something needed to be changed. This knowledge resource we created lead to this outcomes. This same approach of executing deep work on different parts of the Catalyst process can be continued to create even further resources that will help with identifying ways in which the Catalyst treasury system can be improved.

How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Examples of our approach previously

Previous completed work around funding categorisation analysis and funding categories required a sufficient amount evidence and rationale to justify why the challenge process needed to be replaced with an improved funding categories approach. To produce this evidence we created a number of resources that highlighted the scale of the problem and how a new approach would provide improvements:

• Categorisation Overall Cost Comparison - We identified the costs involved of using one approach over another by looking at the time taken for each stakeholder and any resource costs
• Funding Access For Each Focus Area - We looked at how the existing approach compared to another one in terms of providing access to funding for different focus areas and some of the issues in the current approach.
• Categorisation Setting Observations - We looked at what funding categorisations emerged and their different groupings to help with identifying trends
• Challenge Setting Issues - We listed out all of the issues that were present in the challenge setting process so the current situation was well understood and then more easily compared with different approaches.

Knowledge resource deliverables

The knowledge resources are the core output from our contribution efforts towards supporting and improving treasury systems in this proposal. The creation and delivery of these resources each month along with a monthly summary of our progress will be the main way that completion of this proposal can be measured.

Approach comparison analysis

For the upcoming contribution roadmap for the Web 3 Association we will be following a similar approach of measuring the potential impact and success of our contribution outcomes by comparing different approaches. After analysis is completed and suggestions are made we will spend time making any useful comparisons about existing approaches to highlight the scale of impact for any improvements that could be made. This analysis will look to identify where time or cost savings could be made or where there are situations where the overall quality of the process can be improved due to the opportunity to adopt new or improved approach.

Record of feedback provided

Success for the Web 3 Association itself will come down to how often we are able to help treasury systems like Project Catalyst to identify and embrace new learnings that lead to improvements in the overall effectiveness of the funding process. We will invite all participants and readers of our resources to provide feedback and about their experience of using any learnings from our resources. This will help to highlight whether these participants are finding the resources valuable and how they could be improved in the future.

Record of treasury changes made due to our contribution efforts

Recording how treasury systems like Catalyst make changes to their funding process due to our contribution outcomes will provide the evidence to show how our resources are being used and what impact those changes are having. Having a public log of changes made will demonstrate whether our shared learning approach is actually providing an effective way to support a range of different ecosystems building treasury systems.

Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

All contribution outcomes created by the Web 3 Association will be open source and freely available immediately upon completion. This includes the knowledge based resources and anything hosted in code repositories.

The outputs for deliverables will be located at:

• Knowledge resources - treasuries.web3association.co
• GitHub - github.com/web3association

In terms of the regularity of reporting any new resources and information created we will provide a summary at the end of each month of what work has been completed followed by a brief plan of the focus areas for the upcoming month. We will invite feedback on any of the outputs from our work to help with guiding future iteration and improvement.

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Team

The main contributor to this proposal is George Lovegrove. George was responsible for the following resources and tools in the Catalyst ecosystem:

• Catalyst Funding Categories
• Funding Categorisation Analysis
• Project Catalyst Community Documentation
• Project Catalyst Community Site

George has been involved with Catalyst since fund 3 and has been supporting and improving the Catalyst ecosystem under the PACE organisation. George has taken part in every role related to the Catalyst funding process which includes being a proposer, proposal assessor, veteran proposal assessor, challenge team member and voter. In terms of professional background George has been a software developer with over 6 years working in both web and mobile development environments.

It was from George’s own experience of trying to improve the Catalyst process that the idea and opportunity to create the Web 3 Association as a more effective and supportive structure emerged to help with improving treasury systems.

Trust

In terms of trust, all previous existing work under PACE has been open sourced from the start and has been freely available for the community to use. PACE has been open and honest about all previous proposals and the current progress and any issues and blockers in separate documentation.

Accountability

In terms of accountability we believe emphasis should be placed on the importance of creating outcomes that produce impact. We explained the importance of producing impact in separate documentation. It is from our experience contributing to these systems that we now know the potential issues & blockers that can occur when trying to help support and improve Catalyst. This was an important factor that helped lead us towards identifying an approach focussed on shared learnings as an effective alternative and solution to these problems. Under this approach there are no blockers for the execution of the intended contribution outcomes. We would not rely on any other team or project to create impactful research and analysis. Previously we have often relied on the Catalyst team for the availability of data or for technical changes to be made for us to execute different proposals. These factors are not applicable when adopting an approach focussed on creating knowledge resources as a supportive structure to help make suggestions and improvements to teams building treasury systems. Adopting this approach means we can say with confidence that we will be able to deliver on our contribution outcomes and have no dependencies that block us from doing so.

Milestone based funding

The risks of accountability have been further reduced since moving into fund 10 compared to previous funding rounds due to the recently adopted milestone based funding process. If funded proposers do not deliver on the intentions of their proposal then those proposers would not receive funding from the treasury beyond the current uncompleted milestone.

For our proposal we have adopted a monthly milestone approach which then even further reduces this risk to the ecosystem as we will need to deliver outputs each month for us to receive the next month of funding.

What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

Knowledge resources with insightful and actionable information

The main goals for this project are to create knowledge resources through conducting deep research and analysis tasks that help with better understanding treasury systems and how they can be improved. Achieving this will mean being able to identify ways in which treasury systems can be more effectively managed and distributed to best serve their ecosystems.

We intend to complete deep research and analysis on one focus area at a time and produce insightful and actionable information through suggestions on what approaches could be suitable for consideration and adoption in existing treasury systems.

Long term goal

Our long term goal is to become the industry preferred destination to learn about treasury systems. This means creating resources that effectively cover how treasuries can be managed and distributed to consistently create high impact and become sustainable over the long term. To achieve this goal our resources will be in a constant state of iteration and improvement.

Proposal scope

The initial scope for the proposal in the first three months will focus around community prioritisation and funding initiative types. Our main priority is to create insightful and actionable information in our resources. At the third month we will reflect on what will be the most impactful moving forward in terms of further contribution. This could be improving some of the existing resources or moving onto the next focus areas of proposal assessment and then tracking progress & completion or measuring impact. Our goal is to go through a focus area methodically to produce useful and insightful knowledge resources that will improves the overall understanding around that focus area. Creating a resource about a given focus area is just the start of the process. Our process will be an iterative cycle of engaging with existing treasury systems like Catalyst to see where improvements could be made to their own processes and systems, improving the resources we create and making suggestions and then getting feedback from these teams in how those resources could be useful. As new information and insights emerge we would then repeat the process. We expect to have an increasing number of different resources focussed on different focus areas that each provide value to existing treasury systems in the scope of this proposal.

Feasibility

In terms of feasibility, there is already sufficient evidence that our shared learning approach to supporting and improving treasury systems is feasible and effective. The funding categorisation analysis and funding categories resources followed this type of approach of focussing on research and analysis. Those resource provided the evidence required for the Catalyst team to acknowledge the opportunity to improve the Catalyst funding categorisation with an improved approach. The Catalyst team is intending to adopt our suggestions for improving funding categorisation in an upcoming funding round - currently forecast for fund 11.

As there are no external blockers or dependencies that prevent us from creating knowledge resources through deep research and analysis we can state confidently that this approach is feasible and can be executed as planned.

Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Focus areas

Our current initial roadmap is to focus around the areas of community prioritisation, funding initiative types, proposal assessment, tracking progress & completion and measuring impact. These all revolve around improving the understanding of how a community prioritises different problems or areas and then what types of initiatives are actually being funded to address those priorities and how are they handled in terms of their assessment, tracking and the measuring of impact once completed. The selected focus areas and points of interest are broken down more in the next section.

Milestones

In terms of delivery milestones, this proposal covers 8 months of contribution effort which will be completed with 8 milestones. At the end of each month we will deliver a summary of the research and analysis resources that have been completed for that month. At the end of every 3 months we will do a review to ensure upcoming work is aligned with making impact and do any necessary adjustments to our deliverables to align with that impact. These outputs will be available in our documentation which is also available in an open source repository.

The main focus areas relevant each grouping of the 8 milestones would be as follows:

• Months 1 to 3 - Community prioritisation and funding initiative types
• End of third month - Review of impact alignment for upcoming work
• Months 4 to 6 - Funding initiative types, proposal assessment and tracking progress & completion
• End of sixth month - Review of impact alignment for upcoming work
• Months 7 to 8 - Tracking progress & completion and measuring impact

Contribution process

Our contribution process consists of selecting one focus area at a time, inviting collaborators, conducting research and analysis and then making suggestions to create insightful and actionable knowledge resources. These resources are shared with teams building treasury systems and the cycle is repeated as any new data and insights emerge. Over a medium to long term time frame the potential impact of creating open source software can be considered as well as where we can support any opportunities for standardisation. Each focus area will require deep work to create useful and actionable information. This means it is likely that we find new information or evidence that leads to us spending more time in certain areas to better improve the resources and the collective understanding of each topic area. It is also important to note that when we execute other areas we will likely then be updating our previous work to integrate those new learnings into previously completed research and analysis. This type of iteration is what happened with the funding categorisation analysis work. We would conduct the research, produce some analysis, reflect on that and gather feedback from people and then continue to improve it.

Our contribution process focusses on continuously improving the knowledge resources that we create about each treasury focus area. This means we will respond to opportunities when they emerge that help improving our knowledge resources. Any initial outcomes from our contribution efforts can expect to have ongoing iteration and improvement in the future as more data, insights and research become available to guide further improvements.

Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

Main commitments

The deliverables for this proposal include 8 months of contribution effort towards research and analysis that help with supporting and improving treasury systems. Our main commitments during this proposal will be:

• Knowledge resources - Our contribution efforts will be directed towards creating knowledge resources for the benefit of teams building treasury systems. We do not expect to be creating any open source software in the scope of this proposal.
• Immediate release of resources created - As soon as a resource is ready it will be open sourced and made available.
• Monthly milestones & summaries - We will do summaries at the end of each month on what was completed in that month for our milestone reporting.
• Treasury system focus - We are fully committed to only working on focus areas that are relevant to treasury systems.
• Ongoing review of impact alignment - Every 3 months we will evaluate the resources we have created or improved and then identify how we can best align ourselves for creating impact in the upcoming 3 months.

Deliverables for months 1 to 3

The first three months of this proposals will be focussed on research, analysis and suggestions towards the following focus areas:

• Community prioritisation
• Identifying the different approaches a community could use to prioritise certain areas or solving certain problems.
• Explore the implications of using different levels of specificity for prioritisation of different focus areas or problems.
• Explore how collaboration and community discourse could be integrated into the prioritisation process and the costs of these approaches along with any opportunities that exist.
• Identify ways the community could vote and come to agreement on different priorities and how those approaches compare or could be gamed.
• Discover how existing ecosystems are approaching prioritisation and make any suitable comparisons between different approaches.
• Create some suggestions on approaches to explore that look promising or towards existing solutions that are already showing evidence of them being effective.
• Funding initiative types
• Identify the different approaches that could be used to distribute funding such as idea, contributor, task and go into detail on their differences.
• Outline how different funding initiative types could address the community priorities and what trade offs exist for each approach.
• Identify the steps involved to distribute funding to each initiative type such as how they might be structured, assessed and measured.
• Research the approaches being used across different ecosystems including blockchain ecosystems, crowdfunding platforms and other grants based systems.
• Make suggestions towards what funding initiative types are worth exploring further and which ones are currently working most effectively.

Deliverables for months 4 to 8

After three months we will review where we are able to create the most impact moving forward. We may decide to spend more time on funding initiative types and proposal assessment over moving onto tracking progress & completion and measuring impact focus areas if more time is required on these areas or we see more potential impact in continuing contribution there. Some areas of future focus areas for us will be the following areas.

• Funding initiative types (continued)
• Create suggestions that cover suitable data structures that could be used for each of the funding initiative types based on other implementations and analysis on what is required for each initiative type to go through a funding process effectively.
• Proposal assessment
• Identify the approaches that exist for each funding initiative type in how they can be assessed both quantitatively and qualitatively.
• Discover ways in which assessments could be automated using technology and existing tools and provide insights towards how impactful these tools and approaches are.
• Outline how different assessment approaches are effective at comparing proposals against one another and how that can benefit the voters in making informed decisions.
• Identify what assessment factors are more likely to identify which proposals have a higher possibility and likelihood of creating impact.
• Research and analyse how existing solutions approach handling quality thresholds for proposals going through the funding process. What is considered as the minimum viable amount of information for proposals to be accepted.
• Explore what incentives could be offered to create an effective assessment process with considerations towards identity, gaming the system and sybil resistance.
• Tracking progress & completion (coverage will be dependent on progress of previous focus areas)
• Identify how proposals in each funding initiative type could be measured for progress such as milestones or progress reports
• Explore how regular a progress reporting process could be for it to be effective at identifying bad actors and being useful for the proposals.
• Explore ways in which tracking progress could be automated into existing workflows for different types of project and how that could be integrated into a teams contribution process.
• Identify what data should be required and optional when tracking progress and completion and make suggestions towards what should be included.
• Measuring impact (coverage will be dependent on progress of previous focus areas)
• Research how impact could be measured such as using a quantitative approach or a community consensus voting approach.
• Identify what data and information is most useful when trying to measure the amount of impact a completed proposal makes.
• Explore the different ways that impact could be measured based on the type of funding initiative being proposal and compare the complexities and trade offs that exist.

3 month review for impact alignment

It will be important that we are able to be reflective on what is happening in the ecosystem and to respond to new data, insights and changes in the environment when creating our resources. After creating any resources we may identify further opportunities in the same focus area or another focus area to create high impact if we direct our contribution effort to these areas. Due to the importance of ensuring our resources are creating impact we will collaborate with the proof of achievement community team on changes to our upcoming resource deliverables based on which areas will create the most impact. If our roadmap items become less relevant or outdated due to changing factors like new data, insights or a changing environment we will update the roadmap as necessary to ensure we are aligned with creating impact. This review for aligning out efforts towards impact will happen every 3 months.

Example of the importance of flexibility

As a simple example of why flexibility is important, if we had not been flexible in our approach on adapting to our environment and directing our contribution efforts towards impactful opportunities we would not have worked on the funding categorisation analysis and funding categories resources. We instead would have been executing proposals that had little opportunity to create impact. Proposers cannot predict everything that can happen ahead of time and what they may need to respond to. Startup companies are often changing their approach and ideas as they learn new information and get more experience. Similarly, proposers also will need to respond to new information and changing environmental factors that influence the amount of impact their current plan of execution may produce. We have previously created some comparative analysis on the benefits of a contributor proposals vs idea proposals. This flexibility in approach led to us to being able to identify and act on the opportunity to create an effective return on investment for the Catalyst ecosystem through the funding categorisation analysis.

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Budget

This proposal is for the sponsorship of the Web 3 Association and supports 8 months of contribution outcomes.

To handle accounting, legal fees and all operational requirements an annual budget of $10,000 is being applied. Any remaining budget left over from that amount, if any, would be used to support further contribution efforts. For a 8 month sponsorship this value would equate to $6,666.

An annual equivalent salary of $90,000 will be applied. All applicable taxes will be handled by the Web 3 Association. For a 8 month schedule this equates to $60,000.

The total for 8 months, prior to any deductions made, would therefore be $66,666.

Deductions

In terms of deductions, PACE has a number of funded proposals that have not been executed due to either existing issues & blockers or due to identifying that the outcomes that would be generated would not create sufficient impact. PACE has documented why this decision to pivot has been made in separate documentation with the full rationale and plan to pivot existing proposals over. To clear that backlog of proposals the value of a proposal will be pivoted towards this proposal meaning the value is removed from this sponsorship request. The current value of the ADA of those proposals is far lower than when it was when the funds were distributed, however for the proposal being pivoted to these contribution efforts the full value will be applied and respected. This means that even though the actual income will be less due to the reduction in existing fund value the Web 3 Association will still provide the full 8 months of contribution effort for that reduced total value received.

For this sponsorship we will pivoting the following proposals towards supporting the Web 3 Association contribution outcomes:

• Improve proposal data ⇒ $8,400 ⇒ 3,323 ADA received
• Project tracking ⇒ $8,400 ⇒ 3,323 ADA received
• Proposal progress updates ⇒ $11,500 ⇒ 7,553 ADA received

Total value at distribution = $28,300.

At todays value (17th July 2023) ~ 14,199 ADA * $0.35 ~ $4,970.

These proposals totalled $28,300 of ADA at the time of distribution. At todays value this same ADA received is worth around $4,970. Even though the value has dropped significantly for the ADA received from these previous proposals the original dollar value will be honoured.

Total amount requested

The $28,300 value can now be deducted from the total costs. This results in a final amount to be requested of $66,666 - $28,300 = $38,366.

Applying an ADA price of $0.35 then results in a rounded down value of $38,366 / $0.35 per ADA = 109,617 ADA.

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Team

George Lovegrove - George is the main contributor for this proposal and his role will include leading the execution of the research and analysis for the selected focus areas for improving treasury systems like Catalyst. George has a background in software development, relevant professional and social profiles include: LinkedIn, GitHub, Twitter.

Future contributors

Over the coming months we will also be inviting other Web 3 ecosystems to see if they want to participate and sponsor the contribution outcomes made by the Web 3 Association with a similar sponsorship proposal. If sufficient funding is secured from these efforts and total funding goes beyond the salary being requested then we will bring in more contributors into the team to help with the planned contribution outcomes we’ve shared to support and improve treasury systems.

The key skill set that will be important for this work is the ability to do deep work. We will be spending large amounts of time on different focus areas relevant to treasury systems to effectively identify trends and data that help create well informed analysis and suggestions that can help improve treasury systems. New contributors that join the Web 3 Association in the short term would need to be effective in contributing towards deep work focused outcomes.

How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Historical example of value for money

For our previously completed funding categorisation work, we received $42,150 for these contributions when helping to improve the Catalyst funding process. These outcomes helped lead to a plan for making changes in Catalyst that even with conservative estimates from our analysis would lead to a near 200% return on investment after a single funding round. We believe this value will be even higher than those conservative estimates and as the Catalyst treasury has subsequent funding rounds the return only scales further over time. The research and analysis produced was also beneficial to other teams building treasury systems that were looking to improve their own approach to handling funding categorisation.

<https://youtu.be/tExyD9oJb9g>Near term value for money

There is a massive opportunity to help with improving the Catalyst treasury system due to the amount of influence an effective funding process can have on the growth of the ecosystem. The areas of focus for this proposal specifically are around community prioritisation, funding initiative types and proposal assessments which will help with improving the funding process itself and how it is approached. Approaches from other ecosystems can be compared and suggested for adoption in the Catalyst ecosystem if there is sufficient evidence and rationale. Our contribution efforts in the short term could help lead to experiments or changes that become meaningful parts or improvements to the funding process. The roadmap of focus areas we intend to work on will help with improving the collective understanding of how the Catalyst system and processes can be approached, what is currently working across other ecosystems worth consideration and also what opportunities exist for improvement.

Long term potential

Taking our previous funding categorisation analysis example, if the cost of that work was split between 5 different ecosystems then those ecosystems would only have needed to invest $8,600 into the contribution efforts. If the cost of contribution effort was split between ecosystems these resources would still be available to all ecosystems with the full benefit of the resources created at a fraction of the cost. This is why an approach that focuses on shared learning provides a massive opportunity to scale a truly collaborative and public goods approach towards improving treasury systems. It offers the opportunity to create a massive return on investment with modest amounts of capital by increasing the efficiency in how learnings are identified and distributed across many ecosystems.

There are many other ecosystems that face the same problem of effectively managing and distributing their ecosystem treasury. The Web 3 Association represents an opportunity for creating even further impact for these ecosystems by increasing the potential return on investment for each ecosystem that sponsors our contribution efforts. We explained the scale of the opportunity of improving treasury systems in our Web 3 Association documentation where even small percentage improvements to how treasury systems function can lead to very meaningful improvements. It is due to this shared problem that a large amount of impact can be generated by adopting an approach focussed on shared learnings. A collaborative group of contributors working under this model will mean the costs of these contributions can be split between many ecosystems rather than one. Over time if the range and diversity of participation can be increased the overall cost for each ecosystem will remain low yet the amount of impact it generates these ecosystems could continue to increase. This is because each ecosystem would be getting more value for money by sharing the cost to produce the same impactful resources from the capital invested rather than doing all of this works by themselves in isolation.

If this approach to improving treasury systems proves effective then the cost savings across different ecosystems provides a massive opportunity to increase the return on investment for many treasury systems who support these contribution efforts. This approach will help to determine how far collaboration can be pushed across ecosystems to create impact with less funding required per ecosystem. Achieving this would also mean that each ecosystem would have more available funding to distribute to other impactful initiatives due to those cost savings.