Governance Vote: Ecosystem Vault 3.0 - The Longest Dance

Governance Vote: Ecosystem Vault 3.0 - The Longest Dance

Resolution

  1. To stop funding of the Gitcoin Grants program with funds from the Fantom Ecosystem Vault.
  2. To rename the Fantom Ecoystem Vault to Fantom User Vault
  3. To start an airdrop program.

Purpose

This proposal seeks to:

Stop the Gitcoin Grants program. There are several downsides of those programs. To name a few:

  • Overlapping with the already setup Hackatlons.
  • Little to no visibility. In fact, Gitcoin failed to support Fantom and does not show any information about the Round on https://grants.gitcoin.co/.
  • Looking at the Featured Rounds makes things obvious, Gitcoin is for open source projects, Climate and social projects.
  • The Gitcoin Passport has to prove itself as a real sybil filter. As of today it’s mostly to encourage staking Gitcoins token.
  • Gitcoin supports now many chains. There will be a constant battle against bigger round budgets from other chains.
  • The Fantom Foundation always has the possibility to launch a Gitcoin Round if it sees fit.

Developers and teams have enough ways to pay their bill. Gas monetasation for bigger ones and Hackatlons for indie devs. There are VCs, crowdfunding and normal token sales that should be enough.

One thing that is missing though is users. Actuall users that use the dApps. Andre himself said its way easier to keep existing users than to attract new ones. Agreed. But that was before Multichain. Now the focus must switch to attract new people.

How to get people (wallets) on a chain? Let’s not search too far, it’s a potential airdrop that attracts them. If a user comes for a potential airdrop to Fantom and he likes the tech & dApp, then he might stay. Airdrops are the most effective marketing out there.

How will this work?

The Vault has a 180 day “fill-up” phase, accumulating $FTM. After that, at one random date bewteen day 181 and 365 the SNAPSHOT is taken. To keep things transparent, the randomnes should be public and verifiable. The amount of funds will be locked on the chosed date (the 70-100% of the vault). Then starts the new fill-up phase.

Reasoning: unpredictable - engaging phases (threadors work for free) - ongoing

Protocol and dApps can issue NFTs to users that interact with them. This can be for swaps on DEXes, achievements in games, or what ever. The claim itself is up to the team as well. Build own quests, publish them on known web3 questing sites (galxe, zealy, layer3, …) for an even bigger reach. The NFTs can be distributed during the 180 days of fill-up as well as any additional day till the snapshot is triggered. The teams need to submit their NFT collection (in case they have different ones ongoing) the the User Vault Council (FF initially) with details how those NFT have been distrubited.
Onchain sleuths and community members are open to report wrong behaviour. Those collections will be removed from the airdrop and the teams warned / banned. A bounty might apply for the reporter.

Reasoning: Teams decide what action they need the most. Gaming the system will be punished.

Airdop calculation anyone? This is just an idea or guidance and should be finalized if this proposal gets accepted.
Holding a collection NFT gives points, while gas dapps points are counted 3 times. The wallet needs to hold at least 10 $FTM.

NFTS to collect wallet x wallet y wallet z
dApp 1 (gas) 3 (1x3) 3 (1x3) x
dApp 2 1 x x
dApp 3 1 x 1

total: 5 3 1

100k FTM 62.5k 37.5k 12.5k

Reasoning: Collecting all NFTS can make sense but is not required.

Bonus: add an muultiplier if an airdorp from a previous round has not been claimed yet (should be a active action on the claim page, like “compound it”.

What are the biggest risks?

Rouge teams that try game the system with NFT drops or just bad designed NFT drops from unexperienced teams.

Pros and cons

Pros:

Users, the network needs user. More users = more transactions = more fees = more airdrops.
Both new and established projects can participate.
A guaranteed airdrop will attrack many low fees seeking users.

Cons:

Initially more management needed by the Foundation to setup the airdrop framework.

1 Like

At this state, doesn’t feel like a right timing to get new users. I feel need to resolve the Multi issue before asking more users to Fantom.

After FVM has released, and ecosystem are ready to go public. Ecosystem wise, Fantom is move backward for past year especially recent. It has no Lending platform, no clear stable, without FVM, many L2 does the same job.

What is the reason user chose to stay. I feel the ROI is low. Fantom needs to fix it issue first before going public.

Thanks for the comment @0xOTW, let me try to explain why you’re feelings are wrong.

  • Multi issue: those funds are most likely gone. Chasing them is is not wrong, but will be a long process that might take years. The FF can and should multitask.
    Attracting new users is an ongoing process and has nothing to do with past events. Keyword: Mt. Gox. Legal stuff takes time.

  • FVM: The ecosystem (what do you mean?) is already public. In fact, Fantom is a very old chain. FVM won’t change anything magically. It will just reduce costs, improve speed and more. Trx fees are already super low, honestly it doesn’t matter if a trx is 0.0001 cent or 0.001.
    You are right on one point, Fantom does the same job as any other L2. With and without FVM.

  • Reason to stay: Here I can agree with you, native stable is a must (again, parallel work by the FF). Lending platforms is a must. Both points have nothing to to with this proposal.
    What people could like though is the existing Dexes, Mummy and Estfor. Those dApps need user now, not in 2 years.

Final thoughts: Tech - dApps - User
Those three pillars need to be addressed. Fantom tech is good, dApps need users, and users need dApps. You have to work on each one to succeed.

Thanks for sharing the details. Let me clarify more:

The Multi chain issue I was referring is mostly referring to the sentiment of the existing community. You can see they are ranting everywhere (comments on every Foundation post, TG, discord). They start to turn against Fantom and should not be ignored. It needs to reach out a conclusion, even Foundation could certainly tells everyone that Foundation are certainly NOT going to pay back the user who has affected, or whichever that can let the affected users move on. At this stage, seems like everything are not confirmed.

Tech wise, from normal user experience, really nothing different from the other chain. Speed, fees? Like you mentioned, normal user doesn’t care about 1s or 0.1a tx speed. $0.01 or $0.001. So I don’t see a hook from Fantom right now other than developers will appreciated it and innovate from tech of the chain (such as FVM) to create a new hook that other chain could not have.

Ecosystem wise, Mummy and Estfor is really not enough to hook an user, there might be a chance, but maybe 5% or lower. You can see many active address or actively from there, but those just a single person spamming. If you check the so call active address, 95% are EOA, they created smart contract to farm the items and sell it on marketplace while the game is hot. It hardly sustain over a month with the existing economy, they need to think of a way to fix that in short term. Otherwise the market place will flooded with items and once it’s loses value, it’s the end of P2E game.

Nutshell, I really wise somebody can take advantage of FVM and come out something unique with super fast and cheap tx. So get all the devs ready first since FVM testnet is coming next month, that should be the priority. That is my personal view only. I think you also came from good intention, but I just share my opinion from the other sides. =)