Proposal
Create a public goods funding application such that the supply and demand between public goods builders and capital allocators can be better coordinated while minimizing coordination overhead and trust.
The idea is to coordinate capital and builders without the overhead of complex coordination or trust.
How would this work?
The application would allow various autonomous ecologies or DAOs to make a request for what it is they want to build. For example, the DAO may have a request to build a Python version of the Cosmos SDK. You can think of the application as a bulletin board of projects that builders can choose from. The DAO would place the bounty in a resource, which can only be consumed upon completion of a successful committee vote.
The Builder would submit a successful completion of the Python version of the Cosmos SDK by creating a repository containing the relevant code base and documentation. The builder would also submit a research forum post to the relevant DAO’s forum summarizing their completion of the project and provide a link to the repository. This submission acts as a request for a committee vote.
Committee
The committee composition is for the DAO to determine. There could be a large committee endowed with soul bound tokens who can vote or a small group with social credibility. Members of the DAO can be notified to vote which could last ~2 weeks. This is enough time for a majority of SBT holders to vote.
In the social credibility (multi-sig) scenario, a 2 week vetting period could give the community a voice to evaluate the project as well. This has advantages in cases where a small committee may collude to fund projects associated with their own financial interests. By having a vetting period, DAO members can voice their displeasure. It would be difficult for committee members to collude if their public reputation is at stake. The 2-week period also filters out projects that submit junk requests to grieve the DAO committee members.
Upon completion of the committee vote, if a 67% majority of a given quorum is reached, then funds would be distributed to the builder and the resource containing the bounty would be consumed.
Efficient Capital allocation
This process can be parallelized, meaning many DAOs could compete to incentivize builders to complete projects for them. DAOs that engage in public goods funding could create a queue of bounties such that a new resource containing the bounty of a new project is always created when the previous one is consumed. DAOs could also use this application one-off. This type of application would bring much transparency to funding, allow DAOs to procure labor with minimal overhead, and better align public goods builders and DAOs.
Example Customers
Take blockchain A as an example. Blockchain A has a DAO treasury that is controlled by token holders, a portion of which is ear marked for public goods funding. The DAO recognizes that public goods funding is a difficult task and so has configured itself with a subDAO focused on this. This subDAO is responsible for allocating funds to ecosystem teams building projects, both proactively and retroactively. The subDAO unfortunately struggles to make the appropriate determinations of what to fund.
Conclusion
There is some overlap between these proposals and others like Public Signal.
The proposal outlines a straw man application concept which would reduce coordination costs and better match builders and PGF capital.