A portal to audit and release funds

Proposal is split into work blocks with req. ADA, once finished community/smart contract confirms if next funding is unlocked.

I am an Engineer from ETHZ, Entrepreneur and have experience with how funding is unlocked in traditional settings.

Work packages and required funding per package should be defined before the voting process.
This makes the organization of a proposal visible before hand and increases transparency.
After winning a funding round the proposal becomes a catalyst project and is moved to a portal where everyone can keep track of the progress (e.g. https://projectcatalyst.org/))
The funds will be released once a (previous) work package is finished.
These packages can be unlocked in different ways depending on the work defined.
This could be independently by a small community group (oracle pools), by a selected auditing group or depending on the nature of the packages automatically with smart contracts.
The packages can be unlocked in parallel if needed, dependencies can be defined beforehand. This allows branching of tasks and again makes it clear to both the proposer and voters what the structure of the project will be.

Stages of this proposal:
500$->First month: Look at data of finished, delayed, failed and cancelled Proposals/Projects, what metrics can we extract to benefit the definition of this audition process?
What planning did successful proposals/projects have? (large and small)
What caused proposals to delay or fail? -> needs extra work packages here to know if funds are used correctly
Talk to previous proposers and participating developers about effective payment models, learnings and shortcomings of the current system.
This is the phase where the details of this proposal are defined. No-one can know all the things that previous proposers loved, what they think can be improved and what is currently just a No Go.
Also it will be decided how to define a work package:
what options need to be available to the proposer?
- weekly Payment rate, lump sum, reward/prepayment, etc
- define performance metrics to confirm successful completion
- set max. Hourly, daily, weekly requirements per package
- set the unlock mechanism

500$->First month: how to determine a work package as completed
This goes hand in hand with the above stage and will be completed in parallel during the interviews with previous proposers.
Some examples:
- Community voting (requires continuous engagement, lots of voting already, might be possible to cheat?)
- dedicated audit circle (requires vetting, time dedication, payment of committee? and might be vulnerable to bribing? Committee could be voted for every funding round?)
- automated approval(might only work for software projects or once previously defined metric is met)
- a combination of several of the above, funds are only unlocked if A and B approved etc.
- The proposer can decide
- The amount of money that is unlocked by a package decides

5'000$->second to sixth month: Setup the Audit-Portal: Main part of this proposal
All winning Projects will be ported to and can be followed via the portal,
One can see:
0) Project introduction/description
1) the current state of a project,
2) any updates a project made,
3) what work packages are currently worked on and which have been unlocked,
4) user statistics
5) who is working on this project
6) if additional people are needed and for what
7) Social media + their engagement indicators
This keeps people engaged with running projects and lets them stay in touch. It is the main resource for the auditing of ongoing projects. It will be a better resource to keep track of the projects than the current google docs and pdf. As winning proposals can just be linked to their project pages.
People can see how many projects an individual has worked on, how many packages they have completed, which will increase trust for future proposals as well as giving him better chances to be hired for another project.
It also makes it easier for projects to get access to interested developers and strengthens the DAO aspect of this space.
Additionally it creates an infrastructure to port to other areas that can be applied for crowdfunding of non-cardano related topics once the community is happy with the environment.
The money would go into developing the infrastructure, both from technical and design standpoint to make it easy to use.

2'000$->fifth-seventh month: Setup the infrastructure in the ideascale site. This requires strong collaboration with ideascale and might require a pilot phase where proposers can choose to opt in to the new process.
After this voters can clearly see the outline of an (opt-in) proposal and keep updated with the progress on the respective project page after it has won a vote.
This might give an additional benefit to more planned out proposals. As proposers have to really think beforehand what the work packages are and what they need to finish it. Ergo increasing the success rate of funded proposals. As well as porting the winning proposals to the project-portal. This stage could be defined as the testing stage and might overlap with the previous phase.

1000$->second-8th month: Prepare and design resources for ideators/proposers. This would compile the learnings of the first two stages as well as the platform into an easy to read/watch instructions to make good decisions about their project/proposal management and split the work packages into good sizes in order to level the playing field.

-> Public launch in Q3 of 2022

I would be happy to have this proposal as a test of the described process.
As there is no infrastructure implemented yet, the money could go to a trusted security holder and only be accessed if me and two other community advisors agree that the previous work package is finished and a next funding is reasonable. This would serve already as a first test and will bring valuable learnings to the process.

Success:
3 months after acceptance: A team of developers is working on the platform first tests have been completed. A newcomer can already see the concept without much explaining.6months after acceptance: Alpha tests are complete. Beta testing with actual proposers has begin, the implementation into the ideascale environment worked.12 Months after acceptance: The platform is fully released. People are using it for presenting their progress, for hiring new team members and for updating the community. All while transparency about their workflow is building trust in the process.