Funding Categories Analysis

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Funding categories analysis and documentation is already live and available -

• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/catalyst-funding-categories/
• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/funding-categorisation-analysis/
• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/catalyst-contributors/
• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/cardano-contributors/
• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/contributor-analysis/

Catalyst is Cardano’s largest and most important DAO that brings the community together to govern and operate an ecosystem that distributes the Cardano treasury towards impactful initiatives. To improve Catalyst and how it functions as a decentralized organisation there was a need for more analysis to understand how it can approach funding categorisation.

Challenge settings have a number of issues that needed to be addressed - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/funding-categorisation-analysis/challenge-settings/challenge-setting-issues

To determine how funding categorisation could be improved a number of categorisation approaches were analysed to determine which approaches would be more effective - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/funding-categorisation-analysis/categorisation-approaches/overview

The analysis helped result in finding approaches for funding categorisation which are more effective. These approaches include categorisation that leans towards being broad, inclusive, unique and recurring.

Applying the most effective funding categorisation approaches leads to a number of advantages such as categorisation becoming more simple, efficient, scalable, flexible and egalitarian - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/funding-categorisation-analysis/funding-categories-advantages/overview

The outcome of this analysis led to the suggestion of funding categories which have been defined and submitted as challenge settings in fund 8 and fund 9 - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/catalyst-funding-categories/

You can find all the funding category proposals here - https://linktr.ee/cardanopace

This documentation yields a high impact for the operation of the Catalyst organisation by improving the education and resources around what makes effective funding categorisation with analysis on historic examples so that effective solutions can be suggested and then integrated. Attempts are now being made to make actionable improvements to the process based on this analysis. An improvement proposal now has been shared with IOG to make changes to the funding categorisation process for Catalyst by replacing challenge settings with a more effective solution - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/catalyst-improvement-proposals/improvement-proposals/2.-replace-challenge-setting-with-funding-categories

The implementation of funding categories as an outcome of this analysis would lead to the creation and usage of new tools and processes to operate the Catalyst organisation and ecosystem. This includes tooling to help deal with budget weighting votes or progress auditing solutions to handle the new contributor based funding model that is being recommended. As funding categories are a recurring form of categorisation it will also be easier to create tools around the usage of categorisations with data and insights which further help lead to improvements and increased understanding of the implications of different changes to funding categorisation.

Concerns about funding categories and solutions / answers are covered in the analysis - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/funding-categorisation-analysis/funding-categories-analysis/concerns-and-solutions

An FAQ section is also provided - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/funding-categorisation-analysis/funding-categories-analysis/faqs

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

The challenge looks to improve the DAO tools available in the Cardano ecosystem. As an example it mentions that Cardano needs “Additional not yet existing tools to give Cardano a distinct advantage”.

This analysis is a pre-requisite to the execution of changes to Catalyst as a decentralized organisation by suggesting the introduction of funding categories with a community wide budget weighting vote. This analysis suggests the implementation of a budget weighting tool that would be integrated into the voting experience to give the community more granular control over how they want to distribute funding in the ecosystem between different focus areas under each category.

The analysis also suggests a new contributor funding model. Community members can be paid full time to work in Catalyst and Cardano ecosystem. This change in the funding process will likely mean new tools and processes will be soon introduced to improve how Catalyst functions as an organisation. These tools and processes could be used and provide value to other DAOs.

Another key benefit to this work is it is open source and freely available for all other DAOs in the ecosystem (and outside the ecosystem!). DAOs with a recurring income stream may want to determine how that funding could be most effectively distributed to continue progress with innovation or to pay for community contributions. This analysis provides ideas and suggestions for how DAOs could approach their own categorisations to help with funding they are looking to distribute.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

The proposal is about executing the analysis for creating effective funding categorisation. This has already been delivered and means there is no risk on the actual delivery of this project.

In terms of maintaining this work there will be improvements made based on any feedback that comes in from the community or from insights that come from the usage of funding categories.

An outcome based risk for this proposal could be if the analysis led to any bad outcomes in the short term. These risks are small as the funding categories have been created to accept all forms of ideas and innovation - This helps prevent stifling of any innovation. You can see the inclusion of the proposal types in each of the categories listed to showcase inclusive categorisation. Funding categorisation is also never finalised. If any given approach or outcome was not preferred or could be improved then the community can change and adapted funding categories in any future Catalyst funding round.

To mitigate any risks we have been looking for feedback on the concerns and issues already around categories and incorporating that feedback into the analysis and categories that are suggested. Feedback from the initial version has already led to the introduction of ‘Nurture Ideas & Teams’ experimental category to see how effective it is for helping increase diversity of ideas and teams

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

The deliverables of this work are already completed. The open source repositories can be found here:

• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/catalyst-funding-categories
• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/funding-categorisation-analysis
• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/catalyst-contributors
• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/cardano-contributors
• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/contributor-analysis

The documentation can be found here:

• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/catalyst-funding-categories/
• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/funding-categorisation-analysis/
• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/catalyst-contributors/
• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/cardano-contributors/
• https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/contributor-analysis/

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

The work for this proposal focussed on doing analysis to improve the Catalyst ecosystem. The analysis focussed on the Catalyst ecosystem including the challenge settings and funding categorisation. The Catalyst Contributors suggests a guidance budget range of $25,000 to $45,000 for a 6 month term - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/catalyst-contributors/category-proposal/fund-9/budget-ranges

Due to the experience of the PACE team in the Catalyst ecosystem we have applied the $45,000 6 month term budget. This equates to $346.15 daily or $43.27 hourly. For simplicity this has been rounded up to $45 per hour.

The initial research for categorisation started with the Catalyst Contributors in fund 7 that was submitted on 21st November 2021 - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/381894

Since 21st November and the 26th June there have been 31 weeks, of which 29 have been active for making improvements to the categorisation analysis. A larger majority of the work has occurred closer towards the June 26th end of the date range rather than at the beginning. The latest weeks had full time hours spent on improvements, new documents, sharing, budget weight voting preparation and getting feedback on the analysis. With this in mind, on a given week there has been on average 30 hours of work completed. Hours completed = 30 hours per week * 29 weeks = 870 hours.

Total compensation for PACE (up to 26th June) = 870 hours x $45 = $39,150

A request for further funds to distribute to different community members that have provided vital feedback to the improvement of this analysis which should be compensated. Some funds from this allocation will also be used to support the fund 9 moderators who helped with the budget weighting vote.

Community contributions - $3,000

Total requested budget = $42,150

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

PACE team has produced all of the documentation around funding categories and contributors that is shared in this proposal. Upon initial completion of different analysis feedback was requested from the community. Further analysis and updates were made based upon community feedback. Some community members have been involved in providing feedback that support the improvements. Compensation has been added for those contributors. PACE team details can be found here - https://cardanopace.notion.site/Team-partnerships-6d1a8bc8a5474b63ade005ab3cdacf21

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

We will continue to work with the community on improving funding categorisation until an effective solution is executed and used. In an ideal world Catalyst contributors would be an effective model to pay for full time stewards that support the Catalyst ecosystem that would be able to maintain and improve this analysis and how funding categorisation is implemented in the funding process.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

The proposal is already available and open source. You can track all of the projects progress changes from start to finish on the following repositories:

• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/catalyst-funding-categories
• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/funding-categorisation-analysis
• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/catalyst-contributors
• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/cardano-contributors
• https://github.com/projectcatalyst/contributor-analysis

For the end user that just wants to see the content of this work they can track all of the documentation produced under the homepage for all Catalyst contributors documentation: https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Success for this project is finding funding categorisation solutions that will help improve the funding process for Catalyst and make it more simple, efficient, flexible, scalable and egalitarian.

Based on the analysis of the different approaches to doing funding categorisation we believe that funding categories achieve that goal. The next step in assessing the success of this project is to analyse the usage of the categorisations to verify their impact and to suggest any alterations that may be needed.

In fund 9 we can already start to see some of the impact of using broad categorisations. The products & integrations category has had over 300 proposals submitted. This now gives the voters more optionality on which proposals they want to vote on and makes the funding categorisation more flexible to the voter in determining how funding actually gets distributed.

Further refinement and feedback will likely result in the evolution of these categories. Ideally the future of this work is handled by full time contributors who are stewards for the Catalyst ecosystem under the Catalyst contributor funding model!

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This proposal originated after initial analysis around Catalyst Contributors which was a challenge setting proposal in fund 7. You can find the Catalyst Contributors history here - https://github.com/projectcatalyst/catalyst-contributors.

A fund 8 proposal was submitted for the funding categories analysis work. This was accepted by the voters but did not meet the funding threshold.

Since then more work has been completed and this fund 9 proposal is a continuation and aggregation of all the unfunded work that has been delivered that improves the understanding and suggestions towards more effective funding categorisation solutions.