JIP-29: Update the NCN Grants Programme and Commit to Futarchy Experimentation

JIP - Official
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JIP-29: Update the NCN Grants Programme and Commit to Futarchy Experimentation

Category: Treasury, Strategy

Abstract

In JIP-7, the DAO set out to utilize Futarchy to govern an innovative grants program designed to accelerate the open development of NCNs. As part of that proposal, a one-year timeline was proposed for the programme. This proposal seeks to extend that timeline to allow for a longer technological development trajectory, provide a wider scope for grant structures, and more broadly, build a Jito DAO culture that aims to push the frontier of futarchy experimentation.

Motivation

Solana is the leading ecosystem on the planet for experimentation in futarchy. The hybridization of governance and prediction markets is likely to be a revolution for both decentralised systems and eventually conventional governance systems.

This is, however, a challenging technological frontier. The JIP-7 grant programmes attempted to leverage a niche governance process with a niche technological tool, the NCN. Consequently, uptake was low, both for the Grant programme, but also for the prediction market itself.

The grants programme only funded a single project Switchboard, which has recently completed their TGE, shipped an NCN, and distributed significant value to restakers. This demonstrated the highly selective nature of the grant programme operation and stands out against a backdrop of poorly run governance programmes across the industry.

Rather than shy away from this challenge, this proposal seeks to double down on the commitment to futarchy experimentation and also NCNs. JIP-29 seeks licence for a longer timeline of experimentation and greater agency in exploring the design space of the grant programmes and the capabilities of the MetaDAO futarchy system.

There is no new ask from the DAO, JIP-29 simply requests to maintain access to the pre-assigned unspent funds, but also as a consensus gathering exercise as to whether the DAO should continue with its commitment to futarchy experimentation.

Specification

  • Allow the NCN Grant Committee to maintain control of the remaining 1.7m of the 2m JTO budget in the multisig previously assigned.

  • Unlock the ability to experiment, by removing the tight specification of the grant structure, but maintain the equivalent rigour over grant selection and structured approaches to the grants.

    • Each iteration of the grant programme will be signaled in this thread for the DAO to review and discuss prior to activation.

  • Make a commitment to build a DAO culture of futarchy practice and experimentation.

  • Nick Almond (Head of Governance) and Hayden Tsutsui (Restaking Lead) will join the previously structured grant committee (composed of Brian Smith, Andrew Thurman, Kollan House, Ian Unsworth, and Juanbug) to assist in grant design and governance oversight.

Benefits/Risks

Benefits

  • Using Futarchy to broker grant access provides an open market opportunity for interested traders to contribute real skin-in-the-game signals to grant selection. Which has worked as an effective filter for high quality NCN projects. Leading to less wasteful grants spend in aggregate

  • Futarchy enables operational efficiency and grant selection neutrality, by handing market participants the genuine choice over whether projects are funded.

  • More rigorous and experimental approach to grant structures allows us to maintain quality over quantity, whilst finding the sweet spot for utilising the MetaDAO mechanism.

Risks

  • The grant committee overspends resulting in low effective spend. However, previous utilisation of funds was demonstrably cautious utilising only 15% of allocated funds, with 100% hit rate on projects with over $1m in real value in SWITCH tokens distributed to restakers.

  • Updating the programme leads to less favorable results. However, updates will be incremental based on lessons learned from previous iterations and only must gain approval from DAO.

Outcomes

The passing of this proposal will give the Grants Committee the mandate to keep the JTO budget allocated to it in JIP-7. Additionally, it will provide the mandate to experiment with futarchy market structure in order to find a more suitable market-based grant evaluation methodology.

Cost

This proposal will incur no direct cost to the DAO, as all relevant funds were budgeted in JIP-7.