S4 - Ep. 27 - Grants Program Registry W/ Sov & Mahesh

Transcript

welcome to the green pillow. network podcast if you're just joining us we're building a coordination a network Society of thousands of hackers dreamers and doers focused on using crypto to bring positive some digital systems to the world this podcast features the people who are doing it and we record a season of episodes every couple months this season is lean mean Capital allocation machines Capital allocation is the process of deciding how to spend or invest financial resources and with web 3 Capital allocation we're going to be able to do more democratic more scalable more precise Capital allocation than was ever possible before what are the coolest experiments who are the people who are doing it these are the themes of Greenfield season 4 lean mean Capital allocation machines my guests today are Mahesh Mery of karma Sav of

gitcoin and we are talking about a grant program registry that they have deployed Mahesh is the founder of karma software Dev by profession passionate about product and technology and has been building zero to1 products for over a decade he's been working on Karma for about two and a half years sa is BD and programs lead at gitcoin he has dedicated the last few years of his life to learning and growing in the web three grants space and also recently founded the Cartographer Syndicate which is what manages the grants registry so I think this is a fun episode if you are into grants programs if you're into their multiplayer onchain future if you're into how grants programs are evolving in web 3 then this is a fun episode and I

think you're going to enjoy hearing from Savin Mahesh hey s hey mesh hey it's good to be here how's it going good to have you why don't we do some quick intros and then we'll get into the meat of the episode mahes you want to go first and then pass it to S hi my name is Mahesh MTI I'm the founder of karma I'm a software developer by profession and uh I love crypto I love product I love technology and I'm very passionate about uh Building Products from 0 to one and I've been working on karma for about two and a half years now I I am Sol I do BDM programs here at gitcoin you I've

dedicated the last couple years of my life to the learning and growing around kind of like the web through Grant space so it's a little bit of a weird hobby that I've got that way and I recently started work with Mahesh around this web3 gr registry that we're talking about today and also founded the Cartographer Syndicate which is a community that's built the support and kind of build the registry so let's get into it what is the program registry what is the grants registry why why should our audience be excited about it yeah I can probably take that you know it really started for me years ago when um I got into you know learning about web3 grants I noticed that there wasn't really a central place that lots of them were tracked and so I started uh building out an ocean page that tracked

those called the common good uh that evolved into a page on defi llama Wiki called lame grants and then has been other pages on the blockwork site and now I met some months ago and discussed kind of this idea about bringing that concept on chain and adding some additional functionality to it and that's kind of what we built you know here today is the the onchain grants registry yeah so add adding to that like for for us we have been building protocol called gap for about six months at Karma which is a protocol for um helping granes show their work to the funders and also it's a great way for the community to like hold the granes accountable and also for the grantees to build a reputation as we were building

this like one of the logical next question was grantees are doing this work sharing their updates and then they're building reputation but then what next like what happens with building all this reputation one of the things we wanted to solve was can they like can we help them get more funding like more grants like how do we recommend more grants to them for that we started looking at like okay what are all the grant programs out there and then there are like a lot of websites out there but none of them are like well managed and up toate so we were like let's see if we can like put together something where it's like always up to date and it's all on chain anyone can update it and then through this

discovery process I found out about sa and he's been doing this for years now so we figured why don't we just collaborate and then build on this so that's the angle we came uh came to this uh please just note for the listener if you go into the show notes of this episode you will see a link to the grant program registry in the show notes so you feel free to click on that and see all the different Grant programs out there there's a 292 looks like on the registry right now so quite a uh quite a broad view of all of the different Grant programs out there and I'm wondering if you could if you could tell us next about the Cartographer Syndicate yeah sure right so this really started as

this idea beh mes and myself of building you know this registry of you know all the different Grant programs and we wanted to create something where anyone could come and basically add to that registry so to his point earlier you know most of the sites that are out there today are pretty much all of them or like a single curator you know like myself that just built a notion site or a web page that you can add to we definitely saw the potential of bringing it on chain and allowing others to be able to suggest different entries to it and so we built that you know into the registry so as I started thinking down that thread it it started to make sense on how do we build a community around this that almost acts like a community to help curate maintain and build out

other aspects of the registry uh so like many great things in crypto it started as a telegram Channel a few of us in there just kind of batting around some ideas and as I noticed more people getting added to this thread and more people just kind of interested in this idea of tracking Grant programs all for different reasons I realized there was something there you know the grant program registry uh received a initial Grant from getcoin to help fund kind of like the first development of it because it's built you know slowly on top of the Alo protocol in terms of the registry that it it uses or that it builds upon and so we looked at that and kind of said if we could build out this community of the Cartographer Syndicate I think there's more opportunities to make this more autonomous so it's not in

the hands of just like a few individuals there could be a broader community that helps to to build that we could build different types of data analytics and visualization tools on top of the registry I also maintain something called cryptogr wire which is like a telegram feed of different news and events that we want to build in and create kind of an aggregator of news for Grant programs there too and then as mahes talked about a little bit earlier there's this this broader opportunity around reputation where tools like Gap have built reputation systems for grantees and applicants and I think that there's an equal opportunity there for building different types of reputation from a program perspective how active are programs how much are they dispersing what kind of things are are they funding you know Etc which really circuits more of that cycle for grantees

to find the right kinds of opportunities that's a good fit to their skills and so when you look at that long list of things that you know starts to have the beginnings of like a great place where a community could come together and help to to build that and so that's why we started the Cartographer Syndicate yeah and and through this process one of the surprising things for me was how interested the grand program operators were they wanted to talk to other Grant operators exchange notes understand how other programs are being run um learn from it so that was like very interesting for me I was always looking from the grante or the builders point of view but there is an equal opportunity to um satisfy the like the the needs of the grant program operators as well

absolutely and so that group is now people from different service providers that work around the grant space grant program managers thought leaders people that do research around grants so like the grants Innovation lab so all this group has started to come together we've got 40 or so people give or take in the telegram now and more getting added every day um and the Cartographer Syndicate was actually recently awarded a grant from arbitrum to help build out different aspects of the registry and so we're actively working on that as well as providing some contributor incentives to help you know build and maintain the registry as well so again what started is just like this telegram group where we started to gather together and figure out you know how we could build things out and it wasn't so single threaded

around a few individuals has turned into something pretty interesting I'm wondering where you all see this grants registry and the social scaffolding that you've built on where is it going in the future the trends I see in the ecosystem is now there's hundreds of Grants programs and you know in what ways can we make it easier for people who are applying to Grants and applying to multiple programs at once now that they have to spend a lot of time applying their programs how can we lessen that load and also how can we make it more effective by by bringing the grants programs on chain it feels like we're using onchain Primitives to send tokens to each other but we're not leveraging all the other things that could be done on chain and so those are the trends

that I'm interested in following and you know I I'll just remind the listeners in in this group that the theme of this season is capital allocation in what ways are going to be doing more scalable precise Democratic Capital allocation by moving things on chain so with that in mind where's this all going where would you like to see it go how can we build a Commons of Grant programs and Grant Registries and and get people all working together to get Capital allocated to the best Builders a few things which I'm really excited what we launched now is is really an MVP so here is a registry we put around 300 Grand programs on chain but that's just the start really where from at least my point of view like there are few things

which I'm really excited about is through Gap we have like these hundreds of thousands of Builders like building up reputation and we know what they're doing and there is this Grand program registry of all the programs with types of projects they fund can we effectively like match them can we understand who these Builders are what they're good at and we already know this through this program registry all the programs and what they offer and what kind of Builders they are looking for can we do like an effective matching between the two so that is like one thing I'm like really excited about today if you go to the site it's like you need to be more proactive and like look for yourself but we want to kind of like serve that up like we already know who you are like

here is a program you should apply for like we want to do that that's one thing I'm like really excited about and then the um other thing is if you are like a quality Builder and how if there is no program which kind of fits the bill like can we still help them there are these lot of these uh program managers we talk to they are willing to like fund like projects which might not fit the mold so can we like do that matching so that's another like I'm like really excited about yeah for sure I think Grant matching is a big opportunity coming from a background on kind of like 501c3 nonprofit that got me into grants in the first place you know

I work with different organizations that help with Grant matching services and they would use open systems and they had expertise around finding different types of grants for you know your nonprofit matching you to those programs helping facilitate that process and even project managing it I think that you're starting to see some of those organizations form across crypto which just shows like maturity building around you know web 3 grants but I also think the fact that we have the ability to bring these things on chain and tap into systems of reputation can shortcircuit some of that cycle a common thing that I see across web three grants today is many people are are wasting a lot of time you know from the grant program perspective you know as Mahesh mentioned it can be hard

to find the right types of Builders you know for the needs that you have especially when we have a scarcity of developers and those types of Builders across the ecosystem versus the demand for them right you also add onto that kind of the challenge of Grant farming which is common in the space today where you know if I'm a prominent program and I open applications I'm going to get a ton of applications in many of those are going to be unqualified some of those may look good on the surface but they're from teams that maybe don't have the best intent and so what that boils down to is many programs are only approving less than 10% of the applications that come in which means 90% of their time is wasted from the Builder side of things it's the same right like if I'm a builder and I want to go and find the

different opportunities that are out there I might have to go to 10 different programs submit 10 different applications and get 10 different experiences and so I think that there's ways through this registry that we can help to improve some of that ultimately save more people time and match kind of like the the supply to the demand you know I also think that there's tie-ins to the registry that we can start to tap into with other partners just like you know Gap would be able to tap in from a reputation perspective we built this on top of you know Alo protocol from a registry perspective we're partnering with open source Observer to tap into kind of data and analytics of different ecosystems and layer that onto the registry we have some work that we're doing to build in you know the news

aggregator that I mentioned earlier and tap into other systems and so I think this can also be a hub where people that have built systems to support you know grants tooling and and you know different aspects of systems around web3 grants would be able to leverage the registry because it's it's built open you know and it's built that way on purpose and then having the community the Cartographer Syndicate that group could even be tasked to help curate information find additional information you know and ultimately maintain those types of you know linkages over time very cool well we're getting towards the bottom half of the episode so I'll start moving into my final questions uh the first question question is if you guys are maximally successful play me forward five or 10 years what what does this all

look like what do web 3 grants look like and how do they differ from today in my mind it becomes that common app that Mahesh just described right it can become a central Hub that different services and tools can plug into but allows flexibility in that where if people desire to use certain types of mechanisms different types of tools you know Etc it can be open enough that it can accommodate that but it can be you know somewhere where it can be flexible enough that you don't have to go multiple places to accomplish you know the one thing so in my mind it it starts to achieve the vision of that common app but it does so in such a way that it's a connector you know of all these different you know toolings and and systems that are being built out today

if this is successful in the long term I see this as a place where any Builder can come in apply and near instantly receive a grant for their idea build and build a prototype get some traction and then pick a path whether it be continuing to build it as a public goods project or go raise external funding this is why we are calling this a funding map where they can choose their path and uh and navigate it and we'll be there to help them all right let's move into our last question which is is there anything I didn't ask that you want to tell us no you know I mean I think we hit the high points you know in this discussion um we're definitely excited to you know

finally launch this and get it out there you know like mes mentioned this is just an MVP a V1 for us and we have you know some big plans for how we continue to build on that and that isn't something that you know we view as you know a closed process you know we want more people joining the Cartographer Syndicate and you know helping us to build this out so yeah if you're a program manager you're doing research or you're Building Systems to support web through grants we'd love to hear from you and I think there's going to be a link in the show notes where you can find more information on one thing we didn't talk about is the integration with open source observable which I'm really excited about everyone knows how important impact measurement is one thing what we are doing is integrating

with open source Observer so you can measure the impact of each project uh which has been funded by a program and then roll up all those impact measurements and then understand what the impact of the program itself is so that integration is coming soon and uh which will be really useful for the enel grants EOS system yeah I mean I think we're all excited about what impact metrics could do to onchain Grant programs so the open source Observer integration seems really interesting all right well uh for the audience there is a link in the show notes where you can check out the Cartographer Syndicate and also the grants program registry so sa Mahesh thanks for coming on the green pill podcast thanks again all right we

just heard from Mahesh Murthy Sav of gitcoin and I am excited about the grants aggregator because I think that we just got a glimpse of where grants programs are going on web 3 thanks again for listening to the green pill. network podcast again we are featuring the people who are building a coordination a network Society of thousands of hackers dreamers and doers focused on using crypto to bring positive sum digital systems to the world like mahes and like Sav if you value our work you can collect this episode go to pods. medgreen pill and collect this episode thanks to MMA on chain. and inverter.pdf collectors of recent episodes while you're here also remember to subscribe rate and review tell your friends about

this podcast episode it really helps the algorithms promote the regenerative cryptoeconomic movement thanks for listening and I will see you next time peace