Result - Not funded ❌
Problem
The challenge setting process needed thorough analysis to make suggestions on how to improve funding categorisation
Solution
Analysis on the challenge setting process, comparisons of categorisation approaches, analysis documents and funding category suggestions
Requested funds
$21,000
Please describe your proposed solution.
The solution is live and available at - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/catalyst-funding-categories
The intended audience is for anyone interested in improving the Catalyst process. More precisely, it is targeted for people who are interested in how Catalyst categorises the funding between different areas of the ecosystem and the implications of how that categorisation impacts innovation, ideas, access to funding and the options given to voters.
The documentation is open source and stored on GitHub - https://github.com/projectcatalyst/catalyst-funding-categories
This documentation helps provide impact by helping to provide support, improve conversations and lead to guidance on how funding categorisation could be improved. The analysis outlined in the documentation has led to attempts to make actionable change to the process. You can find all the category proposals here - https://linktr.ee/cardanopace
Another way that impact has been created is by organising community discussion on the topic of funding categories to find ways in which it can be further improved - https://docs.catalystcontributors.org/catalyst-funding-categories/community-discussion/discussion
The more effective that Catalyst is able to categorise funding so that it’s fair and open to all forms of idea and innovation the more proposals that can be submitted each round. This means there is a potential impact of increasing the number of proposals submitted to the Catalyst funding process. More inclusive categorisation can also help create more options for voters to decide between. This helps increase the chance for the community to find the most promising solutions and support for the ecosystem.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the challenge?
The challenge looks to help with creating ‘accessible knowledge’ and ‘education for development in the Cardano & Catalyst ecosystem’. This proposal helps address the need for more analysis and open source contribution to the available knowledge base on how Catalyst could do funding categorisation.
Analysis shared to the community around the issues with funding categorisation and potential solutions helps to achieve the outlined success criteria - ‘A growing number of experts join forces to build collaboratively on community owned infrastructure, tooling, standards, libraries and docs’.
The outcome of this analysis has been shared on Discord, Telegram, Twitter, in after town halls and directly to community members to receive feedback and provide value to the ecosystem knowledge base. Also a democratic vote was initiated to get feedback on the budget weightings of the categories.
Another way this proposal helps address the challenge is how the impact of improved funding categorisation can lead to increasing the number and the quality of Cardano Open Source projects due to having better access to capital through more open and flexible funding categorisation. A key benefit outlined in the documentations is how broad categories more effectively cover a wider range of ideas and innovation meaning more open source projects will be able to compete for funding to bring their solutions to the ecosystem.