What is Aave Grants DAO?
Aave Grants DAO is a community-led grants program to fund ideas submitted by the Aave protocol’s community, with a focus on empowering a wider network of community developers. and its ecosystem. The goal of the program is to provide resources to grow the Aave ecosystem in a way that can scale over time.
There are many great ideas for improving the Aave protocol bubbling up in the Discord, community forum and other places. Aave Grants hope to initiate a community-led, transparent process for connecting those developers/creators/innovators with resources needed to go from idea to funded development.
Aave (AAVE) is the native cryptocurrency of the Aave platform: a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform where users can borrow a range of cryptocurrencies, as well as lend assets in exchange for interest payments, all without needing a middleman.
The Aave Grants DAO Guidelines
Aave Grants will organize grant recipients into two 3-month funding rounds. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis and any grants disbursed during a given 3-month period become part of the corresponding round. Round 1 will be for three months from the day the grants proposal has been approved. If approved, starting immediately after a proposal is ratified, AGP will begin accepting applications on a rolling basis. The grants committee will determine on how funding is to be disbursed (e.g. milestones, upfront, etc.) on a case-by-case basis.
At the end of each round, the committee is responsible for sharing all the grant recipients along with amounts and descriptions as part of a transparent quarterly review process. The end of the Round 2 marks the end of the pilot. At that point, the community will decide based on the results of the first two rounds whether or not to continue funding AGP (in the same or an amended form).
Most grants will have 1-2 milestones and recipients will receive about half the grant upfront and half on the completion of a milestone. For more complex projects or larger grants, there may be several milestones and payments could be split across these milestones. AGP will get progress updates from teams and assess the completion of these milestones. This ensures downside protection for the AGP in case the project is unsuccessful or needs to pivot. The grants will
primarily be focused on projects working to improve the Aave protocol. However, a small portion of the budget (5-10%) may be allocated to select projects with a wider scope (e.g. ETH scalability).
Project Proposals
To help inform the types of grants which are most likely to get funded, they highlight the following target areas:
- Protocol development (including core Aave protocol development, development of higher layer protocols which use the Aave protocol)
- Applications and integrations (front-ends and other applications that use the Aave protocol)
- Developer tooling
- Community (marketing and educational)
- Committees, sub-committees, and DAOs that serve the Aave ecosystem
- Code audits
- Events and hackathons
- Bounties
Application Process
There are two ways to apply for a grant: Rapid Grants and Community Grants. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis.
Rapid Grants (<$20k, faster process, smaller grants)
Fill out the application. The application will only be shared with members of the grants committee. If it passes a round of review, they’ll approve it and send you confirmation of the same within a few days.
Grants ($20K – $100k, fast process, bigger grants)
Fill out the application. Your application will go through a round of review, interview, and internal deliberation. Positive feedback will lead to your grant being approved.
Community Grants (>$100k), just slightly slower process, very large grants)
Fill out this application as well. If they have positive feedback after a round of review and interview, they will ask you to share your proposal on Aave’s governance forum for voting. Your grant will be processed based on the outcome of voting there.
Grants Above $500k
If you have a grant application above $500k, they recommend directly sharing your proposal on Aave’s governance forum. Feel free to contact aavegrants@gmail.com if you want feedback before putting up your proposal. Approving this grant will be outside Aave Grants DAO’s mandate, however, Aave Grants are happy to provide feedback.
Evaluation
The Aave Grants have set some requirements on their official website. This criterion is used to evaluate applications and projects.
Measurable criteria:
- Growth in the number of grants applications received quarter-over-quarter • Growth in the number of projects, ideas, and events funded
- Growth in community engagement (e.g., increased activity on forums, Discord, etc.) • Growth in Aave pools driven by applications funded via grants (e.g., increased TVL, borrow activity, and unique addresses due to apps funded by grants)
Subjective criteria:
- Improved sentiment and goodwill within the community
- Improvement to the Aave protocol’s brand and positioning in the market