Academy Page Project

As we look to re-launch the Grants program, we are in the process of developing a few different strategies to improve the impact and success of Grants v1.5. One of these strategies is the use of “Grants Projects” to better coordinate efforts within a specific category of work. We'd like to introduce the idea of Grants Projects, before applying it to our first Goal, a dYdX Academy Page.

Grants Projects

What is a Grants Project?

When the Grants team identifies a goal that will require a collection of grants across different functions and abilities, we may choose to launch a Grants Project with the purpose of coordinating efforts across all grantees to accomplish the end goal. In most cases, we expect the project to include a Project Manager role with experience in the category to manage all of the project grantees, coordinate efforts, identify weaknesses and work alongside the Grants team to source contributors.

Projects are expected to have a single goal to be accomplished (e.g. launch an Academy page) instead of the more generalized functions of a Working Group (e.g. Protocol Risk). The intention is to enable the efficient delivery of a goal set by the Grants team.

Individual grants will be issued by the Grants team within the Project, and grantees will be expected to work together alongside the Project Manager grantee to accomplish the Project goal. The Grants team maintains direct control over all grants issued, but leverages the skills and dedication of the Project Manager to coordinate efforts. Once the goal is accomplished, all grants are paid out and the Project is disbanded.

Why do we need a Project?

In Grants v1, we issued several grants within the same category of work (e.g. Educational content, Newsletters, Tooling) with the hopes of maximizing the impact to the community. Instead, even with high quality work produced, we found that a lack of consistency and coordination across the grantees resulted in lower impact due to distorted delivery methods and content produced.

To solve for this, we want to encourage grantees to work together within their overarching end goal to maximize the efficiency and production methods. This won't apply for all grants, but we are starting to see a few large goals that could be tackled this way.

Why a Project Manager (“PM”)?

The PM will be responsible for handling the day-to-day coordination of efforts and synchronizing workflows, while also serving as a primary contact for both the Grants team and community to hold accountability in the project. The PM will also raise issues to the Grants team, given their better understanding of pain points or holes in the goal.

How will the Grants team work with Projects?

The Grants team will create Projects as seen fit to best execute large goals. Once launched, the Grants team will remain responsible for assessing, interviewing, and issuing all individual grants to be issued under the Project goal. All grantees will continue to report to the Grants team, and payments will be issued at the team’s discretion. The team will make use of the PM to coordinate efforts and guide pain points or holes in the progress.

Academy Page Project

The inspiration for launching Projects originated from the goal to build a high-quality dYdX Academy page funded through grants. Here we explain this in more detail.

Description

The project will be responsible for the creation and management of a dYdX Academy page. A stand-alone website, to be potentially integrated into the dYdX product down the line, will be created and populated with content on dYdX and related topics. The following topics will be covered:

• dYdX Exchange (deposit/withdrawals, executing trades, ...)
• General Crypto (wallets, sending transactions, explorers, ...)
• Relevant Trading (perps, funding rates, market makers, ...)
• Governance (proposals, voting, delegating, …)
• Community (commonwealth, discord, ambassadors, grants, …)
• Technical (APIs, algorithms, bots, …)

Motivation

Educating users about the different types of cryptocurrencies, trading venues, and trading products helps companies and protocols build trust with users. We believe that dYdX can build from this idea by investing in a dedicated Academy page to educate users, build trust with them, and make dYdX their home.

In Grants v1, the team issued a number of grants tackling educational and dYdX related content with the hopes of tackling a similar approach for educating new users and improving onboarding. Although some quality content was created, the result was a distorted collection of inconsistent community generated content. To improve on this, we think launching a structured project with concentrated delegated efforts will lead to more tangible results.

Ultimately, the project team will be responsible for building a dYdX Academy page with content that helps onboard new users to the dYdX product and community.

Grants

As part of this Project, the Grants team will be issuing Grants across the following divisions of work:

- Project Manager

- Website Management

- Designer

- Gamification

- Simulation Tooling

- Content Production

More information can be found here: https://reveriereserves.notion.site/Academy-Page-Grants-Project-87e1c98d052c41c5a0f7413a934e8f1e

‍

We are open for applications on all of the above! Please submit if you're interested.

‍