Proposal Overview
Thanks to previously approved funding, zkDAO has been operating as a Harmony core initiative, primarily to support activities at zku.ONE for onboarding experienced web3 developers to build their first zk product (i.e. an application utilizing zero-knowledge proof technology). As our first quarter is coming to an end, we hereby report progress, and request funding for Q3 2022 in order to continue our activities.
As per the Harmony roadmap for 2026, ZK is a central focus for the technical developments for our ecosystem. Besides training zk developers, zkDAO also organizes activities and incentive structures to retain the loyal contributions of active zk experts coming out from our training programme.
Through the last funding period, one of our governors has joined Harmony as a core team member (Brian Felsen), and another two has joined as Fellows (Cathie So and Semar Augusto) to build core zk infrastructure for Harmony. Moving forward we hope to be able to continue to serve as a channel for bringing talent to support the Harmony ecosystem, and to help incubate projects related to ZK.
Mandates
Our mandate has remained unchanged.
Education - support zku.ONE developer training activities
Engagement - exchange ideas with industry experts
Endowment - grow our own treasury for long term financial self-sustenance, and for retaining talents
Deliverables
Although recent market conditions have led to considerable setbacks to our various activities, by and large we have met our promised deliverables. Specifically, our students have already completed 36 final projects (each representing a usable zk product on testnet), exceeding the original target. Of these projects, 14 of them are already approved for a zk launch grant. We expect this number will double (2x) as the current cohort of students graduate by the end of June.
In total, we have so far attracted over 700 students, who completed over 900 assignments (developed and graded by our teaching staff).
Going into Q3 2022, we aim to deliver at least another 50 final projects. Following our roadmap, we aim to bring our DAO membership to close to 100, where each full voting member would be a zkDAO launch grant awardee.
Budget (Proposal Ask)
Given current market conditions, we propose to volunteer to scale back our budget by 35%. For the last quarter we have received $1M for our operations. We hereby propose to request $650k for Q3 2022.
The budget breaks down into 3 major categories:
- Staff cost ($100k x 3 months): zku is supported by 12 teaching staff, and zkDAO also requires administrative support. In Q3 we will also begin to setup coordinape-powered mechanisms for DAO members to continue to mentorship and other industry engagement activities on a spontaneous basis, to be rewarded post hoc through peer recommendations.
- Student incentives ($200k): zku operates by a learn2earn model, where successful students are rewarded for their outstanding contribution. Over time, we have reduced the size of these incentives. But to maintain interest, we will continue to pay up to $3k per successful graduate.
- Misc. operational costs ($150k): these are for supporting audits for final projects involving novel circuits ($100k to support 20 projects), as well as for supporting DAO members to travel to conferences in order to compete in hackathons ($30k to support about 20 person-attendances), and for promoting the course ($10k, with another $10 remaining for miscellaneous stationary costs).
Metrics for Success
Our proposed metric for success remains unchanged. We request a 10% operational cost (e.g. 1M DAO funding) for the launch grant money (e.g. 10M) attractable by the projects coming out of the relevant ZKU training activities. This has been the guiding principle for the long-term financial planning of zkDAO, as proposed in the initial setup.
Therefore, at $650k we expect to be able to train 65 students capable of finishing a launch-grant ready project. This will fall short of our ambitious goal of training 1,000 students by 2024. But as market conditions improve, we hope to be able to scale up again in the near future to catch up.
Personnel
Our personnel has so far remained unchanged since the launch of zkDAO in Mar 2022. Once this round of funding is approved, we will hold a general election to determine governance for Q3 2022.
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