Funding process considerations

A list of suggested considerations to make when implementing a funding process

The funding analysis helped to generate a number of suggestions about the most promising approaches that could be adopted. The following helps to highlight some more factors to consider when implementing a funding process.

Knowledge process

1. Identify the most relevant and important areas of knowledge

Improving the funding process and decisions can be more easily achieved by identifying the different sources of information that could be relevant and important for the community to consider. Making this list of potentially relevant information sources can help with identifying where any gaps exist in the ecosystem in terms of the currently available knowledge sources. Documenting what information would be most useful for an ecosystem's funding process can be useful for creating a shared understanding of how the funding process could be improved over time. This understanding can also help with highlighting how complex the decisions are for funding and how much information might need to be digested to make well informed decisions. Understanding this can help to inspire new ideas about how that information could be better presented to further save voters time when they are reviewing the available knowledge sources.

2. Identify existing systems and processes that help with knowledge creation and aggregation

Reviewing the available knowledge sources can help to reveal the types of knowledge sources that already exist in the ecosystem and what information areas have no current solution or process. Understanding which knowledge sources are currently missing can help with starting the discussion about how fundamental that information could be for making good funding decisions, how that information source could be created and how decisions could be made without that information in the meantime. Another benefit of reviewing the existing information sources is that it can help to highlight gaps or potential issues in the existing solutions that the ecosystem is using and how those issues could be resolved. Creating a resource that helps to bring together all of the available information sources together into an easy to understand format could also help with reducing the overall complexity for voters to find the most relevant and important information.

3. Determine what knowledge sources could be created or improved in the future

Knowledge systems and processes will need to evolve over time as the ecosystem and environment changes and new information sources emerge that could positively influence what initiatives might be the most impactful for an ecosystem. Taking an active approach with improving the knowledge process will entail the community being able to make suggestions on how the existing sources could be improved and what new ones could be introduced. Information can also be presented in many ways visually and could also be combined with other pieces of information to help with identifying new insights and learnings. A funding process can consider how the most relevant information could be further integrated into the process so it becomes more easily accessible and reliable for voters to consider. Small improvements in ease of access to important information could have a profound impact on improving the scalability of a funding process due to the time it could save voters. Identifying the most useful formats to present the available information could help with reducing the total time it takes for voters to understand and digest the most important information.

Priority process

4. Document any mission statements, principles and values

An ecosystem might have a certain mission or overarching set of goals that they are trying to achieve over the long term. Web3 ecosystems could have been designed and implemented in a way that is most aligned with achieving this mission over the long term. An ecosystem can document any mission statement, principles or values to help community members better understand the current intentions for the ecosystem. Some ecosystems may also decide to document a constitution to more formally outline the background and governance structures involved in the ecosystem. The founding entities of these ecosystems will want to consider how any of their existing goals and mission could change over time as the ecosystem evolves and as community preferences change. Documenting this information can help with improving the prioritisation process as the community members will then be able to more easily reflect on this information and incorporate that understanding into their own priority suggestions.

5. Identify the feasible and relevant areas of focus

Some Web3 ecosystems may have been designed to cater for a certain set of use cases and applications. For instance one ecosystem could be highly focused on making the best network possible for financial systems and applications. This prioritisation about how the infrastructure is built can then influence the types of priorities that make more sense during an ecosystems funding process. Documenting the most potentially impactful use cases and features that a Web3 ecosystems infrastructure is suitable for can help with improving the communities awareness and prioritisation of the most promising ideas that could be most suitable for utilising the ecosystems infrastructure to its fullest potential.

Idea process

6. Identify the suitable and unsuitable types of ideas

Certain ideas may be less effective in certain Web3 ecosystems due to how the network's infrastructure and protocols have been designed. If this situation is the case for certain ecosystems then this information would be highly valuable to document and share with the community so they can learn about what factors should be considered when suggesting ideas that could be executed. This can also help with identifying the different problems and opportunities that exist in the ecosystem for certain types of ideas. Shared knowledge about the current infrastructure and any limitations could help to inspire new ideas that are focused on resolving those particular limitations and problems.

7. Determine how learnings from executed ideas can be documented and shared

Each executed idea can help with generating a diversity of learnings about what works and what doesn’t, the market, usage trends and the opportunities there are to generate further impact with certain ideas. One consideration that an ecosystem can make is how they can record and document any new learnings made from executed ideas. Existing contributors and future contributors can benefit from these learnings such as by preventing them from repeating any previous mistakes or by helping them identify some of the more promising ideas and areas that could be focused on to generate impact for the ecosystem.

Contributor process

8. Identify what skills and experience are most relevant to the ecosystem

Each ecosystem could be more suitable for certain ideas than others based on the strengths and weaknesses of the ecosystem's network and infrastructure. As well as this the skills and experiences that are most useful for the ecosystem will be influenced by the priorities and ideas that get selected by the community. Identifying the skills and experiences more accurately can help with improving the accuracy of any efforts made to attract suitable contributors that have the right skills and experience to execute the most promising ideas to a high standard. The priorities and needs for an ecosystem could likely change and evolve over time. This creates an ongoing need for a community to periodically consider what skills and experience could be the most suitable for the ecosystem at that point in time.

9. Identify how contributors can most effectively collaborate and work together

An ecosystem can have a multitude of ideas that could be impactful to work on and each of those ideas could have many intersecting parts where different ideas integrate into and get used by numerous other solutions. Considerations can be made about what systems and processes could be most effective for supporting the collaboration between existing contributors in the ecosystem to better support the overlapping and intersecting ideas that can exist that each group of initiatives can benefit from. Increasing the amount of collaboration across the ecosystem can help to increase the speed in which contributors are able to execute the most promising ideas.