Proposal 16: Akash CAB funding #2

Governance
#1

Hi all,

Couldn’t find a thread on the latest proposal so I’ve created one.

Disclaimer: We are leaning towards voting YES because incentivizing adoption and development is great for the ecosystem, however we owe it to our delegators to do our due diligence first.

Firstly, as Mintscan doesn’t show it, I have checked on chain and yes, the receiving address of Proposal 16 is the same as the one in Proposal 9.

Secondly, the amount requested is 150k AKT (just over 10% of the Community Pool) or just under US$200k at the time of writing.

As people may know already from Proposal 9, small submissions ($100-$1000) were funded internally by Akash, and the larger submission are the only ones handled by the account being funded in Proposal 16.

So what did the CAB fund from this account already?
Apart from a number of small transfers <500 AKT, and 2 large transfers which were returned ~6 hours later, the account in question made only 3 large transfers:

  1. 8th Dec 21 - 57,123 AKT (~US$98,800 at time of transfer) - Not relevant to the process but all of which are staked.
  2. 5th Jan 22 - 4,000 AKT (~US$10,800 at time of transfer) - Not relevant to the process but all of which are untouched in the account.
  3. 7th Jan 22 - 33,255 AKT (~US$86,500 at time of transfer) - Not relevant to the process but much of this has been sent to Osmosis and exchanged for UST (assumably as a hedge against volatility which was very high at the time). Special note that this account is highly active in deployments and leases on Akash.

So what were the projects that were approved?
Given the meeting minutes in this forum, I have found the following approvals. I haven’t been able to match these to the payments however as they don’t line up by time or amount.
CAB 24th Nov 21:

  1. Open Registry → $10,000
  2. Akashlytics → $100,000
  3. Akash Deploy → $10,000
  4. Apsu Auditing → $100,000
  5. AwesomeAkash+ → $10,000

CAB 12th Jan 22:

  1. Open Registry → $100,000

According to Proposal 16, the latest payment to Open Registry is still outstanding and pending this proposal passing. From this, one would extrapolate that the two large transfers are Akashlytics and Apsu Auditing and the $10k transfer is one of the 3 approved projects from the November meeting.

Could someone please clarify the payments and why they don’t align?

Suggestion: transfers from the CAB should include a memo with the name of the receiving project and a link to forum post showing reason for award.

I note that according to Proposal 16, Anthony Rosa will no longer be making application proposals and that his addition to the CAB was made after his grant was approved, however there are other members of the CAB who are applying for/have been approved grants and it would be nice to get a comment on how conflict of interests are being avoided there (I want in no way to diminish the value of their contributions to Akash).

Summary
Overall, I think the program is of massive benefit to the Akash ecosystem and not only the projects being developed but also the time invested by the CAB with little to no thanks or reimbursement.

So thank you all and in the absence of any new information being brought to light we intend to vote YES on this proposal.

#2

Hey there, we put out a twitter thread @akashaudit_ (https://twitter.com/AkashAudit_/status/1494112809566806016?cxt=HHwWgIC5yeTrk7wpAAAA) but it definitely would have been a good idea to put one on the forum too, thanks for doing so! Apsu Auditing has changed to Akash-Audit, just a name change is all. Since my addition to the CAB is recent, I can only share the payment details of my grant reception which is here Mintscan - Chain explorer by COSMOSTATION. As you can see, we haven’t sold any of the grant, have actually added to the account, and in reality have more than is shown but we needed to send some to our validator for the deposit for the proposal (Mintscan - Chain explorer by COSMOSTATION). Additionally, we have promised not to sell any validator rewards for the remainder of the year (https://twitter.com/AkashAudit_/status/1493241614965174273?cxt=HHwWgsCj_crVh7kpAAAA). Another grant we voted to fund was a provider onboarding service (10k). I’m unaware of any pending grant proposals from active members.

2 Likes
#3

Thanks @amrosa !

Do we have any other members of the CAB active here to comment?

#4

Hey, I confirm that the payments made from the cab funding to Akashlytics were made. We basically got the same amount of AKT as Akash-Audit, but 1 month’ish later. That’s why the value at the time of transfer don’t match.

I recognize that there may be a conflict of interest between me, the CAB and Akashlytics, but I try to be impartial in every decision I make on the CAB and always have the benefit of Akash and the Network in general in mind first and foremost. We’re building free and open source software to support the adoption of the network and we don’t have concrete path to revenue, so we rely on community pool funding for now. We’re very much on track with our roadmap and plan to add a ton more value to the network and community.

Anyways, I understand the lack of transparency with the payments and perhaps with memo’s it could be clearer and easier to track.

Cheers

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#5

We definitely know the value that Akashlytics has brought, thanks for the considered response and keep up the great work!

1 Like
#6

Hey @KamuelBob, thank you for starting this post and taking the time to research it properly. Sorry it’s taken a while to get a reply from some of us.

First of all I completely agree that including the memo in the TX would make things much clearer for everyone. I think this would be a great process to implement and will raise it in the next CAB meeting.

Secondly I think the confusion is partly because the funds aren’t given to the project in one go. We vote on a total amount but the project has to prove progression before additional tranches of funds are released. Overclock and @AlaniAKT keep on top of this and projects present back to the CAB as required. However we have to ensure we have the funds to fully cover a project before we start giving out more, which is why we’re requesting more even though not all of the previous projects have been fully funded yet.

I also want to add that the CAB is ‘finding it’s feet’ - Overclock have been amazing at helping to coordinate and ensure the CAB runs smoothly, and the last few months have seen a big improvement in process from all of us. It’s tough coordinating community members like this, especially since some of us haven’t been on a board like this before. Please keep suggestions and threads like this coming.

#7

Thanks!

#8

I think your idea to include a memo is a reasonable suggestion. Tagging @AlaniAKT for visibility.

The CAB voted to create rule early on in the process stating that CAB members cannot vote on their own grant application. It is logical that grant recipients who are active in the community also tend to make great CAB members. I think it should be noted that Akashlytics, OpenRegistry, and Akash Deploy were all winners of Akash’s Hackathon challenges prior to being funded by the CAB. So they all received their first funding separate from the CAB, and they were able to show progress on their project to the CAB before receiving funds from the community. You can see the progress of their work in the CAB videos.

I’m so happy to read this. Vote YES!

2 Likes
#9

@colin.lowenberg Thanks for the input! Always glad to have you chime in.