The kickoff month mostly comprised of research, meetings, synthesis and project planning. As I’ve jumped into the project, I have familiarised myself with the problem space, available solutions, potential obstacles, stakeholders and technology.
The main goal for the month was to understand how this project can be successfully executed.
I’ve spent quite a good amount of time internalising how quadratic funding works, learning how Gitcoin does their rounds, how the latest version of Allo protocol works, and what are other approaches and initiatives for funding public goods in web3.
Through the research and meetings I started getting a clearer picture of what needs to be done and how, so I have started drafting a plan of activities.
Overall plan includes spending the first 6 months setting the necessary ground work of administrative, legal and software development work.
What will follow is building the capacity to conduct the number of events all revolving around the first quadratic funding rounds in Split. These will include hackathons, a residency, educations, marketing campaigns and more. Last part of the project is the followup on the QF rounds, focused on the evaluation and execution of the funded projects, as well as on onboarding new municipalities.
Things done:
- Project planning
- Activities
- Timeline
- Subprojects
- Initial budget
- Stakeholder identification
- Goal setting
- Research
- Public goods funding mechanisms
- Voting mechanisms
- Participatory budgeting
- Allo protocol
- On ramps services legal frameworks
- Erasmus KA2 funding
Meetings:
- David Casey, Funding the Commons
- Vlaho Hrdalo, lawyer and president of Croatian Blockchain Association Discussed the legal aspects of the project.
- Saša Varmuža, local neighbourhood NGO leader Discussed how to get citizens motivated to participate.
- Antonija Eremut Erceg, Head of department for development of the city, City of Split Discussed how to implement the project legally, administratively and financially.
- Ele Diakomichalis, Drips Network Discussed the possibility of getting additional funding and using Drips Network technology.
- Mark Tyneway, Optimism Discussed possibility of using Optimism, and getting additional funding.
- Dan Burnett, Ethereum Enterprise Alliance Discussed how to onboard new users to Ethereum.
- Rene Reinsberg, Celo Discussed possibility of using Celo, and getting additional funding.
- Michael Freer, Hack4Split Discussed how we can incorporate this urban hackathon into the project.
- Tomislav Vajić, Bitcoin Store Talked extensively about how to implement on/off ramp, KYC/AML and scam prevention.
- Austin Griffith Talked about onboarding new users to Ethereum.
- Gísli Kristjánsson, Monerium Talked about possibility of using Monerium EUR token.
- Brana Rakic, OriginTrail
- Nate Gosselin, Gitcoin Talk about technical details of Allo protocol.
- Valentina Perišić, Calimera consulting Talked about possibility of applying for Erasmus KA2 funding.
- BlockSplit Management Board
The most useful meetings/calls were with Antonija, Vlaho and Tomislav who provided some very useful information that helped define the project requirements and goals better.
Besides that, I have had countless discussions about the project with other residents and mentors of the Funding the Commons residency in Berlin. Their opinions, concerns and advice is implemented and so integral that is it hard to distinguish what came from whom.