Introducing Olympus Grants

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)

• Olympus is officially launching a grants program!
• The 13 grantee beta launch is well underway!
• New partnership with Gitcoin!
• Co-funding with WAGMI Inc and KlimaDAO
• $1.5M budget
• Seeking projects that enhance Olympus’: Knowledge, Utility, & Infrastructure
• Especially seeking projects that serve markets or communities under-represented in web3 in order to keep driving economic growth and innovation whilst expanding the econOHMy.

Introduction

Olympus Grants is designed to fill various gaps in the Olympus ecosystem by funding projects which support the DAO’s initiatives but don’t fit into existing projects. Where a token swap, incubator investment, or yield-redirection is not quite right, Olympus Grants will fill the gap. The OGP(Olympus Grants Program) is funded with $1.5 M of DAO approved $OHM. OGP 1 will run over a 3.3 month period as an MVP and reevaluate after that period, wherein a report will be provided to the community with suggested next actions. OGP is built to bolster the objectives of other departments such as Partnerships, Olympus Pro, Incubator, and Give in ways that require a more flexible funding mechanism. And in true LFG spirit, Olympus has selected 13 new initial grantees (and a partnership with Gitcoin) to help kick off our Grants Program!

Grants aims to support the core values of OHM such as building an inclusive econOHMy. As such we aim to take the cooperative economics of 3,3 and greatly expand the reach and user experience of the Olympus ecosystem. Applications are open effective immediately and will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Like a mycelial network, sharing nutrients and messages between trees in an old-growth forest, Grants helps lay the foundation for OHM’s thriving.

https://twitter.com/demonyong_nini

Why

Olympus Grants aims to put Olympus’ Values into action by filling in the gaps of the ecosystem and the broader crypto space, focusing on Education, Infrastructure, and Utility while also building on the knowledge provided by similar web3 Grant programs such as those pioneered by Uniswap, Lido, Gitcoin, or the Ethereum Foundation — to name a few (but there are many others).

To quote from our Values and Mission & Vision:

“Results Oriented: OlympusDAO is building a global, community-owned and decentralized economy so we can introduce stability & transparency back into financial markets and create financial inclusion for all.”

Grants will provide measurable and legible results via integrations, increase user adoption and education, and create functional on-ramps into the ecosystem, as well as increase in the accessibility of OHM.

“Stability, sustainability & transparency: Build and develop ecosystems for a smart, sustainable and transparent crypto reserve currency.”

Grants will help expand the user base and multiply the tools tied to OHM, helping to cement our place as the crypto reserve currency of the internet, while focusing on things like bug bounties and cross-chain expansion.

“Value Constant, Reserve Currency & Protocol Owned Reserves: Create a value constant building block for DeFi by developing and maintaining protocol owned value to stabilize OHM as a reserve currency”

Grants helps accelerate DeFi LEGOs and user relationships, by focusing on granting to projects remedying e.g. onboarding initiatives, third-party integrations, staker-directed voting, one-click purchase, and staking in mobile wallets, etc.

Grants also seeks to promote the development of our econOHMy. In September 2021, Jack Purdy of Messari released a piece which did the rounds urging DAOs to rethink their spending. The thesis was that DAOs are spending very conservatively, which is “hampering growth and leaving them vulnerable to competition that could spend their way to scale faster and come to dominate their respective vertical.” The conclusion being that DAOs “need to take a page from the startup playbook: Blitzscaling.”

In Grants, we would like to pull from these insights while offering an alternate model to the Blitz when thinking about growth for cooperative DAOs such as OHM; a mycelial network.

Mushrooms are nature’s premier cooperators. Ain’t nothing bigger than the OG big boi — the “Humongous fungus” a mycelial network 3.5 square miles (9.1 km2) (2,240 acres (910 ha)), possibly weighing as much as 35,000 tons, making it the world’s most massive living organism. Is stronk. Mycelium offers us an alternative vision for growth and scale which contributes to equilibrium rather than zero-sum games or winner takes all. Mycelium also are in it for themselves, but not at the cost of everything — at the cost of infinite growth. They shuffle resources where they’re most needed, they get a good price, and they make sure that their fellow mycelia, trees, buds, and everything dependent on them finds a way to benefit, while they get theirs.

Olympus aims to utilize the power of markets and DeFi, but while also expanding spaces of positive sum cooperation. So as we shroom-scale by building interconnected aligned incentives, we also build each other’s wealth in the spirit of 3,3 circular econOHMies.

Grants seeks to accelerate the growth of circular economies by supporting ecosystem development. Fundamental to this aim is helping to build bridging relationships that support communities and markets currently under-represented in web3 both as a means of satisfying the core OHM value of building the inclusive econOHMy as outlined in Olympus12 and as a strategy of amplifying our economic growth and innovation. This is a critical step in creating a healthy and vibrant DeFi forest for evermore Ohmies to play and grow — our Total Addressable Market is everyone connected to the internet, right anon?

What

Created by OIP-55, the Olympus Grants Program (OGP) aims to fund projects that expand the Olympus ecosystem, helping to make Olympus the decentralized reserve currency of the internet.

At launch, OGP 1 will prioritize projects in:

Infrastructure

Improve and expand the OHM Infrastructure

We seek to fund interoperability and a thriving multi-chain world — with OHM as a major catalyst in the network.

Is there a connection to be made between two or more chains, protocols, etc, that no one is quite incentivized to build, but that everyone could benefit from? Grants could be the answer, and OHM will blaze the trail. Anything that Grants funds, should be available for others to integrate with, or adopt and learn from. Open source FTW!

Utility

Improve the Utility of OHM, reach more ohmies

Will your project make it easier for Ohmies to transact throughout the OHM ecosystem of forks, bridges, and more, making OHM more valuable to Ohmies and all of DeFi? Will you make it easier for new communities or markets to access OHM, aligning with Olympus’ mission of an inclusive economy? Will you make it easier for people to off-ramp from fiat into the circular economies built on OHM? Grants might be for you.

Education

Educate more users about Olympus, help make more Ohmies

We’re still in Day 0 of crypto. Mass adoption is so far away, yet coming ever closer. Education is a major part of what’s needed. Are you writing developer documentation, building YouTube and TikTok guides, playgrounds, hackathons, infographics, ecosystem maps, accessibility initiatives, or translating OHM content and docs into other languages? Have yourself a Grant.

How

1. Application & Evaluation: Apply via our Notion form. Projects will be evaluated based on goodness of fit and reputation as follows:

• Core categories: Fit into at least one of our core categories (Education, Infrastructure, Utility)
• Culture: Collaborative, not a reputational risk, good communication, dedication.
• Values: History of working with decentralized and/or open-source software and horizontal governance with special consideration given to historical participation in the OHM ecosystem.
• Skills: Likely ability to deliver on project
• Inclusion: Serving and/or coming from communities or markets underserved by web3

2. Terms: Draft and agree on cooperation terms

3. Committee Approval: Take it to a vote!

4. Contract & Launch: Your signature please.

5. Grantee added to Give platform (more in a future guest post from the Give team)

• % of grant is released when milestones achieved.
• Remaining funds live in Give vault with yield directed to Grantee throughout lifespan of grant
• OHMies can deposit sOHM and redirect yield to grantees they would like to boost

6. Track, Record, and Archive: Track projects along roadmap, archive documentation, manage (milestone contingent) funds disbursal, and evaluate project success.

Who

Public Domain: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/atlas-des-champignons

We accepted our first cohort, named Amanita, as a beta launch of the Grants program and are thrilled to introduce the 13 projects here. Special shout out to WAGMI Inc and KlimaDAO for co-funding some of these grantees.

• Solana: Integrating Olympus onto Solana. Grant co-funded with WAGMI Inc.
• Terra: Integrating Olympus onto Terra. Grant co-funded with WAGMI Inc
• Composable: Composable Finance is working to accelerate DeFi into the mainstream. The team’s vision is to develop interoperable infrastructure that will create a blockchain-agnostic future for the industry. With a number of key pieces of infrastructure launched and in development, including a Kusama and Polkadot parachain, Composable is simplifying and unifying DeFi for developers, end-users, and investors.
• MoverDAO: Creating an Olympus payment app and implementing permission less, gasless transactions. You can follow us on Twitter or Discord.
• Playgrounds: Empower users with on-chain data analytics tools and educational content to improve yield strategies and understanding of Olympus protocol in particular and DeFi more generally. Follow us on Twitter and come join our Discord! Grant co-funded with KlimaDAO.
• MetaMars: No-loss arcade with prizes funded in part by OHM treasury rebases. Learn more at MetaMars.org and join their Discord server (gated).
• Pas: Making an Olympus level in a video game.
• Entropyfi: Provides safer risk-on and risk-off options for OHM stakers via soft-hedge and soft-leverage. Follow us on Twitter and come join our Discord! Try out our dapp here!
• The Black DAO: A multi-chain reserve currency and yield aggregator operating as the premier interface for OlympusDAO to expand their TAM to Black and African-owned businesses, creatives, and initiatives. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and come join our Discord!
• Gateway: Building a decentralized professional network, issuing soulbound NFTs to indicate DAO membership and roles. The web3 standard for community verified activity and professional data. Follow us on Twitter and come join our Discord!
• MetricsDAO: Delivering on-demand analytics for the OlympusDAO ecosystem, sourcing community needs, developing bounties and delivering quality controlled results. Follow us on Twitter and join our Discord!
• Landback DAO/Afro DAO: OHM usability study focusing on communities that are harder to reach in web3, culture setting NFT art auction collaboration with emerging Olympus products, Tyche/Give use-case build out. Follow Landback DAO and AFRODAO on Twitter.
• Incubator Launch Collab: Olympus Incubator launch event collaboration with Startup Jam: 3rd of March at (3.33 pm UTC-03:00). 3 * 3333$ worth of OHM to 3 Teams applying — Capped at 33 Participants. Apply now!

And like a mushroom hit by rain, releasing it’s spores to the wider world, our 14th and final treat for this Feb 14th release is that Olympus Grants will be partnering with Gitcoin to contribute to their GR13 quadratic match funding pool where all grantees from rounds 1 and 2 of Olympus Grants will be added. Each project will be in the running for further boosts from the wider ecosystem as part of the quadratic funding approach which Gitcoin have been pioneering. On top of this if the projects do well they could be in the running for the $1M ETH main pool prize.

When

Now Ohmies! Carpe diem (or noctem as many of us are creatures of the night)!

Conclusion

“Let’s double-down on the cooperative mindset that drives us forward. (3, 3) is more than game theory. It has become a mindset, a lifestyle; a rejection of the belief that all actors will behave based on greed at the expense of each other in favor of the interpretation that, given the opportunity to reap the same benefit mutually, they will. This is such a powerful concept, and it can transform far more than DeFi. Collective action can, does, and will change the world.” — Zeus

Building our new econOHMy is going to take a wide variety of projects. OHM is in a unique place to become a crossroads of collaboration and exchange akin to ancient Greece. Grants is excited to paddle into the tidal wave of creative energy flooding through Olympus’ gates and use it to drive our ecosystem to ever-greater heights. Are you as excited as we are to see what we can create together? Then you better apply soon.

About OlympusDAO

Olympus is a decentralized financial reserve protocol that provides sustainable compounding interest through its community-owned and protected treasury.