"FAB DAO Grant is Great!" marks Taiwan's first experiment in non-profit quadratic fundraising, entirely on-chain community-initiated with diverse proposal teams. In just 25 days, we've demonstrated that Taiwan's community has the ability to create an ecosystem capable of independent operation, donations, and proposing initiatives.

By mashbean & Gimmy Chang (Authors and contributors to FAB DAO)

Introduction

FAB DAO (Formosa Art Bank DAO), Taiwan's first non-profit-centric decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), has, in two years, executed over 20 NFT-based non-profit actions. These range from self-initiated projects to collaborations with Taiwanese cultural institutions, non-profits, advocacy groups, and schools. Through “Project Percentage,” the DAO partners with Taiwanese generative artists to raise funds and recruit its members. It has transitioned to a decentralized governance model with various subgroups focusing on non-profit actions, public goods research, and collections. FAB DAO's active contributors number around 20, with a general following of about 200 and a Discord server community of approximately 2300. Participants include non-profit workers, engineers, researchers, creators, teachers, business professionals, retirees, first responders, and civil servants, showcasing the diversity of its members.

In 2023, FAB DAO joined the GreenPill Network, operating under the alias GreeSofa and managing GreenPill Taiwan affairs. Between November and December 2023, the DAO conducted its first fully on-chain quadratic funding experiment using the Gitcoin-developed "Grant Stack." This marked Taiwan's first local team-led web3 quadratic funding campaign. The Taiwanese web3 ecosystem, themed around public goods, includes about three groups with overlapping memberships, such as da0 (part of the g0v ecosystem), focusing on civic technology, Volume DAO centered on digital art, along with informal study groups, self-media, and academic research teams, forming a vibrant web3 ecosystem.

Podcast about this experiment with Blocktreand (Chinese)

Results

This experiment signifies Taiwan's first foray into non-profit quadratic fundraising, led entirely by the community. The participating donation teams were diverse, including influential Taiwanese blockchain media like Blocktrend, projects focused on elderly care, art and cultural event organizers like Volume DAO, individual researchers like Frank Hu, and DAO's internal activities such as year-end gatherings. In just 25 days, we completed an entire fundraising cycle. This success demonstrates the Taiwanese community's capability for autonomous operations, donations, and quadratic funding proposals. This was also a stress test for Grant Stack in Taiwan.

Mission

Our initial goal was to localize Gitcoin Stack's tools for native public interest projects, thereby minimizing participation barriers. We weren’t concerned about Sybil’s attacks on resource distribution issues in this experiment due to the limited matching fund pool. Regarding this initial goal, we are successful. Notably, this quadratic funding campaign did not experience sybil attacks, possibly due to the small public funding pool size.

Duration

The promotional phase began on November 5th, followed by a 10-day preparation period involving image creation, drafting press releases, hosting two AMA sessions, mobilizing publicity, and collaborating on a podcast with Blocktrend. The proposal period ran from November 14th to 30th, spanning 16 days, with the donation period lasting from November 24th to 30th, a total of 6 days.

Funding

FAB DAO initiated the “Grant is Great!” experiment. Matching funds were derived from the previous Gitcoin Grant Round 18 (GG18) and the Global Chinese Community (GCC). In GG18, 95 individuals donated a direct sum of $294, resulting in a total of 1212 DAI (approximately equal in USD). In the GCC, 17 individuals donated $58, with the matched capacity reaching 136 DAI. The combined matching funds amounted to 1369.6 DAI.

Manpower

The human resources involved three individuals: mashbean responsible for initial planning, promotional materials, podcast recording (invited by Blocktrend's Astro Hsu), and two AMA sessions (one for proposers and one for sponsors, each lasting about 1 hour on Discord); Gimmy handled Grant Stack setup and co-hosted the AMAs; Stanley focused on writing promotional text. This final report was jointly completed by mashbean and Gimmy.

Distribution

Ultimately, 32 individuals participated in donating, with a direct donation sum of $93.57 across 166 donations. Among the 13 proposal teams, matching funds ranged from a low of $35 (2.61% of the pool) to a high of $191 (13.97% of the pool).

Grantee

There were 13 teams or individuals involved in this experiment. One team, Wagami Fund, was an unfamiliar proposal not affiliated with any DAO member. Due to the nature of quadratic funding, this team also received $35. The rest of the teams were DAO members or their acquaintances, resulting in an equitable distribution.

Donor

Considering the Gitcoin Passport scores, all 32 donors were familiar with wallet operations. Specific data on the teams was limited, but we attempted to lower the participation threshold for project teams and donors through two educational sessions. The average Passport score was 21.9, mainly between 15 and 30. Although we didn't set a Passport score threshold, all donors scored above 15, indicating no evident sybil attacks. As GG18 used the OP chain, most participants were familiar with cross-chain operations, with only a few newcomers involved.

Discussion

The event leveraged $93.5 in direct donations into a $1370 matching fund pool, demonstrating a significant amplification effect. Donors made 166 donations, averaging $0.5 per donation and $2.6 in total donations per person to 5.2 projects. On average, each recipient received 12 donations.

This experiment faced challenges, including imperfections in the "Export Results" feature, issues with Gitcoin Passport Scores, Metamask plugin detection errors, and unintuitive UI operations. Despite efforts, the campaign only extended up to the DAO and Gitcoin regulars. The community's robust connections played a significant role in participation, with little involvement from unfamiliar members. To lower barriers for willing first-time donors, we offered small airdrops of about $3 in ETH, with three participants receiving them during the second AMA. However, one failed due to using a centralized wallet address.

We suggest that traditional Chinese-speaking DAO contributors and civic tech communities jointly propose translating Gitcoin-related interfaces like Grant Stack, Gitcoin Grant, and Gitcoin Passport into Chinese, collaborating with official bodies. This would reduce barriers for Chinese-speaking users, embracing the spirit of internet internalization (i18n) and continuing to attract non-English speakers interested in digital public goods.

Conclusion

The "FAB DAO Grant is Great!" campaign was Taiwan's first non-profit quadratic funding experiment, entirely community-led, with diverse proposal teams. In 25 days, we've shown that Taiwan's community is now an ecosystem capable of independent operations, donations, and proposing quadratic funding initiatives. Quadratic funding is still in a pioneering phase, not yet reaching mass adoption. It's essential to motivate proposal teams and sponsors through intangible rewards like reputation systems or tangible incentives like tokens and to continue strengthening local community connections to enhance participant engagement. Despite some areas for improvement in the tools, this campaign was valuable.

Detail Raw Data: https://bit.ly/fabdao_grantisgreat_data