POTLOCK: composable funding & impact tracking stack for public goods

Potlock, a composable public goods funding and impact tracking stack, built on Web3 social, DAOs, & decentralized frontends.

Since we first started building in October we have deployed multiple funding strategies with composability and decentralization in mind and a quarter million USD flowing through our platform. Already accessible through 50 gateways through the BOS framework. Our main priority this year is to not only build the building blocks to new funding mechanisms, but build a smooth experience to onboard the masses as well as a developer friendly stack so others can build their own public goods funding experiences for their own use case.

Important Links

Important Links: github.com/potlock

Twitter https:x.com/potlock_

Docs https://docs.potlock.io

Tutorial PotLock

App https://app.potlock.org

Why Are A Public Good

We are a meta public good. A public goods that directly supports other public goods, regardless of blockchain or onboarding to Web3. We build everything in public, everything is open source (under MIT license) and composable. We are building an open source ecosystem around non-evm public goods funding and impact tracking and looking to merge this with chain abstraction to the EVM ecosystem. More on our end game vision (WIP)

Everything we build in public in a composable way that has fees for all stakeholders which are optional. Our front end code is saved on chain and integrated into Web3 social. Follow our github for updates or subscribe to our newsletter.

In October we started from a team of 2, now we have grown and hare greenpilling the entire NEAR Ecosystem, and have a robust group of contributors. We have launched our own identity protocol that integrates 3rd party providers and cross chain functionality, direct donations with on chain referrals, quadratic funding with more primitives to come, built on Web3 social and integrated with DAO support.

Why Project Important

Decentralized point of failure for funding mechanisms and silo’d experience for public goods funding. A separation of impact tracking, project profiles, social graph, and different funding strategies. We are combining all of these experiences and bringing true composability to the public goods funding space onto ecosystems that previously didn’t consider it. For public goods to gain true adoption we believe that we not only have to target existing ecosystems, but expand and bridge public goods funding to ecosystems that often overlook it from very early on.

Current traction

  • Direct Donations Launched in November $30,000 in direct donations
  • Quadratic Funding Launched in February $200,000
  • 150 projects + on registry
  • 800 unique donors
  • Beginning to build an ecosystem
  • Regular public goods updates (turning to video series for public goods eco updates)
  • Built Identity Solution nada.bot with 9 Stamps (Holonym, Farcaster, Lens, Twitter, etc verification) and more to come with 600+ checks verified on chain

By end of year target

  • 1,000 public goods on registry
  • 10 quadratic funding rounds
  • 5,000 verified humans and donors
  • $1,000,000 through that platform

Live Data

Use of Funds:

None of this will be used to cover engineering or core team costs. Rather this is to facilitate funding rounds around open source projects. We are asking for $100,000 Use funds for quadratic funding rounds from May to July on our platform.

Target goal for rounds

  • $10,000 raised through external donations + sponsorships
  • 1000 unique humans verified and 1000 donors
  • 60 new projects onboarded unto platform
  • Ability to track funding for all these projects and begin tracking impact

Soft goals

  • Drive more tractional across Web3 ecosystem regarding Octant rounds

Top Funding Rounds options

We want to choose the top rounds based on what is most aligned with the Octant ecosystem. We’d appreciate people reply to what top 2 rounds they prefer.

  • Chain Abstraction: open source technology focusing on account abstraction and chain abstraction
  • New Funding Mechanisms: those building open source novel ways to fund public goods and build a plural funding ecosystem
  • Network States: build open source network state technology
  • Privacy technology: build privacy on chain
  • Open Source: general open source technology
  • Impact Tracking: open source technology for tracking impact on-chain

During this time (upcoming quarter) we will building more solutions

  • Open API for multichain impact tracking. Solutions integratable with Open Source observer to track open source activity, multichain impact, and self served attestations
  • Additional composable decentralized gateways. Able to whitelabel you own funding experience with use case
  • Robust identity solution with custom rules and the ability to set custom config for individual use cases
  • Start development of campaigns fundraising primitive to raise target campaigns on behalf of organization
  • Create curated lists that can plug into other funding strategies and primitives.

Our Team

Our team consists of mostly full time engineers native to Web3, DAOs, and DAOs across the world. Between all of us we have decades of engineering experience. We also have different entities contributing to the overall ecosystem at this point allocating resources to make the vision of composable public goods come true. Here is a miro outlining that

Core FTE

Plug Rel - President of Minority Programmers, Head of Decentralization at Banyan Collective.

  • Experience working across many L1 ecosystem, DevRel, building NFT and DAO Infra

Wenderson Silva - Senior Full Stack Engineer, former Senior Software Engineer at Satori and NEAR Tasks

Lachlan Glen- Head of Engineering, former Senior Software Engineer at Few n’ Far

Minority Programmers Full Time

Mohamed E, Front End Engineer from Minority Programmers

Prometheus - Smart Contract Engineers at Minority Programmers

Part Time Contributors

Earnest - Social Media Management for Nada bot, , Founder of NEAR Africa, Study Masters in Architecture

Ledum Peter - Social Media Management & Graphic Designer

Isaac Williams - Social Media Management & Graphic Design

Kritik - UI/UX Designer

Emmanuel - UI/UX Designer

Build DAO

  • Elijah - Hyperfiles at Build DAO
  • Elliot, Founder of Everything.dev and Council at Build DAO
  • Lordking - Data Analytics
  • Matt B - Senior Software Engineer, and Build DAO Contributor

Community Members

  • Russell Ballard, Community & Events, Founder of Proof of Vibes, Co-Founder of 40Acres DAO, Former
  • Shah, Venture Research, Venture Partner at Skalata, Former Board Member and Head of PR at Girl In Tech Australia, Startup Mentor

Funding Raised

Directly for our team we have received

  • $4,000 + in donations through Potlock to potlock.near,
  • $1,000 in optional protocol fees to the DAO from donations
  • $338,000 convertible grant from the NEAR Foundation for our H1 runway to include audits, external bounties, and our staff. This does not include dedicated marketing, program managers or BD leads.
  • $200 in Open Source Software Round in GG19

Other organizations have also received grants to do related events outside of the core team and bounties to continue our stack. We are asking for funding not for operational cost but rather to fund more quadratic funding rounds.

Social Credibility

Submission Proof

potlock.eth

https://signer.is/verify/JTdCJTIyY2xhaW1lZF9tZXNzYWdlJTIyJTNBJTIyT2N0YW50JTIyJTJDJTIyc2lnbmVkX21lc3NhZ2UlMjIlM0ElMjIweDUwYTQ4OTdhNzU2NTcwM2JjODY1ZjMzMWMxNGRmMGIzOTQyYmFlNWNlZTkwMmZmNjMzMmMxMTRlM2E3NTU3ZTY3NzhkODIwN2EyNDY5MWE2OTg1MTQ0YjVjYzU4YjYxYmJjMzA2ZTRiZTYyOTVmZTM0MGI2NWJiNmVmNDRiN2Q0MWMlMjIlMkMlMjJjbGFpbWVkX3NpZ25hdG9yeSUyMiUzQSUyMjB4ODhCOTNkNEQ0NDAxNTU0NDhmYkIzQ2YyNjAyMDhiNzVGQzAxMTdDMCUyMiU3RA==

What’s the impact tracking stack? See you mention that in the submission, but can’t find any info on it in your docs. Curious what your approach is to this common vacancy in most grant systems.

1 Like

Great question! Would be really useful to know what is working in other ecosystems for Octant and the community fund.