This is not a proposal (unless someone wants to turn it into a proposal) but rather a discussion about the idea. I’m not saying it’s a good idea or not, just creating the topic to spark discussion.
I posted this on Discord already, but since Ripple is doing this program every year, this topic will be a place for me to announce their next waves of grants and update.
Ripple is currently holding their XRPL Grants Wave 5 (through March 26, 2023, 11:59pm Pacific Time.):
A lot of people familiar with Ethereum are probably not familiar with the XRPL ecosystem which is more business oriented.
I don’t think there is any problem for a DAO to participate (dao were parts of the previous winners), but it certainly seems a bit cumbersome:
What personal information do I need to provide?
You will be required to share full legal names and bios of all team members, as well as a copy of a government-issued ID (front and back). If considered for a finalist interview, we will complete additional compliance, legal, and sanctions screenings.
Would have to be seen if the team decided to onboard the ecosystem. Their grants to build are pretty big, they are pretty helping too. Also “Decentralized Science (DeSci)” is part of their criterias.
Could be put up to a governance proposal if you’d want to lead this initiate and maybe get a $vita compensation for it with a bonus if we get in? What does it entail getting in?
@keepx thanks for bringing this forward. We should definitely make better use of all the grant opportunities out there. I would love to help if you decide to put a group together for this.
I’ll make a long answer later, but Ripple does Grants quite regularly (first one was September 2021 if I’m not mistaken) and we are at wave 5 now, so there will be more (well I suppose) so maybe we should not rush this either. The developer community is quite small on it too, so is worth spending time building there rather than on ethereum?
In the past I’ve mentioned these grants on Discord, but I wanted a place to post it here for long term discussion. What does it entail basically is building on the xrp ledger so they’d probably help paying some of the costs associated with porting the Vita token as an IOU on the ledger or creating tools running on xrpl. I’m not super technically deep into it either, I’ll post some links including a recent zoom session.
If there was a plan to move to the grasshopper chain, this would be the way to do it.
However, it looks like the grants just cover building the infrastructure, so I’m not clear how this would advance VitaDAO’s mission. This would introduce cross-chain issues for governance. There are better chains to diversify too, if multiple L1s are a goal.
It’s just an idea to discuss, it’s true that it would add a layer of complexity for governance.
“There are better chains to diversify too, if multiple L1s are a goal.” Well this is still a subject of discussion, what chain? Xrpl is behind ethereum and binance chain for marketcap, not a big fan of binance chain. It would probably be easier to go on ethereum sidechains I agree.
I’ll see if I can get someone to answer some of our questions here (no guarantee).
And btw no, the grants are not just to cover building infrastructure:
I’ve mentioned this topic to ambassadors, not sure if someone will come here reply on a personal basis as it’s true that all info are public.
Also I’m just talking about it with no special interest in my mind (not to get compensated by Vitadao or I’ve no special interest in Ripple - even if I’m an holder in both Vita and Xrp).
If the grants will offer more than infrastructure, I think it would be helpful to see what those options would be for VitaDAO. Hard pass if it’s trying to make crickets more palatable, though.
Arweave would be a strong fit because the chain is built for “permanently” (ie 200 years) storing publicly accessible data. Building on there would provide a decentralized alternative to IPFS. Data storage is a huge need for biomed research, publications, and data transparency.
Cosmos (and more particularly Secret Network) would also be good fits. On one hand, Cosmos/tendermintSDK has the flexibility to build and run a VitaDAO-specific chain if we had specific needs other chains could not accommodate. On the other hand, Secret is set up to enable privacy of information encoded in NFTs. It would lend itself well to having proprietary data on chain without the world seeing it. This is one way IP-NFTs could be done in the future. Plus, the collapse of Soylana is good for Secret because both use Rust as the language for smart contracts. Less competition for devs.
Algorand has potential. There is some privacy built into that chain because one of the big zk proof people helped design the chain. Smart contracts are starting to multiply there.
Stacks would also be an option because it is built on Bitcoin. STX registered with the SEC and uses Proof of Transfer. No one has quite realized the power of the Proof of Transfer setup, yet. With the launch of Ordinals, there is a lot of potential for BTC NFTs. Downside is that programming Clarity sucks, and STX is still painfully slow.
If the plan was to move to another Eth L1, Avalanche or Matic would be my choices.
