Grants Oversight Council Process

Roles: Who is involved in the grants process?

The grants process includes 5 distinct roles:

1. “Initiatives, Budget, Operations” (Foundation team): (i) Proposes initiatives, (ii) proposes total budget, and (iii) enables token grant operations (Know Your Customer reviews, contracts, payouts, etc).
2. “Grants Team” (Foundation team): Executes on grant initiatives. Recruits, reviews applications, and decides on individual grantee awards and terms.
3. “Grantees”: Applies for a grant (as a team or individual).
4. “Grants Oversight Council”: Reviews and verifies Grants Team transparency reports that outline allocations from community initiatives budget.
5. “Token Holder”: Signals feedback at the end of a season.

As part of the initial council incubation period, the Initiative, Budget & Ops, and Grants Team are Eigen Foundation teams.

Grants Governance Process

The grant proposal process for Season 1 is as follows:

0. Prior to the start of a season, the Foundation introduces the vision for Community Initiative grant allocations over the course of the season, which includes annual top-level directional goals (Initiatives) and spending cap (Budget).

1. The Grants Team shares their plans to deploy a portion of the allocated budget over the course of two six-month seasons. The Grants Team then executes on the Initiatives and allocates the budget at their discretion. Throughout the season, the Foundation will continue to custody the Community Initiative funds and distribute grants in coordination with the Grants Team.

2. Within 30 days of the end of the (6 month) season, the Grants Team submits a full version of the Transparency Report to the Grants Oversight Council, outlining progress towards their goals and a retrospective on their allocations.

3. Once submitted, the Grants Oversight Council has two weeks to review and verify the contents of the Transparency Report. Grants Oversight Council members review the Transparency Report for its accuracy, completeness, alignment with any applicable Initiatives and Budgets, and consistency with the Foundation’s objectives and constitutional documentation.

   (a) If needed, the Grants Oversight Council can request more information from the Grants Team in order to ensure the Transparency Report is accurate and complete.

   (b) After reviewing, the chair of the Grants Oversight Council (Chair) either approves a redacted version of the Transparency Report for publication to the EigenGov GitHub repository and forum.eigenlayer.xyz under the Grants Oversight Council category, or publishes a notice to forum.eigenlayer.xyz, that it is unable to approve for publication any Transparency Report due to its inconsistency with the Approval Criteria as defined in the Grants Oversight Council Charter.

   (c) The Grants Oversight Council Chair or a Foundation Ops support queues an on-chain message containing a link to the Github Pull Request and forum post. Grants Oversight Council members vote yes/no/abstain on the statement “I have received the complete version of the Transparency Report from the Grants Team. The Transparency Report is consistent with the Approval Criteria as defined in the Grants Oversight Council Charter.”

   (d) The Chair shares a link to the on-chain vote to the corresponding forum post. The Grants Team continues their Initiative for the next season.

4. Within one week of the Grants Oversight Council publishing their review, the Governance Team facilitates a reflection process for the ecosystem to provide additional feedback on the season.

Who manages the Grants process?

The Grants Transparency Report repository and process is managed by the Foundation.

How are Grants tracked?

The PR is tracked publicly on the repository using tags:

• DRAFT: The report has been received and is under review.
• PUBLISHED: The transparency report has been reviewed and approved to publish.

The same tags are used to track the state of the report in the Grants Oversight Council category on forum.eigenlayer.xyz.

What are Transparency Reports?

Transparency Reports are a Grants Team’s retrospective on the season’s Community Initiative Grant allocations.

• Submitted to the Grants Oversight Council within 30 days after the last day of the season.
• Expected content is outlined in the Transparency Report Template.

There will be two versions of the same Transparency Report: (i) A public and redacted version published by the Grants Oversight Council which provides the EigenLayer community with an overview of the progress of the grants process and (ii) a private version submitted by the Grants Team to the Grants Oversight Council which includes more detailed information about specific grant awards.

Details of active grant awards may be redacted from the public report due to considerations regarding business confidentiality around the structure of the grant, but available to the Grants Oversight Council in order to balance accountability. This enables the Grants Team the flexibility to allocate the grants budget efficiently and competitively to the best grantees, while balancing transparency around Community Initiatives.

💡 In summary, the Grants Team submits a private Transparency Report Proposal to the Grant Oversight Council. The Grants Oversight Council will publish the public version of the Grants Team’s Transparency Report with their evaluation notes at the end of each season.