Stockpile Season Kickoff Recap

Our first grant round, Stockpile Season Kickoff, has officially ended. After all is said and done, we’ve distributed $1,000 to the three projects that participated. In this post, we’ll recap the system behind it, and the results of the grant round.

Results

Starting off with the results of our inaugural grant round. Below is a table outlining the distribution of votes and capital:

While turnout was less than expected, we can see that the system worked as intended. Sample size was small, so larger contributions of $10 made an impact, but the relatively even contribution count worked to equalize the distribution. With $95 contributed, and 16 total votes, we can see that Space Operator got the largest share of $423.71, seeing multiple larger votes pushing them to the top. They were followed by Blockride with $391.88, getting the highest vote count, but falling $6 shy of Space Operator in total net contributions. Lastly, Get On Grind received $184.41, with 5 votes but in nominally smaller amounts.

What is Quadratic Funding?

Quadratic Funding, or QF, is a novel capital distribution mechanism meant to distribute a pool of money based on monetary contributions (referred to as “votes”). Proposals join a time-based funding round as crowdfunds, and solicit contributions to get a share of the total funding pool. It is designed to not work on a “winner take all” basis, such that a if a proposal gets at least one vote, it will get some share of the pool. Additionally, it is meant to skew voting power away from larger contributors, and distribute funds to proposals that get higher quantities of votes rather than larger contributions. In our case, a small sample size resulted in this effect being less apparent.