• General

  • RFC - Artemis Academy Grant Proposal

Executive Summary from Grants Working Group

The Grants Working Group received an application from Artemis Academy (provided underneath this executive summary). Given the project is led by a member of the Olympus Governance Council it was agreed that in addition to the application passing through standard due diligence and Grants Committee vote there should be an OIP vote to give token holders finally authority on whether to proceed with the Grant or not. Grants Committee quorum is 4/7. A summary of Committee voting and reasoning is as follows:

  • 5 voted for
  • 1 voted against
  • 1 no vote cast

Summary of reasons for:

  • Strong alignment of team with Olympus can help activate buildooors atop the econOHMy which is within grants remit. Opportunity for Olympus to get access to interesting pipeline of potential early stage projects if/when appropriate and also developer talent.
  • Risk/reward ratio seems reasonable
  • Team seems prepared for execution in difficult markets

Summary of reasons against:

  • Value add is too remote. Having cut costs within DAO, as many DAOs have shortage of talent is not a problem and is not projected to be for some time.
  • Focus should be on builders building products that people can BUY with gOHM.

Ratio of Remain Grants Reserves

gOHM rate at time of OIP-90 passing was $3,838.51USD. With current gOHM rate of $2,218.26 USD, 50k USD worth of gOHM would be approx 22.5 gOHM. This would be roughly 22.5% of remaining Grants budget.

Summary from Artemis Academy

Led by Wartull, Artemis Academy is built by the world’s premier Web3 veterans. We’re creating a top-tier, end-to-end educational program that not only teaches the next wave of Web3 talent, but also enables them to create the future of Web3 innovation.

Motivation

The vision for Artemis was germinated from within Olympus. Finding, attracting, and retaining top Web3 talent that not only performs, but also does so in an ethical manner has become extremely rare. The Olympus community, more, the entire DeFi and Web3 communities deserve better. The strength of any organization is determined by its people. Artemis’ mission is to run a challenging ‘Navy-seal’ type bootcamp that focuses on quality over quantity and instills an ethos around building with a long-term mindset and contributing to web3 in an ethical and meaningful way.

Artemis’ goal is to promote the Olympus ‘econOHMy’ by educating, preparing, and funneling the best web3 talent/ leaders to build. Whenever possible, we draw salaries, make investments in student startups - all denominated in OHM. We also plan to hold a significant portion of our reserves in OHM.

Background

Artemis Academy is built by the world’s leading Web3 veterans. We’re creating a top-tier, end-to-end educational program that not only teaches the next wave of Web3 entrepreneurs, but also enables them to create the future of Web3 innovation.

We are a borderless, open source, open access, structured “education + investment” program. Artemis combines cohort-based online education for experienced engineers alongside an enhanced YC-type incubator for web3/DAOs, which invests in founders or places them to work inside top web3 organizations. The program welcomes participants into a network of several top Defi builders, partners, and investors in the space.

Artemis Academy is built by the world’s leading Web3 veterans. We’re creating a top-tier, end-to-end educational program that not only teaches the next wave of Web3 entrepreneurs, but also enables them to create the future of Web3 innovation.

We are a borderless, open source, open access, structured “education + investment” program. Artemis combines cohort-based online education for experienced engineers alongside an enhanced YC-type incubator for web3/DAOs, which invests in founders or places them to work inside top web3 organizations. The program welcomes participants into a network of several top Defi builders, partners, and investors in the space.

Led by Wartull (early contributor at OlympusDAO) our founding team consists of experienced developers, teachers, strategists, Olympus contributors, and web3 veterans.

We also have significant members  of the web3 community onboard as contributors/advisors:

Additionally, Artemis is formally advised and invested in by CodePath, which has a decade long track record of successfully training web2 engineers at FAANG companies and elsewhere.

Proposal

Provide $50,000 USD grant denominated in gOHM to Artemis Academy. gOHM rate to be set at time of snapshot.

Value for Olympus

Through Artemis’ community, members, and network:

  • Artemis Academy will provide Olympus with specialized Web3 related courses.

    • Olympus will be able to coach Artemis graduates on 'how to build' on top of the DAO’s protocols/ ‘econOHMy’

  • Artemis Academy will provide Olympus with highly qualified web3 talent (i.e., placing each Artemis graduate for a $15,000 flat fee).

  • Artemis will offer Olympus DAO related boot camps (e.g. community mgmt, etc.) in the future.

  • Artemis will host AMA/ educational events for the Olympus community

  • Artemis will denominate all salaries, investments, revenue, and tuition in OHM to facilitate OHM’s use-case and contribute toward the ‘econOHMy.’

  • Should Artemis launch a token in the future, a commensurate % of our token supply will be sent to Olympus based on our valuation at the time. For example, should Artemis have a $30M valuation, 0.333% of our token supply will be sent to Olympus.

Value for Artemis Academy

Through Olympus’ community, members, and network:

  • Olympus may provide resources to improve the quality of Artemis Academy courses and student experience, for example:

    • Olympus may help create course materials (e.g. DAO building, community management, tokenomics, etc.).
    • Member of Olympus may guest lecture 2-3 ‘Crypto Talk’ sessions such as how Olympus was built, how its faced adversity and persevered; explaining OHM’s economic (3,3) theory, etc.

  • Olympus may provide a grant that: 

    • sponsors students facing financial hardships and are unable to afford tuition

    • assists Artemis in building an open-source portal that hosts bootcamp lecture materials (open to the general public) in an effort to make web3 more easily accessible to everyone

  • Olympus may provide mentorship to students during and after bootcamps

  • Olympus may help promote Artemis to its community members and network to help drive potential:

    • Students

    • Teachers

    • Partners


Proposed Use of Funds:

Open source portal: As mentioned, our goal is to facilitate the general public’s transition into web3. We intend to help with this transition by making our course materials open-sourced, and easily accessible. To realize this goal, we’ll need to allocate funds to developers to build a robust portal that hosts this information. 

Estimated spend: $16,666.5.

Admissions Platform: We view our admissions platform as a tool that not only helps us gauge and assess the best talent, but also a tool that can be used by anyone (even non-applicants) to test their mettle in web3 development. Our pre-work is challenging and we want to give everyone a shot at hands-on web3 learning in an open, easy to use environment.  

Estimated spend: $16,666.5. 

Student Grants: Our goal is to create a borderless, open-access, educational platform. We do not want to deter any talent from participating in our bootcamps for financial reasons and will use part of the grant funds to cover tuition costs for any student facing financial hardship. 

Estimated spend: $16,666.5.

Polling Period

The polling process begins now and will end at 01:00 UTC on 23/06/2022. After this, an OIP proposal will be added to forums incorporating any feedback. After this there may be a move of the OIP to snapshot.

Approve Grant to Artemis Academy

This poll has ended.

    IMO I'm against a grant like this for a number of reasons.
    -Not beneficial to the overall Olympus community. Bootcamps for community management etc seems like something 99.9% of us won't need.
    -Might have a token in the future? I'm sorry but that makes no sense with a web3-based education materials site/project. Why does a site/project like that even need a token? TLDR: it doesn't need a token.
    - 1/5th of the overall grant budget is a bit high for a single grant. If it were 10% that would be more reasonable. Dozen-plus grants could be given instead of just a few.
    -Other than 'facilitating' the payments in OHM which is a maybe I don't see any use of OHM or gOHM mentioned. This seems to be a big part of the overall grant and it's not solidified. Will Artemis Academy be only paying in OHM or will it just be a side offer to people who participate/want it? Seems odd.
    -This grant seems like it's only nepotism.

    There's my brutal honesty for the day.

      wollemiPine I'm 100% for this, for several reasons:

      Firstly, the lineup of contributors/advisors is self-evidently accomplished. I've seen these community members repeatedly deliver on many features and many protocols in the entire web3 ecosystem, even while anonymous. Any one of us can look them up and not only find irrefutable evidence that they are builders, but we can also find many cases where they helped others and demonstrated through action that they are community-first. Speaking from experience, I realize at this point we need to amplify the leaders in web3 that can handle stressful situations, troubleshoot systemic issues before they manifest, and perform well-practiced due diligence on new web3 systems without playing around with zero-sum tokenomics and risk.

      Secondly, the value add in web3 is not necessarily a first-order consequence. Olympus does have a difficult choice in many cases of necessarily refusing to hand out capital just because there's intuitive deep value (or other externalities).
      On the other hand, the ecOHMsystem does not necessarily grow in scale or develop in scope just because we attract consumer or institutional demand. In order to truly grow in all dimensions, it is necessary to cultivate sustainable growth in the form of developer talent and well-known practices behind the most fundamental hyperstructures in web3. In 2021, we all saw what happened in fork season. I would rather prefer that it had been this sort of enterprise.

      Thirdly, as the proposal states, we do deserve better. In this econOHMy, we need to emphasize cohesiveness and coordination, and that starts with building vertically on top of Olympus, instead of the bull market "shotgun" strategy of creating many disparate protocols that only marginally support this community. My hope is that this proposal reflects the permanent ethos of Artemis Academy, insofar as it emphasizes producing bootcamps, educational events, student sponsorships & mentorships for the Ohmies.

      Finally, what's the point to repeating the old and obsolete? Olympus succeeded in bootstrapping in 2021, but we are where we are. Are OIPs limited to dealing with the same actors, the same DeFi, and the same risks? Now is the best time to be sincerely nimble, and think about how the Olympus12 can be reinforced through new strategies. This proposal leverages industry experience, due diligence, and a selective framework to deliver capital to one of the most fundamental +EV endpoints: new developers, working on new primitives. This is how we win (again). Moreover, this proposal stresses that it is OHM-centric. Moving forward, Olympus should reinforce that it is not a hedge fund, and it doesn't give out charity to external organization with the discretion to pivot away from (and dump) this decentralized reserve currency.

      The vision for Artemis was germinated from within Olympus. Finding, attracting, and retaining top Web3 talent that not only performs, but also does so in an ethical manner has become extremely rare. The Olympus community, more, the entire DeFi and Web3 communities deserve better. The strength of any organization is determined by its people.

      This is ambitious, but necessary. We should definitely consider it, or we may end up following the recent path of the protocols and degens who have rugged themselves.

          I like this proposal in concept, especially as m_j_r has explained the value added contribution that Artemis can provide. Rfc reads a bit like a framework agreement. But I’d like a bit more stick and not just carrots. If approved, what does ‘support students’ really mean? What measurements will be used to evaluate the success of the value contribution to Olympus? There’s a lot to like here, but a lot that can be made clearer so that expectations aren’t misunderstood and left unclear. What governance will there be between Olympus and Artemis. What guidance do we have to minimise conflict of interest? Just some thoughts.

              wasnteth

              Hi,

              Thank you for your feedback:

              1. It is beneficial for the Olympus community. As said, we will foster using OHM as the innovation cornerstone for aspiring new founders. Building the econohmy will play a role in the curriculum.
              2. It could use a token to represent investments done by Artemis in protocols started by alumni. Additionaly it could be an entry requirement to access this talent
              3. I think economies of scale should be considered, even just assessing a grant takes a lot of effort from the DAO, if you need to do this 12 times, you pay more in wages to assess a grant than the grant itself
              4. We will hold a portion of our funds in OHM and have been paying our teachers in OHM since Feb. I myself have been a major Olympus contributor since day 1 and will oversee the benefit to Olympus. I wouldn't have founded this initiative if I didn't see the value to Olympus
              5. I was never involved in the submission of this grant nor the decision from the grants team. Since it's a public vote the community can decide, all in the open

                Appreciate the brutal honesty. IMO much better for the strength of the protocol to have diversity of positions/opinions than to be organising within a quiet echo chamber. To attend to your points:

                wasnteth -Not beneficial to the overall Olympus community. Bootcamps for community management etc seems like something 99.9% of us won't need.

                Those from the Committee in support of this grant had these opinions:

                • Its a fair point that dev talent isn't a blocker in the DAO currently, but long-term we need developers building ontop of OHM, not joining the DAO. Its more about ecosystem growth rather than a direct purchase of talent for the DAO imo.
                • I agree with this but where are the builders building utility for gOHM coming from? A grant to artemis creates that source of builders imo
                • to summerise building open access, open source education materials, by OHMies, with needs of Olympus and growing EconOHMy within the DNA of the org is a very astutue move. As well as the utelisation of OHM as currency for wages etc you get benefits such as next wave of builders and entrepeneurs deeply familiar with OHM as well as potential for funnel for dev talent into the DAO.
                • In my opinion, getting developers to build on top of Olympus is completely in line with the purpose of the Grants program. The individuals leading the Artemis initiative are more familiar with the protocol (Olympus) and its potential than most. It is understandable to have hesitancy around this given the market conditions and the reduction of Grants budget, however, to date the Grants program has utilized a fraction of its budget

                wasnteth -Might have a token in the future? I'm sorry but that makes no sense with a web3-based education materials site/project. Why does a site/project like that even need a token? TLDR: it doesn't need a token.

                From the perspective of the committee, whether or not there be a future token is immaterial as it's not the dependency path to impact in the majority opinion. The stipulation that if there were a raise/token that the DAO receive at least corresponding amount of token to the value of the grant is the more important point and one which we would ask any partner/potential grantee.

                wasnteth - 1/5th of the overall grant budget is a bit high for a single grant. If it were 10% that would be more reasonable. Dozen-plus grants could be given instead of just a few.

                This was a perspective shared by the committee. The original grant request was for 100k USD worth of gOHM but committee required reduction by 50%. Whilst interest in the grants program has remained constant since we launched there are have been few applications which have fit the current objectives and aims of the program. The only other application over this past period has been an OHM-EPNS integration. With that being said we don't foresee this grant as hampering the ability for the program to be able to support smaller high impact grants as they come through the door.

                wasnteth -This grant seems like it's only nepotism.

                Due to the proximity of the founder of Artemis to Olympus that's why we have opened the final decision to all token holders.

                m_j_r Secondly, the value add in web3 is not necessarily a first-order consequence. Olympus does have a difficult choice in many cases of necessarily refusing to hand out capital just because there's intuitive deep value (or other externalities).
                On the other hand, the ecOHMsystem does not necessarily grow in scale or develop in scope just because we attract consumer or institutional demand. In order to truly grow in all dimensions, it is necessary to cultivate sustainable growth in the form of developer talent and well-known practices behind the most fundamental hyperstructures in web3. In 2021, we all saw what happened in fork season. I would rather prefer that it had been this sort of enterprise.

                Thanks for your input. This point strongly corresponds with some of the core sentiment from the committee

                IceWeaselVert If approved, what does ‘support students’ really mean? What measurements will be used to evaluate the success of the value contribution to Olympus? There’s a lot to like here, but a lot that can be made clearer so that expectations aren’t misunderstood and left unclear. What governance will there be between Olympus and Artemis. What guidance do we have to minimise conflict of interest? Just some thoughts.

                These are some excellent guiding questions to consider. The grants program have defined and operationalised a series of processes for tracking and evaluating grantees and how they are achieving impact within the remit of their grant. Typically grants are structured into tranches with each tranche only being released upon completion of mutual agreed milestones. That being said we're unlikely to intervene in the internal processes of a grantee (governance etc)

                We'll take the feedback here an add some points to the upcoming OIP proposal in the forums.

                            Good initiative. Not relevant to Olympus. So go ahead without Grants.

                            Olympus needs to get its own s*** going, before disbursing funds externally. And currently Olympus is just barely limping along.

                            As a long-time, external, diligent student of Olympus I see only 3 values with Olympus on the market:

                            1. Treasury/DAO funds --- (based on my hope – cant see any trustworthy QC’d data)
                            2. Discord community
                            3. Inverse Bonds

                            Thats it. Thats all we have.
                            Need products. Need quality control. Need substance. Need credibility.
                            Stop living in la-la land on community expense.

                              bubbidubb

                              Well, what better way to get products, quality control, substance, and credibility by literally educating the next generation of builders the right way with Olympus as a key factor?

                                an ohm-centric economy wont be built by waiting on the free market. if you want the market to denominate in, trade with, and build around ohm, you need the infrastructure and systems built around it. you need builders that are familiar with it. you need to connect the dots for the market to understand ohm, habituate using ohm, and see ohm as a path of least resistance (no pun intended).

                                we can decide that artemis is too tangential to olympus and wait for better grant proposals to come along to direct this funding. or we can risk this funding on some of the minds that are already contributing to the economy we envision, already have alignment with olympus, and will probably continue building this out at a slower rate even if we decide not to pass the grant.

                                the education each of us received in the past has shaped how we see the world and the opportunities we apply ourselves to. remember fork season? olympus (and arguably most of web3) suffers from poor education and ethics. projects that address these problems with responsible budgeting should absolutely be funded.

                                wollemiPine would be awesome if we can say plan of action, timelines, KPIs that the team belive they can deliver, no need for something complicated. it's great initiave overall.

                                Would be awesome to also open the Due Diligence process to community contributors, I'd love to join in and help in that when possible.

                                    CryptoAnalyst Unfortunately (IMO) opening the DD process to community would introduce a vulnerability as applicants could get someone in, then optimise their application to maximise our quant models. That's why we have protocols in place for bringing a number of application types (such as this) to OIP for community feedback without revealing our secret sauce. Does that make sense?

                                      you can't have a secret sauce in DD. it's not who scores most points.

                                      Most of my DD is going for a beer with someone and trying to figure out if they can handle it when their treasury gets hacked and keep their head up.

                                      keep in mind most people in the community can't keep up and don't know everyone who is on the proposal, so I'm voting based on what I'm reading which is dry information at this stage.

                                        wollemiPine Also this is a nice list of advisor, but most of them don't have time to scratch their head or eat sometimes. irrelevant for the OIP, just adds fomo.

                                        I want to see what the team that is gong to take the money, is going to deliver and why we think they can deliver? that I don't see in the proposal.

                                          CryptoAnalyst As someone whose spent a lot of time trying to keep these processes secure and objective, and with a great deal of experience in the field, respectfully agree to disagree. Definitely relationship building is a huge part you're right but not in the actual formal applicant pipeline (otherwise it opens up a number of vulnerabilities and reduces transparency/accountability in the DAO). The general overview of how we rank applications is public though. This is all industry standard for a grants program. But happy to talk more on discord as this is a tangent to the proposal imo.

                                              Thanks everyone for the input and votes. We'll take the feedback here to Artemis and make corresponding amendments to the OIP post in the forums prior to proceeding to OIP.

                                              catwalk as someone who sat on the other side of the table and got filtered out a bunch of time, I would say these processes suck, and still briabable.

                                                Poll ended but wanted to comment.

                                                Education is extremely imporatant. Would recommend that Artemis focus on core media like youtube which drives most of the retail and new crowds. I can see the artemis channel and / or podcasts become industry leading with the talent they are aligned with (advisors etc.).

                                                For a 50k grant, I think the value is immense. Future grants or funding though including placements for graduates at said rates should be voted / looked into. But this proposal as is I strongly support.

                                                wollemiPine Had some time to think, and i'm fully against such grants. build something for next 2-3 month, then show us what you can do with what you have. after that apply for grant. boostrap something. otherwise, why don't we find other DAOs that are already doing something similar and already 10 steps ahead of just a blog post?

                                                If Olympus DD team can't find such talent that is building boostrap, then you guys are doing a bad job.

                                                As I said, I don't know anyone from the Academy team, I don't know their track record, or what they built before. so I'm going harsh on everyone to give push back. I understand the need and I agree the DAO needs help on these topics, but this is not the way to spend money.

                                                If someone is 10 steps ahead, and is boostrapped, then they deserve the money and we need to pitch them.

                                                    CryptoAnalyst

                                                    Why do you think there is only a blog post? Additionally, this academy was founded with OHM at its core as opposed to existing educational tracks out there, which is a clear differentiator and benefit to the protocol. But I don't think I'll change your mind here 🙂

                                                      4 days later

                                                      I'm late to this, but still wanted to voice that I am against such a grant, as I see many points of failure despite excellent intentions behind it.

                                                      The Olympus team has no problem finding and attracting excellent talent. Added to this, in the current market there are many talents available and looking for work.
                                                      I understand part of the project is to actually educate builders to build with OHM as a foundation, but why should this be led by the academy? For that much money, I'm pretty sure it's possible to build an OHM centric online course, accessible by all and hosted by the DAO. This would probably be a better value add for the DAO and could be executed by Artemis.

                                                      The courses are already 2,500 USD per cohort/person. If Artemis Academy is such a supporter of Olympus, I feel that should be enough to cover the costs of running the course and doesn't need extra funding.
                                                      I have a hard time seeing how the grant will be spent apart from sent to potential users with no guarantee of returns to the DAO.

                                                      If the goal is to get builders to build on OHM, I feel this joins very much the Grants program, and as such should be part of it in a bid to promote Grants and educate builders on the qualities of OHM.

                                                      Also, why should the DAO pay for talent it has helped nurture by providing funds for the educational platform? As i understand it, it will be the DAO's responsibility to coach the Artemis graduates and it would still have to pay a 15k fee on top to get talent it has participated in educating?
                                                      Will the DAO get a share of the revenue earned by Artemis through placing students having gone through the admission portal and the grants in other projects?

                                                      The way this proposal is formulated feels like a one sided win, with the DAO taking most of the burden and Artemis reaping most of the financial benefits.

                                                      Sorry if the thoughts are a bit disjointed, still feeling the aftermath of NFTNYC 😅

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