With the goal of fostering innovation in the Cosmos ecosystem, Atom Accelerator DAO (AADAO) provides dedicated grants to initiatives aimed at enhancing infrastructure and driving on-chain activity in order to maximize the potential of the Cosmos Hub and the Atom Economic Zone (AEZ).
In the blog below, we’re excited to share the latest impacts of an AADAO grant focused on supporting Dora Factory’s AEZ Quadratic Funding Grant. Aiming to become the go-to resource for public goods seeking community-driven funding, Dora Factory’s initiative is empowering Cosmos builders and introducing new use cases and opportunities to the AEZ.
Get the details on this major initiative, and how its latest round supported 16 new projects, raising 8,000 ATOM in 24 hours, and conducting the largest on-chain privacy voting experiment to date.
About Dora Factory
Dora Factory is responsible for the development and maintenance of on-chain developer tooling and decentralized community governance protocols. Many of which are accessible through the DoraHacks, the world’s most active multi-chain Web3 developer platform.
Earlier this year (2024), Dora Factory concluded the first-ever native Cosmos Hub quadratic funding round, gathering nearly 400 unique contributions. Recognizing the importance of quadratic funding in identifying market gaps and ensuring support for essential AEZ public goods like IBC Relayers and popular cosmos-sdk modules, Dora Factory introduced the AEZ Quadratic Funding Grant.
This past May, Dora Factory’s Proposal 917 passed with overwhelming support from the Cosmos community, enabling a 24-month AEZ Quadratic Funding Grant initiative featuring 10 quadratic funding rounds, supported by 80,000 ATOM in prizes from the community pool.
In support of this initiative, AADAO has granted Dora Factory $200,000 in USDC to be added to the prize pool, aiming to further empower its results and strengthen our dedication to promoting sustainable growth and innovation within the Cosmos ecosystem.
What is Quadratic Funding?
Quadratic funding (QF) is an innovative on-chain mechanism rooted in quadratic voting principles, aiming to ensure a democratic and equitable allocation of resources. It utilizes an algorithm where the power of each vote decreases as contributions increase, preventing disproportionate influence from large contributors, known as whale voters.
The simplified algorithm on how quadratic voting functions is:
cost to the voter = (number of votes)².
By amplifying the impact of smaller donations and implementing anti-Sybil measures, quadratic funding promotes fair distribution of funds and safeguards against manipulation, ensuring integrity and fairness in resource allocation within the community. Any ATOM staker can take part, providing yet another impactful use case for the AEZ.
To add another impactful ATOM use case, and allow those who do not wish to donate but still want to have a say, Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure (MACI) votes were introduced. This allows users to leverage their staked ATOM for voting, with every 1 ATOM staked equating to 1 vote.
Although not as weighted as donation votes, MACI voting still enhances the security and fairness of quadratic funding rounds by providing an alternative way to influence the distribution of the grant funding pool. Over 1 million ATOM stakers across 180 validators are invited to join as MACI voters.
Projected Impact on the Cosmos Ecosystem and AEZ
“Dora Factory’s AEZ Quadratic Funding Grant aims to provide a more robust funding landscape for Cosmos Hub public goods, and a more active on-chain community. In doing so, it can enhance the top-of-funnel pipeline for AADAO grants/venture opportunities and onboard the strongest Web3 developers into the Cosmos.” – Brian Breslow, Core Contributor at Dora Factory.
With the first QF round attracting nearly 400 unique contributions, totaling approximately $10,000 USD in community donations, Dora Factory’s quadratic funding initiative proved its ability to support impactful innovation and community involvement.
These funds were quadratically matched with 5,000 ATOM by Dora Factory CosmosHub PGS validator and Foundation, all supporting projects such as the Interchain NFT Gateway for IBC NFTs, CosmWasm Interchain Accounts Controller, Packet Forward Middleware for multi-hop IBC routing, and Fairblock Network.
Gaining further support from AADAO, this initiative has been able to expand its matched prize pool and therefore motivate more participation and reach for its upcoming rounds.
A Look Into QF Round 2
The latest round of the AEZ QF Grant launched on March 3rd, 2024, featuring an 8,000 ATOM and $20,000 USDC prize pool for matching funds. The initiative’s timeline included dedicated periods for BUIDL submissions, community reviews, demos, as well as anti-sybil attack checks and results announcements.
During this round’s three-month duration, sixteen projects building to enhance the Hub and AEZ have applied. The enthusiasm from the community to support these projects has been overwhelmingly positive, with the round raising 8,000 ATOM in the first 24 hours from over 40 small and large stakeholders.
On top of this, Round 2 was the first ever MACI voting round for the Cosmos Hub, and the largest on-chain privacy voting experiment in history! With 2,262 signups and over 18,702 successful MACI messages (see full results here).
Officially concluding on June 20th, this second round has successfully made its mark in not only empowering Cosmos builders and fueling the growth and participation of the AEZ, but enabling a fair and secure way for the community to take part. This momentum is set to propel this initiative into an exciting next round, continuing to shape the future of the Cosmos Hub.
Find the leading projects of Round 2, such as Interchain Info, Pessimistic Validation, Lunar HQ, and others via the DoraHacks Leaderboard.
Looking Forward
With eight rounds remaining, this initiative, supported by the AADAO, looks forward to increased Cosmos community and builder engagement, ensuring vital innovations receive the necessary resources to make a lasting impact and achieve the long-term goals of a more robust and active on-chain Hub community, ultimately strengthening the AEZ.
Round 3 is currently underway! Discover the latest builds for the current QF round or follow Dora Factory on X for updates.
Are You Driving Value to the Cosmos Hub?
Funded by AADAO, Dora Factory’s AEZ Quadratic Funding Grant is significantly contributing to the growth of the Cosmos Hub by addressing current developmental challenges and fostering new opportunities for collaboration and innovation.
Are you building a project that could help drive value for the Hub? If so, be sure to check out our Funding Themes and apply for a grant today.
About the Atom Accelerator DAO
Atom Accelerator DAO (AADAO) is a governance-mandated DAO of the Cosmos Hub. We have been formed and mandated to drive value for the Cosmos Hub & ATOM, supporting initiatives that either directly create economic impact or produce value that can drive its growth. From this, our current primary mandates are public grants and venture grants.
Atom Accelerator’s venture arm, strategically invests in promising early stage web3 founders and startups both within and outside of the Cosmos Hub’s ecosystem. Offering expertise, guidance, and support as experts within the Cosmos ecosystem while driving value towards Atom.
In 2023, we deployed $3.8 million in grants to 39 recipients – resulting in, among other things – a $22m USD airdrop to the Community Pool, an AEZ Accelerator program to expand the AEZ, a successful hackathon with 42 project submissions bringing innovations to the AEZ – and many other key initiatives. Read about them in our 2023 Impact Report.
