Since our last Transparency Report two months ago, the AADAO has been busy ushering in new changes in the spirit of the new mandate.
We released our first Batch of grants for 2024, alongside announcing our Venture Grants program and signing our first Venture Grant agreement. More details on this are in section 11 below.
In the spirit of creating a stable entity that can honor its commitments, we have also continued our swaps to cover 75% of our liabilities (as detailed in the previous Transparency Report).
The campaign to add a Community-Elected Oversight Member is in full swing, with on chain votes expected to go live shortly on Cosmos Hub Public Governance (at the time of writing). We at the AADAO are glad to see the level of community engagement and feedback on this process.
2. Financial Reports
In early 2024, AADAO upgraded its own treasury management tooling by adopting the DAODAO software, which presents a technically superior method of interfacing with and managing multi-sig workflows. With this setup, each primary wallet on Neutron also has connected sub-accounts on Noble, Osmosis, and ATOM (Cosmos).
Our SubDAO addresses can be found at:
- Grants: Grants Committee
- Operational wallet: Operational committee
- Oversight: Oversight Committee
- Strategy: Strategy Committee 1
Below are the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow Management reports of the primary wallets as well as the subDAO (DAODAO) ones.
Hedging Operations:
Our focus has been on financial stability for fulfilling grant commitments and operational expenses. Hedging operations were executed to remediate market volatility and macroeconomic aspects.
3. Internal Operations/Changes
Over the past two months, the ATOM Accelerator DAO has been actively recruiting for various team roles. We are thrilled to have Mark (@darkmatterr__) and Syed (@syedchoudhury) join us.
Mark has taken the role of Grants Lead and is in charge of the Grants (both normal and Venture) that the AADAO is deploying on behalf of the Cosmos Hub.
Syed recently joined after leaving the ICF and will be our Communications and Marketing Lead, ensuring that the AADAO and the work we do for the Cosmos Ecosystem are communicated effectively.
During this time, Dilan had resigned from his role as a reviewer. We thank him for his time and dedication during his tenure at the AADAO.
4. Grant Application Summary
Funding Distribution
Below, you’ll see a breakdown of the total funds distributed in 2024 across each category, as well as the funds still to be distributed contingent upon milestone achievement.
Amount in USD
Amount in ATOM
Amount in USDC
Total Grant Distributions
5. Grant Funding Updates
6. Latest Batch of Grants
Grant applications have been open since early February 2024 (after being temporarily closed during the transition period between our gov mandates). Our reviewers have been working on sifting through all grant applications, rating them per the guidelines published on our website, and we have recently announced the first batch of grants for 2024.
Our first batch included the following Grants:
Grantee: Cosmoverse
Category: Events, Marketing, & Education
Description: Cosmoverse is the single largest conference for the entire Cosmos ecosystem, with its 2024 event aiming to attract over 2000 attendees. The grant will promote the Cosmos Hub, its technology and innovation, and the AEZ projects that are driving value to the Hub – before, after, and at the conference.
Grantee: Asteroid Protocol
Category: ATOM as Interchain money
Description: Establish the Cosmos Hub as a permanent data storage layer, facilitating DeFi activities like minting and swapping NFTs and fungible tokens. The grant’s goals include integrating advanced functionality in NFT and CFT20 marketplaces – from the ability to launch NFT collections to floor-sweeping functionality; expanding interoperability through cross-chain transfers of NFTs and CFT20s; and introducing novel experiments to advance activity on the Hub.
Grantee: Lava Network
Category: ATOM Interchain Data
Description: Lava Network’s incentivized Public RPC model aims to provide fast, reliable, and scalable access to the Cosmos Hub’s data. By consolidating several top RPC providers into a single endpoint, Lava ensures performant access to data, constant availability and cost efficiency for the user. Our grant to fund this critical public infrastructure will enable innovative dApps, dashboards and other use cases to flourish without being held back by unreliable RPC endpoints.
Grantee: Everstake Airdrop Dashboard (Spelldrop)
Category: Interchain Public Goods
Description: Everstake is developing an “Atom Value Accrual” tracker. This essential tool comprehensively illustrates and continuously tracks the growth in value derived from staking ATOM, alongside capturing all the airdrops ATOM stakers have qualified for. Everstake’s grant will include the delivery of API endpoints – allowing wallets, platforms and other UIs to access and make visible this data on other dashboards across Cosmos and other ecosystems. Currently, you can track up to 6 airdrops including Osmosis, Evmos, Neutron, Saga, Juno and Celestia: https://spelldrop.xyz/
7. Grant Updates
Title: Shogun DEX-Aggregator
Category: Atom Zone Buildout
Updates: Shogun DEX-Aggregator is a Cross-chain CoW between Neutron, Osmosis and other interchain networks. The team is currently building out the necessary Infra pieces for their product to work.
Title: Yieldmos IBC Atom Compounding
Category: Interchain Public Goods
Updates: Yieldmos has made progress in the development of its autocompounding staking rewards feature. The first part of the frontend (FE) piece has been ironed out and can be viewed on their staging platform here. Users with stakes on networks supporting IBC 7+, such as Kuji or Xprt, can access the new functionality by selecting “Select Strategy,” and then skipping to explore the updates. Currently, Osmosis serves as the originating network (for testing purposes only and will be removed upon launch), with the Hub as an allowed destination.
Title: SunDAO Bootstrapping
Category: Interchain Public Goods
Updates: The team is waiting for a Lead investor to complete due diligence. Meanwhile, they are conducting calls with other investors, founders & validators. The legal setup has been started. The initial website was created, promotion and media plan will go live upon the successful close of the lead investor.
Title: LongHash Accelerator Cosmos Cohort
Category: ATOM zone build-out
Progress Status: The LongHashX Cohort 14 AEZ Accelerator kicked off on the 6th of November 2023 & ended with the Demo Day on the 21st of February 2024. The 4 teams have joined the cohort were:
- Apollo
- Obi
- FortyTwo
- QuantAMM
The final project funnel:
Over the 12 weeks of the program, they deep-dived into various web3-native topics including Web3 Product Design & Strategy, Community Building and Fundraising. We covered those topics and many more (Tokenomics, Governance, Smart Contract Security, Web3 Legal) in Fireside Chats with guests and in weekly 1-on-1 problem sessions with our Venture Builders. Workshops included 6 sessions on Ecosystem Overview, Fundraising, Community Building, Smart Contract Security, Legal and Tokenomics & Governance. (The highest-rated session is Web 3 Legal at 8.75 out of 10.) At the end of the 12-week program, the teams were invited to the Demo Day where they pitched their latest product demo to external investors and kick-started their fundraising journey.
Title: Fairblocks Private Governance
Category: Governance Tooling & Infra
Updates: Fairblocks has made notable progress and secured essential funding through recent grants and partnerships. Firstly, a three-month PR contract worth $30,000 USD has been inked with WestComms, aimed at showcasing Fairblocks’ advancements in pre-execution privacy, FairyRing, and Private Governance. Deliverables include Twitter threads, blog posts on private governance, and other promotional activities. A successful live spaces session, discussing Private Governance and Pre-Execution Privacy, further amplified Fairblocks’ visibility. Additionally, the launch of the LGTM testnet, as announced on Twitter, represents a notable technical milestone. This progress underscores Fairblocks’ commitment to advancing its platform. Furthermore, Fairblocks has received a grant of $18,000 from AADAO, with $21,000 remaining to be distributed. This funding is designated for marketing efforts to enhance Fairblocks’ reach and user engagement. The pending distribution of the remaining grant is contingent upon the completion of signaling and governance proposals.
Title: Calc Finance Automated Grant Payments Tooling
Category: Governance, tooling & infra
Updates: Calc Finance has made notable progress in its development roadmap. Key components such as API setup, front-end skeleton, and infrastructure are in place. Integrations for CW3 Multisig and Cosmos SDK Multisig have been initiated, enabling multiple signers for transaction authorization. Additionally, features like payment links and user experience enhancements have been successfully implemented. The current focus is on completing user sign-up/invitation processes and refining payment flows. Overall, Calc Finance is positioning itself for a successful launch on Neutron soon.
8. RFP Updates
Tokenomics RFP
Since our last update in February, there have been some updates in the form of discussions from Noam (Binary Builders).
In the latest forum post, the ideas of a ‘Dynamic Community Pool tax rate’ and Community Pool ‘Reserve Management’ are extensively discussed.
We will have more updates from the teams behind the RFP shortly.
9. Oversight Election Process
Our Oversight Election Process is nearing completion as of writing. For those unaware of the process, here’s a breakdown of how the last few months went:
- Mid to End of February is when all interested applicants had to signal their desire to run for this position. The dates and process were detailed in our first post on the Cosmos Forum.
- Early March is when the Oversight Committee contacted all of the candidates and held Interviews with them.
- Late March was when the Internal Elections were held to determine the final 3 candidates to go on to the Public Elections. We had to whittle down the list to 3 to reduce the burden on Cosmos Hub Public Governance since we are posting 3 onchain proposals to determine a winner.
- April is when we went live with the Candidates and the next steps in the process. All of this information can be found in our latest Forum post.
10. Treasury Management of the AADAO
Our initial goal of swapping 75% of our core liabilities (grants) to USDC is underway. In the previous Transparency Report, we detailed how we had swapped up to $2.8M and transferred it to our Grants Sub-DAO.
Our latest update is that we have swapped $4M from ATOM to USDC in 2024 and have $5.2M in reserves. This leaves us with $2.5M to swap to attain the 75% goal highlighted above. Our swaps through Osmosis are concluded and going forward we will use an OTC provider to swap the remaining $2.5M.
11. Venture Grants
As discussed during our mandate renewal, the Atom Accelerator DAO has begun to deploy Venture Grants.
While the Cosmos Hub birthed the ecosystem that now has more than 110 chains, due to the public nature of IBC and the Cosmos SDK, it has been difficult to monetize and invest in entrepreneurial chain creation to date. Venture Grants aims to solve this.
The Cosmos Hub, via the ATOM Accelerator DAO (AADAO), can solve this public good monetization problem by embracing a role of providing capital to early-stage builders in exchange for alignment with ATOM – from coming on as a consumer chain of the Hub and whitelisting ATOM as gas, to preferential airdrops and token allocations directly to the Cosmos Hub community pool (governed by stakers).
Venture Grants deployed by AADAO will help grow and diversify the ATOM Community Pool, help to exponentially grow the AEZ and ATOM usage
At the time of this writing, we have signed our first Venture Grant agreement. We are currently awaiting the funding round to complete before making our announcement and diving into the details of the agreement.
You can consult more on our Venture Grants on our official blog linked below.
https://www.atomaccelerator.com/blog/cosmos-hub-introducing-venture-grants
12. Upcoming Updates
Hiring
Related to our recent announcement about Venture Grants, we have been recruiting for a Venture Grant Specialist to help propel this program and help drive value for the Cosmos Hub.
As of writing, we have made an offer to a candidate for this role, and are currently awaiting his acceptance.
Legal Structure
Since our last Transparency Report (Number 5), we have successfully entered into a relationship with Saffery Trust and are currently onboarding.
As a reminder, the AADAO entered this agreement to minimize the liability that the DAO may face and to provide the DAO with legal representation in a nation-state jurisdiction.
Internal Frameworks and Policies
A full 20-page document has been published and released internally highlighting and setting rules and responsibilities of each committee, their operations, etc. It is an attempt to formalize our internal protocols both for smoother operations and to give the community a clear view of the inner workings of the organization.
At the time of writing, this document is about to be put up on DAO DAO for a vote by all AADAO Contributors.
Increased Engagement for Governance
We are increasing our engagement within Cosmos Hub Governance discussions. We have appointed Carter as our Governance Lead to source ideas and seek any potential engagement we can have.
An example of our engagement so far is that we helped in the recent discussion and the passing of including Permissioned Cosmwasm on the Cosmos Hub
Please note that all of the financial information in this report is valid as of 01/05
Appendix A: Grant Summaries
Batch 1
Interchain MeetupsEvents in Universities across Italy to educate young developers and onboard them into Cosmos
Cosmos SDK Module RegistryRegistry for Cosmos SDK to discover modules for developers to use and build on.
CosmWasm by ExampleGithub repo for CosmWasm smart contract samples across the interchain
Cosmos MillionsOpen source prize protocol which utilizes ATOM yield to distribute to winners.
Batch 2
Cosmos Hub Data LensesDashboard for Cosmos hub and Atom Economic Zone on-chain analytics.
Escrow Module: DreddSecureCosmos SDK Escrow module designed to provide a secure and reliable way for parties in the Cosmos ecosystem to transact with each other and reduce the risk of fraud and disputes.
Metamask To CosmosMetamask support for Cosmos ecosystem via Snaps variant.
Batch 3
LongHashX Accelerator Cosmos CohortA cohort between AADAO, Neutron, & LongHashX for a 12-week program, the first focusing on accelerating projects on Cosmos’ Partner Chains, to boost applications in the ATOM Economic Zone, including those on Neutron.
Fairblocks Private Governanceaims to deliver pre-execution privacy and private governance to Cosmos, ensuring user protection and enhancing the overall user experience while mitigating against bad MEV.
Amulet FinanceNon-custodial lending protocol on Neutron with self repaying loans.
Cosmoverse 2023AADAO is the sponsor of Cosmoverse, with inclusion of AADAO grant teams, tokenomics RFP, and other AEZ related topics.
Messari Research ReportsInstitutional grade research reports on Cosmos hub and Atom Economic Zone
Batch 4
Range SecurityIBC monitoring dashboard for AEZ to monitor and alert anomalies & security breaches.
Auction Module for AEZAn auction module which allows for the development of applications which aim to benefit partner chains by enhancing AEZ’s value and generate revenue from listing fees, NFT marketplace sales, and auction commissions, with $ATOM as the default settlement token.
Piloting deliberative governance for the CosmosPilot research program aimed to address and improve governance challenges Cosmos hub faces today.
Blockworks ResearchTokenomics RFP Lead contributor
Binary BuildersTokenomics RFP Lead contributor
RMITTokenomics RFP Lead contributor
Batch 5
ICS/RS Consumer Chain KickStart ServiceFocused on ICS, it will offer comprehensive support, including codebase preparation, testing, launch events, and ongoing operation, for potential Consumer Chains looking to deploy or migrate to the AEZ platform.
Cryptocito4 month sponsorship on producing monthly videos dedicated to the hub, Atom Zone spaces, spaces with our DAO/our grantees, a monthly hub focused livestream plus additional hub advertising.
Proof of Personhood – AnimaUse Cosmos hub as a central hub for cosmos user identities across the interchain.
DAO DAO Neutron DeploymentPorting DAODAO to Neutron to have more on-chain tooling for AADAO and other subDAOs
Cosmos IndexerGeneric indexer for for investigating governance, delegations, taxes, IBC transfers etc
Leap WalletIn wallet services for AEZ with with a key focus on ATOM.
Mystic Labs RPC and Gas Fee Flexibility AgreementFunding RPC costs & build out of the Gas Flexibility Module
Batch 6
IBC Atom Compounding
Colombian Development Seedbed
Cosmos Brazil
Grant Proposal for onboarding New Developers, bring awareness and a new Foundation for the Cosmos in Brazil
Funding the buildout of the Interchain Allocator’s Covenant System
Batch 7
Cosmos Hub Hackathon
New DAO bootstrapping
Interchain Info Development Funding w/ AEZ chain priority.
Fiat Onboarding to the ATOM Economic Zone
AEZ Ecosystem build out References
Astrovault+
GT:1 Automated grant payments/treasury tooling
Cosmos Hub & AEZ Educational Content
Testnet working group
Polymer Labs IBC Summit
Batch 1 2024
Cosmoverse
Asteroid Protocol
Lava Network
Everstake Airdrop Tracker
