Dora Factory: Develop public goods staking and promote the Aptos ecosystem funding program

Author: Dora Factory

Aptos Grant DAO Round-1 Highlights

(This article is based on the piece "Funding Public Goods through Staking and the Aptos Ecosystem" published by Dora Factory core team members Eric Zhang and Steve Ngok on December 30, 2022. It is reported that this is the first time Dora Factory has publicly shared details related to its Public Good Staking.)

Special thanks to Mo Shaikh, Neil H, HC Xie, and the Aptos official team for their discussions and support during the early stages of the Aptos Grant DAO.

The long-term funding program of the Aptos ecosystem—++Aptos Grant DAO++ Round 1 has successfully concluded with enthusiastic participation from builders and community funders, as highlighted in this ++announcement++. This round attracted 137 project applications, with 18 BUIDL projects advancing to the second voting phase, collectively receiving 14,208.9 APT in funding, which includes 4,000 APT for hackathon BUIDL funding, 6,208.9 APT for community contributions, and 4,000 APT in matching funds allocated based on the second voting mechanism.

In addition to being a funding program, the Aptos Grant DAO is also an attempt at public good staking, achieving a ++blockchain incentive-driven funding ecosystem++. As one of the validators on the Aptos network, Dora Factory's public good staking node has contributed 8,000 APT to the first round of Aptos Grant DAO funding and will continue to support this funding program.

Public good staking will drive the Aptos Grant DAO to continuously fund BUIDL teams on a broader scale and help BUIDL maximize the realization of feasible ideas. In the long run, the Aptos Grant DAO can validate or falsify various perspectives within the Aptos ecosystem by funding these teams. Throughout this process, through competitive challenges, BUIDL teams can grow to a certain extent while also helping to build trust between teams and the community.

On the other hand, as an open community funding DAO, the sustainability of the Aptos Grant DAO also relies on effective community governance. An effective community governance mechanism not only allows all stakeholders from the community to participate but also facilitates the community to make collective decisions efficiently and autonomously.

Review of Aptos Grant DAO Round 1 Funding

In the first round of funding for the Aptos Grant DAO, there were a total of ++137 BUIDL teams++ applying from 5 tracks. The focus of the first round of funding was to encourage BUIDL projects that strive to fully leverage the advantages of the Aptos network and the Move language. To this end, we established two main tracks: infrastructure/tooling and Move native, to fund Aptos/Move public goods. Of course, as the funding program evolves, the track settings may change.

Combining the applications from the infra/tooling track and Move native track, about one-third of the projects are related to Aptos infrastructure and Aptos ecosystem public goods.

Among the 137 applications, through strict screening based on the following criteria, ++18 projects++ advanced to the second voting funding phase:

1. The project is actively being developed.
2. The project is in the early stages of development and requires funding to continue.
3. The project has not received significant venture capital.
4. Must be an Aptos native project (building Aptos infrastructure or primarily deploying products on the Aptos chain).

Here are the introductions to the 18 funded projects:

All BUIDL funded by the Aptos Grant DAO are in the early development stage. Mentioning does not equal endorsement; it is more about encouraging the broader developer community to actively participate in future Aptos Grant DAO funding programs.

NFT/Gaming Track

• ++MuseBot++: A one-stop AIGC-driven NFT platform.

DeFi Track

• ++Nomis <> Aptos++: A Credit Karma for DeFi, a multi-chain loan aggregator that intelligently connects borrowers with DeFi protocols, offering customized loan terms based on the borrower's on-chain credit score.
• ++Aptin Finance++: A decentralized lending platform.
• ++Scale Protocol++: An on-chain decentralized derivative trading hedging tool.
• ++Cetus Protocol++: A concentrated liquidity protocol focusing on the Move language ecosystem.
• ++Leviosa++: A platform focused on extracting maximum real yield from POS networks.
• ++Meson++: A stablecoin exchange protocol that facilitates the free flow of stablecoins across Ethereum, Layer 2, and major high-performance public chains.
• ++Mira Finance++: An index fund that allows investors to access assets across multiple chains with a single click.
• ++OmniBTC++: A versatile financial platform based on cross-chain interoperability protocols.

Infrastructure/Tooling and Move Native Track

• ++Hamster++: A DevOps service platform.
• ++Fewcha Wallet++: A pure Move self-custody crypto wallet.
• ++Aptos Dart SDK++: An open-source Aptos mobile SDK.
• ++MoveDID++: A DID protocol compatible with Move-based blockchain networks.
• ++Apscan++: An Aptos blockchain explorer.
• ++MetaSecureLabs-Link3++: A cross-chain communication protocol.
• ++Mokshaya Protocol++: An open-source solution on the Aptos blockchain.
• ++Aptos Passport++: A protocol that includes domains, DID, and SBT.
• ++Aptools++: Making it easy for non-technical users to use Aptos.

Aptos Native Community Governance Stress Test

It is noteworthy that the Aptos Grant DAO itself is an application based on Aptos. Its entire voting mechanism is built on the ++open-source Move contracts++ integrated by DoraHacks. BUIDL submitted on DoraHacks.io is registered on Move smart contracts, and all votes are recorded as transactions on the Aptos chain.

During the 10-day voting phase of the first round, a total of 38,872 unique Aptos addresses participated in the voting, and the contract processed ++40,851 transactions++. In the face of a large volume of traffic in a short period, both the Petra wallet and the Aptos network performed excellently.

The Aptos Grant DAO voting utilized the MACI cart feature, allowing a user to select multiple BUIDL and vote for all of them in a single transaction.

Effective Governance and Fair Distribution

As an open community funding DAO, the Aptos Grant DAO naturally encounters all the challenges faced by ++quadratic governance++. Simply put, it is about protecting voter privacy while preventing identity attacks, witch attacks, and imbalanced fund distribution, all while maintaining permissionless and free participation. Currently, DoraHacks' mechanism design and infrastructure have provided sufficient tools to address these challenges. Notably, in the first round of funding for the Aptos Grant DAO, two additional countermeasures were employed—fair funding distribution algorithm (also known as ++progressive tax 2.0++) and voting weight based on ++vcDORA++.

The funding distribution algorithm is a dynamic on-chain progressive tax mechanism that can adjust the wealth gap between the BUIDL receiving the highest and lowest funding throughout the round.

The use of vcDORA allows community voters to verify their staking and commitments anonymously, thereby gaining opportunities to increase their voting weight.

vcDORA can enhance voting weight, but the increase in weight will gradually decrease according to the log ~2~(max(2, vcDora))

algorithm to prevent control by whale accounts.

Post-Round Sybil Analysis

As a standard procedure of quadratic governance, DoraHacks conducted a sybil attack detection after the Aptos Grant DAO Round 1 voting through on-chain transaction pattern matching and user data analysis. A total of 17,136 sybil votes were deleted, resulting in a 1.07% change in the distribution of the total prize pool matching.

Reflections on the Next Round of Funding and Suggestions for BUIDLers

• Most of the BUIDL from the Infrastructure/Tooling and Move tracks are native projects of Aptos and the Move language. As the Aptos ecosystem is still in its early stages, we expect more Aptos native public goods in these categories to receive funding from the Aptos Grant DAO in future rounds.
• Build those necessary small tools that core development teams do not have time to create, or accelerate ++existing development++. Teams can apply for both the DoraHacks Aptos Grant DAO and the ++Aptos Foundation Grant++ simultaneously.
• Most applications are multi-chain oriented. However, we still recommend considering why you want to build the product on Aptos before starting the project, and which specific features of Aptos you want to leverage in the product.
• The most disruptive ideas and applications come from projects that maximize the use of Aptos features. For example, token transfers on Aptos do not require user approval, which enhances the security of user assets and applications. Another example is utilizing precise ++timestamps++ to achieve high-performance applications in the real world, such as payments and oracles. There are many other projects involving ++innovative properties of the Move language++.
• No projects from the Community/DAO track were selected in this round. We encourage more Aptos native communities, media, and DAOs to participate in the second round of funding applications!

Editor’s Note: The second round of funding for the Aptos Grant DAO has begun on DoraHacks.io, adding three tracks: stablecoins, social, and ZK-Mov.

Future Prospects of the Aptos Grant DAO

The Aptos Grant DAO itself is also continuously evolving. As a long-term open community funding DAO, over time, more and more BUIDLers and community contributors will join, and more BUIDL teams will receive funding, including open-source software, enterprises, communities, public goods, etc. Improving the Aptos Grant DAO to make it more efficient, fair, and inclusive will be a long-term task for the DoraHacks community. Currently, we can start addressing the following points.

Enhancing Voter Privacy Protection -- As the Aptos Grant DAO continues to grow, a larger voting population and more funding require stronger mechanisms to protect user privacy and combat collusion. A zero-knowledge proof-based voting system, such as ++MACI-QV++, can enhance voter privacy protection to some extent. Additionally, the developer community is also attempting to add zk primitives in Move, such as ++Groth16++ and ++Pederson Commitment and Bulletproof Verification++. Another approach is to reuse existing zk tools from the EVM ecosystem and introduce them to non-EVM public blockchains like Aptos. The ++snarkjs-bellman adapter++ is an example built by the Dora Factory team that connects snarkjs and circom to Rust blockchain. Similar functionalities can also be used to connect snarkjs and Aptos.

Aptos Grant DAO Alumni Network -- Over time, successful project teams from the Aptos Grant DAO will make significant contributions to the Aptos ecosystem, gradually forming an alumni network that can help new teams through their survival phase. The support this relationship network can provide is extensive, ranging from technical guidance to case demonstrations, helping new products quickly adapt to ++market demands++. The Aptos Grant DAO alumni network is expected to gradually form after the second or third round of funding and ultimately become an indispensable part of the Aptos Grant DAO.

Providing Public Good Staking for Everyone -- Through public good staking, the Aptos network becomes the first public chain in the cryptocurrency space to systematically use blockchain incentives to fund ecosystem innovation. Currently, the community can participate in Aptos Grant DAO governance by voting for their favorite teams, but they cannot yet participate in public good staking.

However, public good staking should be open to everyone, so that everyone staking in the network can contribute to the network's public goods and new teams. This may take some time, as the current ++Aptos staking++ does not yet support individual staking. We look forward to closer collaboration with the Aptos team, and once the infrastructure is ready, we can provide community-accessible public good staking.