I’m writing to voice my strong support for this proposal.
As an active, long-time member of the Ampleforth community and ecosystem, it’s been a pleasure to witness the growth and evolution of the AMPL-powered ecosystem of applications.
Ever since our earliest conversations about the potential of AMPL, we’ve always focused on the need for strong utilities for the asset. Fortunately, we have come a long way on the utilities front. AMPL holders can not just participate in the Geysers, trade or hold AMPL, but engage in lending/borrowing activities, earn yield on AMPL during all phases of the rebase and more.
However, a major challenge the community faces is driving utilization of the utilities that are currently on the market, and that will be developed in the future. If we look at the total outstanding supply of AMPL, currently 83 million, and wallets ~30,000, an estimated 2% of the AMPL supply and 1% of wallets (not counting the Geyser programs) are deployed in ecosystem applications.
In my opinion, this is a dangerous situation for the AMPL community because without strong utilization of applications builders will be disincentivized to develop for AMPL, or maintain the applications they have already developed.
I see the grants program as essential for ecosystem adoption and acceleration. As the most well-resourced actor in the nascent AMPL ecosystem, the FORTH DAO can play a big role in incentivizing application adoption, driving utilization (TVL) of these applications, help to market the ecosystem and more. The grants program will allow the DAO to rapidly inject much-needed capital and attention into the AMPL ecosystem, which will encourage its growth and development.
Regarding the proposal, I would recommend these additions:
Areas of Focus
- Adding an additional item: Application Adoption and Utilization
Key Performance Indicators
- TVL (AMPL) in existing and new applications utilizing AMPL
- Awareness (can be measured via social media metrics, or other data) of AMPL ecosystem projects
Project Deliverables
The project evaluation criteria currently presented is very good for new projects, or those in development. However, some applications are already deployed or nearing deployment, so grants might be delivered to these projects immediately given that they are already on-market. Evaluation criteria for these projects might have to be developed in tandem with the project requesting a grant. (I recommend this be mentioned in the proposal.)
Thanks @Guz_MassAdoption for spearheading this effort. I look forward its swift approval by the community.