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GIP: 134
title: Pilot a Growth Fund for small scale, community-led ecosystem proposals
author: Paul Glavin (@paul_glavin on X)
status: Phase 2
type: Funding
created: 2025-08-14
duration: 4 months from proposal execution
funding: $40,000
Proposal Overview
This proposal requests $40k in funding to be added directly to a GNO community-owned conviction voting pool on Gardens. The purpose of this pool is to help resource growth initiatives that foster a healthier, more diverse Gnosis Ecosystem.
This experiment allows the Gnosis community to try out a mechanism aimed at giving GNO holders more agency in the DAO, and plants the seeds for a more resilient ecosystem by expanding the diversity of projects and initiatives being resourced.
This community would be guided by Gnosisâs mission of Building the Open Internet, enforced through an onchain Covenant.
The Gardens Core team is offering to set up this pilot free of charge with 100% of funds added to the Growth Fund directed by GNO holders.
Proposal Details
As a starting point, we suggest Gnosis DAO replicate an active pilot recently launched in the Safe Ecosystem:
A Gnosis Community on Gardens - an open community members can join by signing an onchain Covenant and staking GNO.
Governance Pool #1 - Council Safe Election - a signaling pool in the Gnosis Garden to elect the signers of the admin Safe for the community
Governance Pool #2 - Priority Signaling - a signaling pool in the Gnosis Garden where the community can curate the ecosystemâs pain points and prioritize areas of funding
Governance Pool #3 - Gnosis Growth Fund - a funding pool, seeded with $10k and an additional $30k streamed into the pool over 3 months, to fund community growth initiatives.
Descriptions, eligibility requirements, visual assets, and secure pool governance parameters for each.
Governance parameters for each of these pools can be separately customized, including:
voting weight system (fixed, quadratic, or 1 token = 1 vote)
voting allowLists (the Safe ecosystem uses its Guardian addresses and Top 50 voters on Snapshot for sybil protection)
conviction growth rate (time delay on proposal support)
Tribunal Safe (account that rules on proposal disputes)
GNO stake required to join
Work to be completed by the Gardens team
Unless there are substantial changes to the setup above requested by the Gnosis DAO community, Gardens will resource this work with its own funding:
Draft a community Covenant with feedback from Gnosis DAO delegates.
Creation of the Gardens community governed by GNO.
Setup and activation of governance pools to be run.
Marketing and communications to onboard members and proposals into the community.
A report following the pilot with results on the projects funded and participation metrics from the community.
Requests of Gnosis DAO to help with this pilot
$40k in funding, sent to the elected Council Safe that will moderate the community
Amplification of announcements to help recruit members, proposals, and voters
Feedback on the proposed setup and suggestions for improvement to better address Gnosis DAOâs needs
Gardens Core is motivated to resource this work based on the demand in Gnosis DAO for more participatory governance solutions, and the likelihood of the programâs success leading to additional funding.
Weâre strongly supportive of this initiative, and excited to see how Gardens might help to accelerate DAO-led funding and community initiatives, all helping to strengthen our DAO.
Since the formal activation of the delegate program in April, the DAO has seen a significant rise in activity and the wider dissemination of our voting power. As part of this, weâve seen attempts to create large-scale directional funding initiatives as well as attempts to kickstart smaller-scale procurement exercises. In both cases, DAO members have expressed reluctance about spending for spendingâs sake. At times, it feels as though weâre in a chicken-and-egg problem where participation needs funding, but funding wants participation. We hope that a Gardens trial can help to break this deadlock.
We see this initiative as a low-cost way of signalling to the world that GnosisDAO is open to fund external contributions that help to grow our ecosystem, and encouraging those with valuable skills to present themselves to the community. It is not a guaranteed commitment to spend, but rather more of an open and ongoing request for proposals that can adapt to suit all parties.
In discussions with other delegates, we queried if Gardens could really be a suitable substitute for larger-scale DAO funding initiatives like those linked above. We were persuaded by @paul2 and @mrtdlgc that thereâs no reason why not. This kind of conviction voting teases out the DAOâs thinking and direction over time, and empowers small voices to be heard where their amount or duration of staking is relatively high. Gardens integrates dispute-resolution systems to handle difficult situations, removing the need for maintenance. And ultimately, it makes the process more transparent and verifiable.
At only $40k, we see no reason to delay kickstarting a trial promptly.
Obviously in support of this. Gnosis DAO needs more bottom-up governance if it wants to make the ecosystem as appealing as it was during the early days of the chain.
Otherwise, the chain will basically turn into Gnosis and Frens Co. Chain, which has been happening for a while already.
Since funds are for pure allocation, I would be in favour of 100% upfront or if the DAO wants to be risk adverse, have two tranches: 50% to start (20k) and then the remaining upon a soft evaluation.
Allocate â Evaluate â Empower
I feel streaming 30k over 90 days (~333 per day) could inhibit evaluation the efficacy of the pilot.
However, It would be good to see a hypothesis of the pilot laid out it can be evaluated against something. ie. Are we expecting several larger initiatives to be allocated? or is this method designed for smaller plays given the current steaming construction?
This is how we accelerate growth. Empowering small builders with agile funding is one of the highest-leverage investments the DAO can make. I fully support this pilot.
The rationale behind streaming funds into the pool is to stabilize outflows from the pool over a time period. With this proposed setup, the community could expect ~10 proposals to pass over a few months, averaging $4k each.
If the $40k was added upfront, Iâd recommend lowering the Spending Limit at first to prevent rewarding too heavily the first proposals that are created. Then as the pool was drained, that Spending Limit could be increased later on.
Or with the 50/50 approach you mentioned, adding $20k upfront and streaming the other $20k over 1-2 months to at least allow some time for quality proposals to be created.
The key evaluation questions to answer at completion of this pilot are:
How valuable was the work funded for the growth of the Gnosis Ecosystem?
How critical was this funding for the projects being funded? i.e. would they have still happened even without funding.
Did the program increase participation from builders and voters in a way that can be scaled up healthily for the ecosystem?
Basically program is smart, low-risk way to empower the community and encourage a more diverse range of contributors. Using a proven framework like Gardens to launch a Gnosis Growth Fund will help foster bottom-up innovation and give GNO holders more direct influence over the ecosystemâs development.
Itâs very cool initiative that aligns perfectly with the goals of decentralization and community-led growth.
I think this could be a very interesting approach and the explanations provided make me very interested to see the results.
It seems to be the kind of grass roots endeavor very aligned to the gnosis mindscdape.
thanks for the proposal, Paul. Gardens is an OG in the Gnosis ecosystem. This is an OG proposal and gets the DAO back to basics with a modest amount of funds. It would be great to see this proposal pass.
And failed by a gnatâs whisker to reach quorum. This is of course very sad when it has 99% support, but this is the consequence of setting of any threshold.
This shows the DAO and its rules are not production ready yet, and also this forum donât cover the main communication about projects/proposals and thereby donât attract people to join.
fun fact: GIP-134 only reaches quorum cause of the biggest vote, and this one was against;-)
@thewanderingeditor@refri fair comments however, the rules are well known regarding quorum. The Snapshot UI is so one dimensional that it canât capture our quorum rules. Weâve had a number of fruitful discussions about our quorum rules over the years.
The GnosisDAOâs Snapshot configurations are only compatible with simple voting (âForâ, âAgainstâ, or âAbstainâ). Ranked choice or weighted voting is not compatible with the GnosisDAOâs Snapshot space. A GIP only passes if at least 75K GNO are cast as âForâ votes. If the majority of GNO used in voting indicate âAgainstâ or âAbstainâ, the proposal is considered closed and not accepted. In the event that the majority of votes are âForâ but the 75K GNO threshold is not met, the proposal fails quorum and does not pass. âAbstainâ votes are not counted towards quorum.
There is nothing stopping a community member from re-posting a GIP after it failed quorum. However, itâs also clearly stated in the governance rules that if a proposal skips phases and goes straight to Snapshot, itâs not valid. That includes GIPs that already went through the voting phases. In principle, a proposer can can endlessly push the same GIP through the governance process but most likely itâs not going to pass if it failed the first time around.
We have had issues with critical GIPs failing quorum that were reposted. I agree, it sets a bad precedent and I think weâve all come to a consensus that itâs not good for the DAO to do this. When GIP-134 showed up on Snapshot again, I communicated this to the proposer. Since we are an open organization where anyone can join and make a proposal, the process is sometimes messy. The DAO Docs are always shared with proposers.
We also send out the monthly governance newsletter here on the forum and email as a resource to keep everyone updated and aware of voting deadlines.
@refri what would make the DAO and its rules production ready for you? How can we do better regarding your communication comment and onboarding new folks into the DAO?
Quorum discussions are important IMO. Those rules are up to the DAO to decide they arenât set in stone, of course. If thereâs a compelling case to be made to change the rules, I encourage anyone who feels strongly to publish a proposal.
Both wouldât be an issue if whales, most likely part of the gnosis inner circle, would participate here and in snapshot voting even if its a proposal not discussed/approved beforehand by them.
as said above: core members need to be more present here and in snapshot voting, cause to my impression (would be glad to be proven wrong) majority of voting rights are controlled by gnosis core ppl or aligned entities. Ideas where to work on, cooperation with other projects and other things can be outlined here much earlier, not only if funding is needed.
Another point is @Karpatkey, to my impression they are doing a good job in general, but just giving the minutes afterwards (and donât mentioning any problems, like with the EURe pool) seems not enough to me. Discussing why (DAO owned) capital is allocated at which protocols, where are incentives are placed and why, and how they use their voting rights (e.g. at balancer) to funnel incentives to certain pools seems an easy way to generate interest in joining here for possible capital providers.
Our reasoning for reposting was based on what I understand to be the fundamental purpose of quorum: to protect the community from impactful decisions being made without enough participation. Quorum is typically a decision security mechanism not meant as a signal for rejection.
GIP-134 received 99% support and reached 98% of the quorum threshold. This wasnât a controversial proposal that the community rejected - it just didnât get enough attention. Gnosis DAOâs quorum design (only counting âForâ votes) seems to acknowledge this. If you oppose a proposal or are unsure, you vote âAgainstâ or âAbstainâ - thereâs no strategic benefit for refusing to vote. This is why I felt reposting with more outreach was appropriate rather than treating it as a failed proposal.
However, I understand this created confusion and could be seen as setting a bad precedent, and should have communicated this here in the forum when it happened.
So given the process concerns here we will no longer be pursuing GIP-134.
However, going forward I think a healthy precedent for proposals that donât reach quorum would be to allow for 1 additional revote under the same proposal terms.
sad to read this, it isnât the outcome I was wishing (and voted) forâŠwould be really glad to see you proceedâŠin hope to shape this DAO to what it can be.
Thanks for the reply, but some different perspective:
Iâm perhaps misunderstanding, but it seems like youâre saying that there is a discrepancy, but this has been seen before so it doesnât need to be fixed, as everyone is already aware of it?
This doesnât seem compatible with having an open DAO. A certain level of familiarity and context is of course welcome, but if the only way to know and understand the rules is to have been around long enough to understand how they differ from the information presented, then how are new members supposed to participate?
Iâm sympathetic that Snapshot isnât entirely compatible with the DAOâs rules, but then there needs to be better information flow to members. Where can I go to learn that this proposal has actually failed, even though Snapshot claimed it passed?
I understand that spam and scaling are a concern but this forum isnât that busy or noisy. It seems reasonable for there to be posts in these threads explaining when the status of a GIP changes and (crucially) where information presented elsewhere might contradict the true state of a GIP. But there needs to be a source of truth somewhere.
Thatâs a shame. I do think the process should have started again at Phase 1 or 2, but I agree that the level of support would have warranted it. Iâm not averse to things being posted again, but if every stage is optional then the DAO feels too weighted towards the token vote (which isnât incoherent, but thatâs not the design ethos espoused in the Governance docs and elsewhere).
Iâm more concerned that there are very regular deviations from process and the only way to get to the bottom of them is for individuals members to notice and ask meta-questions on various proposals, rather than discussing the topic at hand. A more systematic approach to communicating GIP status here in the forum would address this.
My point was that this is an open DAO where anyone can come and publish a proposal. It also means that anyone can choose not to follow the governance rules set out in the DAO Docs. Part of my job is to help steward DAO governance. I canât, however, force authors of proposals to conform to the governance framework that the GnosisDAO created.
I donât think it makes sense to point fingers or call out certain proposals but, yes, absolutely in the recent past there have been instances when a proposal was pushed immediately to Phase-3 or where GIPs were re-done and published on Snapshot after they failed. In each case, the community and myself have attempted to communicate that this breaks the governance rules and sets a bad precedent. Rules and norms are upheld when a community collectively agrees that theyâre important and valuable. This discussion is healthy and important because it clearly shows that the community does care about the state of metagov for Gnosis!
I totally agree - governance shouldnât be for those who have been around long enough to know how it works. This is not insider baseball. To that end and in attempt to also address the need for having a source of truth, we created the GnosisDAO Governance Summary. Here is the latest edition and it reflects that GIP-134 failed quorum: GnosisDAO Governance Summary ~ September 2025 We also publish the summary here on the forum in the General category GnosisDAO Governance Summary ~ September 2025
I would love to update the Snapshot UI but itâs not possible to do that, unfortunately.
Maybe a link to the DAO Docs should be included in each monthly governance summary to help new members gain an understanding how to participate? Another useful way to navigate GIPs and the forum is to check out the Delegate Communications category to see what delegates are saying about recent proposals. What else would be helpful steps towards improvement wrt your comments?
Thanks again for taking the time to respond and I look forward to keeping the discussion going.