GIP-Draft: Pilot a Gnosis Growth Fund for small scale, community-led ecosystem funding

Governance GIPs
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GIP: <to be assigned>
title: Pilot a Growth Fund for small scale, community-led ecosystem proposals
author: Paul Glavin (@paul_glavin on X)
status: Phase 0
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 Gnosis’s 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:

In short, this setup includes:

  • 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 ecosystem’s 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 DAO’s 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 program’s success leading to additional funding.

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We’re 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, we’ve 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 spending’s sake. At times, it feels as though we’re 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 there’s no reason why not. This kind of conviction voting teases out the DAO’s 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.

2 Likes
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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.

1 Like
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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 → Evaluate → 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?