Public Grants
Introduction to Cherry Public Grants
Cherry has an on-chain public treasury composed of funds from several sources, including transaction fees, validator fees, and inflation. The public can vote and propose to utilize these funds through a democratic and open process. Right now, grants are only available in CHER. In the future, you will be able to receive grants in stablecoins as well.
Every 28 days the treasury adjourns to award the winning proposals their requested CHER tokens. Proposals must be submitted by the 24th day of each governance cycle and received a majority of votes.
Oversight of Public Payments
There are a few different ways that funds are allocated that improve the risk of these interactions for both the chain's community and for the recipient.
Under $5000
Payments can be sent directly to a recipient.
Payment can be provided up front in order to enable work delivery.
Payment can also be provided after the work is complete, for smaller tasks.
Between $5,000 and $10,000
A multisig occupied by community members and your team ensures oversight, and sub-disbursements.
Payments will be split into 'deposit' and final fulfillment.
For amounts above $10,000
The above conditions will apply.
Additionally, you will structure your proposal into 'milestones,' and when each is delivered, you will receive the next tranche of funds.
You may be asked to deliver a small amount of work upfront before receiving your first payment in order to build trust if the recipient lacks in-chain reputation.
This multi-proposal milestone approach ensures that the CHER you receive is priced comparative to USD so that you are not subject to price volatility, and have the amount per milestone that will actually enable your deliverable.
Step 1: Draft your proposal.
See the proposal template and create a Google Doc so others can collaborate on your responses openly. (ADD Link to proposal Template)
Post a thread to thee Cherry Governance Forum providing short intro about yourself and following the provided example template. This is a great chance to make a good first impression if you haven't been very involved in the community.
Attend the working group calls, and the bi-weekly all-community call to introduce your project, receive feedback and answer questions. We recommend attending at least one of these, and especially the All-Community Call.
Take good notes of others feedback, and likely, integrate some of that feedback in the review of your draft. You may benefit from several rounds of this, which, while it can be tedious, go a long ways to satisfying the community.
Once you've polished your proposal sufficiently, announce a final day for remarks. We usually let 2-4 weeks pass in discussion, 4 for larger or more feedbacked proposals.
After the final call for feedback, you're ready to prep for the on-chain steps.
Optional: Creating a Multisig Escrow
For proposals with requests greater than 10,000 USD, we recommend as a norm, that you use a multisig.
A multisig will be established with one or more member of the Cherry Technical Council or reputable person in the community. A multisig is a wallet where cooperation between multiple people is required to act. In this case, we usually use a 2-of-3, meaning 2 people out of 3 total people can agree and the wallet action, usually a transaction, will occur. This multisig will be different than the wallet you conduct your projects' transactions from-.
The multisig will hold the total funds for the project, and the representative (a 'curator') will create and approve disbursements from the wallet to your team or person's individual wallet, as milestones are reached.
This helps make sure that the total amount is budgeted for, responsibly managed, and that milestones are fully incentivized. In the past, teams have failed to fulfill their agreements, but were able to walk away with the total amount regardless. This multisig setup helps protect the Cherry community from fraud, and helps ensure your team has the total funds budgeted, rather than asking the treasury repeatedly (a slow process.)
Determine your co-signatories.
Example: 2 of your team, and two of Agency staff or Council.
The agency member will construct the wallet and do a test transaction.
Add the wallet to your DotApps
Provide the address of the wallet to the Agency if they don't already have it. This address will go into the proposal technical details.
Provide an on-chain identity. - An on-chain ID is a public mode of knowing who owns and operates an account and verified points of contact. These verifications improve accountability. - All grant recipient addresses should be a verified account.
Step 2. Construct and submit the proposal.
In Cherry, treasury proposals have two stages:
Create the on-chain treasury proposal: The treasury proposal, which details the recipient and amount.
Create the governance decision event: The referendum/democracy proposal, where the entire community of Cherry votes on approving or rejecting that treasury proposal. This has two sub-stages as well:
Proposal Launch
Referenda
Create the Treasury Proposal
Bond
The bond exists to prevent people from abusing the proposal system and protects against frivolous proposals or spamming. The bond is 5% of the total amount of funds requested.
(Insert technical details and or video.)
Call Hash and Call Data
These are important data about the extrinsic that you should record and save for technical use in other steps or troubleshooting. Feel free to enter this directly on your proposal text for safekeeping.
Create the Referenda
Enter the Treasury Proposal # from the previous step.
Go Live
Timeline (9 days total)
1 days in Proposal
7 days in Referenda (Voting)
**1 day **in Execution/Disbursement
Inform the community
Proposal Stage
Referenda Stage
Disbursement Stage
Receiving the Funds
Grants Larger than 5000 USD
You will be using a multisig with a minimum of 2-of-3 threshold. You will need to work with that Curator (a community representative on the multisig) and inform them of milestone achievements or funds needed.
Grants smaller than 5000 USD
If the grant is lower than 5000 USD, you probably will receive the disbursement directly to the account shown in your proposal template. You may control and use these through traditional transaction methods. (Link to Docs, Sending a Transaction)
Managing and Using Funds
We recommend Polkadot.js application for managing your funds. This involves a MetaMask-like browser extension and an interface.
Website: https://cherry.place (Requires browser extension from first link.)
Mathwallet or other wallets.
What if there are issues with our funds?
Cutting-edge technology comes with growing pains. Sometimes, funds can be sent to the wrong address, the public market valuation of your CHER may change drastically, or other losses may occur. These will be judged on a case-by-case basis, but for the most part, there are three avenues to explore:
Active: Re-proposal
You may create a new treasury proposal and explain the need to cover the loss in a new post, follow the above guidance like the first proposal.
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