An Overview Look Into Pomelo's Top Ten Season 2 Grant Recipients

Foreword

Season 2 has come and gone, but its impact continues for months after the fact. The size of the impact it gives to the EOS ecosystem is something that should be of keen interest to the networks’ stakeholders. With the second season having provided funding to almost double the number of projects it had in its first season, does that also mean there’s now double the value created for EOS? How does one go about measuring whether Pomelo Grants is a successful initiative or not, or perhaps those that benefit are only the grant recipients?

Since this season attracted hundreds of projects and helped fund over a hundred of them, it wouldn’t be feasible for me to go through each and everyone of them. So I will go through the ten projects that received the highest amount of funding. Hopefully, the Pomelo team can keep track of every grant recipient to find out whether they are delivering on everything they said they would. But ultimately the responsibility lies with everyone that donated to a project, to ensure that said project(s) meet the objectives they set out to achieve.

Top 10 Pomelo Grant Recipients

The top 10 grant recipients are decided based on the quadratic funding model, in other words, based more on the number of unique donors they received rather than the amount raised. The quadratic funding algorithm then rates the projects, based on these factors and others, to determine what percentage of the matching pool each will be granted. These ten represent 7.14% of the 140 approved grants this season.

1. Metahub

Metahub is a web plug-in wallet developed for EOS and other EOSIO chains such as WAX and Telos. They provide a wallet that’s lightweight and easy to use, with a free resources quota for each user to use to carry out feeless transactions on the EOS network. Its team is currently working on the source code to publish it as open source to ensure trust and security of the wallet.

A total of 126 contributors donated to their project; raising a total $5,452.03 and receiving a $51,108 allocation from the matching pool funds. With these funds they plan on adding these features to their wallet:

● Create an EOS account for free, allowing for newbies to enter the EOS network with zero friction (in addition to the free resources quota).

● Support EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and embrace the EVM that EOS will soon support.

● Support for hardware wallet. Makes the wallet more secure.

● And more detailed optimization.

Website: https://metahub.cash/ Telegram: https://t.me/MetaHub_Community

2. Wombat Dungefon Master

Wombat is one of the best gaming wallets for Ethereum and EOSIO blockchains (EOS, WAX, and Telos). Their new game, Dungeon Master, is a multi-chain staking game with thousands of active players and tons of awesome NFT collections to stake for loot. With this game, Wombat’s aim is to give gamers more content and to incentivize other creators to bring their amazing project to EOS - bringing more NFT traction to EOS.

A total of 199 contributors donated to the project; raising a total $4,187.27 and receiving a $50,045 allocation from the matching pool funds. Wombat plans to use these funds to achieve the following milestones:

● Adding partner NFTs as rewards to the daily chests.

● Clans.

● Multiple Wombats as NFTs.

● Multiple Dungeons.

● Leaderboards.

● Name tags.

● Land.

● Season passes.

Website: https://dungeon.wombat.app/ Twitter: @WombatDungeon

3. Anchor

Anchor is an EOSIO wallet and authenticator for desktop and mobile users, and is one of the most widely used wallets in the ecosystem. It is widely integrated with dApps, services, web wallets, block explorers, and many other applications throughout the EOSIO ecosystem. Anchor is also fully integrated with other major tools and infrastructure such as top-tier APIs, Greymass Fuel (free resources for users), and Greymass’ account creation platform - all creating for a great user experience without compromising on security.

A total of 195 contributors donated towards the project; raising a total $2,182.80 and receiving a $49,742 allocation from the matching pool funds to further their development goals. In addition to salaries, hosting, and support, these goals include:

● Hiring additional staff to work on Anchor and supporting services.

● Allowing their existing teams to put more hours towards Anchor maintenance and development.

● Increasing their support team, and developing new and improved ways to offer user support (including user tutorials and direct support).

● Add additional features to all three versions of Anchor (Anchor Desktop, Anchor for iOS, and Anchor for Android).

Website: https://greymass.com/en/anchor/ Twitter: @greymass

4. EOS Support - The Concierge for EOS

EOS Support is the go-to platform for issues and/or inquiries related to the EOS network. Its support agents provide help across multiple social platforms in EOS forums/groups on Discord, Telegram, Reddit, Facebook, Eden, and its own EOS Support platform.

The initiative has accomplished a lot from funds received in the first season of Pomelo. This season they had a total of 135 contributors donate to the project; raising a total $4,067.26 and receiving a $44,261 allocation from the matching pool funds to help continue providing support for the EOS network. Some of their activities include:

● Creating how-to guides in English, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, and Turkish.

● Providing support in English, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, German, French, Turkish, Italian, and Russian.

● Tracking scams and providing community awareness through the EOS Support’s Twitter.

● Building a multilingual EOS support platform and collaborating with multiple teams in the EOS ecosystem.

● Since October 2021, 37453 people have viewed EOS support articles on their learning center platform.

Website: https://eossupport.io/ Twitter: @eossupportio

5. Totoro

Totoro is a decentralized open source DeFi product that promises to provide the EOS ecosystem with an open-source contract for the DeFi basic track, so that all EOS developers can use the Totoro open-source code to easily fork innovative projects.

A total of 117 people contributed to the project; raising a total $3,944.73 and received a $42,124 allocation from the matching pool funds to carry out their development plan:

● Totoro Swap will provide Swap basic services for the EOS ecosystem, and the Totoro contract will be completely open source, allowing more developers to develop more applications in EOS according to the open source code.

● Totoro has realized the first decentralized multi-currency oracle machine in EOS, realizing decentralized oracle. Each transaction pair will quote the oracle machine for each transaction to provide the latest and most accurate quotation, adding bricks to Defi applications.

● Support ETH account transactions: Totoro is the first batch of applications on EOS to support ETH addresses. Users using Metamask or Metahub wallets can seamlessly use Totoro with ETH/BSC accounts, bringing more off-chain traffic to EOS.

● Totoro will realize the Defi lending function and open source the lending product code, allowing EOS ecological developers to easily build innovative forked products.

● Totoro will implement Defi stablecoin products and open source the code, allowing EOS ecosystem developers to easily build innovative forked products.

Website: https://totoro.finance/ Telegram: https://t.me/InfinityDAOofficial

6. Infinity

Infinity is a decentralized DeFi currency protocol built on IFT tokens. It introduces unique economic and game theory dynamics into the market through staking and bond purchases, which greatly improve the playability of the platform. Their new DeFi structure will bring more people to participate in development, with the educative materials helping new developers learn how to better develop contracts in EOS.

A total of 108 contributors donated to the project; raising a total $3,238.06 and receive a $36,890 allocation from the matching pool funds to which will be used for:

● Developing more peripheral protocols to enrich the IFT platform, and will still open source to the community.

● Creating publicity to attract larger users to join IFT and the EOS ecosystem.

● Hiring of excellent teams to test and audit the code to make the platform more secure.

Website: https://app.infinitydao.fi/#/dashboard Twitter: @InfinityDAO_

7. EOSIO SNARK libraries + tutorials + specification

The ZEOS team’s work to create a privacy coin on EOS is still ongoing. Having completed the zk-SNARK verifier from their Season 1 campaign (which is currently deployed on testnet and will be on mainnet soon), tools to make it secure and efficient are needed to ensure that developers can utilize it to provide certain levels of privacy to their dApp users.

A total of 145 contributors donated to their project; raising a total $2,597.15 and receiving a $36,622 allocation from the matching pool funds. The funds they’ve received will contribute towards developing:

● A simple header-only library for smart contracts on EOS(IO) that aim to utilize the SNARK verifier.

● A RUST library for the client/wallet side, providing all necessary functions to generate zero knowledge proofs and packing proof and input data so the verify can process it.

● Educational material (including basic tutorials) for developers to understand how to create arithmetic circuits and how they work in zero knowledge proofs.

● The ZEOS protocol for private and untraceable transactions will be open sourced, documented, and fully specified to serve as a comprehensive sample application on how to use the SNARK verifier and zero knowledge proofs in general to achieve privacy for user transactions.

Website: http://zeos.one/ Twitter: @ZEOSonEOS

8. Fractal Democracy SIM with Chinese Characteristics

The Eden CN (China) team is working towards running a Chinese variation of the effective fractal democracy of Eden on EOS. Using DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) to imitate the pattern of China’s rapid economic development, and create a positive, self-driven, and sustainable economic system in the community. Following its successful first trial election on March 20th and the first Delegate Meeting on March 23rd, Eden CN is looking to complete its Phase 1 which it began from funds ($3,700) raised in the previous season.

This season a total of 82 contributors donated to the project; raising a total amount of $5,978.82 and received a $30,295 allocation from the matching pool funds. The funds will help the team complete its Phase 1 plans, which include a lot of what has been done by the English version of Eden, but in Chinese. Such as:

● Translating Genesis Eden’s basic docs into Chinese (60% Complete).

● Creating Eden’s guides and videos in Chinese (50% Complete).

● Setting up a Discord server for Eden CN members and inviting everyone interested in Eden's democratic process (30% Complete).

● Designing the UI/VI for Eden CN (20% Complete).

● Launching a v0.1 website with only a wiki and a forum. Enabling election candidates to post their proposals and communicate with the community before elections take place (50% Complete).

● Launching the V1.0 website to test the invitation process, making sure it’s easy for the next community to deploy using the technical documentation provided (60% complete).

● Running a trial election (off-chain) to validate the system logic and design, then exploring the most effective governance processes (90% Complete).

● Creating a Github for Eden, to provide main program documentation, new processes flow charts, new functions, and tools code repositories, etc. Making it easy for others to launch their own Eden organization (0% Complete).

Website: https://edencn.org/ Twitter: @_EDENCN

9. Port

Port is an app that cryptographically proves your uniqueness to the global community and minimizes the risk/effectiveness of Sybil attacks. As a decentralized identity (DID) solution; Port provides a more secure, cheaper, faster, private, and trustless solution compared to typical DID solutions which require 3rd parties in order to bring decentralized identity to the blockchain.

A total of 78 contributors donated to the project; raising a total $28,108.40 and receiving a $28,594 allocation from the matching pool funds. These funds will help them deliver their goals of:

● Managing Port service for Pomelo, providing customer service, solving bugs, expanding support for whatever additional passport variants that pop up.

● Full-time development of the current open-source code by a team of 3 with product, developer, and cryptography skills.

● Adding support for the Password Authenticated Connection Establishment (PACE) protocol.

● Researching and making proposals to expand EOSIO capability to validate more signature algorithms.

Website: https://port.link/ Twitter: @zeropassio Github: https://github.com/ZeroPass/

10. EOSPAPA Service

EOSPAPA is an account creation service that helps new users to understand and create EOS accounts easily and affordably. In addition it provides an easy way to manage EOS network resources.

A total of 127 contributors donated to the project; raising a total $3,972.52 and receiving a $27,838 allocation from the matching pool funds to carry out the following development plans: [Written in its original words]

● Decentralized self-service use of smart contracts to deploy token smart contracts with one click.

● The token icon is saved on the chain, and an on-chain token icon protocol is created.

● One-click upload of the NFT avatar corresponding to the account, and the NFT avatar is also saved on the chain.

● Privacy creation of account, confusing the relationship between the funds source and the generated account, to achieve the function of protecting privacy.

● Idle account reclaimer, which reclaims idle accounts for a fee.

● EOS Volunteer Interactive Platform.

● EOS Frequently Asked Questions FAQ.

Website: eospapa.com/ Twitter: @eospapa Github: github.com/monstredd/eospapa

Personal Take

I’m actually not sure how to feel about this season of Pomelo Grants overall. Yes there are good projects in this Top 10 list of grant recipients, but there are some that I think either got too much money for what they’re trying to achieve or shouldn’t have gotten any. I believe that, for the most part, projects need to first prove themselves to be worthy of receiving funding rather than raising tens of thousands of dollars based solely on promises. Some put up high funding thresholds just so they can default on their responsibilities when those thresholds aren’t met.

On the flip side, this is the whole point of the quadratic funding mechanism. It uses the wisdom of the crowds to choose the best projects to fund, or at the very least the projects that most of the people think will best serve their needs and interests. So that an individual like you and I, who might disagree on a few projects to fund, don’t prevent some of those other projects from receiving funding when the rest of the market thinks otherwise. As long as effective processes are put in place to prevent people from cheating and exploiting the funding mechanisms to gain an unfair advantage.

Not nearly everyone will be entirely happy with this Top 10 list receiving over $400,000 of the total $1,061,724 Pomelo funding, spread across 140 projects. But, a majority of projects in this list are those that many of us will agree on that they deserve the funding. It will be up to us as individuals in the EOS community to ensure that those other projects that we believe in, when very few others do, actually prove their worth by delivering on their set goals.

The rest is as the Season 2 matching pool analysis article put it:

“*It is the quality grants and contributions of the EOS community that truly make Pomelo a success.”*

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Source

● Pomelo Season 2 Analysis: Matching Pool Distribution

● Pomelo Grants gears Up for a Bigger Season 2!

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