Building an extensible world with MetaMask Grants DAO

Surviving and thriving in an ecosystem as creative and nascent as Web3 is no small feat. To put the last six years into context, Bitcoin was created in 2009, Ethereum launched in 2015, and MetaMask made its appearance soon after in 2016 with the support of grant funding. The fox and its determined community have seen multiple highs, lows, bulls, and bears, and are excited about the adventure to come.

To explore new avenues for decentralized growth and continue implementing Web3 native practices at ConsenSys, we are launching MetaMask Grants DAO: an employee-led, ConsenSys-funded program that issues grants to developers building impactful experiences within the MetaMask ecosystem.

Well well, this foxtrot just got more interesting.

Why Grants DAO?

“Of course, MetaMask wanted to be a DAO when we first started but there were no wallets to build a DAO with yet.” – Dan Finlay, co-founder of MetaMask

So we had to build a wallet first. And here we are.

ConsenSys is dedicated to building a more open, empowering, and decentralized world. That's what motivates everyone in the company, including everyone on the MetaMask team. We all strive to build products and systems that are just as open, decentralized, and permissionless as the world we are shaping.

Exploring Web3 mechanisms is core to the DNA of our company. ConsenSys has been experimenting with how to incorporate increasingly decentralized operations into a mature software company, as showcased by initiatives like the Bankless DAOlationship, Merge Regenesis NFT drop, and VillageDAO.

Making MetaMask the most extensible wallet in the world requires decentralizing efforts to build it out and empower our communities. Not only will this accelerate growth for crypto-comfortable users, but this will also boost adoption for crypto-curious individuals that will have more paths to participate in.

A grand experiment

Since launching in 2016, we have learned a lot but there’s a lot more to learn alongside you and the entire industry. In this spirit, we are embracing this initiative as an experiment. Much like how Flask is a developmental laboratory, Grants DAO is a radical step to support the developer community through grant funding in building out a thriving landscape (or metascape?) that benefits more users.

ConsenSys has laid the foundation for many projects, with MetaMask being a prime example. The fox was initially funded with a grant! Had no one believed in MetaMask at its inception, we wouldn’t be here, and we’d argue that the Web3 space would look completely different today.

Grants DAO will continue that tradition to foster new ideas from which everyone can benefit, enabling the developer community to build with MetaMask in a way that’s valuable to them.

The internal DAO will also enhance the collective mission of ConsenSys employees and give them a new way to engage and lean into their curiosity. The very people who founded MetaMask were profoundly curious, and ConsenSys employees, many of whom come from the Web3 community, are among the most curious in the world. Together, we take the leap to charter unknown waters, build new tech, and pioneer the way for other organizations. Grants DAO is our way to start giving back to the developer community that’s been on this ride with us to build great applications that boost Web3 adoption.

Okay, but how does it work?

Here are the details:

• MetaMask Grants DAO is an employee-driven, ConsenSys-funded DAO that issues grants to developers building impactful experiences within the MetaMask ecosystem.
• Every ConsenSys employee can opt-in to be a Grants DAO member with equal voting rights governed by a non-transferable token.
• The DAO is made up of two main parts:
  • Employee-Led DAO: Heart of the DAO made up of all ConsenSys employees.
  • Leadership Committee (mini-DAO): Head of the DAO made up of 7 individuals responsible for finding high-potential projects, creating governance proposals, updating external content, gathering feedback on the DAO, driving improvements to the DAO, and queuing multisig transactions.
• The DAO uses a secure multisig wallet owned by ConsenSys that will manage the treasury, disbursement of funds, and minting or burning of tokens as employees join or leave the company.
• The DAO will fund two types of grants:
  • Leadership Committee Grants: Any Leadership Committee member can make a proposal, and proposals with at least 5 "yes" votes at closing will pass. Leadership Committee grants are intended to provide a quick, easy mechanism for those most closely tied to the grants operations to ensure that high-quality projects that may be overlooked by the full DAO can be funded. Votes will be open for five days and the individual proposing the vote will be responsible for making the case and otherwise taking any actions they need to win the vote’s approval.
  • Full DAO Grants: Any Leadership Committee member can make a proposal to the Full DAO, and proposals with a simple majority “yes” at closing will pass. Votes will be open for ten days and the individual proposing the vote will be responsible for making the case and otherwise taking any actions they need to win the vote’s approval.
• Grants DAO has a budget of $600,000 per quarter to fund meaningful projects.
• Voting and proposals will take place publicly through SnapShot on the Codefi Activate platform.

And that’s the tea.

If you’d like to learn more about this, more details are available here on the MetaMask Grants DAO page.

And finally, have you participated in one of our dev-focused workshops or hackathons? Met our team at a conference and got inspired to tinker around with Snaps? Want to bring your features and APIs to the wallet? Well, here’s your chance. Apply for a grant to build out this ecosystem with us.

*We can’t guarantee when we will review your request or that it will get approved, but know that our team will review the application pipeline as often as we can. Thanks for being patient with us. *

Beyond the amazing projects we hope to fund with the DAO, Grants DAO is an opportunity for us to experiment with and learn from governance models to influence the direction of future projects. Cheers to another long ride with the fox. We can’t wait to see all the projects that bloom.