Hey there! Happy to have you on board, together we can go much further.

The goal of this document is to provide guidance to anyone who is exploring the potential of organising a Quadratic Funding round for their community and is looking for support from the Community

This guide aims to provide a high-level overview of the process involved and templates on how to structure a QF round, yet it is not intended to be a rigid solution. We recognize there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to how to best run a funding round for every community. While some technical & operational constraints do exist, in general we love new ideas on how to create the best outcome. If you have something you’d like to propose, please do share with us!

What is Quadratic Funding (QF)?

Quadratic funding is a new technology that empowers communities with new capabilities to allocate resources. For those who don't know much about Quadratic Funding, start here.

What is the Quadratic Funding Incubator (QFI)?

Our team works on privacy technology that leverages ZKPs to empower radical democracy. We’re working to create a scalable way to support Quadratic Funding projects, by building infrastructure that enables community organizers to run Quadratic Funding Rounds.

Learn more about QFI and what we do.

Process

Here’s a general overview of the entire process to set up & run a funding round with QFI.

1. Apply
2. Prepare
3. Run the funding round
1. Launch
2. Enrollment phase
3. Contribution/voting phase
4. Reallocation phase
5. Tallying phase
6. Allocation phase
4. Impact analysis

Rough timeline

There is currently no “standard” timeline. Timelines of rounds can vary widely depending on the structure of the QF round (e.g. duration of contribution period) as well as your team’s capacity in terms of organizing, promoting, deploying & operating the event.

That said, we typically recommend 8-10 weeks of lead time before running a QF round in order to adequately prepare. The more time the better 🙂

Rough time commitment

Again, requirements here can vary widely depending on the round structure & competency of your team. For most teams, we recommend allocating ~200-250 total hours of time to run a QF round. We estimate ~300 hours in total to go from no experience with Ethereum development to running a successful matching round.

This includes technical & operational work:

• Technical work includes configuring wallets, deploying contracts & deploying the website
• Operational work includes marketing/communications, curating projects & user onboarding

The tasks involved could be executed by a single individual but rounds are typically more successful when responsibilities are divvied up across a team, which allows execution in parallel.

1. Apply

Application

• First step is to submit a brief proposal outlining your QF plans & use of funds

Exploration

• As part of your application, you may have a series of calls with folks to discuss you application & review your proposal
• Here we can brainstorm QF structure, logistics of the round & answer questions

Specification

• After we land on a general structure, we’ll need to establish specifics
• Who is organizing the event?
• Who/what is the legal entity that will receive the grant?
• Confirm funding amount
1. Direct grant amount
2. Matching pool amount

Submission

• Our team will work with you to formalize your grant submission with the Ethereum Foundation
• https://esp.ethereum.foundation/applicants/small-grants/apply

2. Prepare

Sort out grant logistics

• Apply for funding

Establish roles & responsibilities

Prior to the round, it’s important to understand who is responsible for what from both an operational & technical standpoint.

From an operational standpoint, there a several roles of a QF round:

• Marketing & communications
• User support (e.g. onboarding support, troubleshooting)
• For in-person events
• Person handling the booth
• Person speaking/presenting/educating on QF?

From a technical standpoint, there a several roles of a QF round:

• Fund holder
• Website deployer
• Smart contract deployer
• MACI key generator
• Round coordinator

Sort out round logistics

• Establish timeline for each phase (see phases below in How it works - 3. Run the round)
• Establish process for recipients (how they will participate in the round
• Establish process for contributors (how they will participate in the round)
• More on this here: Contributor registration approaches for QF rounds

Sort out technical details

• Technical workshop with QFI team to:
• Learn about tech stack (e.g. ZKPs)
• Learn smart contract & website deployment details
• Choose a public chain: gas unit, voting/donation unit, etc.
• Launch website
• Event brand guidelines/design assets
• Prepare website copy, including documentation for users
• Determine/create project submission form
• Deploy & host website

3. Run the round

Every QF round has a sequential lifecycle. The specifics can vary depending on the approach but generally all rounds follow this series of phases:

1. Launch

Configure the on-chain parameters of the round, then deploy the smart contracts & website.

2. Enrollment phase

Projects and voters will need to register in order to participate in the round.

Contributors are able to register & browse projects but won't be able to contribute/vote on them.

3. Contribution/voting phase

The launch of the contribution phase follows the join phase and marks the official start of the funding round. The round opens to contributors, who can vote/contribute to projects.

The duration of this phase is completely configurable - it’s a window of two timestamp parameters set in the initial deployment of the smart contracts.

As a user, if you don’t contribute in the contribution phase, the round is over for you once this phase ends.

4. Tallying phase

At this point, all contributions are final, and can now be counted. The round coordinator triggers the MACI smart contracts to calculate how much of the matching pool each project will receive.

5. Allocation phase

Once the tallying calculations are complete, the round is finalized. Project owners can come and claim their funding (via an on-chain claim transaction)!

4. Impact analysis

• Round report
• Exit interview / retrospective

Round approach

The specific approach you take to structure the QF round can vary. Here are 2 examples.

Approach 1) participants donate cryptocurrency to vote

With this approach, contributors can donate tokens (any ERC-20 token, typically DAI) to projects, which represent their votes, where the amount of tokens weights their votes.

This approach is great because it facilitates more fundraising for each project, given contributors are donating directly in addition to the matching pool. However, this can create additional onboarding friction for users, who need to acquire tokens on the chain the round is running on.

Approach 2) participants are credited tokens to vote

With this approach, we generate “voice credits” (typically 99) for each contributor, which they can spend by voting on projects.

This approach works well because it’s simple for users - they do not need to acquire tokens, they will receive them once registered into the round.

Apply to run a QF round!

Still interested in working with us?

FAQs

Find commons questions and answers about QFI here

Additional resources