The Initiative for Decentralized Governance Support (IDGS), a not-for-profit DAO, has launched and announces the opening of applications for its grants program—the first initiative of its kind to specifically promote decentralized governance development.

If you are undertaking initiatives to enhance governance security in decentralized systems—one of the biggest unsolved problems in crypto — IDGS is here to support you. On a mission to improve the current state of governance security in decentralized systems, IDGS provides resources and support to those actively working towards positive change. This initiative is founded by decentralized governance experts with the goal of supporting and growing decentralized applications and ecosystems. These founding members are: 

The IDGS has been deployed on the Q Blockchain and seeks to opt into the Q governance framework. This means that on-chain transactions by the DAO will be executed on the Q Mainnet, and, if the opt-in is successful, the DAO treasury will be overseen by Q Protocol’s Root Nodes.

Grants for Better Governance

All too often, malicious actors—whether individuals, organizations, or even core team members with significant control over a protocol’s governance system—manipulate the system to their advantage. They may use their voting power to pass proposals that change protocol rules or redirect assets, effectively stealing funds, devaluing the project, and leaving other participants at a loss. To counter this, IDGS plans to provide three types of grants:

  1. Support of Research Projects – Grants aimed at leading the change towards good governance by providing scientific insights to the development of credibly neutral and decentralized governance structures. 
  2. Promotion of Good Governance Initiatives – Grants to support projects, organizations, or individuals that develop good governance practices within decentralized systems. Examples include, but are not limited to the creation, and implementation of standards, guidelines, and processes that enhance governance security.
  3. Promotion of Governance Education – Funding for public awareness campaigns, content creation, and conferences to promote governance best practices. To spread awareness of the risk which bad governance can pose, persons or organizations that have been victims of governance attacks can also apply for (partial) compensation of their losses. Preference will be given to applicants that demonstrate learnings from the attack, e.g. by publishing post-mortems or suggesting concrete steps for improving governance.  

Apply for a Grant or Support IDGS

Use this form to share your grant proposal: https://forms.gle/WDs8BfPn4pmxnBgj8 

Proposals that align with the IDGS’s mission are first used to attract donations to the IDGS treasury. Then, after fundraising and a successful on-chain vote on the grant proposal, funds will be sent to the wallet specified by the grantee.

IDGS invites decentralized governance enthusiasts, experts, and those affected by poor governance practices to get in touch, submit a grant proposal, and explore further collaboration opportunities. Of course, donations to to IDGS are always welcome! 

Here are some relevant links to get started: 

Contact form: https://forms.gle/WDs8BfPn4pmxnBgj8 

IDGS on-chain deployment: https://hq.q-dao.tools/0x1143a8B7a266774f803092AF3C88Df337642D356 

IDGS constitution: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmVtUH3i9PgwPykUatKo9jKjs9qs2osga11E6ndnAUzi6B 

About IDGS

IDGS is a not-for-profit DAO founded to promote governance security in the crypto space. An on-chain treasury, deployed on Q Mainnet and funded by crypto donations, enables IDGS members to allocate funds to projects and raise awareness on the importance of governance security for decentralized projects.