Successful Proof of Concept

We have successfully completed our Proof of Concept!

We are happy to report that the original vision for GoodMicroGrants works well. We had four Entrepreneurs participate in our Proof of Concept phase. Of these, one did not make any sales and one didn't complete their application, but two were able to both complete their application and make sales where they accepted GoodDollar as payments for their services. 

Originally slated for January, we found we didn’t get enough data in the first month so we decided to extend to keep running for another month. And now by the end of February we have enough data to call it a success :-)

Here are a few of the things we worked on in this two-month period: 

• Got this website up and running

• Created a signup form for entrepreneurs. It’s long, but the good thing about it is that it captures enough data for us to “optimistically” approve everyone. What does that mean? If an Entrepreneur is able to answer all questions then they will be auto-enrolled to the program. No need for expensive central admin staff, no need for applicants to wait for approval.

• Integrated the BrightID Bot to the GoodDollar Discord channel. We will use this to ensure potential Grant recipients are unique. This means we don't need to ask participants to undergo traditional KYC. They don't even need to have any government issued ID at all.

• Figured out how to run analytics of the on-chain data and identify qualified transactions. Decided to only analyze and include payments processed through the GoodDollar Wallet (= the default "escrow" contract) initially. This means payments facilitated through other contracts, such as the Artrific marketplace will NOT qualify at this point. However, as more Entrepreneurs join we will consider adding more contracts as we go along.

• Run the collected data through a multi-step quadratic formula that we custom-built to determine how much MicroGrant each Entrepreneur qualifies for. 

All this to say that we are now operational and up-and-running. The results from the proof of concept is as following:

Of the three entrepreneurs who accepted GoodDollar as part of their business one is engaged in trading / selling phone minutes, another offers graphics services, and one creates and sells NFTs on GoodMarket. The two successful Entrepreneurs have been airdropped their Grant Allocation. (The third Entrepreneur is still pending a completed application, but was included in the calculation above because the quadratic formulas require more than two participants to work properly). The airdrop transactions can be found here and here.

We have a lot of things on our roadmap, many things we can do to improve this program. But right now it seems the most important thing we can do is to spread the word and get more Entrepreneurs to sign up. So please, everyone, let's get out there and let your friends in the community know about this program. Tell them to sign up and start accepting GoodDollar as payment for goods and services.