MIP 93 - Call for Grants

Governance
10

Project Title: Builda Protocol (Yieldfunding Platform)

Organization name: Builda Labs

Organization website and/or social media links:

About us + prior experience:

DeFi Dude (myself) has been a long time advocate for Ethereum, DeFi, and decentralization as a whole, going back to 2017. Working largely on the community side of things, I’ve previously worked at Kyber Network representing and helping build out the early community as well as handling the shift to decentralized governance that oversees Kyber Network. After Kyber, I worked at Aave to help support the community and facilitate the transition from ETHLend to Aave, as well as kick off the early governance community. After Aave I’ve helped support two early stage Web3 projects pre-launch, before working on Builda Protocol.

My co-founder JC has 8 years of experience as a software developer and product designer in consumer products and FinTech - while later selling a Web3 gaming companion app in 2023. Together, we’ve previously worked on a non-profit project, ArchiveNode (x. com/archivenode), which aided 1000+ developers, researchers, and educators by giving them free access to Ethereum archive nodes at a time when it was very costly to do so, leveraging strong synergies and cooperability until the project was successfully sunset.

Leading Contributor(s):

  • DeFi Dude:
    • x .com/DeFiDude
    • t .me/defidude
  • JC
    • x .com/delzennejc

Requested Budget: 30k MORPHO

Scope of Work:

Create a yieldfunding protocol that allows users to deposit into Morpho vaults, earn yield, and be able to direct that yield to fund early-stage projects in return for potential rewards such as token allocation, NFTs, game assets, and more. This allows projects to bootstrap what they’re building prior to launching a token and without the necessity to raise funds through a more traditional way like VC funding, which may be out of reach. By using Morpho, users can help fund these projects with “no-loss” funding, meaning, only their yield is used to fund the projects rather than direct investments. Yieldfunding is also supplementary, so projects and builders are able to utilize Builda while still taking advantage of more traditional funding routes if they choose.

Accelerating growth through early capital support, business development, as well as product development (which has already begun) will be our main focus and the majority of the work required.

Morpho Ecosystem Benefits: Utilizing Morpho vaults (ETH & USDC to start) for generating the yield will boost the overall TVL of Morpho vaults

Metrics: Achieve 5-10M TVL during our beta launch, and 50M+ TVL within a year after our main launch.

Timeline: 1-2 months for development and early testing before our first public beta launch goes live, and another 3-6 months to develop some of the deeper features as discussed below before our main launch goes live.

Future directions:

We have an internal roadmap we will be working towards, which includes building out more social support features that can assist projects with benefits like user testing, business development, social support, and more in a decentralized way. Our goal is to also integrate more vaults, and integrate benefits for both the users and projects so that they are seamlessly supported directly on the platform. The ultimate goal is to create a fully decentralized Builda Protocol, allowing the entire platform to support itself with the foundation that was built early on.

The ultimate goal for Builda Protocol (beyond a self-sustainable permissionless yieldfunding platform) is to be the number one place for early projects to get the funding they need to get off the ground, as well as the best place for users to fund what they believe in while being able to have their support not go unnoticed. To do this, we have some future directions which include:

  • A more fleshed out reward system for both the projects and Builda Protocol.
  • Creating a seamless support system for projects that can offer what “good” VCs can generally offer, including user testing, social support, business development, and more, directly within the platform.
  • Integrating more vaults and yield methods with Morpho and Morpho-related projects.
  • Offering deeper features, such as utilizing Morpho to allow the projects to create a locked yieldfunding campaign and take their funding upfront at the expense of lower yield in the long term, allowing them to access capital sooner rather than more sustainably over time.
  • Eventually allowing for direct capital contributions for users who are in eligible jurisdictions, similar to Echo or existing crowdfunding platforms.

Apologies for the incorrect link formatting, newer members are limited to posting 2 links in a single post.

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