Project Title: Prime Rating
Description: Prime Rating builds and maintains a permissionless incentive system to evaluate the quality and risk of Web3 projects by collecting on-chain and off-chain data and interpreting the information in form of reports. We do this by applying an open-source research framework in combination with a permissionless to part-take, gamified incentive system which is facilitated through a Service DAO model.
Manifesto/Vision: Our mission is to “foster transparency through community-driven research”. We envision a future in which projects on Ethereum with (1) actual value-add (2) tokenomics aligning stakeholders and resulting in positive-sum behaviour (3) a legitimate team and (4) robust governance receive user attention and funding through an informed choice of the individual in order to build overall a more robust, enriching and valuable ecosystem and slaying Moloch on an ecosystem level. We envision Prime Rating facilitating this through periodic information provision over the lifetime of a project evaluating the risk and quality of the project.
Problem: Web 3.0 suffers from a lack of curation and measurement in project quality and risk. While most information is publicly available, it is gated by (1) dispersion across different data sources and (2) domain expertise to interpret the information. This leads to misallocation of capital by individual actors (i.e. investing in projects with a lack of product-market fit, non-existing value proposition, outright scams) and ecosystem (i.e. investing in what is trending rather than what is needed from an ecosystem perspective) that lack expertise, time or resources to curate this information. The overall effect on the Ethereum Ecosystem is (1) misallocation of resources and (2) the harming of new entrants leading to a lack of adoption.
Solution: Prime Rating is developing (1) a domain-agnostic incentive system which can be applied to other research areas to enable the collection of qualitative metrics that are subject to human interpretation, (2) frameworks (i.e. DeFi, Metaverse and ReFi) to assess quality and risk for Web 3.0 projects and relevant mechanisms for them to procedurally update, (3) curation and reputation mechanism of the contributor. (1), (2) and (3) enable us to offer an evaluation of project quality and risk in the form of publicly available scores on our website and our API.
Product Features:
- Our rating system is facilitated through a non-transferable token (RXP) which is issued exclusively to (active) members who write and review fundamental analysis reports. RXP governs most protocol processes on an operational level (i.e. RAP, RUP, TIP, RDR) and is used to define roles within the rating protocol (i.e. Rater, Reviewer, Governor, later Council). We hope this in the future to be permissionless and self-sustaining building tooling for information provision and USP over centralised entities.
- Detailed protocol coverage across essential projects vertical with interpretation and quality quick through the permissionless rating product.
- API-accessible risk and quality score across Value proposition, Tokenomics, Team, Governance and Regulatory.
Validation: We have been running the system for several months. Through this, the fundamental framework has improved by community input (see example TIP-001). We identified weaknesses in our incentive system and are working towards fixing them (Revamp). We have 66 unique holders of RXP (~currently still named PRR on etherscan) - i.e. 66 successful raters that have been able to submit at least one successful report. 180+ reports written on DeFi, Metaverse, and ReFi protocol. We also secured our first clients of our API.
Progress: Re-vamp of the incentivising system in order to increase robustness, development of standards and documentation
Differentiation (from other projects): Prime Rating differentiates itself because (1) of its unique-incentive system which we believed will lead to a more independent, objective evaluation of risk and quality in Web3.0 projects, (2) our community made up of high-grade research talent, (3) its holistic and standardised evaluation framework.
Team:
Lavi leads product and governance at Prime Rating. He has a background in traditional finance, with 6+ years of experience working at international banks, from the client-facing front-office to the project management in the back-office. Before moving into a business analyst position at a consulting firm, he studied Business Innovation at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Lavi is part of Kolektivo Labs (one of the builder shops behind PrimeDAO), and an active rater at Prime Rating since early 2021. He was also a community contributor and metagovernance committee member at Index Coop.
Mayank is a core team member at Prime Rating and guild lead for business development. He has a background spanning 15+ years in traditional finance (hedge funds due diligence), management consulting, tech product management (Amazon) and entrepreneurship (running recycling plants in the Middle East). His motivation is to build a Web3 platform that encourages people to ask deep questions about projects and protocols and to share this knowledge with the world.
Salomé is a core team member involved in DAO Architecture and Business Development at Prime Rating. She contributed to several DAOs in the space such as Idle.Finance, Paladin DAO & Yield Guild Games (YGG). With previous +6 years of experience in traditional finance she jumped down the rabbit hole and left the central banking world behind. Twitter: https://twitter.com/salomebernhart
xm3van has previously worked at an academic research institution researching Digital Assets. He holds qualifications in Data Science and Business Administration. Beyond Prime Rating xm3van contributed to several open research initiatives such as a DAO Governance Rewards Working Group and the Tokenengineering guild of Tokenengineering Academy.
Grant Request: USDC 60 000
What the Funds Are For:
| Amount ($) | Activity | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| 30 000 | Operation expenses (Core + Community) | 2-3 months |
| 15 000 | Finalisation of Incentive Revamp | 2 month |
| 5 000 | Updating documentation | 1-2 months |
| 5000 | Implementing the new system and monitoring of new system | 1-2 months |
| 10 000 | Further development of tech infrastructure | 1-month |
Help Requested:
- Jam session with willing community members from Moloch to rip the revamped incentive system apart once V1 is finalised.
Additional Resources, Links, Portfolio: