The Polygon DAO has been heads down, shipping programs and resources and growing the Polygon ecosystem at lightning speeds. Despite the bear market volatility, Polygon DAO remained focused on building communities and projects on the Polygon network. We are excited to share an update on the DAO's initiatives and community developments.

Let's see what the team has been up to over the last six months.

Polygon Village

Polygon DAO is the centerpiece of Polygon's long-term strategy of progressively decentralizing the ecosystem's growth to the community. On April 8, 2022, Polygon DAO launched the Polygon Village, a full-stack ecosystem for developers to buidl and grow. Through Polygon Village, developers gain access to everything they need to showcase their web3 initiatives, while projects building on Polygon receive comprehensive, quality support.

Welcome Vouchers

With web3's rapid growth, service providers push new and innovative project tools at scale. While having an abundance of decentralized technology tools is excellent for industry innovation, it creates a formidable barrier to entry for fledgling projects.

The Village addresses these issues through Welcome Vouchers. Vouchers give DApps free access to the best web3 service providers under a single forum and act as a bridge between service providers to projects, covering all services a project might need through its lifecycle.

Welcome Voucher Stats

• 2000+ Welcome Vouchers dispersed to projects looking to spur higher adoption rates and benefit from the top-tiered web3 service providers.

• 53 Voucher partners onboarded across 12 Distinct verticals

  • Notable partners include: Alchemy, Akash Network, and Tatum

  • 200+ Projects referred to internal teams

  • Voucher service providers across Audit, Marketing & Community, API, Node Infra, Storage & Hosting, General Utility, Accounting and Payroll, Cross-Chain Toolings, Fiat On ramp- Off ramp, Legal consultation, NFT utility

• $382,000 grants and $750K worth of paid Vouchers distributed ​

Village Wonders

In July, Polygon DAO launched Village Wonders, a first-of-its-kind initiative providing a dedicated expansion strategy, mentorship, and funding opportunities to web3 projects building on Polygon.

During this three-month cohort, 12 selected projects across DeFi, DAO/tooling, NFT/gaming, metaverse, infrastructure, sustainability, and public utility receive:

• Mentorship & office hours with Polygon core teams and industry experts;

• $40,000 investment in return for 1.5% of equity or tokens

• Demo Day with top VCs, Polygon Ventures, and other investors

• Up to $70,000 in vouchers from Tier-1 partners for development, audit, marketing, etc.

• Recognition, ecosystem connections, marketing, and community-building support.

1st Cohort of Village Wonders

Since Wonders launched, over 500 applications have been received. The first cohort of the Village Wonders began on September 1 and included the following projects:

• Artlabs: Providing 3D & AR at scale for Commerce and Metaverse

• Deefy: Renting, lending, and BNPL infrastructure for NFTs Getting instant liquidity & 100% utility

• Hackmakers DAO: Community-driven SaaS platform to accelerate and reward innovation

• Impact Arcade: Virtual gaming arcade featuring casual games that generate real-world impact, such as planting trees, cleaning up ocean plastic, protecting rainforests, and beyond!

• MetaGameHub DAO: Hub for open Metaverse experiences and aggregation by converging Metaverse agnostic infrastructure with complementary dApps and LAND Valuation tools

• Matter Protocol: Matter Protocol is an oracle for social sentiment data, and Matter Trade (MatterTrade.com), the first app that leverages data from Matter Protocol, helps investors find trades that matter.

• Parallell: New travel-style metaverse that gamifies digital twins of the real world and fantasy planets

• RightsfuAlly: Decentralized platform that simplifies the management of film/video intellectual property rights (IPR) and enables their allocations seamlessly on blockchain

• Synphonic: Transforming the musician-to-fan relationship by enabling musicians to engage with and monetize their superfans in new ways

• Threely: Like Google in web2, Threely is the gateway to accessible and fluent web3 made for all

Since this is the first cohort, we are still on an explorative journey. We will continue iterating on the process to bring the highest value to our community to do it better and bigger in the subsequent ones.

WAGMI Jobs

To facilitate the growth of the Polygon ecosystem, Polygon DAO's Jobs initiative focuses on bridging the gap between projects in the Polygon ecosystem and relevant web3 talent. One employment initiative, WAGMI Jobs, is a simple but powerful service that facilitates building a talent network and takes manual work out of connecting people and companies.

From time to time, we find some potential employers that need an additional layer of support in finding the right candidates for roles. In that case, Polygon can facilitate this need through the WAGMI Jobs platform.

Job Stats

• New Jobs Added: 2300+

• Active Jobs: 631

• Projects added: 100+

• Total Projects: 137

• Job applications: 31,000+

WAGMI JobDrops

WAGMI JobDrops is a first of its kind job fair to bring together top web3 talent and projects from the Polygon ecosystem. The First edition was focused on connecting blockchain developers to companies in the Polygon ecosystem. There was participation from 11 hiring partners and 150 blockchain developers, who also received POAPs as a recognition of their participation and shortlisting..

Before the job fair, weeks of interactive sessions with hiring partners offered insight into the hiring perspective, the importance of collaborative work culture, and information about the open roles. The promotional campaign received over 200,000 impressions which was instrumental in generating massive interest among the talent community. This was evident with over 3000 applications received from Blockchain professionals.

Over 250 interviews were conducted, over 60 candidates were shortlisted and more than 10% of candidates received job offers.

Polygon ID

Polygon ID introduces a self-sovereign private identity solution that changes the means of verifying user identities required within DAOs. In DAOs, community members vote on protocol decisions using tokens and signatures from their wallets. Because such data exists on a blockchain, other users can trace previous transnational activity from voter wallets.

Polygon ID solves this issue by verifying private information on-chain using zkProof Request Language, a unique protocol for apps to specify the requested private attributes that the user needs to prove. This way, Identity reputation can be cryptographically verified in a privacy-preserving way directly on-chain to trigger trustless executions/actions.

Through the Polygon ID app, users go through a KYC process to verify their identity. After verifying their identity, they receive so-called claims that allow users to verify their identity privately on-chain.

PolygonID members: 1082

Polygon DAO incorporates Polygon ID-based governance into its processes, leveraging this tool to enable Sybil-resistant governance participation based on claims issued by the DAO to users.

Polygon DAO Initiatives

DeSci

DeSci was introduced to the Polygon community in early August and was described as "the application of blockchain technology to various aspects of scientific research to make it efficient, accessible, transparent, and censorship-resistant."

There are many problems facing the scientific community, but ultimately, the goal of DeSci is to put the power back in the hands of the researchers.

Polygon Village helps DeSci projects along two different paths:

Awareness: We want to engage with and bring together academics & researchers from other DAO's and ultimately help increase awareness of the entire DeSci space

Village Initiatives: DeSci projects will benefit from Village offerings, including funding, service vouchers, marketing, and more.

Polygon Village Blog + Village Times

To increase the amount of information provided to the community, Polygon DAO launched a weekly newsletter, The Village Times, and its first-ever Polygon Village Blog. The DAO ships programs and initiatives at lightning speed and wants to ensure our community stays updated.

The Village Times

The Village Times provides a weekly snapshot of what's happening in the DAO and the Polygon ecosystem and includes Village updates, announcements, partner and grantee spotlights, job opportunities, and more.

Polygon Village Blog

In September 2022, Polygon DAO shipped its first-ever blog series written for the community by the community. Articles cover a range of topics from DAO announcements, Polygon topics such as zkEVM, DeSci initiatives, and more. In the first month since launch, Polygon DAO shipped seven articles. You can check them out here.

Bounty contest

Bounties offer an opportunity to outsource work of the ecosystem to the freelance world. The Village offers a Bounty Board program accepting tasks of all kinds offered as Bounties to contributors from the Polygon Ecosystem.

In the spirit of gradual decentralization and the progressive inclusion of the Polygon Community in the operations normally administered by the Polygon DAO team, the DAO launched a Bounty Contest. The Polygon DAO Bounty Competition determined the recipient of a range of financial/non-financial support from Polygon DAO, with the winner decided by the community.

The Polygon community received claims via Polygon ID attesting to their Polygon DAO membership that was then used as a basis to vote for the project they believed was the best, decentralizing the process that the Polygon DAO Grants Team would normally conduct.

The Bounty Contest ended on September 7, with the first-place winner receiving $10K in funding, vouchers, and more.

Polygon DAO Social Growth

Polygon DAO Twitter

The Polygon DAO Twitter saw massive growth over the last six months. Twitter is a vital tool for engaging with the community, sharing resources, and growing the ecosystem.

From April to September, the Polygon DAO Twitter had over a 300% increase in followers and user engagement.

Visibility through Twitter Spaces

Each week, the DAO hosts Twitter Spaces on education through Expert Talks involving our Voucher Partners, Fireside chats with grantees and partners from initiatives like WAGIMI JobDrop and Wonders Cohorts. Expert Talks and Fireside chats are great ways for Village partners, grantees, and more to gain exposure with the Polygon community.

Below you can find visibility metrics from the last six months:

Closing Thoughts

Much has happened in the six months since Polygon Village launched, and what has been achieved thus far is a testament to Polygon DAO's unparalleled versatility and dedication to the community. We're not only celebrating the DAO and its initiatives but also Polygon's community. So thank you, Polygon community, for being a part of the journey.

What’s Next?

To continue a cohesive support system, the Polygon DAO will move the Village inside of Polygon Technology, where we will go on supporting early-stage projects with grants, vouchers, Wonders, the JobBoard, JobDrops, and re-vamp our Bounty Board. By joining forces with Polygon, we can increase our support and offerings to the ecosystem.

Additionally, the team is iterating on a more transparent, objective, and efficient evaluation framework.

Follow along with the Polygon DAO's continued groundbreaking innovations by joining our Discord, following us on Twitter, subscribing to our newsletter, and checking out the Polygon Village blog.