[2603 Grant Proposal] Rootstock Buildathon Track and Sponsorship at Ipê Village 2026

Grants & Incentives
21

Hi @ChronoTrigger
Thanks for sharing the proposal. It is great to know about the IPE Village program, and it was also great that it got recognition from some of the top people in the ecosystem, like Balaji.

I have two quick questions:

  1. Regarding the projects built previously: This has happened already, and I believe we are gearing up for this session. In the last edition, what kind of projects were built on the different partner programs?
  2. Regarding deployment averages: On average, how many projects were deployed on a particular partner’s tech stack in a similar prize pool range, like around $3,000?

It would be cool if you could share that.

22

Thank you @ChronoTrigger for the simple budget breakdown, but now you are suggesting to increase the budget from $6,500 to $9K, and increasing your budget by:

  • Increasing your IpeVillage sponsorship cost from $2,300 to $2,500
  • Increasing your marketing collateral, branded materials, and sponsored mini-events from $600 to $1,000
  • Adding a stipend for you and @Kaf_Anode (who was going to go anyways) and increasing it from one of your comments from $300 each to $500 each.

When you do a budget breakdown, you include actual/estimated costs for every single expense, with individual line items for each item, for example: printing, design, drinks, food, venue extras (wifi, lighting, recording). We don’t see that in what you’ve provided. You’ve only provided a very high level breakdown, and nothing that a delegate can determine actual costs.

Finally, can you explain why the increase of the Sponsorship cost by $200, as we perceived that it was a fixed cost? And finally, can you provide justification to what R&R’s expansion activities that you and @Kaf_Anode will be doing that explains the increase in cost for this stipend?

23

Thank you @DAOstar_gov. Let me address each point.

On the budget increase

To be clear, the increase from $6,500 to $9,000 is not something I’m pushing for. Some delegates raised the possibility of expanding scope, I agreed and engaged with that discussion in good faith. If there’s not enough support, I’m happy to move forward with the original $6,500 proposal. That was the original plan, and it still works perfectly.

On the sponsorship cost

For reference, the event’s deck lists the smallest sponsorship tier at $5,000 and the Tech Partner tier at $12,500. The opportunity to participate at a fraction of that comes from a relationship I’ve built over the years with the local Web3 community and with Jean Hansen through shared work in the community and mutual admiration. At $2,300 we’re already well below market. Offering $2,500 if we had a larger allocation was a gesture of goodwill toward a partner giving us favorable terms, not an exercise in inflating costs.

On the coordinator stipend

For context, @Kaf_Anode is spending roughly $400 on his event ticket, ~$500 on lodging, and ~$1,000 on flights, all out of pocket. Both of us will be investing significant time outside working hours, evenings and weekends, over a 25-day event. We’re both professionally accomplished with established careers. At $300 to $500, this doesn’t come close to compensating the time involved, and no one would coordinate ten similar events in a month to earn $3,000 to $5,000. I’ve kept it deliberately symbolic because the motivation here isn’t compensation, it’s contributing to something we believe in for the Collective. Realistically, $1,000 each would be fair, but it’s simply not viable to include that on top of a $6,500 proposal.

On the line-item breakdown

I’ve organized events and printed branded collateral before, so I have a reasonable sense of costs. But producing exact line items right now, banner dimensions, supplier quotes, per-unit printing costs, would be an exercise in fiction. The event runs for a month and is designed around spontaneity, adaptability, and building as it progresses. Attendee numbers aren’t final, mini-events often come together spontaneously during the village (sponsors ordering pizzas after a presentation, a breakfast meetup that wasn’t on the original schedule, a side event co-sponsored with another project mid-month). Practical steps like requesting brand assets from Rootstock Labs, sourcing suppliers, and confirming venue details are things I’d really rather execute afterwards, starting from the proposal approval, till the week before our presentation and happy hour.

I can break the budget down further if delegates feel strongly about it, but it would be estimates on top of estimates. I think the high-level allocation I’ve provided gives a clear picture of where the funds go, and the actual expenses will be refined closer to when they’re spent.

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24

Indeed I misplaced your tag @DAOplomats, but hey, awesome to have you chiming in.

The prize pool is a strong steering mechanism. Builders follow the incentives, and a dedicated Rootstock track with $3,000+ in prizes gives them a concrete reason to build on the stack. In practice, builders at these events submit projects across multiple tracks, so it’s not about choosing Rootstock instead of Solana, it’s about building for both. Solana track might feel crowded, and builders may see the Rootstock track as a stronger opportunity to stand out and compete for prizes with less noise.

There’s also a natural ideological pull. The network state movement has Bitcoin at its philosophical core. Solana offers speed and developer tooling, but it can’t offer the Bitcoin-native narrative. For builders who care about sound money, BTC settlement, and alignment with decentralized governance principles, Rootstock is the natural fit. Solana can easily be overlooked by more passionate or ideological builders.

And the barrier to entry is lower. Rootstock is EVM-compatible, any builder who’s worked with Solidity or Ethereum can deploy with minimal friction. Solana’s stack requires Rust, and Rust developers are in high demand and scarcity these days, which may work in our favor.

But perhaps the strongest pull is what comes after the buildathon. Serious builders who deliver strong prototypes on Rootstock have a real opportunity to apply to the Collective’s grants program, with the prospect of raising $5,000 to $30,000 to fund the full lifecycle from development and audit through mainnet deployment and marketing. That’s a compelling next step that we can actively communicate to builders during the event, as well as to personally invite the top projects we select, to apply for a grant and build a real product, audited and launched on mainnet.

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25

Thanks for the questions, @krngill.

I’m not sure last year’s numbers would be a meaningful baseline here. The 2025 edition was the first one, and like most new projects, the event is growing significantly year over year in structure, audience, and track definition.

More importantly, it feels like an eternity has passed in AI technology since then. A year ago we were still struggling with hallucination, limited context windows, and manually passing all information through prompts. Today, tasks are handled by 2 to 4 agents working together, we have structured projects with persistent instructions, shared memory, and files, end-to-end prototyping takes half a day, and hallucination is a faint memory. Everything will be different this year. The volume of projects, the quality, the speed.

In 25 days, a single builder can ship dozens of prototypes, select the 3 to 10 best ones, polish and refine them, run security-focused agents to audit the code, and even have AI agents manage social media profiles, create content, and run campaigns. Think first week as a prototyping funnel, second week for polish, refinement, and audit, third week for social, campaigns, traction, and testing market fit.

Ipê Village and our local Web3 community both have a strong focus on agentic AI and AI-assisted coding, so it’ll be exciting to see how these technologies merge in a 25-day competitive buildathon.

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26

Hello @ChronoTrigger , thank you so much for the additional context. We really appreciate this continued dialogue and especially the passion that is evident that both you and Kaf have for the Ipê Village community. However, after reviewing your response, our position remains unchanged. We still cannot support this proposal in its current form for the following reasons:

  1. We totally understand that the nature of a event like this requires flexibility, however, we also believe that it should still have established clear budget guardrails. To keep things simple, you could use targetted budgetary guardrails for the main expense lines. This allows for the on the ground spontaneity, while still giving it a more defined spending cap. Claiming that a line item breakdown is not possible prior to approval suggests a blank check approach to the $3,500 coordination fee. We all have a fiduciary responsibility to approve funds based on defined allocations, not high level estimates that are refined after the money has been committed.

  2. Our concern remains focused on the strategic vacuum of isolated sponsorships. Approving this one off event, especially one where the budget there is discussions to fluctate the budget between $6,500 and $9,000 based on scope discussions, sets a poor precedent for treasury management. We still believe that we must prioritize a unified strategic framework that allows us to benchmark these opportunities against one another before committing further capital.

  3. Regarding the stipend, we hear your point that $300–$500 is a symbolic gesture and doesn’t come close to covering the true value of your time or out of pocket expenses. We certainly don’t want to undervalue the effort you are both putting in. However, from a governance standpoint, we believe we should remain focused on a builders first allocation of funds. Even if the amount is symbolic, we feel it sets a better precedent to direct those resources toward direct builder incentives or technical infrastructure, ensuring every dollar is working toward the highest possible ROI for the ecosystem.

  4. We hear your point regarding the favorable terms secured through your relationship with the Ipê Village team, which we appreciate. However, from a treasury management perspective, we don’t believe we should increase the sponsorship from $2,300 to $2,500 just because it’s a gesture of goodwill. The fact that you and Kaf are dedicating 25 days to providing high quality content, judging, and builder support is already a significant value add for the event organizers. If the residency is a success this year, we can certainly discuss a larger partnership in 2027, but for this pilot, we should stick to the agreed upon costs rather than adding goodwill premiums to the sponsorship fee.

  5. Finally, we remain concerned about the gap between testnet prototypes and Mainnet deployments. To move the needle for Rootstock, we need a model that clearly prioritizes the latter. We would be much more comfortable with a structure that links a portion of the funding to Mainnet ready deliverables, ensuring we are moving beyond shelfware and toward long term activation.

27

Thank you for the thoughtful engagement @DAOstar_gov. It’s a pity we won’t have your support. We hope the discussion below might give you reason to reconsider when it’s time to vote. Either way, we’re addressing each point for the benefit of other members of the community following along.

Budget guardrails

We appreciate the push for clarity, but we want to flag that a breakdown was already provided earlier in the thread:

The sponsorship fee ($2,300) and the two coordination stipends ($300 each) were already defined. The only item without a granular split was the $600 for marketing and community events. Here’s a more detailed view of that line:

  • $150 to $250 for marketing collateral and branded materials (banners, stickers, giveaways, printed guides or presentation decks)
  • $350 to $450 for sponsored mini-events, food and beverages during presentations, and on-site coordination logistics serving approximately 80 to 200 participants each.

These are spending caps, not targets. We don’t believe this qualifies as a blank check approach, and we hope this puts that concern to rest.

Strategic framework

We agree that a unified sponsorship framework would be valuable for the Collective. However, building one requires coordination between delegates and Rootstock Labs, and no concrete timeline exists for that work. Putting every initiative on hold indefinitely while waiting for a framework that may or may not materialize is not practical governance, it’s paralysis. Ipê Village runs April 6 to May 1. The window is fixed. We can pursue both the framework and this opportunity in parallel.

Coordination compensation

The Collective already compensates governance contributors for coordination and community-building work through established programs, including the Recognized Delegates program and local ambassador initiatives. The principle that non-builder roles deserve fair compensation from treasury is well established here. Asking two people to dedicate 25 days of on-site work while directing their symbolic compensation elsewhere creates an inconsistency with how we value contribution across the ecosystem. If anything, the $300-500 range significantly undervalues the commitment relative to comparable compensated roles in the Collective.

Sponsorship amount

Similar to the budget breakdown above, this was also clarified earlier in the discussion. The sponsorship fee is $2,300 as originally proposed, and the total budget being put forward is $6,500, not $9,000. The possibility of a larger scope was discussed early on and only would have moved forward with vocal delegate support. That didn’t happen, so we settled on $6,500.

Testnet vs. Mainnet

This was one of the earliest design decisions we discussed with the Ipê Village team. Expecting mainnet-ready deployments from a short-term incubation program would be unrealistic and, more importantly, irresponsible. Tying prize money to rushed mainnet launches without proper security audits creates exactly the kind of risk that leads to hacks, loss of funds, and lasting damage to Rootstock’s reputation. That’s not a theoretical concern, it happens regularly across the industry.

The program is designed so participants build working testnet prototypes and present them on Demo Day. Those who want to continue toward mainnet can do so on their own timeline, with the Collective’s grants program providing a natural next step from prototype to production. This is in fact a healthier pipeline than forcing premature launches for the sake of a metric.

28

Thank you everyone for the support, positive feedback, and thoughtful discussion over the past 20 days. A lot of ground has been covered, most questions have been asked and addressed, and engagement has naturally wound down.

The proposal is now on-chain. We’re roughly 20 days from the event and need some coordination time ahead of it, so the timing felt right to move forward.

Appreciate all the delegates who engaged with this, whether in support or with constructive pushback. It made the proposal stronger.>

Edit: The first proposal posted did not show up in the app, so two identical proposals have been submitted on-chain. The problem has already been identified by Rootstock. Please vote accordingly on the first proposal, and vote against or just ignore the second one.

29

Thank you so much, @ChronoTrigger , while we clearly have different perspectives on the weight of coordination costs versus builder incentives , we really appreciate the rigor of this debate. It’s healthy discourse for a balanced conversation, and we recognize that we “agree to disagree”, which is totally fine.

To wrap up our position for the community:

  • We agree that security is paramount. However, our focus still remains on the conversion funnel. A 25 day residency is a significant investment; if the natural next step is simply more grants, we remain concerned about the long-term ROI of this specific pipeline compared to other high-intent builder programs.

  • We don’t advocate for governance paralysis, not at all! We simply believe that with these recent multiple event grants requests, demonstrates the need for having an understanding from Labs on their priority mandate, which allows the DAO to determine our own strategic goals. If we don’t know where or what the goal posts are, then we continue to vote on grants based reactively vs. voting with alignment of mandate + goals.

  • We also acknowledge the precedent for contributor compensation. Our view is simply one of prioritization, in this current lean bear market, we believe every possible dollar should be skewed toward the developers building the actual protocol utility. That is what is going to provide long-term growth (and longivity) for the protocol.

Finally and regardless, we do wish you and Kaf a very productive 25 days at Ipê Village. Regardless of the vote outcome, we look forward to seeing the Demo Day results and hope to be proven wrong regarding the retention of these projects.

We will be voting Against based on the strategic and financial points raised throughout this thread.

DAOstar Delegate Thread (rev)
30

Hey @ChronoTrigger — I voted FOR this proposal. The $6,500 total cost ($2,300 for sponsorship / $600 for marketing / $300 symbolic compensation to you and @Kaf_Anode) seems reasonable for the value Rootstock stands to gain.

My position hasn’t changed from my original comment (copied below for reference).

While the DAO doesn’t have a formal events strategy yet, this event is less than a month away and we’ll have representation and execution from two strong delegates — so I think the timing justifies moving forward. If it goes well, it can also help inform how we approach events going forward.

As for the TabConf proposal I shared — that’s still 6+ months out, so there’s no urgency to decide on sponsorship there just yet.

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