The problem DataCommons solves

The Problem It Solves

Open, community-driven datasets — such as scientific repositories, civic data, or public research information — are vital for innovation, yet they remain chronically underfunded.
While everyone benefits from accessible, reliable data, the individuals and teams maintaining this infrastructure often rely on short-term grants or donations that quickly dry up.

At the same time, DeFi protocols like Aave and Octant generate vast amounts of yield every day, most of which sits idle or gets reinvested privately.
There’s no seamless mechanism to direct on-chain yield toward the maintenance of digital public goods in a transparent, automated, and verifiable way.

DataCommons solves this by creating a trust-minimized funding layer for open data ecosystems — allowing communities to collectively decide who should receive yield-backed support, and automatically route funds to them over time.

What DataCommons Does

DataCommons is a decentralized coordination and funding protocol that sustains open data contributors using programmable yield.

It enables communities to:

Apply for recognition and long-term funding through an on-chain DAO process.

Allow token holders or community members to vote for deserving data curators or public-good projects.

Automatically direct a share of on-chain yield generated from Octant or Aave vaults to selected payees.

Once selected, recipients continue receiving their proportionate share of funds automatically, based on transparent smart contract logic — no intermediaries, no manual fund transfers.

Core Components & Features
1. DAO-Based Selection Process

The DAO governs the allocation of yield by selecting the set of eligible payees.

Application Phase:
Applicants register by submitting their profile and proposal metadata stored on IPFS.

Voting Phase:
DAO members review applications and vote, assigning percentage shares (in basis points) to candidates they believe contribute the most.

Finalization Phase:
After voting ends, the system automatically determines top applicants, normalizes their funding shares, and records them permanently as payees.

This ensures that community consensus drives funding decisions.

2. Continuous Yield Allocation

Funds deposited into the protocol — such as ETH or stablecoins — are deployed through Aave V3 or routed via Octant V2’s yield mechanisms.
The yield generated over time is automatically sent to a Donation Pool contract.

Each selected payee can claim their share at any time, based on their DAO-determined allocation percentage.
This makes the process transparent, automated, and tamper-proof.

3. On-Chain Transparency

All stages of the process are public and auditable:

Applications and proposal metadata are stored on IPFS, ensuring immutability.

All votes are recorded on-chain.

The final payee list and yield shares are permanently visible to the community.

This ensures that both contributors and funders can verify every step of the process — from selection to payout.

4. Weighted, Aggregated Voting

Voters can distribute their vote weight across multiple applicants.

Each vote includes a list of applicant indices and corresponding share weights.

The contract aggregates all votes and computes the total normalized funding distribution (out of 10,000 basis points).

This allows nuanced decision-making — voters aren’t limited to picking one winner, but can support multiple contributors proportionally.

5. Decentralized Payouts

The Donation Pool contract acts as the on-chain treasury for distributing yield.

It holds yield-bearing tokens or assets from protocols like Octant or Aave.

Whenever yield is realized, it becomes claimable by the verified payees.

Each payee can withdraw their proportional share of available funds using a simple claim function.

This ensures fairness and simplicity — every participant receives exactly what they earned according to the DAO’s consensus.

Vision

DataCommons envisions a world where open data is self-sustaining, powered by the collective yield of decentralized finance.

Challenges we ran into

1. Understanding the entire octant v2 structure and contracts proved to be a challenge as well as integrating them in our contracts
2. Configuring the idea and the voting mechanism required some logical thinking and effort