The problem TezQF solves

There has been a rapid growth in the number of projects which are showing up on the Tezos ecosystem. Until now, most of the grants and support has been provided to the projects by Tezos Foundation, and other equivalent organizations. We believe that with Defi, Gaming, and various other spaces heating up on Tezos, it is about time we have a more robust grants platform which makes it easier for the funds to reach the right projects.

Enter, TezQF. A grants platform which is a close cousin of Gitcoin on Ethereum. With TezQF, we aim to optimize the whole process of matching fund distribution by:

• Having a managerial DAO at the center which governs the funding rounds and ensures that the projects listed on the platform maintain the integrity of the same. All decisions are taken on the basis of token voting.
• Instead of following a linear curve for voting and funds distribution, we integrate the concepts of quadratic voting and quadratic funding.
• In quadratic voting, instead of considering only the number of tokens in support for a decision, the number of voters is also factored in. In a similar way, for quadratic funding, besides the amount of contribution received by a project, the number of contributors is also factored in when calculating the match (this is then referred to as the CLR match).
• TezQF ensures that every project receives optimal funding based on its value and community reach.

Challenges we ran into

We faced various challenges both in the project planning, and the actual implementation.

• It was difficult to plan out how the governance token would function. We made a number of changes on the way; initially starting off with a crowd sale structure to ending up deciding on keeping the governance tokens amongst the original developers and then distribute the voting rights as the team grows.
• Our platform being pretty robust, we faced a number of gas optimization issues at various points. Carthagenet being quite gas-intensive, even using optimized design patterns for the smart contracts did not seem to work. Thankfully, Delphinet came around at just the right time. After migrating onto Delphi, our gas usage was cut to 1/5th of that on Carthage.