Pomelo Donation Rules: Updates You Need to Know

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Thank you for taking the time to respond to our survey on Pomelo’s donation rules. We have reviewed the results and adopted one new rule. The clarifications we made on existing self-donation rules will also stand.

Donation Rules: Updates

At the start of Season 4, we proposed some amendments to the donation rules. These amendments were not enforced in Season 4 to give time for awareness and community feedback.

Fast forward to today, and we’re ready to adopt an update for Season 5 and beyond. Below is a quick summary of the new rule for team members and the clarifications.

New rule:

🚨 If you are a team member, do not donate to your team’s grant. Pomelo’s user interface (UI) will prevent donations from team members listed on the grant. If team members are not listed, the rule still applies, as grants will be monitored for evidence of donations from unlisted team members.

Clarifications of existing rules:

🚨 If you create a grant with an account that represents your organization, you cannot donate to it with an account that represents you personally. Or vice versa.

🚨 Eden members cannot donate their Eden winnings to their own grants.

For all of the above, donations that are made by a team member not listed on the grant will not be matched.

Rules Survey Feedback and Season 4 Activity

Keep reading for more details on these updates. Rules are listed below as we phrased them in the original Pomelo Rules article, with the supporting information following.

For each item, you’ll find a summary of the survey feedback, explanation of the final decision moving forward, and what we found in Season 4, including what the impact would have been on specific grants as examples.

New rule for team member donations

👉 Can a team member (i.e., an active participant that is helping to build the project) donate to their team’s grant?

Summary of feedback:

We also asked:

How could we monitor donations for this rule?

Summary of feedback:

From the Pomelo team:

We acknowledge that monitoring won’t find all instances of team member donations where team members aren’t disclosed or listed on the grant. But having clear rules and consequences for violations helps us discourage this behaviour and prevent it from becoming widespread.

In Season 4, we saw increased reporting from the community and even analysis on grants with suspicious donation patterns, so having this effort expand to violations of this rule will build on that partnership. Armed with clear criteria and rules, the community can step further into this role.

👀 Watch for reporting incentives for community members coming in Season 5. We’ll discuss this more in our upcoming Season 4 retrospective article.

📌 Final decision: Team members listed on a grant application will be prevented from donating to their own grant by Pomelo’s user interface (UI).

If there is evidence of team members who are not listed on the grant having donated to that grant, those donations will not be matched.

If there are signs of intentional disregard for the self-donation rule, like heavy collusion among team members, we may disqualify the grant.

Possible impacts from Season 4:

This is not an exhaustive list of team member donation violations, but rather some examples to show the impact going forward.

1. If we didn’t match donations from team members listed on the grant, how would the matching allocation change for the following grants?

Reward distribution smart contract for proxy

Hot Sauce Amplified!

2. If we didn’t match donations from team members not listed on the grant (but known to be associated), how would the matching allocation change?

This would include cases where we have evidence that people are associated with a grant but they are not listed as team members.

Reward distribution smart contract for proxy

Hot Sauce Amplified!

3. What if we had disqualified the grant, Reward distribution smart contract for proxy?

Clarifications of existing rules

👉 Can I create a grant with an account that represents my organization, and donate to it with another account that represents me personally?

Summary of feedback: The majority of respondents agreed that this should not be allowed, with a few saying they see a self-donation as an investment in the project. Some respondents commented that it would be difficult to identify all violations.

📌 Final decision: Until Pomelo adds support for creating an organization account (currently we only have individual accounts), we recognize that participants will create individual accounts that represent their organization and may also have an individual account that represents them as an individual.

Individuals connected to an organization grant should be listed as team members on the grant application and will be prevented by the UI from donating to their own grant. If team members are not listed and we have evidence they are team members, the donation will not be matched.

Blatant disregard for the self-donation rule may result in disqualification (see decision for team member donation rule).

Possible impacts from Season 4:

The grant owner of Hot Sauce Amplified! donated 16 EOS to their grant using their personal account. If this donation wasn’t matched, the matching allocation would have been reduced to 11,166 USD (–274).

Sidebar: What is Eden?

Some survey respondents weren’t sure what Eden is.

Eden is a community working towards developing a truly democratic election process, in which election results and leader promises are stored on the blockchain. Elected delegates allocate funds from a treasury to causes and projects they care about.

Many of our Pomelo donors are Eden members.

👉 Can an Eden member run in Eden on a platform to take the Eden winnings to donate to their own grant?

Summary of feedback:

The majority of respondents agreed because this counts as a self-donation. Some thought the Eden winnings could be donated but shouldn’t be matched. A few responses thought that an Eden member should be able to do what they want with their funds.

📌 Final decision: This is against the rules. We can’t prevent Eden members from running on whatever platform they choose in Eden, but Pomelo will not match donations made by team members of a Pomelo grant.

This would apply to any groups that collaborate to raise and distribute funds on Pomelo, not just Eden.

👉 Can Eden members donate to other Eden members’ grants?

Summary of feedback:

The majority of respondents agreed as Pomelo promotes the community supporting each other and the spirit of collaboration. A few responses suggested there is a risk for quid pro quo and collusion, and that donors should use their own tokens.

No changes or additional information to report on this one.

Thank you for helping to shape the rules on Pomelo!

Pomelo 捐助规则：重要更新

Pomelo 捐助规则的重要变化，从第5季开始。