Pomelo Grants, Innovating for Season 6 and Beyond

Over $3 million raised for public goods so far.

Thank you to everyone who answered our Season 5 survey or shared their feedback through other channels!

Here’s a look back at Season 5, including some highlights from your feedback and how we’re addressing it in Season 6 and beyond.

Season 5, big on heart 💚

Despite the matching pool being significantly reduced from the previous season and a stricter application review process, we held steady on applications submitted and grants approved.

Matching pool: $170K (53% decrease from Season 4)Applications submitted: 186 (0.7% decrease from Season 4)Applications approved: 127 (0.5% decrease from Season 4)Number of donations: 4,537Amount raised: $84,058 (73,897 EOS)Total dollars raised and matched: $254K

To date, the Pomelo community and matching partners have raised over $3 million for public goods!

Results of appeals

We received one appeal, but there wasn’t enough evidence provided to make any changes.

Your feedback and how we’re adjusting

Here’s how we’re responding to your feedback in Season 6.

Attract more funding

One consistent theme in the survey feedback since Season 2 has been for Pomelo Grants to facilitate more funding and opportunities.

Action: Pomelo Grants goes multi-pool 💰💰

The Pomelo team proceeds with the plan to support multiple matching pools with the long-term goal to attract more matching partners and increase opportunities for grant owners.The team delivered this feature in the short time between seasons (while also juggling work on Pomelo Bounties).The result for Season 6 is four matching pools — with the eligibility criteria set by the partners. Allowing matching partners to customize their matching pools makes Pomelo Grants more attractive to new partners.

Increase awareness and collaboration

Another consistent theme in your feedback through the seasons has been for Pomelo Grants to widen its audience and work with other blockchains to increase awareness and participation.

Action: Pomelo Grants goes multi-chain ⛓

The launch of inter-blockchain communication (IBC) makes it possible for Pomelo Grants to add support for tokens of any Antelope-based chain that supports IBC.The Telos community comes onboard as a Season 6 matching partner with a matching pool in TLOS.

Provide clear communication

In Season 5, we saw messages in the Telegram chat that told us grant owners aren’t always sure why their application has a status of “action required.” Action required means that the grant needs some revision to clarify something before it can be approved.

Action: Action required status message ✋

We updated the notification message that is sent to grant owners to provide the matching pool criteria and the specific reason why the grant needs revision.

Be sure to regularly check the email that is associated with your Pomelo grant so you receive these important messages.

More flexible trust bonus

We agree with your comments about Pomelo’s trust bonus options and the need to give everyone the same chance to maximize their bonus, whether or not they have all the social accounts on the list or a passport.

Planned action: Trust bonus changes 💪

We’re considering improvements that will allow you to achieve the maximum boost without completing every option in the list.

We also received comments that revealed a misunderstanding that completing trust bonus options reveal your identity. Please note that when you verify options for your trust bonus like scanning your passport, your personal information is not shared.

Action: Clarify the message ✎

We plan to edit the explanation on the trust bonus tab so it’s clear that no personal information is shared.

Improve some aspects of browsing

While the survey reported solid ratings for browsing of grants, we also heard about a few pain points in the comments, like not being able to filter out grants that weren’t participating in the current season and a poor mobile experience.

Action: Adjust “Approved” filter ✅

We’ve adjusted the Approved filter so it behaves the way you would expect when applications are open, but donations are not.

Planned action: Revisit the mobile experience 📱

We plan to review the mobile flow and make improvements.

Update on the NFT adventure 🎢

Some respondents commented that they would like more explanation about the Pomelo NFT collection. Here’s a brief update with more to come soon.

We’re evolving the NFT adventure to focus on the existing collection, but from Season 5, you can expect:

If you hold a full Starship, you’ll receive a Pomelo Astronaut Token.If you hold a Season 5 Achievement Badge, you’ll receive Season 5 Grant Collectibles.

What else did we learn from the survey results?

Read on for more interesting Season 5 stats and tidbits.

Customer satisfaction score: 70% ⭐

Respondents gave Season 5 a solid customer satisfaction score at 70% — Pomelo Grants’ highest since Season 2.

New Pomelo participants

We had lots of newcomers respond to the feedback survey: 43% of respondents were new. We’re so happy to hear from those joining us for the first time.This means we didn’t receive as much feedback from our returning Pomelo community members, but we look forward to hearing from you about the big developments in Season 6.

Your use of Collections

We were curious to know if your use of the Collections feature changed from Season 4 to Season 5. Over 70% of respondents said they used Collections about the same.

Top 5 collections by donated value in Season 5:

Eden L1 Picks by Daniel Keyes | Total value donated: $2,968.30EOS Respect Community Collection by EOS Support | Total value donated: $1,513.52Personal Picks by Yves La Rose | Total value donated: $649.29Pomelo Pitch Sessions — Season 5 by Martin Breuer | Total value donated: $300.37EDEN by Xavier Fernandez | Total value donated: $195.14

Languages on Pomelo Grants

To gauge interest in more language options for grant descriptions, we asked which other language you would like to see grants translated into. Here are your responses:

No other language: 9Spanish: 6Hindi: 5Russian: 4Ukrainian: 2

We don’t have plans to add additional languages to Pomelo Grants at this time.

Season 5 wins! 🏆

Ratings stayed consistent, with respondents scoring the following features highly:

Ease of applyingEase of donatingBrowsing of grantsClaiming process

(Note: we haven’t forgotten there is a scenario where claiming is not ideal. We plan to address this issue by Season 7 but hope to deliver it much earlier.)

Some kudos:

Smooth experience using Pomelo Grants, even for first timers.Gradual flow of funding goes to projects that build consistently.Not allowing donations from team and company members is the right move.Effective defence of Sybil attacks.The Pomelo team does a really good job and is quick to support and help.

That’s all for now. Let’s get back to Season 6 and check out some grants!