Fair play prevails: minimal adjustments to matching pool distribution this season.
Over the past few seasons of Pomelo — and Season 5 is no exception — we’ve seen a decrease in attempts to cheat the system. With a major reduction in Sybil attacks and no evidence of quid pro quo, this season’s analysis was more straightforward than ever before.
The Pomelo team’s analysis resulted in $8,308 being redistributed to the Season 5 matching pool. This is a massive drop from $99,482 in Season 4 and $155,112 in Season 3.
Sure, the stakes were not as high with a more modest matching pool, but we’re still seeing solid support for public goods on EOS, with over $250K going to fair-playing projects in Season 5.
Now, that doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to report.
What do we look for during analysis?
Pomelo uses the quadratic funding formula to allocate the matching pool of funds to eligible grants. This method requires accurate tracking of how many donors contribute to each project, including how many of those donor accounts are real unique humans and not multiple fake accounts created to game the system.
So after donations close, the Pomelo team audits the season results to identify any intent to exploit the system. This investigation includes following up on reports from community members.
The team focuses on ensuring grants follow the Pomelo Terms and Conditions, and where there is evidence of violations, makes adjustments. During a Pomelo season, rule violations primarily fall under offers and exchanges (quid pro quo), Sybil attacks, and collusion.
But that’s not all we look for. For more explanation of the rules with examples, see Pomelo Rules.
What did we find this season?
This season, we saw a significant reduction in Sybil patterns, and no evidence of quid pro quo.
We investigated reports from community members submitted via the Pomelo UI, but they contained no definitive proof and didn’t result in any action being taken. None of the reported grants were flagged by the team’s analysis.
We didn’t receive any replies to our email offer of a reward for evidence of rule breaking. Our theory is that the offer itself helps to deter such behaviour, but we’ll watch going forward to see if this is true.
Grant disqualified for violating Terms and Conditions
Pomelo’s Terms and Conditions (Section 12) apply to the Pomelo Crowdfunding on EOS Telegram channel, where participants must follow the conditions of use and not post threatening or abusive comments, or cause annoyance or upset any other person.
The grant owner of A trader’s favourite tool — The Overwatcher is disqualified from Season 5 for repeatedly violating these terms, with three separate attacks of bullying community members in the Telegram chat. The grant owner can return for Season 6.
Reduced matching allocations due to Sybil patterns
The following 3 grants had donations with patterns of Sybil removed and their matching allocations reduced.
1. BuliDAO, a friendly DAO for new users (-99%)
We found multiple different patterns of Sybil attack, resulting in this grant’s matching allocation being reduced almost completely.
2. Totoro — Decentralized Open Source Defi Product (-56%)
3. Metahub — EOS Web Plugin Wallet (-35%)
Both of the above grants had donations with Sybil patterns, including donations from accounts that were identified as Sybil in previous seasons.
Adjustments to matching distributions
When we remove the donations that are violating the rules, it broadly affects the matching allocations as fraudulent donations are often made to a variety of grants to make them seem legitimate. Several more grants had their matching allocations reduced by moderate to minor amounts, and this does not necessarily mean that the grants are malicious.
Of course, some grants had their matching allocations increase due to the disqualification and removal of donations, as this releases more of the matching pool to be redistributed.
To see the changes that occurred due to the adjustments and how this affects your grant, view the Pomelo Season 5 — Public Summary.
Reduced matching allocations due to team member donations
This was a new rule being enforced in Season 5: if you are a team member, do not donate to your team’s grant. For more on this update to the self-donation rules, see Pomelo Donation Rules: Updates You Need to Know.
Any donations made by team members won’t count towards the matching allocation. Consider yourself a team member if you’re actively working on the grant (if so, you should be listed on the grant), or working at the same company that’s working on the grant.
The Hot Sauce Amplified! grant had donations from team members removed from the matching allocation, reducing it by 3%.
Eostat — future of any Data! “Make the Truth True”
There was much debate (and some personal attacks) in the Pomelo Telegram chat between community members and the newcomer grant owner of Eostat — future of any Data! Community members submitted evidence from both sides, reporting the grant owner for breaking the rules (quid pro quo) and providing support for the grant’s legitimacy.
The Pomelo team performed deep analysis on this grant, including the project’s history, social accounts, donations, and the community reports. We found a history of real users and proof of a strong community. We found no evidence that this grant violated Pomelo’s rules.
In fact, we encourage grant owners to bring their communities to Pomelo Grants, to introduce them to EOS and onboard them, so they can donate. The ideal outcome is that donors from these communities learn about other Pomelo projects and donate where they see value, but that is not required.
Let’s keep the Pomelo Telegram channel a welcoming environment for all participants, old and new. Hostile behaviour will get you banned.
Appeals
If you would like to appeal a decision, send a description of the action taken and any evidence you have that supports your appeal to support@pomelo.io by May 1, 2023.
Claiming
After the appeal period, qualified grant owners will receive an email with instructions on how to complete Know Your Client (KYC) screening, so you can claim your matching funds.
If you’ve previously done KYC for Pomelo, you won’t have to do it again.
Top 10 grants by matching allocation
Defibox cross-chain, a bridge for IBC
Number of contributors: 92Total raised, USD: $3,810Matching allocation, USD: $15,983Eostat — future of any Data! “Make the Truth True”
Number of contributors: 107Total raised, USD: $3,294Matching allocation, USD: $15,295Social Recovery in the Recover+ Portal
Number of contributors: 61Total raised, USD: $3,493Matching allocation, USD: $12,394Number of contributors: 46Total raised, USD: $4,459Matching allocation, USD: $10,235DAOBOX, an open source governance tool
Number of contributors: 53Total raised, USD: $3,327Matching allocation, USD: $9,729EOS Support — The EOS Network’s Concierge!
Number of contributors: 93Total raised, USD: $1,769Matching allocation, USD: $6,362Number of contributors: 103Total raised, USD: $2,718Matching allocation, USD: $5,817Number of contributors: 41Total raised, USD: $2,360Matching allocation, USD: $5,589Metahub — EOS Web Plugin Wallet
Number of contributors: 36Total raised, USD: $2,321Matching allocation, USD: $4,907The official website for EdenCN
Number of contributors: 57Total raised, USD: $2,318Matching allocation, USD: $4,840Matching pool distribution by category and region
We saw some changes this season in how the matching pool was distributed among the categories. Partly because in Season 5, we added two new categories: Inter-blockchain communication (IBC) and GameFi. IBC came away with 10.4% of the matching pool, whereas GameFi’s share was less than 1% (not shown on our chart below). We’ll be interested to see how these new categories fare in Season 6.
Ecosystem Growth and Infrastructure continued to lead with 20% and 22.8% respectively. DeFi dropped from 20.5% in Season 4 to 5.2% this season.
Figure 1. Matching pool distribution by category
When we look at matching pool distribution by region, East Asia took the lion’s share of the matching pool at 47.4%, a 15% increase from last season. Europe increased to 22.6% (from 16.6% last season), moving ahead of North America at 20.1%.
Figure 2. Matching pool distribution by region
Season 5 analysis data
Pomelo Season 5 — Public SummaryDonation GraphCompare to Season 4 report here:
Pomelo Season 4 Analysis: Matching Pool Distribution