Hello DIMO community! Before we jump into our new DIMO Improvement Proposals (DIPs), we want to remind you that you as a DIMO tokenholder can vote on any proposal that materially impacts the DIMO ecosystem.

Better yet, any person or group with a sufficient number of tokens between them can submit a proposal for voting. For now, sit back and read a quick summary of the changes that are up for vote, starting today!

The Creation of the Ignite Grants Team

Ecosystem grant teams are a common practice amongst well known protocols, and DIP-8 proposes the creation of the Ignite Team. The Ignite Team would be a DIMO ecosystem grants team allocated $1,000,000 in stable tokens and 10M $DIMO to fund world class initiatives and builders. 

While the DIMO core team and others are continuously pushing the protocol forward, grant funding empowers the entire community to contribute in specific ways, both big and small, to expand the DIMO ecosystem. The Purpose & Mission section of DIP-8 summarizes the main motivation behind the program well. The Ignite team aims to:

1. Accelerate development and innovation: Key infrastructure, public goods, and applications accelerate DIMO’s development and adoption. Ignite will tap into the creativity of the community by soliciting innovative ideas and proposals from the public.
2. Enhance project security: Bounty programs, specifically those targeting security vulnerabilities, incentivize ethical hackers and security researchers to identify and report potential weaknesses in the DIMO protocol’s code. This can help improve the project's security and protect it against potential threats.
3. Grow the contributor base: Rewards for specific tasks will attract skilled developers, designers, researchers, content creators, and other professionals, and will foster more general community engagement, participation, and excitement.

The proposal dreams up categories and examples that a grants program could bring to life such as account abstraction, DBC Decoding, Dash Cam hardware, security audits, Web3 Turo, and more. What would you build?!

So how is the team set up?

The proposed Ignite team is made up 7 individuals (to start) with expertise in web3 ecosystem development, connected vehicle technology, and enthusiasm for the DIMO community.

This team is responsible for operationalizing a host of processes ranging from hosting grants and bounties, sourcing grantees, managing and compensating the grantee pipeline, transparent reporting back to the DIMO community, and much more.

For specific details on each team member, their operating structure, and how to apply for a grant, make sure to check out DIP-8 before the vote!

Marketing Grant #1

The next proposal, DIP-9, requests the allocation of funds from the DIMO Treasury to Digital Infrastructure Inc for growth and marketing purposes. These funds would be unlocked in tranches under specific milestone or initiative based terms.

As DIMO increases in popularity, it’s time to put the pedal to the metal. This includes the goal of pushing towards mainstream non-crypto adoption and reaching consumers through conventional channels. Broadening DIMO’s reach means more cars will connect and more developers will build on DIMO, accelerating the flywheel. The DIP calls out the core use of the funds as follows:

1. Incentivize user adoption: Create initiatives that educate and encourage new users to join the DIMO network, and try its services. This can drive sustained user adoption and increase overall engagement with the project.

2. Increase brand awareness: Work to raise awareness of DIMO, ensuring that the brand is consistently and effectively communicated across different platforms in a trusted manner. This includes facilitating education and high-quality conversation amongst our community.

3. Develop and manage partnerships: Establish and maintain strategic partnerships with influencers, affiliates, and other relevant organizations to help expand DIMO’s reach, amplify its messaging, and build its credibility.

4. Expand DIMO’s footprint into new regional markets: Expansion presents several unique challenges ranging from prioritization, marketing, localization, demand for specific services, legal compliance, etc, that we will seek to push forward.

So why Digital Infrastructure, Inc? This team is uniquely qualified given their provent rack record of growing the DIMO protocol to date (over 14,000 cars connected on explorer.dimo.zone), their extensive growth and marketing experience, and domain knowledge across connected vehicles and web3. This team has also proven to act in good faith of the DIMO community.

DIP-9 unlocks ecosystem funds for Digital Infrastructure, Inc to double down on methods that have worked before, and new high value initiatives that require up-front cost. Think things like more user token-incentive programs, referral & ambassador programs, influencer marketing, conferences, advertising, and more! Some of these initiatives represent the opportunity to get in front of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of potential new users.

As always you can check out DIP-9 for more comprehensive details.

Upgrades to $DIMO on Ethereum Mainnet

Lastly, a smaller but important change! There’s a proposed amendment to DIP-1 that gives $DIMO on Ethereum Mainnet comparable voting functionality to the $DIMO token on Polygon. Specifically, it gives holders the ability to delegate tokens to another wallet of theirs or to someone else who can vote on their behalf.

As more $DIMO is bridged back to Ethereum Mainnet, it’s an opportunity for holders on both chains to participate in governance!

Your participation is encouraged

We’re scheduling a Discord AMA next week on Thursday (6/8) at 1pm EST, opening the vote on Friday, and would encourage all token holders to participate. As a reminder, you will need to delegate your tokens to yourself, or to some of our trusted community members. More detail to come soon in Discord, see you there!