This proposal introduces the development of a Grant Progress Tracking Platform for SandboxDAO-funded projects, offering a transparent and user-friendly way for the community to monitor grant performance. The tool will include milestone tracking, real-time updates, and automated alerts for delays or scope changes. The platform will centralize data on all grants—past and present—at a total estimated cost of $12,000.
Motivation
Currently, tracking SandboxDAO’s grant activity is decentralized and fragmented across different forums and communication channels. This lack of cohesion reduces visibility, slows down accountability, and hinders community oversight.
Rationale
To address these issues, we propose building a custom Grant Progress Tracking Platform with the following key features:
Milestone Tracking: Each grant includes a page with major milestones, visual progress bars, and status indicators.
Real-time Updates: Projects can submit live updates as they reach milestones or face delays.
Automated Alerts: Notifications sent via email and in-app when deadlines are missed or scopes change.
Interactive Visuals: Dashboards and graphs help visualize project health and funding usage.
Risk Detection: Machine learning helps detect early signals of delay, inaction, or deviation from grant terms.
The platform will be tailored to SandboxDAO’s structure and needs.
Grant Overview
Browse all current and completed grants
View progress percentages, risk scores, and last activity updates
Filter by type, status, or team
Risk Assessments
Color-coded risk levels
Automated analysis based on update frequency, milestone delays, and funding status
Treasury Dashboard
Track all outgoing funds, disbursement schedules, and project expenses
View overall budget impact and upcoming obligations
Project Pages
Display deliverables, milestones, documentation, and community discussions
Funding history and comments included
Admin & Delegate Tools
Approve or flag milestones
Pause or escalate grants with transparency
Set notification rules and review settings
Scope & Budget
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is scoped at $1,000/month over 12 months, totaling $12,000, and includes:
Front-end dashboard
Back-end automation and risk engine
Governance and admin tools
Public community access
Optional integration with SandboxDAO’s current platforms
Benefits to the SandboxDAO Community
Transparency: Clear, unified visibility into how funds are being used
Accountability: Encourages timely updates and milestone achievement
Community Engagement: Empowers DAO participants to evaluate, contribute, and respond
Risk Management: Proactive tools to prevent delays and misuse
This platform will serve as a foundation for long-term accountability, operational insight, and stronger collaboration across SandboxDAO’s grant ecosystem.
I haven’t taken a lot of time to explore snapshot.box - where you can see who voted on various SIPs (not just for TSB, but other DAOs too). I wonder if these are existing features we can just turn on?
Great question—Snapshot.box is useful for voting transparency and delegate behavior across DAOs, but no, it doesn’t offer milestone tracking, project health visuals, or automated risk alerts, and especially not on a per-grant basis.
It would be great if they did. Then it would be easy to compare voting trends to success rates. Though since all that info is on-chain, it could be easy to include voting metrics into a dashboard with outcomes. Then people can see which VP delegates are backing successful projects, which SIP proposers are following through and earning community trust.
You are right, I love that direction. Tracking not just delivery but also correlating voting behavior with grant outcomes would give the DAO a whole new layer of insight. It aligns with the platform’s longer-term vision: combining grant execution data with voting and delegate metrics to help identify which contributors and proposers consistently deliver value.
Since most of that info is on-chain, it’s definitely feasible to include it as part of an extended dashboard module whether in v1 or a future phase.
The Proposal is well-structured, comprehensive, and addresses a clear need for improved transparency and accountability in grant tracking.
Thank you for preparing this proposal, I only have 1 question.
The proposal mentions “optional integration with SandboxDAO’s current platforms.” Could you specify which platforms (e.g., Discord, sandboxDao.com ) are targeted for integration?
Thank you for your kind words and thoughtful question!
For the optional integration, our initial targets are:
SandboxDAO.com – A seamless link or embedded dashboard on SandboxDAO.com that shows live grant statuses and leads to the full platform for deeper insights.
Discord – Automated updates (like milestone completions or delay alerts) could be shared in a dedicated channel or via role-based notifications to keep the community informed.
These integrations will be modular, meaning the MVP will function as a standalone platform, but can connect to these tools if SandboxDAO chooses to activate them. Let me know if you’d like further clarification, and thanks again for your support!
— BuildUnion
1. How will you differentiate which treasury transactions go to what SIPs?
We’ll use a combination of manual tagging and automated heuristics. Initially, when grants are approved, we’ll create entries in the platform that include metadata like SIP number, team wallet addresses, and disbursement schedules. These will be matched with treasury transactions using:
Wallet address matching
Timeframe alignment with approved grants
SIP or project tags in transaction memos (if available)
Manual validation as needed for edge cases
Over time, we can improve accuracy by incorporating structured data from the DAO’s grant approval process, or working with the DAO to standardize tagging conventions. 2. Where will you obtain your SIP updates from?
For now, updates will come from project teams themselves, submitted through the platform as part of milestone reporting. These updates will be timestamped and visible to the public, with optional cross-posting to Discord.
We are also building an admin panel for delegates or DAO contributors to flag milestones as complete, overdue, or off-track, helping maintain accountability. If SIPs are discussed or updated in specific forums (like Discourse or Discord), we can explore linking or integrating with those sources in future iterations.
Happy to expand on any part of this and really appreciate your support!
Currently, the DAO Admin Team has challenges reaching and/or obtaining updates from some grant authors. How will you overcome this barrier?
Happy to expand on any part of this and really appreciate your support!
I really like your idea. It makes sense. My biggest question is how you will accomplish the updates. I think you’ll find obtaining updates to be a difficult task.
Thank you, there are really good questions and you’re right: there have been challenges reaching and/or obtaining updates from some grantees. The approach includes multiple layers of reminders and reduced manual dependency burden of chasing teams for status and direct outreach. Most importantly, it makes surfaces issues earlier instead of being buried in the noise
How we handle it:
We use data signals to detect inactivity or risk:
Automated signals:
Forum and social media activity analysis (e.g., detecting and analysing new updates or lack thereof )
GitHub commits activities or repo silence
Fund movements without corresponding milestone updates
These signals feed into automated heuristics that flag when a project is behind schedule or off-track. Risky or non-compliant projects are automatically surfaced on the dashboard with visual indicators. This shifts the DAO from reactive oversight to proactive visibility making delivery issues easy to spot and act on quickly, clearly and early on.
2. Frictionless Update Flow
Grantees will receive automated reminders before milestones are due.
Biweekly updates will be encouraged and potentially mandated.
Integrated with tools teams already use, like Discord or Twitter, so updates fit into their existing workflow.
A monthly activity summary combines automated analysis for human review to highlight red flags or gaps
3. Automating Accountability Tools for Delegates/Admins
Community can quickly spot stalled or unresponsive projects
Milestone status and update history are publicly visible, creating social pressure.
Over time, this helps set a cultural norm where updating is expected, not optional
Even non-compliance becomes data. The absence of updates triggers risk flags and influences future funding decisions. This means voters will favor proposals that use the platform to demonstrate accountability, driving a culture of reporting and transparency. The goal is to create a structure where accountability is easier, earlier, and more consistent across projects. Happy to dig deeper on any of these strategies, and again, thank you for raising this important.
When you explain like that, I think that makes sense. Creating a culture of disclosure and accountability through automated tools seems like a good move. I think it would help if you add to the capability of the tool to give more nuanced reporting .Seems like most of your description right now is manual, and with 30 SIPs in implementation, most are not reporting updates.
You’ll get red flags almost immediately on most of them.
Sounds like you’re on the right track though for the tool using no data as data, so if it were able to scrape the forum posts of sips and implementation, then that would be the biggest red flag that this tool could contribute
Appreciate this insight. Yes, the platform will include scraping of SIP-related forum threads, including implementation posts, to assess activity patterns (e.g., post frequency, milestone reporting, etc.). This will allow us to map what should be there versus what’s delayed, incomplete, mishandled, or entirely missing. We’ll continue refining this, such as by tying each SIP’s expected next step to visible updates. So we can continuously surface gaps early and help build more accountability.
As for more nuanced reporting, is there anything specific you’d like to see? would love to incorporate those ideas in the architecture.
As for more nuanced reporting, is there anything specific you’d like to see?
I think you answered it by tying each SIP’s expected next step to visible updates. Knowing when a milestone is off track and that we should be expecting an update is helpful. Then linking the specific transaction made from the DAO Treasury and then the tool identifying that + the amount helps keep us updated. I’d have to go search the wallet on ethscan or polyscan and it’s difficult to link that to a SIP without opening multiple windows side-by-side.
The biggest thing would be to alert the community, rather than making the community remember to look for the updates. We need something that engages us. As more and more SIPs come out, it’ll be more difficult to keep track of them.
submitted through the platform as part of milestone reporting
“Submitted to your platform” as in a separate website that isn’t Discourse? I recommend against that. Our reporting mechanism is here on discourse. Putting it on another platform separates the community from the accountability.
Thanks for flagging that; it was a bit of miswording on my part. What I meant to explain was how updates would be formatted and displayed in the dashboard. The platform will scrape, organize, and visualize the data from SIPs so that voters, admins, and the whole community can easily track progress, spending, deadlines, and risks without needing to dig through multiple threads.