FIL RetroPGF Feedback

[ErickWa]

As a first time badge holder, I found the onboarding process quite confusing, particularly given the hundreds of texts flying back-and-forth in Telegram - signal to noise ratio there was regrettably low for me.

Fortunately, once I plugged in my wallet, I was able to add projects to my ballot and place my votes quite easily. Reviewing the projects took quite a bit of time, but the voting process itself was mercifully brief once I added the projects I was interested in supporting onto my ballot. It does seem like there is room for improvement when it comes to conflicts of interest - there were 2 projects listed in FIL-RetroPGF that I was conflicted on, and even though I notified the committee through the appropriate TG Channel, there was nothing stopping me from casting votes in favor of these projects, (even though I did not). I have heard that other communities have experienced problems with this as well.

Might also be nice to consider some sort of "tiered" approach, as I found the number of projects to be quite overwhelming - it feels to me like our votes (and the resulting rewards) are being "peanut-buttered" across a large number of projects, rather than giving a meaningful amount of funding to those projects which do the best job of "moving the needle" for the community. I'm in favor of fewer, but more impactful projects. Limiting the number of votes per project also militates against this approach, which I think is unfortunate and leaves us with a lot of partially-funded projects, rather than a small number of well-funded ones.

Just my $0.02. I know there are many others with strongly held (and sometimes diametrically opposed) opinions. I hope the committee finds my feedback helpful.