The other day, someone that knew about my quest to find and apply to Web3 grants let me know about The Sherwood Project.
I'm going to share about why I was excited about this, and then ultimately decided that I was not going to pursue this particular grant at this time.
A part of this is, well, everything about this project reads like a scam.
The introductory text is very convoluted, and the Visionary Grant description is not much better. Earning a $50-60k commission doesn't sound like a bad deal on the surface, but there is a lot of work involved in this, and the community building is mostly for the Sherwood Project. On the plus-side, they claim that there is additional funding for the engineering for actually implementing the project. On the con-side, there are no actual mentions of amounts dedicated for additional resources.
The creators had a podcast episode, but I only made it about 1/4 of the way through it.
One of the factors of judging whether something is a scam or not is figuring out who are is in leadership. In this case it is Luke Dale and Matt Silverman. They both seem to have a lot of experience with film, but this is their first major NFT project (or at least that is how it seems to be through their LinkedIn Bio.)
The Treehouse Grants seems like a better deal because it is a request for funding for your own project. However, that definitely struck me as being scammy due to needing to be an NFTree NFT holder to be eligible for the program. However, there are definitely non-scam organizations that have scholarships for only members of the organization - so maybe it's just a soft red flag (?)
Their podcast introducing the project was very convincing, at least what I heard. Overall, it's really hard to figure out what is the Web3 Hype Way vs a transparent scam.
One other thing that I'll touch on: The Sherwood Project is an official partner of Polygon DAO. I assumed that being a partner with a large DAO like Polygon meant that the company had done their due diligence.
I don't know people in their network. I am a member of their discord, and I am going to purchase a $160 NFT tomorrow in their pre-sale. I'm curious about whether it is a scam, and less than $200 to find out is certainly one way to do it while keeping the possibility of applying for the Treehouse grant open.
I tried to convince my night job to submit an application for the Visionary Artist grant, with myself and one other person being the face of the night job project. However, we decided that it would benefit the Sherwood Project too much for us to delay our own product and all of that community building is better off done with our own branding.
For the "Visionary Artist" grant, they really should be paying the artist an amount of money, probably closer to $100k, or an amount of equity of the project, and then the commission for incentivisation for the completion of the project. The artist will have a lot of responsibility in coordinating so many artists in order to complete the vision of making 8,333 NFTs.
So, is it a scam? Maybe.
Is the amount of work that goes along with the grant outsized compared to the compensation? yes.
Am I applying to be a visionary? no.
Am I going to purchase an NFT? one.
Will I apply to the Treehouse grant? We'll see once it gets opened up.
What are your thoughts on The Sherwood Project? What Web3 grants are you aware of?
EDIT: the first Visionary Artist Grant application is open until June 15th, 2022.
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