Evaluators

Evaluators assess projects that applied for funding on Polimec. They are incentivized to evaluate projects correctly as they earn rewards for successful evaluations or are slashed for unsuccessful ones. The incentivization mechanism encourages evaluators to only back projects which they consider to have an above-average success probability and consequently ensures that only projects deemed promising are made available to other participants.

Evaluators have the opportunity to perform due diligence by assessing the whitepaper, team, tokenomics, total supply of mainnet tokens, roadmap and usage of funds of a project for 28 days after project submission.

Evaluators signal that they expect a project to successfully complete the funding round by bonding PLMC. After bonding PLMC for the evaluation of a project, the evaluation lock activates, which means that the bonded PLMC are only available for participation in funding rounds for the evaluated project and voting. The evaluation lock is active until the completion or cancellation of the funding round. The evaluation process informs participants in an open and interactive decision-making process before a funding round starts. Evaluator DID’s can link to social media profiles (e.g. Twitter, Telegram, Discord, Youtube, Github) in a verifiable manner to reach more people and to increase the quality and verifiability of the evaluations. This allows publishing evaluations in an easy-to-access form while also raising project awareness.

Evaluator backing is crucial as a project only progresses to the funding round if it reaches 10% of PLMC bonded by evaluators (in USD equivalent) in relation to the target funding amount. At this stage, failure to meet the 10% threshold does not entail any slashing for the evaluators. However, if the project reaches the 10% threshold and thus progresses to the funding round, the following thresholds apply to the total amount raised relative to the target funding amount, which determine the evaluator’s potential outcomes.

Possible outcomes under the various thresholds:

Should the total amount raised fall at a level of 33.00% or below of the target funding amount, the protocol automatically declines the project, slashes 20% of the evaluators’ bonded PLMC, and refunds the participants. The slashed PLMC are allocated to the on-chain treasury. The 33%-threshold incentivizes projects to raise funds in line with their expectations. It prevents unrealistic or excessively high valuations as well as participants getting stuck in an unsuccessful funding round.

Should the total amount raised fall within the range of 33.01% to 75.00% of the target funding amount, the protocol gives the project the opportunity to decide whether or not to accept the funding. Regardless of the decision, evaluators get slashed 20% of their bonded PLMC. Contingent upon the project’s decision to accept or reject the funds raised, the participants either receive contribution tokens or are refunded.

Should the total amount raised fall within the range of 75.01% to 89.99% of the target funding amount, the protocol gives the project the opportunity to decide whether or not to accept the funding. In this case, evaluators are not slashed nor do they receive rewards. This incentivization punishes evaluators only for qualitative misjudgement of projects but not for minor quantitative miscalculations. Contingent upon the project’s decision to accept or reject the funds raised, the participants either receive contribution tokens or are refunded.

Should the total amount raised fall at a level equal to or exceeding 90.00% of the target funding amount, the protocol automatically accepts the funding, evaluators are rewarded in the respective contribution tokens based on the amount raised for the project, and participants receive the respective contribution tokens based on their participation.