Sorry for not addressing this one sooner.
I had a similar thought – smaller funding amounts over a shorter timeframe—but we’ve tried that approach before, and it comes with unavoidable overhead. Gathering and organizing metrics, writing the proposal, and managing everything properly is a sizeable team effort to be doing every 3 months or so, which is why we extended the overall timeframe.
We’ve also operated on an extremely lean budget in the past (such as the round before this one), and frankly, it was unsustainable. Without the necessary budget, critical management, administrative, and organizational tasks were left unpaid, which isn’t a fair or realistic expectation.
I’ve also seen comments suggesting that “three full-time people could do this for a third of the cost.” While that might sound reasonable at a glance, the reality is very different. A three-person team working 8 hours a day, 7 days a week would struggle almost immediately. The workload isn’t just routine support—it includes handling unexpected escalations, covering multiple platforms (not just the support widget), and tracking high-level or emergent issues that often take days or weeks to resolve. This often requires coordination with external teams, including those from brand-new chains or projects where we have to establish relationships from scratch. If all we had to do was tell people to hard-refresh their browser, I’d agree—but unfortunately, it’s far more complex than that.
Beyond the support widget, we manage multiple Telegram channels (both public and private), Discord (across multiple channels), Twitter, Reddit, emails (surprisingly high volume), and direct messages from users, developers, and other teams. Despite only having one person “on duty” at any given time, 24/7/365, some tasks require multiple people, which is where a decent portion of the budget goes.
There has always been a tendency to view this as simple chat moderation or entry-level helpdesk work, but the reality is that much of what we do is difficult to quantify. Metrics only capture a fraction of the actual effort involved. Just because a fire department isn’t responding to fires every day doesn’t mean its funding should be cut—because when a fire does happen, the response needs to be immediate and effective. Similarly, our team is structured to provide the necessary coverage and expertise, not just to handle routine inquiries but to ensure Osmosis remains a leader in user support and community engagement.