--- title: "Questbook (grants management)" url: "https://caper.network/wiki/dao-governance/tooling/treasury/questbook" updated: 2026-10-02 license: CC-BY-4.0 license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Questbook (grants management) | | | | --- | --- | | **Tool** | [Questbook](https://questbook.app/) (company site [questbook.xyz](https://questbook.xyz/)) | | **Category** | Grants management · milestone payouts · delegated domain allocation | | **Launched** | Company founded May 2021 ([TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/18/questbook-raises-8-3-million-to-help-web3-developers-secure-funds/)); earliest programme in its [API](https://api-grants.questbook.app/graphql) dated 21 Apr 2022 | | **Builder/status** | CreatorOS Inc., which also operates [Reclaim Protocol](https://reclaimprotocol.org/); $8.3m Series A led by Lemniscap in May 2022 ([TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/18/questbook-raises-8-3-million-to-help-web3-developers-secure-funds/)) | | **Contracts/code** | v0 grant contracts on [GitHub](https://github.com/questbook/grants-contracts-upgradeable) (last pushed 9 May 2023); the current app is a hosted service; payouts leave from the funder's own Safe | | **Governance token** | None | | **Status** | Active: Circle's 2026 programme open and Arbitrum's Season 3 still paying milestones, last recorded payout 30 Sep 2026 ([Questbook API](https://api-grants.questbook.app/graphql), read 2 Oct 2026) | | **Related** | [Safe](/wiki/dao-governance/tooling/treasury/safe), [Arbitrum DAO](/wiki/daos/networks/arbitrum-dao), [Compound DAO](/wiki/daos/lending/compound-dao), [DAO procurement and RFPs](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/analysis/dao-procurement-and-rfps), [DAOstar](/wiki/dao-governance/tooling/analytics/daostar) | **Questbook** ([questbook.app](https://questbook.app/)) is a hosted application for running a grant programme from application to payout. Builders apply with milestones and amounts set out in advance, reviewers approve or reject in public, and each milestone is paid from the funder's own [Safe](/wiki/dao-governance/tooling/treasury/safe) multisig. Questbook built its DAO business on a model it calls _delegated domain allocation_: a DAO votes a budget for an area of work and elects one person, the domain allocator, to approve grants inside it. [Compound](/wiki/daos/lending/compound-dao) has run its grants this way since January 2023 and [Arbitrum DAO](/wiki/daos/networks/arbitrum-dao) since October 2023. For a DAO, the tool is a working answer to a governance question: which spending decisions the token vote keeps, and which it hands to a named person. ## Delegated domain allocation Questbook first set the model out for Compound in a [June 2022 forum proposal](https://www.comp.xyz/t/cgp-2-0-delegated-domain-allocation-by-questbook/3352), CGP 2.0 (the second Compound Grants Program). It asked for $1.5m over two quarters, split between five domain allocators who would each manage $300k in one area. Each allocator's decisions would be public on dashboards, and at the end of every quarter the community could vote to replace an allocator, keep them, or raise their budget. The proposal named two problems with grant committees: a committee lacks expertise in every domain, and a single committee becomes a backlog and burns out. Questbook's own [site](https://questbook.xyz/) credits the Ethereum Foundation with pioneering the model. Arbitrum's version shows how it runs in practice. In its third season an allocator could approve a request of up to 25,000 $USDC alone; a request of up to 50,000 $USDC needed a second allocator's review, and a programme manager oversaw all five domains ([Season 3 official thread](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/arbitrum-d-a-o-grant-program-season-3-official-thread/28753)). Allocators are elected by the DAO's delegates through a forum [election thread](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/election-application-thread-arbitrum-d-a-o-domain-allocator-offerings-grant-program/27909). Delegates defended the arrangement on volume: SEEDGov, an allocator, [wrote in February 2025](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/non-constitutional-rfc-arbitrum-d-a-o-domain-allocator-offerings-grant-program-season-3/27584/139) that Season 2 had drawn more than 500 applicants, too many for delegates to analyse and vote on one by one, and that grant requests under 50k posted to the forum were being sent to Questbook instead. The software around the allocator handles the rest. Questbook's [July 2026 sales page](https://questbook.xyz/start/) lists the pipeline as structured intake, rubric-based review assisted by an AI reviewer, public milestone updates, KYC and an e-signed agreement before money moves, and payment from the funder's Safe, so Questbook never holds the funds. It sells this at a flat $2,000 a month with no customisation. ## Programmes that ran on it Questbook was founded in May 2021 and raised an $8.3m Series A in May 2022, when it [told TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/18/questbook-raises-8-3-million-to-help-web3-developers-secure-funds/) it had helped Polygon, Aave, Near and Harmony pay out more than $1.5m in developer grants. Its later DAO work centred on two programmes. **Compound.** CGP 2.0 ran from January to May 2023 and a second iteration from November 2023 to May 2024 ([renewal thread](https://www.comp.xyz/t/compound-grants-program-renewal/5595)). A renewal passed as [Compound proposal 326](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/compound/proposal/326) in September 2024, transferring 33,133 $COMP for 12 months, and the programme [went live](https://www.comp.xyz/t/compound-grants-program-renewal/5595/21) on 27 September 2024 with $1.125m across four domains: new dapps and ideas, security tooling, multichain, and DAO expenses. In [October 2025](https://www.comp.xyz/t/compound-grants-program-renewal/5595/22) the team said it would continue in the same format with about $660k unspent. On [14 April 2026](https://www.comp.xyz/t/compound-grants-program-renewal/5595/23) it paused new submissions to its largest domain, because the budget had been set at a higher $COMP price and the fall had left the domain short. **Arbitrum.** The D.A.O. (Domain Allocator Offerings) programme grew out of a [May 2023 proposal by Questbook](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/delegated-domain-allocation-by-questbook-arbitrum-dao-grants/14688). According to the [Season 3 proposal](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/non-constitutional-rfc-arbitrum-d-a-o-domain-allocator-offerings-grant-program-season-3/27584), Season 1 launched in October 2023 with $250k in each of four domains, and Season 2 began in April 2024 with $1m per domain. Season 3 passed on [Tally](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/arbitrum/proposal/47215139570733026393508270943324710379923699871435188004224569883226292800465) on 24 February 2025, adding a fifth domain for Orbit chains and funding $6.75m in grants plus operating costs. The Arbitrum Foundation, as custodian, [converted the $ARB](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/non-constitutional-rfc-arbitrum-d-a-o-domain-allocator-offerings-grant-program-season-3/27584/159) into $7.48m of $USDC for the programme and returned the excess to the treasury. Submissions [closed on 17 March 2026](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/arbitrum-d-a-o-grant-program-season-3-official-thread/28753/50), and by 30 June 2026 the programme had received 1,262 applications, approved 190, allocated $5.3m and disbursed $3.4m ([bimonthly report](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/arbitrum-d-a-o-grant-program-season-3-official-thread/28753/57)). **Others.** ENS's Public Goods Working Group [hosted its Q3 2024 Large Grants round](https://discuss.ens.domains/t/active-q3-2024-large-grants/19311) on Questbook. Polygon named Questbook the [operational partner](https://forum.polygon.technology/t/grants-season-2-overview-direct-track/20505) for the Direct Track of its Season 2 community grants in January 2025, then [moved milestone processing](https://forum.polygon.technology/t/season-2-grant-program-close-out-framework/21283) to its own form in September 2025. In Questbook's [API](https://api-grants.questbook.app/graphql), the TON Grants programme opened in February 2024, drew 2,132 applications and recorded its last payout in February 2025. Circle, the issuer of $USDC, sends applicants from its [grants page](https://www.circle.com/grants) to its own Questbook portal and [announced](https://www.circle.com/blog/announcing-the-first-circle-grant-recipients-in-2026) its first 2026 recipients on 14 May 2026. ## From grant contracts to a hosted service Questbook started on-chain. Its v0 [contracts](https://github.com/questbook/grants-contracts-upgradeable) describe a "Decentralised Grants Orchestrator": a workspace registry for each funder, a factory that deployed every grant programme as its own contract, and an application registry. The repository was last pushed on 9 May 2023. The record shows the change: in Questbook's API, programmes created from April 2022 to December 2023 are identified by contract addresses (Compound's CGP 2.0 programme is a [contract on OP Mainnet](https://optimistic.etherscan.io/address/0xeb047900b28a9f90f3c0e65768b23e7542a65163)), and every programme created since January 2024 carries a database identifier instead. Applications, reviews and approvals now live in Questbook's database, and only the payouts are on-chain, from each funder's Safe. The company [site](https://questbook.xyz/) still says "The dApp is perfectly decentralized and doesn't make any trust assumptions." The hosted design was tested on 13 March 2026. A [post-mortem](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/arbitrum-d-a-o-grant-program-season-3-official-thread/28753/51) by the Arbitrum programme manager describes a fraudulent application to the Dev Tooling domain, which an allocator had not approved, appearing in that allocator's Questbook account, and two Safe transactions proposed to send 35,000 $USDC to the attacker's wallet. The second Safe signer cancelled both the same day after the allocators did not recognise the proposal, and no funds moved. The post-mortem names a Questbook frontend or API fault as a candidate cause, noting that the platform had misdirected milestone entries in earlier seasons. Questbook then enforced review checks, KYC and a signed agreement before any payout, fixed a duplicate-approval bug and disabled GraphQL introspection on its API. The funds stayed put because payment needed a second human signature on a Safe the DAO's team controlled. Arbitrum delegates had already questioned the dependency. Before the Season 3 vote, Entropy Advisors [argued](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/non-constitutional-rfc-arbitrum-d-a-o-domain-allocator-offerings-grant-program-season-3/27584/130) for a DAO-owned, Arbitrum-branded grants platform, citing about $700k in operating overhead; SEEDGov [replied](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/non-constitutional-rfc-arbitrum-d-a-o-domain-allocator-offerings-grant-program-season-3/27584/139) that one could not be built quickly and that delaying the programme would cost more. ## Status in 2026 Questbook is operated by CreatorOS Inc., the company that also runs [Reclaim Protocol](https://reclaimprotocol.org/), and it is selling. Its [website repository](https://github.com/questbook/website/commits/main) received a new sales page on 23 July 2026, the most recent push across the [Questbook GitHub organisation](https://github.com/questbook). The [API](https://api-grants.questbook.app/graphql) on 2 October 2026 recorded payouts on 30 September in Arbitrum's New Protocols and Ideas domain, on 22 September in Circle's first 2026 cohort and on 21 September in Compound's dapps domain. Circle's programme, with 843 applications, was the largest still accepting them. The DAO programmes that built the model are winding down. Arbitrum's Season 3 is in a low-capacity phase in which allocators only review milestones of approved projects, and in March 2026 its team said it was [discussing a continuation](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/arbitrum-d-a-o-grant-program-season-3-official-thread/28753/46) with the DAO's Oversight and Transparency Committee; no Season 4 proposal had been posted to the Arbitrum forum by 2 October 2026. Compound's largest domain is closed to new applications, and Polygon has moved off the platform. The same pattern of a tool outliving the programmes that defined it is tracked on [DAO tooling discontinuity](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/analysis/dao-tooling-discontinuity). ## How Caper approaches this Questbook moves the grant decision from the token vote to a named person: a DAO votes a budget and an allocator, and the allocator approves individual grants, paid by milestone from a Safe the programme controls. A [caper](/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) has no such delegate. Every payment out of its treasury, a grant included, is a [payout proposal](/wiki/foundations/paying-someone-from-a-caper) that names the recipient and amount, which members rank on a [ballot](/wiki/governance/voting) and which the market can still veto by selling before it executes ([proposals](/wiki/governance/proposals)). Each grant is therefore a decision of the whole membership, and a member who disagrees can [leave with a share of the treasury](/wiki/foundations/leaving-a-caper) rather than wait for a quarterly review. Questbook's model handles what a vote per payment does not: Arbitrum's programme drew more applications in a year than any membership would rank one at a time, and milestone release lets a programme stop paying a grantee who stops delivering, where a single caper payout moves its whole amount when it executes. ## References - [Questbook – app (read 2 Oct 2026)](https://questbook.app/) - [Questbook – company site (read 2 Oct 2026)](https://questbook.xyz/) - [Questbook – “Run your grants program on autopilot”, sales page added 23 Jul 2026](https://questbook.xyz/start/) - [Questbook – grants GraphQL API (POST-only endpoint, queried 2 Oct 2026)](https://api-grants.questbook.app/graphql) - [questbook/grants-contracts-upgradeable – v0 contracts README](https://github.com/questbook/grants-contracts-upgradeable) - [questbook/website – commit history](https://github.com/questbook/website/commits/main) - [Compound CGP 2.0 programme contract, OP Mainnet](https://optimistic.etherscan.io/address/0xeb047900b28a9f90f3c0e65768b23e7542a65163) - [TechCrunch – Questbook raises $8.3 million to help web3 developers secure funds (18 May 2022)](https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/18/questbook-raises-8-3-million-to-help-web3-developers-secure-funds/) - [Compound forum – CGP 2.0: Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook (29 Jun 2022)](https://www.comp.xyz/t/cgp-2-0-delegated-domain-allocation-by-questbook/3352) - [Compound forum – Compound Grants Program Renewal (2024–2026 updates)](https://www.comp.xyz/t/compound-grants-program-renewal/5595) - [Tally – Compound proposal 326, Compound Grants Program (CGP) Renewal](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/compound/proposal/326) - [Arbitrum forum – Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook – Arbitrum DAO Grants (29 May 2023)](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/delegated-domain-allocation-by-questbook-arbitrum-dao-grants/14688) - [Arbitrum forum – [Non-Constitutional] [RFC] Arbitrum D.A.O. Grant Program – Season 3 (19 Nov 2024)](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/non-constitutional-rfc-arbitrum-d-a-o-domain-allocator-offerings-grant-program-season-3/27584) - [Tally – Arbitrum D.A.O. (Domain Allocator Offerings) Grant Program – Season 3](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/arbitrum/proposal/47215139570733026393508270943324710379923699871435188004224569883226292800465) - [Arbitrum forum – Election and application thread, D.A.O. Grant Program](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/election-application-thread-arbitrum-d-a-o-domain-allocator-offerings-grant-program/27909) - [Arbitrum forum – D.A.O. Grant Program Season 3 official thread (reports, security post-mortem, 2025–2026)](https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/arbitrum-d-a-o-grant-program-season-3-official-thread/28753) - [ENS forum – [Active] Q3 2024 Large Grants](https://discuss.ens.domains/t/active-q3-2024-large-grants/19311) - [Polygon forum – Grants Season 2 Overview: Direct Track (14 Jan 2025)](https://forum.polygon.technology/t/grants-season-2-overview-direct-track/20505) - [Polygon forum – Season 2 Grant Program Close-Out Framework (8 Sep 2025)](https://forum.polygon.technology/t/season-2-grant-program-close-out-framework/21283) - [Circle – Developer Grants](https://www.circle.com/grants) - [Circle – Introducing our first Circle grant recipients of 2026 (14 May 2026)](https://www.circle.com/blog/announcing-the-first-circle-grant-recipients-in-2026) - [Reclaim Protocol – site footer, operated by CreatorOS Inc.](https://reclaimprotocol.org/)