After some recent windfalls, I want to redistribute some of my large portfolio to deserving users who could use some cash to improve accuracy of imporant markets (and profit). I'm willing to put up at least M$5000, potentially more with strong applicants; maybe other funders will join! There's been some discussion on the Manifold Discord.

So, important markets. I think it's really valuable to have a place to go see informative probabilities of things! It'd be awesome if some of my mana could go to people who can improve them. I'm still thinking about how to define "important", but certainly broader than politics and world events: personal goal markets provide great value to people! But I don't want much of my grant money going towards markets about, say, themselves, or sports, or Destiny. Unless I'm convinced that they provide as much value.

How will I decide who to fund? I'd love to see increasing profit graphs with diversified portfolios, and rationales for why more money would be better. Maybe you convince me you have good instincts in a particular category of markets. Maybe there's a particular strategy you think is worthwhile. (Happy to invest in bots!) Maybe you're simply willing to put in more time locating the free mana that still exists if you know where to look. Maybe something else.

Anyway, that's the current state of my idea — still very open to workshopping. Another clear option is to invest in portfolios such that, if they profit, I gain some portion of that, but I currently feel philanthropic enough that I think I will do grants.

As for this market: it resolves NO immediately if I decide not to launch mana grants (or a similar program) in a week, by 6pm PT on April 10. (Because it implies I think it would be a failure.) If I launch it, I will flesh out the details, and will pick some period of time (probably a few months), and some (possibly vague) success criteria. Then, I will resolve YES, NO, or to a percentage after that period of time based on whether I've met the success criteria. Basically, will this grant thing work out?

I'm excited to try to help use my mana to improve Manifold! I've never done any sort of official grant program before; I'm hoping y'all will help me figure out how to do this well.

EDIT: It has now been launched, with 10x the amount of mana!

The success criteria are: I will consider my grant program a success if, three months after the grants are awarded, I feel that grantees used my mana to contribute more toward importance-adjusted accuracy of markets than if I had kept and invested it all myself.

General policy for my markets: In the rare event of a conflict between my resolution criteria and the agreed-upon common-sense spirit of the market, I may resolve it according to the market's spirit or N/A, probably after discussion.