Bringing BanklessDAO AMAs to the next level

Grants/Funding
1

Authors: @mgoesdistance, @jarisjames, @Walshy, B123

Squad: @mgoesdistance, @Walshy, B123, @jarisjames, @NFThinker

Date Created: July 22, 2022

Date Last Updated: August 14, 2022

Date Posted: August 22, 2022

SUMMARY

WildFireDAO are proposing to deliver a regular AMA series with high-profile projects that will raise the brand profile of BanklessDAO, as well as bring in much needed revenues for the treasury. We are proposing to source and organise these AMAs ourselves, with minor help from BanklessDAO, and to distribute them under the BanklessDAO umbrella. We are requesting a grant to make this happen.

BACKGROUND

WildFireDAO is a group of exceptionally experienced DAO operators consisting of James Waugh, Coopahtroopa, gladstonecallum, 0xLucas and dozens of other operators and contributors with deep experience in the space. We have previously introduced ourselves and our mission HERE. The WildFireDAO Creator Economy Squad consists of the four authors of this post, listed above.

As a collective, we have privileged access to some of the leading DeFi, Public Goods, Creator Economy, and Infrastructure projects in the space - such as SuperRare, ENS, RocketPool, Aave, and many others. We propose to leverage these by hosting weekly AMAs for the BanklessDAO community and the wider public, featuring key people from these projects.

These Wildfire-hosted AMAs will not replace or clash with the existing AMAs being hosted by the BanklessDAO, they will just supplement them with more sessions with established names in the industry. Bankless HQ’s podcast is a mass appeal enterprise. We want to help Bankless DAO compliment that. The DAO was started in order to enable Bankless to scale to billions - and surely over time the reach of BanklessDAO can become much greater than the reach of Bankless HQ. This is the way it has always been intended, and with some push on the gas, we can make this happen.

MISSION & VALUES ALIGNMENT

‘Make 1 billion people Bankless.’ In order to do that, we need to increase the DAO’s reach first. Atm the DAO serves as a stepping stone for first-time DAO contributors and is good at launching projects that benefit and strengthen the existing ecosystem. However, what it lacks is a strong external presence outside the core space, which we wish to address.

SCOPE OF WORK

WildfireDAO Creator Economy Squad will supply a pipeline of high-calibre projects for the AMAs. Jaris James and NF Thinker are the hosts, and it will be marketed using the BanklessDAO brand and distribution channels.

SPECIFICATION

The initial project will last for one season, as a trial, subject to renewal. WildfireDAO will source guests for the AMAs and organise the events, as previously described.

The AMAs will happen at a weekly cadence, on average. Tweets about the AMA will be made before, during, and after the event. A calendar event will be created and will be promoted in the BanklessDAO discord server during the Community Call, and the AMA will be uploaded to the BanklessDAO YouTube, which serves as an archive of the event. WildfireDAO will help promote the event as well.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

WildFireDAO is requesting a seasonal grant in the amount of $50,000 in BANK to make this happen. This amount will help fund the operational expenses of WildFireDAO and make sure we can keep delivering value to you.

On the flipside, we aim to turn these AMAs into a revenue-generating enterprise, as soon as possible. This will be achieved by sponsorships (we aim to charge 10,000 USDC per month per AMA sponsor).

We won’t be prioritising securing sponsorships during the first 1-2 months of these AMAs, as it’s a better idea to focus on proving the concept and building an audience first, which will in turn make securing these sponsorships much easier. Hence this project requires funding to kick off, after which it should be revenue-generating, as well as enhancing the BanklessDAO brand, as above.

For any revenues we generate down the line, we suggest a split of 50% to WildFireDAO, 40% to BanklessDAO, and 10% to NFThinker. This can always be adjusted later on, by mutual agreement.

BRAND USAGE

The AMAs will leverage the BanklessDAO brand, in the same way as the currently conducted AMAs do.

SUCCESS METRICS OR KPIs

  1. Deliver a weekly video AMA series, hosted live on Twitter Spaces, recorded on riverside with high-profile projects.

  2. Develop a marketing strategy that consists of effective keyword usage on YouTube, and Twitter, and pinning promotional tweets of the weekly episodes on the BanklessDAO Twitter to maximise our reach.

  3. Develop a rhythm that consists of a teaser to hook our audience into the topic of the episode, base our talking points around the topics that get the most engagement within their community and communities within their niche. Close out the episode with a call-to-action that is based on the theme of the episode.

  4. Develop relationships with potential sponsors based on mission alignment with BanklessDAO, and the size of their treasury; and to expand the growth of the DAOlationships CRM in the process.

The main KPIs to observe are -

  • Viewership per AMA
  • Revenues brought into the DAO

During the initial setup season, the focus will be on optimising for viewership size, optimising for revenues will follow.

WildfireDAO Current Partnership List for Initial AMA Guests

  1. SuperRare
  2. Metafactory
  3. PleasrDAO
  4. Gitcoin
  5. ENS
  6. DAOhaus
  7. Rocketpool
  8. Pokt Network
  9. Aave
  10. Balancer
  11. Element Finance

SQUAD BACKGROUND

See the background of WildfireDAO above. As far as the individual members of the Creator Economy Squad go, they are long-term members of BanklessDAO, whose interests are aligned with this DAO’s success.

Mgoesdistance - Full-time DAO contributor for the past 1yr+, Council member of JennyDAO, previously Lead at IreneDAO, NFT product builder, opinion leader featured in Verge. Early squad organiser at Bankless SG and previous bDAO Obduds.

Walshy - Full-time DAO contributor since January 2022 - BD and Partnerships with Lido - Opolis Commons Member - Past contributor to Cre8rDAO, bDAO - Advisor to The Idols

Jaris James Full-time DAO contributor since December 2021. AMA Host/Outreach Specialist/Core contributor of BanklessDAO, Node Star DAO, Truts, Across Protocol and WeavrDAO. Building relationships all throughout the universe of DAOs, leveraging these relationships for mutual benefit.

B123 - DAO contributor for past 1 yr+. Curator / scout / business developer for several nft collector DAO’s. Specialized in building consortia with start ups around new technologies with a focus on finance for past 10yr+

NF Thinker: BanklessDAO contributor for over one year. Founder of the DAOlationships AMA series, and active in various realms within the BanklessDAO ecosystem. Web3 educator, communicator, and advisor.

  • Approve
  • For, but needs improvement (please comment)
  • Deny

0 voters

8 Likes
2

Very cool initiative!

I have a few questions:

You all are BanklessDAO long term contributors, as well as WildfireDAO members.
I’m unsure as to how WildfireDAO is involved?

As providing the contacts to do the AMA with?

Which leads to my second point:

I know it is early to be talking revenue distribution, so not going to stick on this, although its usually better to do it before money is coming in.

With that said, and without additional info around the financial breakdown, since BDAO platforms and branding are being heavily utilized, I would argue for more for BDAO.

Could you provide more info on how you settled on these numbers?

Why are you wanting the funding in USD, vs BANK?

The challenge I have in denominating in USD, is that it deviates from the funding standard of 1k BANK per hour, as well as insinuates that you mean to sell the BANK as soon as you receive it.

Do you have any kind of breakdown for how the funds will be used?

Looking forward to the responses on this one, as I think overall it is a cool initiative to further develop our media creation and distribution.

9 Likes
3

TBH, this is a great idea from looking at the informations here, would love to see em come live,
anyways i agree, we need a wider and prominent reach.

3 Likes
4

Thanks for putting this together, happy to see we are pushing beyond borders!

Some things that I’d like to see before voting for “yes” would be:

  1. A much, much clearer breakdown of how the funds are distributed and why?

  2. I also don’t quite understand the responsibilities of both entities in this joined enterprise. This would be helpful to know, especially when requesting for 3,5m BANK.

  3. What happens with the in-house AMA efforts that are currently being established in DAOlationships Guild?

Thanks in advance for addressing them, bDAO strong!

2 Likes
5

I presume this is 3rd or 4th proposed podcast, and 2nd of AMAs, under bDAO. Unless there’s a clear differentiation, tbh it’s difficult for even bDAO members to wrap their heads around these.

Does your aim also include a reasonable plan in place to monetise?

To help bDAO scale to billions, it’s imperative that you also mention to what extent you might be able to help. It brings a certain level of accountability.

2 Likes
6

I think @Icedcool, @senad.eth, and @kravi raised some great questions. I would like to see how these will be addressed before I vote.

3 Likes
7

Thanks for your questions @Icedcool | @senad.eth | @kravi

Providing answers for each one below (@Ap0ll0517):

  1. How is Wildfire involved?
    WildfireDAO is responsible for facilitating warm introductions with their partner projects, editing/producing the AMA for bDAO to use, and developing/executing the content creation process. As one of the founding members of the Creator Economy Working Group within WildfireDAO, I plan to bring our AMAs to the next level by leveraging Wildfire’s excellent relationships with high profile projects.

  2. How did we settle on the percentage split for sponsorships?
    We’re open to renegotiate. We’re perfectly fine with allocating 50% to BanklessDAO, 10% to NFThinker so he gets paid for his services/participation, and the remaining 40% for WildfireDAO. Right now, bDAO asks for 10% of revenue from the current AMA model, where we charge guests, primarily startups, 5,000 USDC for an AMA via twitter spaces. We want to provide our partners with what we believe to be fair terms, hence the 50/50 split. 50% to the bDAO treasury, is a considerable amount and a much higher ratio than every other project within bDAO, and we believe reflects the type of relationship we wish to foster from the beginning. We are under the impression that bDAO needs to generate more revenue, and the current 10% model is not enough, not to mention, most projects haven’t provided any ROI yet, and or intent is to generate sponsorship revenue within 3 months.

  3. Why are we asking for a USD amount of BANK as opposed to asking for BANK outright?
    The initial amount is mainly needed to compensate for the hours people make. This includes appointments and preparation with the organizations, research, pre interviews, the AMAs themselves, the editing, the marketing from strategic to hands on (through all the different social media channels available). And of course in addition to that, organizing and bringing in the sponsorships. We used the current AMA model for pricing. When @Walshy, and I designed the system back in February, we set the price for DAOs to pay at $5000 per AMA. We’ve elected to do 11 AMAs, which would equal $55,000 - we decided to round down to $50,000 instead and provide a discount in good faith.

  4. What happens with the in-house AMA efforts that are currently being established in DAOlationships Guild?
    We created that process back in Feb. Nothing changes with that process. Those projects, primarily start-ups, are still getting charged $5k per AMA - we would just need to ensure proper scheduling to avoid overlapping times.

  5. How does our AMA initiative differentiate itself from the other AMA set-up?
    We will use a video format. We will sync up with our guests on Riverside before starting the event on Twitter Spaces. The other AMA set-up is with start-ups/under-the-radar projects; This AMA initiative is with well established, high profile projects only.

  6. Do we have a reasonable plan to in place to monetize?
    This was outlined in the “Success Metrics” of the grant proposal. We will provide video content at a weekly cadence, we’re going to develop a marketing strategy that consists of effective keyword usage on YouTube, and Twitter, and pinning promotional tweets of the weekly episodes on the BanklessDAO Twitter to maximize our reach, we’re going to develop a rhythm for the event to ensure a high listen-through rate (A very important metric for landing sponsorships), and we’re developing relationships with potential sponsors based on mission alignment with BanklessDAO, and we will expand the growth of the DAOlationships CRM in the process.

Side Note
Across Protocol agreed to create a referral link for the BanklessDAO treasury, so the DAO can collect transaction fees on every user that clicks our link to use Across to bridge assets. This link will be promoted at a weekly cadence on YouTube, and on Twitter Spaces; this a nice way to generate revenue from the beginning and to diversify the DAO treasury as well.

8

I’m confused, are guests paying to be featured on the AMAs, or is the DAO paying the guests to be interviewed? I originally thought the DAO was paying the guests at $5k per AMA, hence the $50K funding request. But your answer above leads me to believe that the guests will be paying $5k per AMA and that will be split between WildfireDAO, BanklessDAO, and NF Thinker.

1 Like
9

In the current AMA model, the one that was started back in February, the guest paid us to be interviewed. These guests were the founders of startups. In this new AMA initiative, we’re not charging the guest; we’re going to feature the founders/core team of well established projects. The split is pertaining to future sponsorship funds.

1 Like
10

This is a pretty hard no for me.

This project is asking for more than 3 million BANK to get up and running, which is going to put a lot of sell pressure as it currently stands. I’d rather they take less BANK and keep 90% of the sponsorship revenue to self-fund the project. There is a pretty big assumption that they will be able to find sponsors at $10k/ month.

Let’s see some action before the big ask.

4 Likes
11

While I love the idea of hosting high-profile web3 guests under the BanklessDAO AMA banner, there are a lot of red flags in this proposal.

Your 50k USD ask is based upon BanklessDAO charging 5k USD per AMA host, but this is comparing apples and oranges. BanklessDAO is able to charge this rate to startups to access our valuable audience. When you ask for the same rate, you’re essentially asking to charge BanklessDAO to use our own audience (via Twitter, CC, etc).

As for sponsorships, I do believe they could be a possibility for a product that actually works…but I wonder how many you’ve talked to? How many leads do you have and do they have an ability and willingness to pay the amount you think they will? This is a basic validation step, and if you haven’t done it, it creates a massive risk for this project.

The biggest issue to me is that your squad (and WildFireDAO) are taking on 0 risk with this proposal - all of the risk is shouldered by BanklessDAO. To put it into context, your ask is approximately 40% of seasonal project funding. With this kind of risk involved, my expectations for validation go WAY up.

Finally, I’m pretty surprised this proposal has as many positive votes as it does in such a short amount of time, and it makes me wonder whether all of these voters are actually BanklessDAO members. Have you marketed this post outside of BanklessDAO?

I’ll say again, I love the vision of what you’re trying to accomplish, and I’d love for BanklessDAO to help you get there, but this proposal doesn’t feel favorable to BanklessDAO at all.

4 Likes
12

I appreciate the commenting that is going on here. Agreeing in the proposal’s potential, two comments stand out to me which I would just like to reinforce.

“I’d rather they take less BANK and keep 90% of the sponsorship revenue to self-fund the project.”

“The biggest issue to me is that your squad (and WildFireDAO) are taking on 0 risk with this proposal - all of the risk is shouldered by BanklessDAO”

2 Likes
13

Gotta agree with much of the sentiment of the above comments.

First the positive point; the guests on your list here are high profile indeed. Honorable mentions to pleasrDAO, DAOhaus, Rocketpool, & ENS(especially if it’s Brantley). Would be looking forward to 90+% on that list, and I would like to see more bDAO branding on fewer self referential projects. I believe we’re working with just dYdX so far, could be wrong.

But when I do the math it just doesn’t seem to add up. 50k $USD of bank per season and the first 2/3 of the first season, a trial season, likely won’t be sponsored.

On a full season of sponsorship, 4k $USD per sponsor coming back to the DAO per month, 12k for all 3 months of the season, unless I’m doing my math wrong that means the AMAs would need slightly more than 4 sponsors to commit for the full season to break even. If we get 5 then there is 10k $USD of profit(60k $USD - 50k $USD of BANK) being brought into the DAO.

For comparison when checking the latest episodes on the Bankless channel I see the following (idk what those sponsors pay per month):

Bankless #133 - has 6 sponsors, 7 if you count the promo code link but I don’t
Green Pill #39 - has 4
Overpriced JPG’s #50 - has 4

So 50k $USD in BANK, which I assume would be sold, putting not an insignificant amount of downward pressure on the token price, goes to WildFireDAO. Plus 75k $USD per season for 5 sponsors.

To links’ point, charging bDAO for access to the audience. But also as you said to get the project off the ground. As Sid pointed out, the ask is for more than 3 million BANK to get off the ground; in comparison the largest approved ask in our season 5 spec was from bDAO’s Podcast Hatchery for 1.6 million.

In summary, with 5 sponsors per season:
WildFire - Gets 50k $USD in BANK, 75K $USD from sponsors
BanklessDAO - Gets 50k $USD of BANK sell pressure, 10k $USD profit from sponsors

That just doesn’t check out.

Would double down on Sid’s point to take far less of the sponsorship money just for the sake of the sell pressure on BANK.

Ps: Had to giggle a bit when I read “previously Lead at IreneDAO”, not in a bad way either. Just completely forgot about that whole event and it made me laugh remembering the show it created on Twitter. Good times

Edit: perhaps if the sponsors were required to pay the bDAO portion in BANK that would also help a bit.

Final edit: walked away and thought about something for a second. You’re proposal mentions that it’s 50k to get started, but you refered to it as a seasonal grant. Seasonal to me implies it would be recurring, but I realize this might not have been intended. If it’s a one time thing that helps a lot, but is still double our largest allowance in the S5 spec.

2 Likes
14

Hello - great comments so far, thank you everyone for all of your honest feedback. There’s a lot of really great points that were honest and direct - ones that have been received and digested on.

TLDR: we’ve reevaluated and are happy to reduce our ask by 50%. Based on current feedback, we’d ask the revenue split for sponsors to be adjusted to 30% bDAO, 60% wfDAO, 10% NFThinker (as long as he is hosting).

bDAO is special to me because even though I haven’t been a contributor since early Q2 of this year - it was my first DAO and helped formed my core foundations of what a DAO is and what type of a person works for DAOs. In fact, I believed so strongly in this model being the next step for work that I joined Opolis, stood up an LLC, and went full time DAOs. None of that would’ve been possible if it weren’t for Ryan Sean Adams, David Hoffman, and BanklessDAO. Thank you.

As many of you know - 0xLucas is a founder of WildfireDAO as well as bDAO. When we spoke to Lucas about the state of bDAO - he confided in us, the Creator Economy Working Group of wfDAO, that part of the original vision of bDAO was to match the signal and respect level of HQ through education and efficient onboarding - as well as to compliment HQ’s efforts by providing a place to foster a vibrant and resilient community. And while great strides have been made and bDAO has inarguably created the largest DAO in the ecosystem, he also acknowledged that success has also brought it’s own problems.

The problem? bDAO needs revenue to survive. Token down.

Revenue generating DAO = DAO that can fund salaries = happy/productive members = DAO that produces in the bear market = perception of increased value to interested investors = price goes up = happier DAO members = more successful projects = frens = successful DAO

The issue? Not enough projects are contributing to the treasury. Too many mouths to feed. Hyperinflation of BANK token in down markets. 5% of people carrying 95% of the load. Rough communication between guilds. Expensive projects with no clear ROI. Not enough retention. Constant onboarding.

Some of these are problems I faced directly back in February when I brought the NFT project ‘The Idols’ to bDAO as a client. It wasn’t a clean process and allowed me to observe areas that needed improvement.

We don’t think this AMA project alone will solve this, but we hope to inspire more of you to develop efficient processes/revenue opportunities to aid bDAO. Jaris has a personal goal of improving engagement with bDAO socials and with 5 rotating sponsors a month - the annual ROI for the treasury is $180,000 if the split is 30% bdAO 60% wfDAO 10% NFThinker.

This is a great time to note: NFThinker isn’t in wfDAO but is the current host of the AMAs along with Jaris. Our intent was never to just barge in and change the format or hosts and switch everything up. Quite the opposite! I designed the original AMA business model with Jaris and NFThinker - and we all agree that we want to keep the show format the same.

As long as he is hosting AMAs we would like for him to be compensated for doing so. He is not receiving any BANK from the grant, only receiving funds from the sponsors.

The $50,000 in BANK ask was calculated in a very simple way, and not in a malicious manner. The conversation was literally, okay we charge $5k now - let’s multiply by 11 (amount of shows) and then round down so the number is clean.

Our other grants with DAOs don’t really take the token quantity into consideration, but rather $$$ per job.

One thing we didn’t take into account was how many tokens the original ask is in BANK. Especially compared to where we were in December, we can understand why that amount seems egregious.

Another thing we didn’t take into account was that none of you understand how we structured the AMA model back in February and how the contributors get paid in the current model. This was our fault.

How it works is projects pay $5k to do an AMA with bDAO. From that $5000, 50% went to the hosts, 10-20% to the bDAO treasury, 10-20% went to the A/V crew (depending on how many contributors were needed), and 10% finders fee for whoever scouted the project.

The small, easy to miss detail is that the 11 projects we’ve proposed to work with in the grant WON’T be paying for an AMA, and instead we are offering to do it for free.

The problem then becomes that we, the content creators, don’t have a source of compensation.
Hence, the idea with the sponsors is a simple one - reoccuring revenue.

With this model - ARR now exists for both DAOs, an additional grant is never needed for wfDAO and the AMA project becomes self-sustaining provided there are enough projects/DAOs/start-ups/etc that are interested in being a sponsor.

To state it again: if successful, we will only need one grant. Not a seasonal one.

Links asked about lead count and considers it a risk.

As we stated in the proposal, we haven’t begun our efforts here yet - but we are more than incentivized to do so via the split - and frankly the sponsors find bDAO already without effort. There is no shortage of projects looking to talk to bDAO.

Beyond the IB leads, each of us has an unique network we will utilize to procure sponsors. And to add a cherry, Jaris reported to me earlier that we already have an interested sponsor looking to discuss details. We have a very wide network we can utilize here.

There was a comment that bDAO shoulders all of the risk - but bDAO is in trouble and has asked us for our help. While I understand that it seems like wfDAO is shouldering zero risk, it’s our time and reputation on the line. It’s our faces being used. It’s our concept. And we were asked to help - assigned a task if you will.

Considering most projects only contribute 10% to the DAO treasury - we feel like the 30% share for bDAO will make up for this and balance out the risk.

SO - given the above, we’ve reevaluated and are happy to reduce our ask by 50% and adjust the revenue split for sponsors to 30% bDAO, 60% wfDAO, 10% NFThinker. We hope our intentions are made more clear, and I’m happy to answer any questions as best I can.

1 Like
15

Thanks for your reply and your willingness to work on your proposal. I appreciate that.

Before I reply, I just want to say that reading your response made me realize that we are VERY FAR from a shared understanding, and I wonder if a synchronous chat would be better than back and forth on the forums…anyways, here we go…

It sounds like you have a close, personal relationship with @0x_Lucas and he trusts you to get this done. But I don’t know anything about you. I have 0 history to see whether or not you can actually do this, ALL I see is your proposal, and it’s not clear to me how your proposal is different from any other claiming that they can create revenue for bDAO. You’re claiming you can make $180,000 for the DAO next year with a $50,000 investment, but…

  • Your team hasn’t produced a single AMA I can view
  • You don’t have any confirmed guests (i may be wrong on this one)
  • When asked about sponsor leads, you’re pretty much hand-waving away concerns saying that “sponsors find bDAO already without effort”

Can you understand why I question your project? From my perspective, nothing you say has been validated. Again, I absolutely love the idea, but right now it feels like just an idea, and not an “efficient processes/revenue opportunities”.

It’s a little bit funny that you’re coming here asking for $50,000 USD and acting like you’re doing BanklessDAO a favour. Of course I respect your contribution, but you’re asking to use BanklessDAO’s money, audience, and reputation to get your project going, so it’s not a one-way thing. BanklessDAO has just as much (if not more) to lose.

I’m assuming @0x_Lucas asked you to help BanklessDAO. That’s great, he’s a strong contributor and definitely someone you want to have in your corner. But he’s not BanklessDAO. When you say that “bDAO is in trouble” and you’ve been assigned by @0x_Lucas to save us, it comes off as condescending. Just a little feedback because I truly DO want to see you succeed, and I don’t think this is the best tactic.

This is a really sticky point for me…BanklessDAO charges $5K per AMA. Now you want to charge BanklessDAO $5K per AMA. This is effectively a $10K USD swing - it turns AMAs from a revenue-generating asset to a liability on our books. Why not just ask for the BANK value it takes to run production of an AMA, and ask for that?

This is a key point to me, and probably the point we are furthest from. Using the price that BanklessDAO receives from AMAs as your baseline is the reason why this proposal seems so one-sided to me. For me, it reduces the credibility of everything else you say, because it makes absolutely zero sense to me. To have something this in your proposal makes me question the entire rest of the proposal.

I’d really like some clarity on this. Can you give me a detailed breakdown of how you plan to use the grant funds?

1 Like
16

Hi Links,

Thanks for response - I’d be happy to do sync with you at any time, I prefer it over communicating on a forum as well.

“It sounds like you have a close, personal relationship with @0x_Lucas and he trusts you to get this done.”

I just spoke with him for the first time about a month ago - I wouldn’t say close at all but I do thank him for selecting me as an operator for wfDAO

"You’re claiming you can make $180,000 for the DAO next year with a $50,000 investment, but…

Your team hasn’t produced a single AMA I can view
You don’t have any confirmed guests (i may be wrong on this one)
When asked about sponsor leads, you’re pretty much hand-waving away concerns saying that “sponsors find bDAO already without effort”

Here’s a couple of the AMAs that bDAO has hosted - again, this business model was set up by myself, Jaris, and NFThinker back in February of this year. This is also the same AMAs we’ve been talking about in our grant…

Confirmed Guest List:

  1. SuperRare
  2. Metafactory
  3. PleasrDAO
  4. Gitcoin
  5. ENS
  6. DAOhaus
  7. Rocketpool
  8. Pokt Network
  9. Aave
  10. Balancer
  11. Element Finance

“It’s a little bit funny that you’re coming here asking for $50,000 USD”

We’re not ser, we realized our ask was out of proportion and dropped it by 50%, which is inline with grants.

“This is a really sticky point for me…BanklessDAO charges $5K per AMA. Now you want to charge BanklessDAO $5K per AMA. This is effectively a $10K USD swing”

Again, incorrect. We’ve dropped our ask by 50%.

“Using the price that BanklessDAO receives from AMAs as your baseline is the reason why this proposal seems so one-sided to me.”

Yep - understandable. The DAO will have ARR that will far exceed our ask in this grant. I notice you haven’t given any credence to the fact this isn’t a seasonal grant and a one time ask?

“Can you give me a detailed breakdown of how you plan to use the grant funds?”

I can only speak for myself, but I don’t intend to add sell pressure.
The 1.75m will be split 4 ways equally between the contributors to utilize as they see fit while executing our obligations.

$25,000 grant for $180,000 ARR. If we can apply the A for Autonomous on this idea, then our one time grant will pay for itself by the end of the season if we’re realllllly good, and within the first 3 weeks after the season is over. bDAO will then be left with an ARR vehicle to help with revenues + token price.

I’m sorry for the shorter answers, as I’m currently running to and fro, but I wanted to provide you the respect of a prompt answer to your questions. I’d like to reiterate I’d be happy to sync and discuss further if you’d like. I think the AMAs were executed beautifully and I really want to bring them back.

2 Likes
17

I would like to highlight our plan to boost the engagement metrics for the bDAO YouTube and Twitter, which will benefit every content creator in our community.

Our AMA series will release episodes on YouTube at a weekly cadence, and promoted on twitter while leading up to the event, and after the video has been posted. Consistency is crucial to be in good standings with the YouTube algorithm, and we will use keywords effectively in order to expand our reach outside of the BanklessDAO community.

@NFThinker and I have the second most viewed video on on the BanklessDAO YouTube channel, which was the AMA with the Idols. However, not much marketing went into promoting the event. To ensure that we consistently hit metrics that are ideal, e.g. 100 likes on twitter (minimum) for each promotional tweet, and 1,000 views per week on YouTube, which is our goal, we have to create the promotional content as well as prepare for the event, host the event, and edit the videos. To reach our goals for social engagement, we will utilize keyword research/SEO methods, this will help us create an attractive title that users will click on as opposed to “BanklessDAO AMA with …”

Although, BanklessDAO has over 50,000 followers on Twitter, our engagement rate is far below 1%. In order to attract sponsors, we must take the initiative of crafting a marketing plan that will boost our engagement rate, thus benefiting every project that is promoted by BanklessDAO, since we will be expanding bDAO’s social reach by utilizing social listening tools such as semrush, buzzsumo, and twitter advanced searches to collect data on popular DAO/web3 related topics to craft tweets with hooks to expand upon our reach in our promotional tweets for each AMA.

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Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments on this proposal. To start I’d like to drive home the fact that, while I’m named on this proposal, I am not a beneficiary of any potential grant funding. I’ve been asked by Wildfire DAO to co-host AMAs, and a portion of the sponsorship money would be directed towards me as reimbursement for my efforts. I’m grateful to Wildfire DAO for including me, but would also note that my participation here is not exclusive. I believe the task of presenting should be open to others who are willing and capable. This should be done by invite from the project champions, but I can think of a number of other fantastic bDAO members who would make great hosts.

I’ve always been a proponent of offering other bDAO members the opportunity to host. Originally this was because AMAs weren’t monitized and I couldn’t justify the time spent researching projects with zero compensation. Once we build in a funding mechanism, it was because I want other members to have the opportunity to benefit financially.

With that said, there are a few things to cover in this proposal:

BanklessDAO is a MEDIA DAO, and we are severely lacking in our media production. Podcasts have started taking off, and are getting to the point of profitability, but our video production has been neglected. Many discussions have been had, both within the AMA work stream group and within AV guild, about how we can make a splash on YouTube, but nothing has yet come out of them. It seems to boil down to the fact that it’s nobody’s job, so nobody is doing it.

There should be an incentive for pushing this initiative forward, so a BANK grant isn’t out of the ordinary. Is the ask of $25k (previously $50k) a reasonable cost? With current market prices, it seems like a big ask. BANK is near all-time lows, so it doesn’t translate well to any dollar amount. Had this proposal surfaced in December it would have been for 1/10th the amount of BANK. That would have seemed reasonable given the potential upside. There may be some middle ground that can be explored in terms of KPI based funding release, and I know that Walshy and Jaris are open to discussing the best way forward with Grants Committee.

Potential upside is a huge variable here. We need to set our sights high on sponsorship deals. We have the potential to generate thousands of views with our videos, but we need to be generating consistent and quality content. We’re stuck in a negative loop. Our YouTube doesn’t get enough views so partners are reluctant to pay top tier prices for sponsorships. In the current state of play, we need to increase views before sponsors will pay more.

Interviews with popular guests will be a great way to kickstart the positive flywheel effect. In turn it will increase exposure to other future content streams. Therefore it won’t only generate revenue directly, but also indirectly through other YouTube initiatives. We can still have other YouTube content work streams, and I’m in discussions with other DAO members to generate just that. Additionally we can use these AMAs to plug internal projects like other podcasts, Bankless Academy, Fight Club, Bankless Card, newsletters, etc. etc. Overall we will have greater reach and faster growth.

Couldn’t we just do this directly within BanklessDAO and not include Wildfire DAO?

Yes, but they do bring high profile guests, and they were the first to bring a proposal of this kind. If this initiative had started within bDAO, it would have likely followed previous initiatives meaning 10% of sponsorship fees to the DAO, and 10% to the relevant guild (most likely AV). The remaining 80% would have gone to contributors. This initiative is actually generous in those terms… there’s a smaller percentage going to the contributors. It just so happens the contributors are from Wildfire DAO.

Overall I’m in favour of this proposal. I would have taken more of a boot-strapped approach, but we’ve had over a year to get some YouTube streams off the ground and nobody has done it. We’re missing out on a major opportunity, and this proposal aims to put us on the path to achieving our media DAO potential.

Now it’s just down to GC to determine what that is worth.

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I’m very curious to know about that process.

I checked with @senad.eth

It’s very surprising that no effort has been in place yet, to increase these AMAs’ outreach on Youtube, the current viewership there has been in paltry two digits, even after months !

Potential guests/sponsors expect to be informed of probable outcomes ( outreach during the call, as well as after the call) before discussing anything.

I feel there’s a glaring need for clear and thorough end to end process, that underlies coherent communication within bDAO, as well as externally. Any AMA/podcast, without a well supported marketing process in place, can’t take off.

I simply don’t understand why Marketing & AV Guilds’ services are not being utilised, as required !! :astonished:

Btw, as a side note - It will be great to have a list, of all AMAs held so far, on twitter spaces, in one place, for quick & easy reference.

I feel there’s a burning need in bDAO, for a horizontal Center of Excellence (CoE) that facilitates cross guilds coordination, and consults on monetisation, and monitors deliverables, with attaining as well as maintaining bDAO’s self-sustainability as the highest objective.

That’s super cool, 1-2 months ahead of your own plan.
Appreciate details in any case. I’m super stoked about this project, and great team behind it.

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I’ve read through all of this. My initial response was to vote yes - then I realised by reading the comments that it wasn’t an ask for 50K BANK, but $50K in BANK.
@links I wonder if others have missed this point too and voted yes thinking it’s a low ask.

My main feedback though, is: if you are all core contributors of BanklessDAO, why do we need WildfireDAO involvement? Is it just for the connections? If so I would rather see the DAOlationships AMA’s continue to grow and arrive at the point where high profile want to come on those. It just feels a bit exploitative to me I guess.

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