Fund DAO Newsletters Till End of Year

Grants/Funding
1

Squad: WinVerse, Kornekt, Boluwatife

Authors / Editors: WinVerse, Kornekt, Boluwatife

Purpose: For-profit AND Public good

Affiliation: Writers Guild

Date created: November 4, 2024

Date posted: November 9, 2024

Funds requested: 1320 DAI

Project wallet(s): 0x3d7D73aEc5FDECe8a63A3ACccB48ABad337Bcc3d

SUMMARY

The Newsletter Team is requesting funding for the Weekly Rollup newsletter.

The Newsletter team handles weekly operations, coordinates and facilitates regular team meetings, and delivers content according to established schedules. To maintain high standards, ensure responsibility, and meet deadlines consistently, the Rollup publication requires designated positions with appropriate compensation

RETROSPECTIVE

The Newsletter arm of the DAO has been active throughout this restructuring process, keeping the community together with issues that educate and enlighten readers on the latest happenings around the DAO in this crucial period. Since the start of the restructuring process in December 2023, we have shipped 45 issues of the Weekly Rollup and 21 issues of the Layer 2 Review publication averaging over 60,000 views monthly.

Around the period Bankless Publishing shut down, the Writers Guild was given the leftover funds in the BP treasury to continue operations. These funds were assigned for newsletter activities and served that purpose up until September when the funds got exhausted. We couldnā€™t put up this funding request earlier due to the instability of the restructuring process. As such, newsletter contributors could not receive any compensation for work done in October.

The newsletter project team consists of various roles, including content managers, authors, and editors responsible for consistently delivering high-quality content, efficient operations, management, and distribution. To keep up with our operations, we propose the following roles be funded through both salaried positions and bounties.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Salaried Roles

Roles Weekly Salary Total (12 weeks)
Content Manager $50 $600
Marketing Lead $10 $120
Total $60 $720

Writer and Editor Bounties

Weekly Rollup (ships weekly):

  • Content Curation - responsible for Rollup intro
    • $5 /week
  • Headline piece author - responsible for weekly featured editorial
    • $20 /week
  • Content Editor
    • $10 /week
  • Design (Header)
    • $15 /week
  • Total: $50 /week = $600 (12 weeks)

TOTAL BOUNTY BUDGET = $600 (12 weeks)

NEWSLETTER BUDGET = $1320 (12 weeks)

TOTAL NEWSLETTER BUDGET = $1320

Responsibilities

Content Manager - WinVerse

  • General Admin

  • Manages Weekly Rollup newsletter publication

  • Second pass for sponsorship

  • Schedules meetings with potential sponsors (third pass)

  • Uploads meme of the week, action items, and governance section for the Rollup

COMMITMENTS

As we have good numbers, we plan on actively seeking sponsorships within this period. The DAO has been in a transitioning phase so we havenā€™t been able to reach out to projects over the past couple months.

We also plan to keep the culture of sending back 10% of deals to the DAO (if this is maintained in the new iteration of the DAO).

BRANDING

Now we have a name for the DAO, we will begin implementing this change to our assets. We would update the substack and also this pitch deck linked below.

FURTHER PROJECT CHANNELS

Pitch Deck

Website

https://banklessdao.substack.com

Poll

  • Do Support
  • Donā€™t support
0 voters
5 Likes
2

gm WinVerse and crew. Is there a reason you didnā€™t include a poll?

Thank you all for the work and commitment to getting the newsletters out all this time.

This is tricky for me to say, and Iā€™m most likely biased, but Iā€™d prefer the newsletters pause for now. I think some space between the current versions and whatever comes out of the new org would not be a bad thing.
Having said that, I know there are still subscribers joining the list - are they joining based on the Rollup or the Layer 2 Review, do you know? What are the current subs? I assume you have combined the monthly views or is that per newsletter?

I think the Rollup has served as a very good broadcast of whatā€™s been happening in the DAO, so I could maybe support that to keep going. Iā€™m just concerned - I have to say it - about the quality. To me, it feels heavily AI generated, with the DAO specifics put in to a generic editorial and intro. Maybe I am wrong, maybe Iā€™m too picky, maybe no one else notices this or worries about it. It would be great to hear from readers who arenā€™t as close to it as I have been in the past.

3 Likes
3

gm! thanks for dropping this, a few thoughts:

  1. Please put up a poll, which is necessary to gauge sentiment.
  2. Given our recent disagreements over the proper use of the tlBANK space, Iā€™m really glad you put up this post rather than shipping it straight to a tlBANK vote, which may need to happen after this too depending on poll results
  3. Stoked you have been shipping, and do think some comp is appropriate.
  4. That said, I do think the amounts are high, and not really sure why thereā€™s an amount for partnership lead, which strikes me as something that could just be a percent of whatever rev is generated through that role.
  5. Social also seems very high as all it requires is a handful of tweets a month and nothing else afaik.
  6. Not sure why L2 review content manager gets the same weekly salary as Rollup wen it ships every two weeks.
  7. I think retro comp is appropriate, so October should be funded but not future issues cuz who knows if they actually ship (i mean i believe you but weā€™re getting out of the proactive funding game).
  8. i do share some of trewā€™s concerns, esp given some of the rollup articles have contained factually inaccurate info re: the transition.
  9. Bounties generally look good to me.
  10. so tl;dr, i support retro funding, but not for partnership and social leads, and while i think the $150 a week for the rollup is ok (although tbh it feels high, iā€™m not sure we paid that much wen the DAO was full on and BP had outside rev but I didnā€™t go back to look), the L2 review content manager is 2x too high since it ships biweekly.

EDIT: @thethriller dropped a forum post that helped to clarify my thinking around this ask Should we be funding new initiatives now? - #2 by hirokennelly

the confines of the funding restart are clear, and only work directly related to the transition should be funded at this time. so for me that means the rollup, but not the l2.

3 Likes
4

:heart::pray:Thank you for shipping during the transition period! I think those newsletters have solid value, especially in a noisy bull market aka. banana zone is a pillar of good information beyond what social media presence can do for the DAO.

:thinking: However, I believe the retrospective for both newsletters separately is too high. I would vote yes for the items listed for the roll-up but not 105 per publication for the layer 2 newsletter.

:link: The world is noisy enough, we should get our attention from the audience in one content piece that can open the door or rabbit hole for more in-depth topics. This way, you should be able to reduce the budget per publication and get this for past and future publications.

5

I support retro funding the DAO newsletter, as I think it is helping keep the greater community apprised about issues necessary to our current transition work.

However, I donā€™t think we should fund the Layer 2, because the multi-sigā€™s post announcing the tlBank snapshot only authorized funding for things related to the transition, for the time being. (Something we may want to consider changing).

1 Like
6

Thanks for your comment Trew. Regarding subscriber count, itā€™s been varying for a while but itā€™s about 20.1k atm. Weā€™ve had some new subscribers and most have come in from the layer 2 review. For a particular L2 publication in August, we had about 38 new subs. The monthly views is the combined count for both newsletters.

7

Thank you for your comments Hiro. To address some of the issues: the work of the content manager for the L2 goes beyond the biweekly shipping. If you go through the responsibilities outlined, youā€™ll realize that the content manager for the L2 is also in charge of carrying out final qa and shipping all publications (rollup and L2). As for the pay, itā€™s actually $75 per content manager, thatā€™s what make it up to $150 for both.

1 Like
8

ah yes, thanks for helping my poor maths, i should have been more careful there, apologies.

9

A big thank you to the Newsletter team to continue to ship during this period of transition!

In regards to your proposal, I support the continued funding until the end of December 2024 for the Weekly Rollup newsletter, but I do not feel that the L2 newsletter should continue, as I only personally see the multiple benefits to the DAO for the Weekly Rollup newsletter to help educate and inform community members during this transition. The focus of the L2 newsletter covers more general industry news and education, and is not specific to the DAO and itā€™s membership.

I do however support payment for past work completed for the L2 newsletter. Your proposal mentions outstanding payment due to the team for October, but what about the November publications?

Secondly, my other question is if you are asking the DAO for funding until end of December 2024, what is your funding strategy going forth in 2025, if your project purpose is for profit and public good?

10

This is a great post and a well-detailed ask. Thank you! My thoughts echo a lot of the sentiments already shared here.

  • Support for the October retro funding request
  • Observation of seemingly-AI generated output
  • Concern about the ongoing costs
  • Request for a minimization of operations and expenses

Assuming there were no increases to salaries or bounties after the funds ran out in September, Iā€™m supportive of this request for funding for the work that has already been done. I would also ask, however, that these expenses, and the newsletter in its current iteration be re-evaluated.

I recognize that there was often not much to work with for content when having to fill a whole newsletter every week. I get that. The output generally portrayed the community in an optimistic and objective manner, so thatā€™s still a plus. But the math on this comes out to $1,600 per month. With the AI tools we have available, and, I agree with @Trewkat on this, appear to already be heavily in use, Iā€™m sure we can come up with a more cost-effective way to deliver our DAO updates to the broader community concisely.

I think a newsletter product is an important piece of keeping the community informed and together, but would like to see it approached in a lighter way going forward. Would the newsletter crew be willing to provide an example of what we might be able to achieve on a budget of closer to $200 per month?

2 Likes
11

Sustainable Business Operations

Whilst a top-up is the main focus, Iā€™d like people to spare some thoughts towards long-term sustainability. Back in May-Jun I posted in one of the discord legal channel 3-4 possible directions using existing or known business models:

  1. Oā€™Reilley technical/education publishing
  2. Lonely Planet combo directory + (trusted) guide registry
  3. La Jornada platform cooperativism

there may be other business models.

1 Like
12

Hey gm guys!

Thanks for all the feedback.

I have added the poll. The team also reflected after the CC last week and decided to completely remove the L2 publication. We have also significantly reduced the ask. However, we added a retro comp for the work already done by them till now.

Finally, we plan on posting this on the tlBANK Snapshot for consideration later this week. Thanks everyone!

4 Likes
13

Thank you, @WinVerse for the addition of the poll. I support these changes as indicated by my ā€œyes voteā€ on the poll, as you have addressed my concerns regarding continued funding for the L2 newsletter.

14

I appreciate the efforts of the newsletter crew but I echo the concerns expressed by @Trewkat @hirokennelly and @0xZFi.eth. While there may be value in a newsletter like this at some point in the future when the community is more active, the requested funding doesnā€™t correspond to a value-return for the community at this point in time.

15

To reiterate, I think itā€™s been and continues to be important that we maintain a regular ā€˜pulseā€™. The view count & open stats show we are still reaching a lot of people.

1 Like
16

Hey gm guys!

After receiving all the feedback, I have just uploaded an updated proposal on the tlbank Snapshot that would fund only the Weekly Rollup. It will be live for voting later tonight.

Thanks, everyone!

17

How many hours per week goes into the newsletter?