[The Rug] Season 10 Funding Proposal

Grants/Funding
1

Project Champions: Frank America, Allyn Bryce, perchy
Squad: FrankAmerica, AllynBryce, perchy, Redemption Fox, Zero Mass
Purpose: For-profit
Affiliation: Writers Guild, AV Guild
Authors: AllynBryce, Zero Mass
Editors: AllynBryce, Zero Mass
Date: 11/11/23
Funds requested: 1,268,000 BANK
Multisig: 0xA4C7Aca8D49226355c5543a28c3DE0573F66494a
Multisig signers: Allyn Bryce, Frank America, perchy, Redemption Fox, Zero Mass
Previous Grant Request: [The Rug] Season 9 Funding Proposal
Own subDAO/Discord server: Discord

Project Teaser

The Rug is a crypto comedy journalism outfit shipping the best in satire news related to web3. We’re a media property spun out of BanklessDAO and composed of (mostly) BanklessDAO members. We exist to help the industry not take itself so seriously.

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Project Purpose & Mission/Value Alignment

"We will help the world go Bankless by creating user-friendly onramps for people to discover decentralized financial technologies through education, media, and culture.”

Laughter has to be one of the most user-friendly onramps we can think of. We are a prime example of Web3/crypto media and culture that happens to present itself through the lens of comedy and satire. We are another layer of the unique content onion that is the BanklessDAO.

Bottom line, we are providing another way for people, both industry vets and crypto curious alike, to discover and enjoy this wonderful new world we are exploring and experimenting in together.

Past Activities

The Rug has continued to bring the funny to crypto and Web3, building community and lightening the load for bDAO’s builders with a healthy dose of humor. Please see the links below and scroll through our Paragraph, Mirror, or other social platform of your choice to reference all of our past activities and success in engaging our audience.

Previous KPIs

The Rug measures several KPIs, including Twitter/X followers, # of articles and headlines per week, # of total subs (free), # of paid subs, # of NFTs collected on Optimism, total ETH earned, and # of Lenster subs.

Our KPIs from S5 until now can be found here:

[The Rug] S5-S9 Influencer Stats and KPIs.

Please check the tabs at the bottom for the relevant sheet (KPIs).

Previous Commitments

We were self-funded from S1-S4, and aim to reach independent sustainability through various means including direct sales, royalties, and subscriptions, which we started mid-season 9. The Rug will continue to return 10% of seasonal profits (including articles and NFTs) as well as any additional grants back to the BanklessDAO Treasury.

Previous Season DAO Updates

Community Call 25th August.pptx

Community Call 22nd September .pptx

Community Call 3rd November .pptx

Retrospective

During Season 9, The Rug staff met to discuss progress against KPIs, evaluate current tactics and brainstorm new approaches. It was during one of these meetings that offering a paid subscription was discussed and ultimately implemented as a new revenue stream to build toward sustainability. The team has also reviewed its approach to headlines on Twitter and what increases post engagement, such as tagging people or topics relevant to the headline. Another idea that was discussed to increase reach and increase the number of subscribers was paid promotion of tweets, which we are still considering utilizing for The Rug’s newsletter posts.

Given that The Rug mints articles exclusively on Optimism via Paragraph, the team decided to apply for Optimism’s RetroPGF 3 funding round. The application was submitted and is currently in review. Retroactive funding in the form of OP can help The Rug build toward financial independence.

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Future Plans

The grant we are requesting goes directly to compensate the contributors of the publication and cover the costs of daily operations. In addition, funding will be used for investments in long-term sustainability such as paid promotion of tweets and additional compensation for the production of new content, such as the Mostly Credible News Update, a video regularly posted on X that covers the week’s headlines and articles.

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KPIs

The Rug is proposing the following KPIs:

  • S9 end + 10% or 100 total paid subs, whichever is greater
  • S9 end + 10% or 1000 total free subs, whichever is greater
  • S9 end + 10% followers on X or 5K total, whichever is greater
  • S9 end + 10% followers on Lens

Commitments

Commitments continue to be the same as previous commitments listed above: achieving self-sustainability and profitability, growing the brand, and providing value to the DAO, both monetary (10% revenue kickback), and memetic.

Financial Implications

Previous Period Accounting & Current Holdings can be found here:

[The Rug] Season 9 Budget (In Flight)

Third-Party Funding and External Revenue

We received a portion of Bankless Publishing’s OP RetroPGF Round 2 and have applied to OP RetroPGF Round 3 as a sole entity.

We are also earning external revenue through a subscription model we implemented mid-season 9 as well as NFT sales via Paragraph and Manifold. The Rug is continuing to explore other potential revenue models and promotional opportunities as well, such as producing content for advertisers and collaborations with other publications.

Next Period Budget Breakdown

Funding Requested for S9: 1,268,000 BANK = 1,793,000 (S10 budget estimate) - 525,000 (est. carryover)

Project and Compensation Breakdown

See budget link here: [The Rug] Season 10 Budget (Est.)

All assignments and payouts are tethered to tasks and bounties submitted weekly and accounted for through Dework. Payment is issued monthly via a multisig wallet.

Branding

The Rug is a media property spun out of BanklessDAO. An attribution and link to BanklessDAO’s bankless.community page is at the bottom of TheRugNews.com.

Additional Information

:evergreen_tree: Website: https://www.therugnews.com/
:bird: Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/TheRugNews
:newspaper_roll: Newsletter/Articles: The Rug
:seedling: Lenster.xyz: Hey
:milky_way: Warpcast: Warpcast
:camera: Instagram: The Rug | Crypto News (@therugnews) • Instagram photos and videos
:phone: Telegram: Telegram: Contact @therugnews
:headphones: Podcast: Under the Rug • A podcast on Spotify for Podcasters
:unicorn: Rarible: The Rug
:framed_picture: Zora: therug.eth | My Profile
:mirror: Mirror.xyz: https://therug.mirror.xyz/
:film_projector:The Mostly Credible News Update (MCNU) by @AllynBryce: https://twitter.com/TheRugNews/status/1715400741467087215

Poll

Do you support The Rug’s Season 9 budget proposal?

  • Yes, I support this proposal
  • No, I do not support this proposal
0 voters
2 Likes
2

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It appears locked.

3

Sorry about that. Should be good to view now.

4

All good over here! :slight_smile:

5

Where are the 22 other peeps?

6

Sleeping on The Rug I guess.

7

First, and most important: great work - the Rug is some of the best writing out there imo.

Second, I’m curious if/how the 10% kick back to bDAO will occur. Does the Rug need to be self-sustaining before this happens? Also, how is current external revenue used? Is the intent to gradually offset the funding requested from bDAO to the point of autonomy?

Thanks!

8

Thanks for the questions.

For the past several seasons we have just been calculating the 10% at the end of the season and sending it directly to the treasury. This has been for ETH mainnet and OP sales, which we keep track of on our KPIs page as seen in the proposal. You can find our Etherscan links in the bDAO Discord in the treasury channel if you search.

To the second point, your line of thinking is where we are going. Right now we haven’t really deployed our external revenue except for minting contracts and the occasional odd expense. We are looking to possibly deploy some toward promotional efforts, but we are looking to do just as you mention, offset funding requested from bDAO. We are still looking for a bit more consistency in our revenue streams, which is why we introduced a subscription model in S9.

1 Like