My previous posts show support for flywheel before but this proposal is very disappointing.
I know they’ve been around forever and I appreciate their content.
Imagine going to a fintech start up and telling them you’ll do a podcast and youtube series about the startup then asking for 500k to do this.
For no equity in the ‘media’ company.
Not as a one time fee but as a yearly payment.
This doesn’t happen in the real world.
I get that bankless, makerdao etc have made all levels of financial requests seem okay but we can think from first principles here on whether frax protocol is getting appropriate value for such a even $250,000 and the answer to that is no.
veFXS holder are ultimately footing the bill for this as their yield gets delayed by low value props.
The 6.90 initial request was very poor judgement too.
I think the proposal should be updated to be a max of $100,000 base + 50,000 bonus to support 1 full time person under the education and awareness to make videos. Guests will come on and do appearances for free to get awareness for their own twitter or protocol brand.
Shelf the BD line item.
Open it as a separate proposal if you desire or better yet do a temp check to find the best candidate for that role. One person doesn’t need 5 jobs.
We also don’t need a $105,000 expense for meetups, happy hours and workshops etc.
Please be mindful of bloating dao costs when making proposals friends.
Did you increase the requested amount from 475,000 to 570,000?
I’m not sure that was the kind of feedback people were hoping you would get.
Can you share the wallet address that was given the last rounds of funding and was previously whitelisted too. ideally that should be included in the proposals.
Point taken about the wallet address everyone, that should be listed in the finance section of the proposal (will edit). Our address can be found here: 0xaab5e297b7113b6c188b5b611ba2724bc1decf6f
I see there is a lot of discussion here about details and that’s great so that the community understands what it is funding. That said - DefiDave, Sam, and Kiet have been putting themselves out there advocating, educating, and recruiting Fraximalists to the cause. It’s clear Frax has it’s priorities right where we want them - working on product and shipping. That leaves the promotion side to the community (us). The FlyWheel team has proven effective in this regard and I support their continued work. I think it’s a good idea to make suggestions if folks think there are areas to tweak but unless someone else here is willing to step up and make this a significant part of their lives, I think we need to continue to fund and support FlyWheel.
I think we should keep funding them and keep funding in line with previous proposals but suggest we limit to 1 person:
At $100,000 / yr + a $50k bonus if some KPI is met.
Focus on the podcast and youtube series
If there’s BD or some in person events we need them for the community can vote it in.
Everyone seems to be saying that we appreciate their video and podcast content and we should find a way to fund that within reason like we have before but just be a little mindful of letting it get too bloated.
Having served as the COO of Overclock Labs (creators of Akash Network), I’ve seen and read my fair share of governance proposals there, and throughout the defi ecosystem at large.
This proposal, although it means well, is too lumped to be evaluated on efficacy. I’m not sure what we’re funding here - an entire startup, an operational team, an outsourced business development team, a marketing agency, community management team for ‘culture’ or an evangelist.
FWIW, I also have a tremendous respect for DeFi Dave, and with all do respect, everything below are genuine comments and asks.
I’d strongly recommend distributing this into different set of initiatives as opposed to one lump budget, with clear deliverables . As is, I am not sure how this should be evaluated using which framework?
Secondly, this doesn’t make sense as it relates to your multiple initiatives and business development request. Having been in business development, partnerships and operations at startups for 15+ years, why would a up to $250K budget be better than hiring a full-time senior business development/partnerships lead thats sole focus is to do just that, with clear KPI’s and deliverables? A competitive rate for a senior business development lead ranges between 150-180K today. Anything over 200K is reserved for director-level and beyond with clear responsibilities.
Also, the business development outline is a bit confusing:
Can you expand what you mean by onboarding? Does this require technical support, advisory and guidance, or will you be relying on Frax’s team?
Business development is not marketing. What marketing endeavors specifically will you help lead to amplify which partners? Will they be blogs? Is there a marketing calendar with specific cadence? This is another subset of operational initiatives which are lumped - business development isnt marketing, and marketing isnt business development.
Making intro’s is free. If Sam asked the community for an intro to X, the community would respond effectively. I have used this at my time within the Cosmos ecosystem at large, and it worked great because of our vibrant community
Speaking on behalf of Frax as a core advocate as an evangelist is fine. Maybe recouping costs of travel/lodging should suffice assuming there are events that are outlined, along with a budget for 2024 that the Frax team can center its focus on as a value-add. Will you also require a booth, or are these just speaking engagements gather more opportunities? If you do require a booth, please include the cost of the marketing collateral required to ship/setup/etc, along with how many people you expect to be there.
Culture & Events
Which conferences have you committed to and whats the budget per satellite event? How will you be reporting impact per dollar spent? Is it attendees attended?
What is the plan for merch? What’s the cost of that? Mugs? Sweatshirts? Where will you be sourcing them from and why?
I dont know what ‘pursuing unorthodox collaborations to bolster Frax’s brand and image’ means. Can you please be specific with some examples?
Hey Boz, thank you for your respectful response and questions. Let me answer your concerns as best as I can.
By onboarding, what I mean is to be actively involved in getting projects and users onto Fraxtal. This means publishing content on through our distribution channels (Twitter, Website), being available and reaching out to projects who want to build or integrate Fraxtal, and create tutorials for users on how to bridge to Fraxtal and use Fraxtal primitives such as BAMM. As more information for Fraxtal comes out, we can create a more concrete onboarding plan accordingly. In terms of budget for business development, I want to point out that the base is $50k and the KPIs for the rest we can create with the Frax Core team.
I will answer your next two bullet points together. In terms of intro’s, I am not talking about us giving intro’s to Frax (which I agree is free) but Frax giving intro’s to us in order to amplify their partnerships which most often have to do with getting the word out about yield opportunities. For almost the past year, the Frax Core Team has been putting us in groups with partners they have been working with and then we report on who they are and how they are working with Frax. These collaborations are covered in our This Week in Frax Newsletter (TWIF) as well as our weekly video program under the same name. TWIF is part of our content program for Frax which includes Frax Check and Cryptovestor’s Alpha Corner. We plan on adding more programming in the future, especially ones that center around yield.
These are speaking opportunties at conferences and online such as in Twitter spaces. A booth is a fine idea, I have not thought about that yet although I have hosted workshops in the past. I would consider having a booth and hosting workshops in the category of Culture and Events.
Culture & Events
We have committed to attending ETHDenver, ETHcc, & Devcon at the very least next year and want to leave some buffer for unplanned conferences. For each conference week, we will have a budget of $35k (likely to be not fully used) and any money not spent can be rolled over towards the next conference week.
Im proud to say that we had some of the most revered merch on the conference circuit last year (see response to our cherry blossom tee here and Japan long-sleeve here) We source them from Grift Shop and plan to keep making merch that people WANT to wear and not make it for the sake of making it. Depending on how many units of each item we get it costs $4k-$8k for merch
In terms of unorthodox collaborations, I really liked the “PYUSD/FWB Bazaar” that happened where people were airdropped PYUSD to spend at select merchants, Frax could do something similar to promote payments with its stablecoin on Fraxtal. In addition, I think an unexplored area in the crypto event space is sponsors from non-crypto related partners. It would be an awesome if Arizona Ice Tea were to sponsor drinks (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) at an event. Arizona is synonynous with being stable so having them sponsor a part of a stablecoin event would be a nice synergy.
love defidave, think you all do a good job educating and hosting events. but I do think that if this is just for a 1 year budget, it is a little on the excessive side given the reach. Very much in favor of getting you all on the whitelist, but think a revised proposal requesting less money is advisable.
I’m not completely against just want numbers adjusted.
Media should be 100-125k range. I don’t see the growth to accept a raise from the previous grant
BD is fine with the assumption the Frax team will evaluate properly and the full incentive bonus would be an absolute “knock it out of the park” outcome.
Events should be clear that it’s a budget of up to that amount to be used for things like rental/venue/hosting costs etc. not for payroll as that is part of the BD package. If the amount is not used it should be returned. Or can just invoice frax team for payback up to that amount.
(Maybe this was the intent but it’s not clear to me)
It’s still possible this could pass in it’s current form which is not the end of the world or anything. But I do strongly believe numbers should be reduced