Content Gateway Season 3 Extended Budget Request

Title: Content Gateway Season 3 Extended Budget Request
Authors: 0xNSHuman
Squad: addamsson, 0xNSHuman, ManuelMaccou, Theo, BorisSchickedanz.eth
Date Created: January 16, 2022
Date Posted: January 19, 2022

SUMMARY

After spending a good part of January on various organizational activities, such as:

  • Creating a dedicated Discord server for our team and future community;
  • Onboarding 3 new team members;
  • Working on project collaboration and communication framework;
  • Discussing our product strategy and early monetization options;
  • Restructuring our budget and compensation structure;

we are now prepared to extend our budget request to pursue the goals stated in our Season 3 proposal.

BACKGROUND

In the beginning of the season we had our main proposal approved.

Back then we’ve clearly identified the challenges we’re facing in terms of project scalability, the need to have a proper contributor collaboration and communication framework, the need for market strategy discussion and a plan for sustainability to avoid the project being overly dependent on the founding team and on the larger DAO in the future.

We believe that we’ve made the first steps necessary to proceed with the extended funding and start working as a reformed group.

MISSION & VALUES ALIGNMENT

We continue serving the core mission of the DAO — onboarding 1,000,000,000 people to crypto — by enabling easy access to diverse yet organized content through a single gateway platform.

We are also correcting our mid-term priorities to meet the growing demand for project self-sustainability, to try and shift from being a cost center to productizing our products and services.

SPECIFICATION

Dedicated Discord Server

We have branched off to our own Discord server and developed our own infrastructure for daily communication and synchronization.

All-New Contributor Collaboration Framework

We spent weeks on the discussion around the best practices for project management, remote collaboration, collective ownership, workplace psychology and project sustainability. As a result, we’ve developed a methodology, toolset and procedures to begin experimenting with.

Our setup relies on a mix of Notion pages, Discord threads and bots, GitHub and various plain text documents — all wired together and governed by simplified Agile practices and decentralized ownership.

Contributor Handbook

With the primary goal of making the project resistant to the risks of the permissionless environment, such as the possibility of any contributor to leave of reduce their commitment indefinitely, we started documenting some of the practices and procedures we agree on into a Handbook, so that we can plug new contributors in faster in the future. We believe this is a foundational part of any group that considers becoming a subDAO in the future.

Contributor Incentives & Vesting

As an extension of our effort to manage risks that come with the permissionless nature of collaboration in the DAO, we are proposing the following escrow conditions and schedule.

The purpose of this schedule is to incentivize contributors to invest their time in the product for the entire season period.

The funding release will be split into 4 stages in the following way:

  1. There are three (3) milestones with equal reward, plus the final season completion date;
  2. Upon reaching every milestone the team is distributed 60% of this milestone’s reward;
  3. The remaining 40% of every milestone’s reward is staying in escrow until the end of the season;
  4. Upon reaching the end of the season the team is distributed all the remaining funds.

This way, 20% of the total budget is spent on every milestone, and 40% of the rewards is postponed until the end of the season.

Here’s the example of what this formula results in when applied to our total Season 3 funding.

Stage Budget, % Immediate Distribution Deferred Distribution
Milestone 1 20% 192,000 BANK 128,000 BANK
Milestone 2 20% 192,000 BANK 128,000 BANK
Milestone 3 20% 192,000 BANK 128,000 BANK
Season Completion 40% 384,000 BANK 0 BANK

To prevent any roadmap manipulation and uncertainty for contributors, it is proposed not to bind escrow release to any KPIs or metrics other than whether the contributor has kept working in the project until the end of the season.

Thus, approximate Milestone definitions are limited to dates as follows:

Milestone 1 — January 31

Milestone 2 — February 28

Milestone 3 — March 31

Season Completion — April 8

Example of a Milestone Funding Release

Let’s say you’re an engineer holding two roles:

  • Software Engineer (Platform & Tools)
  • Software Engineer (Integration)

If you commit to spending 10 hours / week for each role, your total projected season earnings should be:

10 HOURS x 2 ROLES x 12 WEEKS x 1,000 BANK = 240,000 BANK

In this case, here’s how your funding release schedule will look like.

Stage Immediate Distribution Deferred Distribution
Milestone 1 48,000 BANK 31,200 BANK
Milestone 2 96,000 BANK 62,400 BANK
Milestone 3 144,000 BANK 93,600 BANK
Season Completion 240,000 BANK 0 BANK

Funds Governance & Responsibility

We will modify our multisig wallet to require 3 out of 5 signatures made by the team members in order to execute every transaction. This will ensure fair execution and incentivise team bonding to achieve common goals.

In the event when a contributor needs to leave the project or reduce commitment substantially for a good reason and in good faith, the team can release the escrowed part of the contributor’s earnings, approving such transaction by voting.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Role Funding

We are scaling our team up from 2 to 5 contributors. Some of the roles are shared among several contributors, while other are assigned exclusively.

The following role distribution is proposed.

Assumed season length is 12 weeks.
Assumed compensation rate is 1,000 BANK per hour.

Role Hours / Week / Role Holder Target Count of Role Holders Funding Avg Funding Per Role Holder
Platform Growth Dude 4 1 48,000 BANK 48,000 BANK
Project Manager 4 1 48,000 BANK 48,000 BANK
Integration Coordinator 4 1 48,000 BANK 48,000 BANK
Team Lead 4 1 48,000 BANK 48,000 BANK
Software Architect 4 1 48,000 BANK 48,000 BANK
Software Engineer (Platform & Tools) 10 3 360,000 BANK 120,000 BANK
Software Engineer (Integration) 10 3 360,000 BANK 120,000 BANK

Infrastructure Maintenance Funding

We are currently hosting the system ourselves and working on solutions to reduce its maintenance cost.

This season, we need about 20,000 BANK to cover the estimated maintenance expenses.

Total Funding Request

Subtotal: 980,000 BANK.

Current project funds to subtract — 405,420 BANK:

  • Season 3 Grants Committee Funding
    • 336,000 BANK
  • Carried Over from Season 2
    • 69,420 BANK

Total additional funding requested: 574,580 BANK.

BRAND USAGE

We are planning to outreach 3rd-party organizations as a BanklessDAO product.

SUCCESS METRICS OR KPIS

The metrics we track since the original proposal:

  • Content producers integrated.

    • Number of independent projects plugged-in and having their data passed through the gateway.
  • Content consumers connected.

    • Number of products using the aggregated content API.
    • Amount of data consumed via the API per a reporting period.

The new internal metrics that we connect to our project sustainability goals:

  • Number of organizations relying on Content Gateway outside Bankless DAO
  • Number of products relying on Content Gateway outside Bankless Mobile App

NEXT STEPS

Continue executing on the development roadmap and market strategy priorities.

SQUAD BACKGROUND

  • addamsson and NSHuman are active Bankless DAO contributors since Season 2. Their biggest footprints are Content Gateway and Mobile App projects.

  • ManuelMaccou has been active in BanklessDAO since the start of Season 2. He’s heavily active in the Education Guild where he is champion of the Education Workgroup. He will be contributing to Content Gateway’s platform growth and integration.

  • Theo is a new contributor with previous backend experience. They will be working as a software engineer on integrating new data and building out the existing plaform/tools.

  • BorisSchickedanz.eth has >20 years experience in Software Development and Software Architecture, and 8 years in Personal & Business Coaching. He joined the DAO in October '21 working on re-establishing the mental health channel. He will be working as a Software Engineer for Content Gateway for season 3+.

POLL

Do you support the budget extension for Content Gateway to fund the restructured team, reformed project collaboration framework and new market strategy execution?

  • SUPPORT
  • DO NOT SUPPORT
0 voters
2 Likes

Forking A I fully support this effort and funding as well as the entire team and methodical effort it took to advance this far. As one of the test pilots of the mobile offering know of their talent. I worked (a lie as usual) observed with the results of their efforts. I know on this discord 3 of the 5 team members and vouch for their skill, knowledge and experience. I trust their team expansion. Pulling from their source of truth, our web sight our content gateway will be absolutely a win as a revenue source as the gateway goes external with the help of the other guilds and collaboration efforts. Light years ahead of the crowd and 1st mover advantage globally. Pass it and get to cranking…love you all and it!

3 Likes

i am in support of this proposal. Content Gateway has so much potential and I can only see even better things coming from this project.

2 Likes

I am new to this project and am getting familiar with the Content Gateway. To me, it looks like something that will generate a lot of value for people. As we are the world’s largest social DAO and are also connected to a respected media brand… :rocket: :rocket: :rocket: !

I am interested in hearing more about how long you anticipate it will take to become sustainable and what steps are involved. I am also interested in your expectations for revenue generation in 2022 and beyond, so that we can calculate the ROI of the grant.

Thank you for leading this effort!!