Hey there Partners, Fam, Neareans & PioNears 
Thanks for all the support you have been giving to the Near Community @marketingdao-council
I will share some background first
The Merchants Guild Leader had to leave the Guild for personal matters, so this was a process on how to keep growing our unofficial Near Telegram group, on where we get initiatives from members like @Mansa.Keita here:
The key point we evolved from that proposal is that now the leadership is shared with the whole community, we have a council group with the 18 most active members 
and we have now 11 councils on the Merchants DAO, so now we are giving example to all the on-chain communities on how we all can take good steps into decentralization and democracy, allowing everyone to participate and grow.
With that being said, I am excited to know your feedback and use your advice on the following proposal we all agreed on during an open meeting with the whole Merchants Guild.
Introduction
Special thanks to @David_NEAR for joining one of our meetings and giving us advice on what we could do to help Near Marketing in general
- Guild name: Merchants of Near
- Funding scheme: Monthly
Initiative Summary:
We will like to keep growing, we have one of the biggest unofficial communities all over the Blockchain Ecosystem, with more than 2.300 members, where Neareans can speak freely and share any off-topics, and mostly discuss price predictions, tokenomics, and other financial related topics.
Vision: Biggest Trading On-chain Community related to Blockchain
Mision: To allow all the growth of the NEAR Community by providing a space for any topic discussion
Goals: To grow the community’s awareness of financial tools and price predictions by running price contests and providing educational content
The main activities to carry on:
- Price Prediction Contests
→ Deliverable: Social media outreach with Tradingview + Medium + Twitter - Content Creation
→ Videos and Publications made by the community and curated by the councils - Educational Growth
→ Webinars, Meetings, and educational documentation construction with the goal of a Near Certified Trading course creation.
Expected impact
- Increase in the social media interactions related to NEAR on Twitter and other social media by spreading information about NEAR tokens and price predictions.
- Professionalization of the members, guiding them through the educational content and the trading course.
- More participation from the Neareans in activities that help the growth of the Near Ecosystem.
Metrics for measuring success
- +20% growth in the next 2 months
- 2.600 → 3.000 members
- 80 → 100 participants
-
Near Certified Trading Course documentation → at least 10 hours of content
-
1 Partnership with an educational team on Near Ecosystem like Near Academy.
Funding Details
- Total: $5.000 USD
72% of the funding request is for the whole community + there are few tasks for the councils and there was an open call for the councils, related to taking care of the communication channels like Twitter, Medium, Reddit, and the telegram.
Funds will be received on The Merchants DAO where we have 11 council members.
- Guidance for the use of the funding (taking into account OWS experience):
| Focus | Activity | Reward | Nominated | Budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership | Shared with the community | No reward asked | Councils | $0 |
| Course | Near Certified Trader - Materials will be created to build up the educational / documentation | $1000 | Mansa | $1000 |
| Contest | Organization and Structure for the Contests | No reward asked | Fritz | $0 |
| Contest | Price prediction rewards | 400 USD per week | Everyone | $1600 |
| Content | Editor and Creator >8 own publications + curating other publications | 400 USD | Yuppie | $400 |
| Content | Articles including trading analysis about NEAR tokens on TradingView + Medium + Twitter | 50 USD per 500 words | Everyone | $500 |
| Content | Create a video over NEAR price-related topics, technical analysis tutorials, guides, etc | 50 USD (3-5 minutes) | Everyone | $500 |
| Community | Responsable for the Group Safety / Moderation | 200 USD | Thanos | $200 |
| Community | Twitter + Reddit Community Management | 200 USD | 9ce | $200 |
| Community | Organazing members activities / Video&Articles Review | 400 USD | Monish | $400 |
| Community | Sharing teachings, suggestions to improve trading and updating the guild with news on webinars/meetups | 100 USD bi-weekly | Mansa | $200 |
| Community | If more content is created + Backup + Solve past contest situation | - | - | $1000 |
*The activities will be related to NEAR tokens
*Contributors will need to request approval before starting any activity.
*Everything will be posted on social media, interaction will be taken into account, and the council members will have the final decision into rewarding those activities.
*In order to withdraw the funds, there is always a report or post on the forum. All payments will be sent from the DAO after the report is received and the community will have a chance to provide feedback.
Info about past contest situation
Cheers, and
