[Approved] NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces - Monthly Funding Request August 23' [Edited 08/13/23]

Marketing DAO Marketing DAO
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Astro DAO Poll

NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces - Monthly Funding Request August 23’

Section 1 - Project Information

  • NEAR at Night
  • Near at Night - Monthly Funding Request (August)
  • Established 08/21/22

Section 2. Previous Funding

Section 3. Project URLs

  • https://twitter.com/NEAR_at_NIGHT
  • NEAR at NIGHT targets all regions and countries with a varied time frame M -T 3pm EDT, & W -Th 10pm EDT allowing for more opportunity for viewers from other timezones to participate.

Section 4. Applicant Information

Section 5. Team Members

Hosts: David Leer, Brandon Cantu

Co-Host: Zach Harmon

Research: Şenay Akdemir Bükrek

Social Links:

Trove Labs Projects - Twitter Links:

David Leer - Host & Coordination

David is the Co-Founder of Trove Labs; developer of NEAR native projects Jump DeFi & NEKO.

David began investing into crypto seriously in 2020; learning how to utilize DeFi to reach financial freedom. David started making crypto content in 2021 to teach others about DeFi and NFTs.

David was a first mover in many alt-layer 1 ecosystems before discovering NEAR in December 2021. At that time, David realized NEAR Protocol is special and he decided to devote his life to building in the ecosystem. David transitioned from a career in engineering to focus on Jump DeFi, NEKO, and the growth of the NEAR Protocol ecosystem full time. David is a passionate leader who works hard to empower people within the NEAR Protocol community.

As host of NEAR at NIGHT, David is responsible for maintaining engaging conversation through the duration of the Twitter Spaces. David moderates the conversation to ensure all speakers feel safe to speak their mind. Additionally, David participates in daily research for the NEAR at NIGHT agenda and coordinates with Şenay to schedule project Founders to attend as speakers.

Brandon Cantu - Host & Coordination

Brandon is a former Laboratory Manager with extensive experience in managing project teams and developing business operations. As Co-Founder of Trove labs, he lives out his passion for web 3.0 by overseeing the product development of Jump DeFi, Good Fortune Felines, & other projects from throughout the crypto ecosystem. He leads projects & communities at a high level.

As Co-Host of NEAR at NIGHT, Brandon helps lead conversation and organizes AMAs with other Near ecosystem projects and teams.

Zach Harmon - Social Media Manager/Co-Host

Zach Harmon has been in the crypto space as a participant/consumer for over 3 years. In January 2022 he transitioned to a more active role building in the crypto community; specifically on NEAR Protocol. Zach has a degree in Education and a passion for helping people learn. The crypto space can be extremely difficult for newcomers, Zach and his partners are working to make the transition from web2 to web3 easier. Zach has worked with NEARNFTDAO, and he is a core member of WGMI Solutions Team working with various projects on Web3, as well as a core team member of The Murder Mystery Collective.

As Co-Host of NEAR at NIGHT, Zach helps lead conversation and build out the daily Spaces agenda. Zach is also the main moderator during NEAR at NIGHT. He makes sure speakers requests are accepted quickly, he pins important links during different points of discussion and mutes/removes any speakers that are being disrespectful to others.

Şenay Akdemir Bükrek - Research & Coordination

Şenay has been a full time crypto degen since 2020. She enjoys playing around on testnet betas, following early products, supporting builders and being a dedicated member of NFT communities. Şenay is a major contributor to NEAR native projects, working as Community Manager for the Mr. Brown Project and is a part of the NDC as a core contributor for the NFT Work. Şenay is committed to the women in crypto movement and LGBTI+s adaptation to crypto.

Şenay has a background in Labor Economics and Industry Relations. She has worked in different sectors of administrative duties including Personal Assistant, Executive Assistant, Logistics, Governance, Project Management, HR and Residence Planning for more than 15 years. She is passionate about giving back to society by participating in multiple NGOs including Purple Roof Women’s Shelter, Greenpeace and Doğa Derneği(Nature Organization).

Şenay is supporting NEAR at NIGHT with research and coordination. She helps assemble the daily agenda by finding important news and events happening in crypto and the NEAR ecosystem. Şenay reaches out to Founders of NEAR native projects to schedule them as a speaker during NEAR at NIGHT.

Section 6. Experience

What related qualifications, experience or track record does your team bring to this initiative?

  • Short Summary of Your Professional Experience (Refer to team experience)
  • Trove labs has developed the following Near ecosystem projects: Jump DeFi, Neko, Near at Night and has been involved/worked with with many other projects in the ecosystem. Brandon, David, and Monza are all Near ecosystem founders and Senay is a core contributor for the NFT workgroup.

Relevant Works:
Jump DeFi
Neko
Trove Labs
NDC
Murder Mystery Collective
NEAR at Night

Relevant Data Points Showing Competencies:

Trove labs has been able to scale N@N to 1686 followers with over 7 months of continued support. We have also been able to market/build the Jump DeFi and Neko communities to 29,000 & 26,000 followers (on twitter alone) respectively. For our most recent N@N proposal (July), we have ~14k impressions and ~162 views per space. With dedicated builders from multiple projects within the ecosystem and NDC, we have the necessary skill sets and relationships needed to build a consistent social media presence for Near protocol through NEAR at Night.

Section 7. Project Goals

Project Description:

NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces is a safe space for people to speak their mind about issues they see in the NEAR ecosystem. Founders provide updates on approaching milestones for their respective projects. The community receives information on how to participate in community-led marketing efforts. Near at Night creates its schedule and agenda from open communication with the NEAR ecosystem, while we tend to focus on upcoming projects and project updates, anyone can request to speak on N@N.

NEAR at NIGHT has scaled its own Twitter account into a popular platform; enabling more people to take on host roles as we grow to accommodate multiple time zones. Also, we have diversified the timing of certain NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces to ensure any NEAR Project can be a guest regardless of their geographic location, with spaces Mon-Tues @ 3pm EST & Wed-Thurs @ 10pm EST.

For this proposal, we are asking for an additional month of funding. Our efforts at Near at Night have continued to draw a regular audience as well as highlight many of the projects still building on NEAR protocol. Twitter blue has helped to create a marked increase in our visibility.

We have also been using our platform to promote and discuss important events within the NDC on a weekly basis. On July 7th, we had over 26,000 impressions for our spaces showing a continuous significant impact from our efforts.

What Problem Are You Aiming to Solve?

NEAR Protocol needs a stronger marketing presence in order to achieve its goal of onboarding 1 billion users. A consistent community presence on Twitter is extremely important for onboarding new users and strengthening existing projects and teams within NEAR protocol. Regular Twitter Spaces shows act as a primary source of information and community interaction for many people in Web3 and in the NEAR community. We are proud to continue providing this much needed presence for the NEAR ecosystem via the Near at Night platform which has continued to gain momentum since our first proposal.

How Does This Project Help Solve the Problems You’ve Listed?

Since the initial NEAR at NIGHT spaces in August, Near at Night has been providing an inclusive platform for all Near ecosystem projects and their communities for a total of 6 months! On (05/03/23), we submitted our latest report that outlines the current month of NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces in progress.

NEAR at NIGHT has served as a platform for Founders and team members of NEAR native projects to showcase what they are building and discuss upcoming roadmap milestones. Additionally, we covered the latest updates and news from all facets of the NEAR ecosystem. NEAR at NIGHT is a node for the NEAR community to stay up to date and involved with the NEAR ecosystem. Also, Near at Night provides a platform which generates significant impressions and views for projects that need a boost in engagement

Professionally structured Twitter Spaces for the NEAR community, by the NEAR community, is one of the highest impact community-led marketing activities that exists at this time.

NEAR at Night Goals:

  • Consistently grow out the N@N audience & impact
  • Regularly host AMAs with ecosystem projects to spotlight important NEAR teams.
  • Highlight NEAR ecosystem News/updates
  • Maintain KPIs and impressions for N@N content.

Section 8. Project Deliverables

N@N will deliver 10 twitter Spaces AMAs for the month of august with a mix of guests from the NEAR ecosystem focusing on the BOS and the NDC.

For our most recent proposal (July), we have held 16/16 spaces, with an average of ~13.6k impressions and ~195 views per space. We are consistently meeting our KPIs set in our proposals. With Important NDC elections, and NEAR APAC coming up, we believe we will continue to play a significant role for adoption to the Near ecosystem in the coming months. See Report

NEAR @ NIGHT AMAs are distributed on twitter via our N@N account on twitter https://twitter.com/NEAR_at_NIGHT

The N@N twitter profile posts multiple announcements and reminders per AMA each month, ~50 posts per month minimum.

AMAs and interviews are formatted to allow each project time (~1 hour) to highlight what they are building and to address the audience and answer questions. AMAs are announced 48 hours in advance, with a general agenda being created with the attending project. N@N is open to any project seeking to participate in an AMA and often takes feedback & polls from the community to select projects for upcoming AMAs.

Section 9. Budget

We are requesting funding for 1 month (4 weeks, Mon-Tues @3pm EST, Wed-Thurs @10pm EST) of NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces from the date (In May) we receive funding. Total of 10 QTY NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces.

Content > Podcast/Twitter Spaces > Educational = $250 (~120.56 NEAR) per Spaces session = $2500 (~2268.13 NEAR) per month (10 spaces)

10 QTY NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces per month at a total cost of $2500 (~ 1851 NEAR)

$250 (~186 NEAR) per Spaces session

See below breakdown of costs including 1 host, 2 co-hosts and 1 researcher

Breakdown of David Leer time:

  • Research / Create Agenda: 1 hour per day
  • Coordination: 30 minutes per day
  • Host Spaces: 1 hour per day

Breakdown of Brandon Cantu time:

  • Research / Create Agenda: 1 hour per day
  • Coordination: 30 minutes per day
  • Co-Host Spaces: 1 hour per day

Breakdown of Zach Harmon time:

  • Manage N@N Social Platform: 30 min per day
  • Co-Host Spaces: 1 hour per day

Breakdown of Şenay Akdemir Bükrek time:

  • Research / Create Agenda: 1 hour per day
  • Coordination: 1 hour per day

Start date of the proposal will be August 1st-31st 2023. If approved, Eligible August spaces completed before funding is distributed will be credited to the proposal.

@marketingdao-council

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I have removed the old proposal for August and posted according to the new Marketing DAO Format! @Dacha , can you confirm if we still need to fill out an application form in addition to this? If so, can you link it here? Thanks!

-Brandon

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No, you don’t need Brandon. Thank you!

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Thank you for your proposal and your great work.

So, basically, you’re splitting the funds among the team members who help organize ? Right and could you possibly attach an amount to all of the team’s engagements?

What is the average participant in your space?

Is there any kind of incentive for your participant?

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Hello @Bakaka , We have attached the teams approximate engagements above.

For the month of July, we have averaged 162 views and 14k impressions per space, with some high profile spaces getting higher engagement than others. Please reference our previous Report for more information. Our impressions have been increasing since our previous reports due to the N@N twitter profile engaging with more posts than before.

Participants are educated on the status of the Near ecosystem, and guest speakers are able to highlight their respective projects. We used to have giveaways, though we were told to remove them by the @marketingdao-council , since removing giveaways our viewership has not been negatively effected, we would consider adding incentives back to the budget & show if the marketing dao agreed.

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Based on the report, probably worth noting that outside of 1 Few&Far space, which is a huge outlier, the average consistent number of total listeners per space is 40.

Seems to be similar situation with impressions, where the consistent average is around 1,200, where NDC space with 160,000 impressions (but only 78 listeners?) is mainly responsible for the average provided.

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Thanks for pointing this out! It is worth noting that our average is 195 viewers per space, not 40, and while the average views has been slightly lower during the summer, we have multiple past reports that show N@N Maintains high average views and impressions making it the highest performing spaces show on NEAR protocol!

Please reference a couple of our past reports for more information on our growth and consistent performance:

It’s also worth noting that “outlier” spaces as you describe them, are still performing our proposed goal of creating impressions and engagement for near protocol, and the distinction dosent change the large impact N@N has had for the benefit of Near!

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True that, the outlier spaces still count very much and are in fact the most valuable once, the highlights of success of long-term commitment! Just pointing this out in the context of average numbers.

It is great to see that you have had more views and engagement in prior months. The temporarily decline is fully understandable, as the engagement in web3 fluctuates a lot and we are not in the most exciting times right now. Hope it goes back up next month!

Anyway, full support for this proposal from my side, I think we need more high-quality content creators in NEAR, especially on twitter spaces, with them being such an effective tool to grow community.

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Our views are actually higher for this month than some of our previous months, the NDC cooperation has helped a ton. It’s also worth noting we have been able to achieve this after dropping giveaways at the request of the marketing dao. Perhaps future proposal could leverage giveaways to further secure views and engagement!

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For sure, in my experience giveaways when done right can be a very cost-effective and beneficial tool.

Especially if people initially attracted by the giveaways are later funneled into a proper system to that creates community and stay long-term

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The N@N team is a great team to to introduce and explain new and existing projects being built on the Near Protocol. As I’ve said in the past, they break down valuable and vital information into digestible chunks even normies can understand.

Coming from founders/devs of the eco system gives a safe haven to members new and old. I attend as many spaces as possible to extend my knowledge in this space. I fully support this team for what they do at the price point they present.

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Hi @TroveLabs thanks for the clear and well structured proposal – noting your responses to questions and feedback from others on the forum, as well as the support from community members.

In looking at the project, significant previous funding, growth over time/metrics, I do think your content is bringing value to the ecosystem, but I am conscious of the need to fund a diverse range of projects and spread MarketingDAO funding around to as many worthy projects as we can.

Would you consider funding for a reduced number of spaces so we can continue supporting the project and give it more time to demonstrate increased traction and audience reach? It may be that reducing the hours to produce spaces and working on the audience cultivation piece of the project may lead to more meaningful results and impact going forward. It’s also not clear to me that more spaces/higher volume of output is leading to increased impact. But want to get your thoughts on that.

I have similar questions/thoughts about a number of proposals we’re reviewing this month, so this is not limited to N@Night – we are in a moment in the ecosystem where I see a need to be careful about allocating funding, we can’t fund every project at the same level month after month and we have some choices we have to make in terms of allocation. All those things are front of mind for me.

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Thank you for your input Lorraine! You and the rest of the council members have been instrumental in helping us shape N@N. I think that the impact of N@N comes not only from the consistent metrics we show each month, but from the amount of projects and teams we are able to highlight each week. We have also broken our goals this month for N@N twitter impressions with a total of 200,088 (13.6k impressions per space) from our posts via the N@N account and an average of 195 views per space. This breaks the 8000 average impressions set by ourselves and @so608 from our last proposal, showing that we are maintaining successful growth after 7 months of funding. With 4 spaces a week we are able to educate about important projects building on NEAR, and build a stronger community. For this proposal, we have planned weekly NDC spaces throughout August where we will educate and encourage the community to participate in the coming NDC elections.

We are open to your suggestions, including new methods for user cultivation, and would consider revising our # of spaces for our NEXT proposal, but would like to follow through with maximum NDC coverage for our august proposal leading up to elections if possible. The monthly funding for weekly spaces allows us to keep momentum resulting in a presence for N@N that has allowed some of our shows to go viral with over 1600 views (Few and Far Spaces)
Also, I think that if the marketing DAO would allow us to provide user incentives again like other shows do currently, it would allow us more opportunity for user cultivation. I would also like a confirmation on wether teams can include giveaways in MDAO funded initiatives like this one @marketingdao-council .

I think its very important that new proposals be judged on their merit, and that N@N is positively beneficial to NEAR with our influence and consistently high KPIs. Our continued funding would allow us to prove our traction and reach. We ask that you consider the above, along with funding this proposal for August before implementing changes suggested. Thank you again Lorraine!

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Hello, @TroveLabs. Thanks for a great job! Could you please give more information about the Twitter spaces’ participants and topics? Due a specific KPIs for August and September, MDAO can allow only proposals focused on the following:

  • NDC elections (please make sure you don’t get any bounties from GWG for the same work)
  • Increasing numbers of active Developers
  • Increasing numbers of active Users and Transactions
  • Increasing numbers of Tools on BOS
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Of course!

For August and September we are planning on continuing our NDC Election spaces series every Thursday to breakdown the different houses, candidates and more for V1 of the NDC. We had a successful space last Thursday with Illuminft, Blaze, and Russ as guest speakers.

N@N and Trove Labs have always structured spaces, speakers, and content with topics are geared towards onboarding developers and users, as well as increasing transactions on NEAR. We regularly hosts spaces with new projects looking to onboard to NEAR, and have done so in the past with projects like Rogues Studio.

We already have upcoming guests, Satori (Alpha BOS Task App) and Mailchain (Web3 Mail App new to NEAR) planned for August as well. We believe N@N delivers on all 4 of the KPIs mentioned and will continue to focus on spaces and guests that educate our audience on new projects/teams in an effort to increase the amount of developers, users and transactions on NEAR!

Please let me know if you need more specifics @Dacha!

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Thank you for your patience while reviewing your proposal.

As Dacha mentioned, our core KPIs for August-September are focused on the NDC election and voter education for proposals like yours that rely primarily on Twitter and podcasts.

I suggest you start doing fewer AMAs and focus more on better quality content, 2 AMAs per week are recommended that focus on NDC elections and why participation matters, as well as talk about project building on BOS.

We also want you to have a BOS page and encourage your followers and participants to actively participate on-chain, which will allow us to track future progress.

Please, could you edit the proposal and reduce the number of your activities?

Happy to support $2500 when edited.

@Dacha @so608 @jarednotjerry

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Thank you for your suggestions @Bakaka . I get your reasoning but think that “better content” is somewhat vague seeing as how our content is educational, effective, and specific to all the KPIs you mentioned, I would recommend that you take some time to watch last weeks NDC space for an example.

Again, we would consider editing our proposal for reduced spaces, but considering our proposals offer the cheapest value per AMA/space with the highest KPIs compared to other simmilar content on the marketing DAO (with ~13.6k impressions and ~195 views per space on average), our value as a platform is evident.

The NEAR Foundation and Marketing DAO needs established platforms like ours to help market the BOS and NDC, but also needs our additional spaces to encourage new developers and users by having additional spaces highlighting things other than just the BOS and NDC.

I would like to hear feedback from the other @marketingdao-council members before considering cutting all other spaces that highlight other projects on NEAR, as we believe that is equally as important for the ecosystem.

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My bad, if the word "better contents " sounds vague

i really enjoyed your space and reading your threads.

The suggestions are only for August, for now, after the NDC election, we are going to have a regular approach and focus more on general promotions and marketing.

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Thanks for answering my questions and those of others commenting on the forum. I want to note that you have been very open to feedback and also willing to update focus to meet current focus for August, which is NDC election and BOS.

Here’s the reality as I see it:

  • We have $203K+ in funding requests coming from the community for August
  • We have ~$46K to deploy
  • We cannot fund everyone
  • The funding we can allocate is limited and needs to go to the ecosystem KPIs – which are NDC election and BOS content

I think we may need to reduce funding to a flat rate for this month across a number of projects in order to get funding to multiple projects and work together to amplify the ecosystem.

Given the current situation, there is a world in which the MDAO may have limit funding to a grant in a specified amount to produce content supporting NDC election and BOS.

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Thank you for the breakdown @so608! As always we appreciate the hard work of the marketing DAO council and advisors.

I think we are more than willing to adjust our proposal to ~$2500 and reduce to ~2 spaces a week (~10 for the month of August) as @Bakaka suggested, with us completing the rest of the NDC election series and focusing on the KPIs suggested.

I will adjust the total ask of the proposal to the suggestions in the comments and tag the council when we have edited our funding request!