[Proposal] NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces - Monthly Funding Request November 23’

Marketing DAO Marketing DAO
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[Proposal] NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces - Monthly Funding Request November 23’

Section 1 - Project Information

  • NEAR at Night
  • Near at Night - Monthly Funding Request (November 23’)
  • Established 08/21/22

Section 2. Previous Funding

Section 3. Project URLs

  • https://twitter.com/NEAR_at_NIGHT 2
  • 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 2

Relevant Data Points Showing Competencies:

Trove labs has been able to scale N@N to 1775 followers with over 9 months of continued support. We have also been able to market/build the Jump DeFi and Neko communities to 29,000 & 27,000 followers (on twitter alone) respectively. During (July), we had ~14k impressions and ~195 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.

For November, we will continue to promote/cover NDC V1and Nearcon 23’ while resuming our coverage of Near ecosystem projects, especially those active during Nearcon. Our proposal aligns with the current marketing DAO guidelines for November by:

  • Encouraging on-chain transactions for the NDC election (votes, engagement etc.)
  • Educating users about Nearcon,NDC, BOS and other active projects via AMA spaces. (Metrics measured via impressions and views per space)
  • Encouraging developers to build on NEAR by providing spotlight and encouraging users to interact/engage with what they are developing
  • Using ShardDog links to measure on chain interactions and promote onboarding.

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?

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(Near Digital Collective Core Values Update)
@marketingdao-council @Bakaka:

Empowering the ecosystem (for people by people)

NEAR at NIGHT empowers the ecosystem by providing a spotlight for projects, teams, and Key opinion leaders to amplify themselves and engage in compelling discussion with the N@N audience and community members from throughout the NEAR ecosystem. We follow important updates and engage in natural conversation that provides a comfortable environment for those looking to onboard onto NEAR protocol.

- Respected by the ecosystem (fair, accountable, transparent, and reliable)

Our team has been deeply rooted in the NEAR ecosystem since 2021 and has fostered strong relationships within the community. We frequently host guests from the most prestigious and respected projects/organizations on NEAR, and are dedicated to maintaining a strong reputation within our platform.

- Dedicated to ideas of decentralization (antifragile, scalable, with collective decision-making)

The main focus of our show is to highlight and discuss the ways in which decentralization and Near protocol can advance the future of technology through blockchain innovations. We consistently amplify the values of the Near Foundation and NDC and target guests related to the above values and topics.

- Efficient operation (don’t be a burden; instead, help the Community to be more efficient)

Near at Night has led the way with the AMA show format and proposal structure used by most of the Near community to date. We pride ourselves in our efficient operations, reports, and proposals. We constantly work with the community and the appropriate institutions (MDAO, NDC, Etc.) to improve our proposals and deliverables.

- Continuous improvement via weekly iterations (plan, measure results, and adjust continuously)

N@N constantly improves its content and structure monthly according to feedback and changes. Recently we have added an on chain metric in the form of ShardDog links claimable during most AMAs. We have maintained one of the highest views and impressions rates per show without use of giveaway incentives. We are open to any feedback from the NDC/MDAO and will adjust as needed.

Section 8. Project Deliverables

N@N will deliver 16 twitter Spaces AMAs for the month of November with a mix of guests from the NEAR ecosystem with an increased focus on the BOS, Nearcon updates, and the NDC.

With Important NDC elections, NEAR APAC coming up, and the NEAR foundation’s recent focus on grassroots projects, N@N will continue to play a significant role for adoption to the Near ecosystem in the coming months.

NEAR @ NIGHT AMAs are distributed on twitter via our N@N account on twitter https://twitter.com/NEAR_at_NIGHT 2

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.

Metrics

The latest proposal for N@N ends November 7th, the full report outlining all statistics is linked here .

1. Accounts retention after 1/2/4/8 weeks — the percentage of accounts who continue interacting on the chain over a given time period (higher is better)

N@N continues to steadily grow month after month. Our follower/impression growth is organic and reported monthly.

2. Account acquisition cost — budget divided by the number of accounts interacting through the funded initiative (lower is better)

For our last fully completed report in November we averaged 107 viewers ($2.41 per view) and 1620 impressions per space ($.16 per impression). This was a marked improvement from our last report in August. @so608

3. Median number of dApps used by P95 accounts retained for 1+ week (higher is better)

We do not currently have a way of tracking this other than ShardDog’s claimed. (data will be in next report for the month of October)

4. Number of accounts retained for 1+ week using at least three dApps (higher is better)

We do not currently have a way of tracking this other than ShardDog’s claimed. (data will be in next report for the month of October)

5. Social engagement score — some compound metric of the number of posts, likes, and followers/views in social media produced by the users.

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 16 QTY NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces.

Content > Podcast/Twitter Spaces > Educational = $258 (~120.56 NEAR) per Spaces session = $4128 (~2268.13 NEAR) per month (16 spaces) + Twitter Blue @ $8 per month

$4136 (~ 2537.5 NEAR) per month

16 QTY NEAR at NIGHT Twitter Spaces per month at a total cost of $4136 (~ 2537.5 NEAR)

$258.50 (~158.6 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 as soon as we are approved.

@marketingdao-council

2 Likes
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Hi @TroveLabs thank you for a well written proposal. I note that you have included detailed metrics on how your project aligns with out KPIs - great to see!

Please ensure that you update the stats. I am happy to support

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Hi @TroveLabs thanks for the detailed proposal. I’m noting you mentioned in this post that the most recent report you’ve posted on the forum is from August. We need to have a report on activity for your most recent funding in order to consider approving for future funding. Can you please provide that? Thanks.

Also, I know this has come up before, but mentioning that both @TroveLabs and @neko @Soos are using the same Twitter handle as proof of audience traction and engagement. I think in the future we are going to need to review with more differentiation around the teams and projects.

4

Thanks for the comments @so608, we just completed our last proposal yesterday due to a delay caused by Nearcon. It was linked in the report as well, showing a marked increase in viewers and impressions from our previous report.

You are mistaken that Near at Night uses the same twitter handle as proof of audience traction and engagement as other projects like Neko. We only use the Near at Night Twitter handle to track growth and engagement for our proposals related to Near at Night. Any mention of other projects in our report is to showcase past achievements from relevant team members. If this is confusing we can remove any mention of this in the future. Near at Night and Neko are completely separate.

5

Thank you for your proposal.

What you guys are doing in N@N is truly amazing, am following and joining some of your spaces, which are very educational.

Few concerns:

-258$ per Twitter space is a little pricey.
-16 spaces per month is also excessive; 4 spaces per week is concerning when compared to other content creators who have Twitter spaces, sometimes on the same day.

It would be cool if you could reduce the cost per space and the number of spaces every week.

Again, your previous reports are replete with AMAs. I am curious how these AMAs help us achieve our core values.

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$258 per space is comparable, and substantially cheaper to other similar proposals including Near Chill and Shill which is priced at $270. We have a team that schedules, hosts, maintains a social media platform (Work that other proposals charge extra for), and N@N consistently meets the demands and requirements set forth by the MDAO. We believe this justifies our price point. What price point do you have in mind for all of the work we do @Bakaka ?

We have previously attempted to perform with less spaces per week at the request of the marketing DAO, which has resulted in a sever loss of momentum and a decrease in views during the month of august as seen in our report. After switching back to our regular schedule in september our views and impressions increased by over 30% for both views and impressions. We also often space out our shows in a period longer than a month to maximize the views and to avoid conflict with other spaces shows. We think that it is important and beneficial that we keep the same amount of spaces per proposal.

AMAs are important in achieving NDC KPIs since user education is vital to user acquisition and retention. With our AMAs, we highlight projects building on NEAR including new projects, projects who have been around looking to amplify new important updates, and even some projects not yet on Near looking to onboard (Some of which have in the past ex. Rogues Studio). A large portion of our AMAs are actually with members of the NDC using our platform to inform the Near community about important NDC events, including elections, governance votes and more.

I am looking forward to hearing back from the @marketingdao-council regarding our proposal.

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Respectfully, when you put this in your proposal, it appears that you are using the sizes of those Twitter accounts to substantiate the audience size and relevance of this initiative. I understand that Trove Labs, Neko, Near at Night and the Neko morning show are all different entities, but it presents a problem for the Marketing DAO to continue to try to evaluate and track the progress of distinct projects when these different projects are referencing the same Twitter accounts.

Trove Labs Projects - Twitter Links:

I also don’t think benchmarking the funding request against another proposer’s funding request is a good long-term strategy for the ecosystem. The long-term affect of that being an acceptable argument is that community funds become decoupled from market rate value, impact, community growth, continued development of quality, etc. This is a large reason why I am in favor of changing the way content is funded for Q12024.

That said, I do think we are in a moment in the ecosystem where we need to continue to encourage communication and activity.

I will support for another month, but I do think change to the overall content creator funding structure is likely up ahead.

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This is not benchmarking other funding requests, this is simply showcasing what our team has accomplished. We will remove this from future proposals.

If you look at our metrics and statistics from our previous reports, you can see we continue to improve and grow month to month by Near at Night’s own merit.

Thank you for your comments, Near at Night is always open to constructive criticism and suggestions to improve our show from the council!

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After discussion with @Bakaka, Near at Night will experiment with Twitter Threads and Key takeaways posted via twitter and Near Social for AMA’s/notable spaces to asses impact. We will also focus on having 3 spaces a week and will fulfill our 16 spaces requirement before asking for additional funding.

1 Like
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Thanks for the discussions and all your clarifications. happy to support and looking forward to seeing your reports and don’t forget to utilize Near social too.

1 Like