Project Name: CleanNFTs Guild (September)
CleanNFTs SputnikDAO
September Funding Request
Project Status: Growing 
Project Accounting: 203.20N* this number includes a few payments from Sept that are in process.
Overview:
September was a busy month for everyone, but despite a late start we managed to find several folks in the NEAR community and our own Discord who were excited to participate in our bounties. Thank you to everyone who helped boost our reach on social media. We hope to continue this momentum forward into October!
Admin & Guild setup:
Guild management and monthly administration and marketing and promotional activities which included;
- Coordinating Guild and Sputnik setup
- Setting up a dedicated email address and google account (cleannfts@gmail.com)
- Discord management, including new channels and safeguards against spammers and bots
- Managing bounty calls and applications
[Completed] [To be paid out - 150N] thebadlament.near (37.5/$228), nvrndr.near (75/$576) & moonhmz.near (37.5/$228)
Moderator Applications:
Recruitment for the moderator position was slow to kick off in September so we appointed former active Discord moderator, Pearl Hyacinth, to moderate for September as they were interested in taking on a short term role to support the GUILD.
We had 6 candidates in our open call. We are still in the process of interviewing to onboard a new moderator for this month and will also run an additional call out to allow for suitable applicants. This role will be granted with a probationary period to assess if the position is a good fit. (minimum 2 weeks, max 4 weeks) Mods will be paid for the time they work during this period.
[In Progress][To be paid out - 15N/$115] pearlhyacinth.near
Marketing:
Twitter account @clean_nfts set up and social engagement started. During the month we featured Guild announcements, Guild Bounties and Event announcements, and retweets of relevant updates from PoS platforms and projects. During September 76 tweets in total were sent out, we followed 469 accounts and we had 233 accounts follow us.
[Completed] [To be paid out - 30N/$230] Split between thebadlament.near (7.5), nvrndr.near (7.5), moonhmz.near (7.5), pearlhyacinth.near (7.5) $57.5 each
Guild Upkeep:
Web Hosting and Server Boosting Fees for the month of September. Website was updated under the new GUILD administration.
[Completed] [To be paid out - 6N/$46.08] split between thebadlament.near & nvrndr.near
CleanNFTs Platform List:
Updated list with 16 new marketplaces, went through and updated any older listings with current status etc. Started work on version 2.0 of this resource.
[Completed] [To be paid out - 20N/$153] nvrndr.near
Videos:
Our first educational video was released on our new CleanNFTs Youtube channel -
Channel - Clean NFTs - YouTube
We recorded our first video and have others planned for October.
NEAR Protocol for CleanNFTs educational video - NEAR Protocol for Clean NFTs - YouTube
[Completed] [To be paid out - 20N/$153] nvrndr.near
Discord Stages/Stream:
During September we held 2 live meetups on Discord with interviews with GUILD team and creators minting on PoS and other projects. In the future we’ll likely have more of these, with special guests, interviews, and Community events.
[In Progress][To be paid out - 16N/$122.88] split equally (4N/~$30 each for making time for these two events) between nvrndr.near, thebadlament.near, moonhmz.near, pearlhyacinth.near
Virtual Gallery Exhibition:
CleanNFTs member Pearl Hyacinth has been curating our 3xr gallery space and ran a call out for 12 artists to submit work for showcase.
[In Progress] [To be paid out - 20N/$153.6]
Editorial:
Set up our Medium CleanNFTs account and our first guest editorial was submitted by our member Triplefox.near - Read it here!
[Completed] [To be paid out - 20N/$153.6] triplefox.near
Bounties
Art Bounties:
112N Budgeted (Logo and graphic design for use in video, editorial & social)
Graphic Design Bounty (50N)
Runner Up:
10N = $83.10 (Monish) Design Compensation
Winning Design (Internal):
50N = $384 (nvrndr.near) Graphic Set + Logo
10N= $76.8 (thebadlament.near) Social graphics + Logo
8.6N = $66 (Design Assets)
Total 78.6N
Logo bounty (20N)
Runners Up
20N = $153.6 (Monish016.near) Logo
2N = $15.36 (ynsg.near)Logo
2N = $15.36 (beyond7.near)Logo
Total: 24N
Art Bounties Total: 102.6N
Budgeted Amount: 112N
Leftover: 9.4N
Buffer:
20N = $153.6
To stay in the Guild Treasury to account for changes in token price.
Outreach: 12N (Maintaining communication with Chains and Platform devs via email/calls, setting up upcoming interviews and live discussions) nvrndr.near
Project Accounting:
We had an unaccounted expense which was the launch of our Mintbase store (7N) and Overall came in 61.4N under budget. (~$472 at time of writing)
Updated Project Timeline:
@nvrndr
Initial guild setup (Writing up posts in NEAR forum, budgeting, sputnik setup, discord announcements), Server moderation and maintenance, Bounty submission pipeline & Tracking (GoogleForms + Discord bot), Medium account setup, Tweeting/Account growth via retweets and follows, Video creation, Communication with candidates and future video interviewees.
@Thebadlament
Initial guild setup (budgeting, planning and writing posts), server moderation, Tweeting/Account growth via retweets and follows, Communication with mod candidates
moonhmz.near
Assistance in social growth via retweets and server moderation
@Pearlhyacinth
Assistance in social growth via retweets, server moderation, curation of our first exhibition
Other Projects
Interviews, More video content, and Website updates are still on our roadmap and in process, due to launch this month.
Highlights:
We were excited to kick off our CleanNFTs NEAR Guild with our core team, highlights for the month included expanding our team of moderators, launching our first Exhibition and Mintbase store, and offering our first bounties to the community.
It takes time to build back a community that’s been a bit quiet for a few months so that has been one of our main priorities, engaging with members, trying to ensure new members are welcomed.
Our Discord insights show us;
- We have a total of 3045 members
- We have an average of 233 weekly active users
- 47 active communicators
- Average of 60 new members each week
Some of these figures may be affected by a couple raids on our server where hundreds of bots attempted to get in but were banned manually. Sadly our tier of Statbot doesn’t let us get more specific than this.
Twitter insights;
During September 76 tweets in total were sent out, we followed 469 accounts and we had 233 accounts follow us.
Our main contributors to the GUILD for this month include our admins;
nvrndr.near, thebadlament.near, moonhmz.near
We distributed most of the admin and marketing work between us, with nvrndr.near taking lead on several of the monthly project coordination and communications.
Our other main contributors for the month included;
- Pearl Hyacinth who took on a moderator position and exhibitions curator role
- Triplefox wrote our first guest editorial, expanding on a zine that was inspired by conversations on our server earlier this year.
- Mze4969 who was interviewed live on Discord about her arts practice and NFT experience
Learnings:
As this was our first month we expected some hiccups but we did learn a great deal from many of the setbacks we encountered.
Some of the things we’ll need to clarify more in the future is the editorial and content submissions, making sure we’re clear that we need self written pieces and not third party sources re-used. We may need to add a few more bucks towards premium discord security… nvrndr.near spent hours this month manually banning bots whenever they would flood our server.
We also didn’t have great take up by experienced graphic artists for our logo and design bounties so we decided to dedicate hours to design our content internally. We’ve had to rethink how these types of bounties will progress.
Next Steps:
Our goals for October include further outreach and individual contact to gain more members to the GUILD. We feel that spending more time recruiting potential people with one on one engagement will work better for us than blanket calls to join our group.
We also need to ensure the core GUILD team are properly compensated for the heavy workload involved in the recruitment and administration of the GUILD. As the allocated fees have not come close to covering the amount of time spent on these areas and to make this worthwhile we need to ensure adequate budgets are allocated to these areas. ‘Projects’ are great but they require a large amount of planning, communication and admin work.
In October we’ll reveal a new website design, a home for our educational resources and a space to highlight guild members and activities.
We’ve connected with several interested parties for videos, interviews, and or live discord sessions. These will be slated for October including more in-depth tutorials, follow-ups to the NEAR protocol intro video by @nvrndr . We’ll also have an exhibition party this month to celebrate the work currently in our mintbase store.
We also plan to activate the discord with more participatory activities, more accessible incentives, and minting parties. Stay tuned for more announcements on those.
Feel free to stop by our discord
Thanks for reading! 
