TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
Update: This post was made out of a misunderstanding about potential changes in the NEAR Guilds program last month. We recognize this was an ambitious post that we made out of haste and some confusion, as we thought we were required to request funding for our guild work in this way. It turned out, that we misinterpreted what the Guild management team told us, and thought we were required to make a post about our plans in order to request any funding at all. @mecsbecs can attest to this, as she helped clear this misunderstanding up. When the issue was cleared up, it was confirmed that what was actually meant to be communicated to us is that in addition to the rate that every Guild was promised when they launched, which this month will be 2000 NEAR for the entire guild, we could potentially apply for more resources and funding if we had specific projects or ideas for growth in mind, and IF we proved to do everything we said we were going to do, which we have so far. Therefore, with that rate in place, we agreed that it is completely sufficient and we haven’t requested anything more than the funding that was laid aside for us from the beginning.
In hindsight, at the time this post was made, we did ask for more than was needed. I attribute this mostly to the fact that we were expecting some push back and were totally willing to take less if someone in the community or on the Core team wanted to further discuss it with us. In other words, it a was a proposal that was very open up for negotiation, not a rigid demand. Two things I will add to this point are that 1) NEAR was worth somewhere between 1 and 2 dollars when we made this post, so anyone who currently is viewing this is going to think this is an insane amount of money for where the price is at right now. The is the nature of crypto currency is that it changes in price, and we have always been encouraged to ask for funding in the amount of NEAR, not in any dollar amount.
2) As an even newer guild at this time, my cofounder @JosePerez and I were the only two consistent members and we were actively trying to bring more people in and pay them for doing work for us, while also coming up with a system for how to manage our own workflow and making sure we stayed true to our roadmap. This was very time consuming, but it was the work necessary to establish a good foundation. Because we didn’t have members who could make consistent commitments, it pretty much became a full time job on top of our other work that we do in the NEAR Ecosystem, and we felt like we needed to continue to legitimize ourselves by laying out everything that we have been pouring into this since the beginning. We have gotten several complaints about “our memes sucking” and not being up to par, but with these complaints we have not received one bit of advice on how to improve them. No, not every single meme we make is going to be the best or funniest, but we have been actively asking the community to request content from us that they would like to see, we have a meme request form that we encourage others to use, and I have asked in multiple chats for feedback on our content that is constructive and that will in the end, help us serve the community and enhance the marketing of NEAR.
So please, whoever reads this post, understand that the request we made below is now irrelevant and it is not an active request. As cofounders, we have requested to meet with the Guild Management Crew next week to seek their support and also their critical feedback as to how we can do better and keep the momentum going without getting discouraged. Thank you for reading!
Outdated Post Below:
Swine Guild is the milky milky meme teet of the NEAR ecosystem, from which the community is encouraged to suckle. We are the preeminent source of meme content in the NEAR ecosystem, and we exist to grow the community. Below is an outline of the tasks we have completed this past month, our roadmap, and our proposed budget.
Swine Guild was created in response to a clear and present danger: NEAR Protocol was experiencing hazardously low quantities of dank memes. There was no top-down or bottom-up system for meme creation. We are of the opinion that BSG (Before Swine Guild) memes were not only not funny, but actively harmful to the NEAR ecosystem. We are verklempt just thinking about it. There was no system in place for projects, guilds, or the NEAR team to order memes for marketing purposes, and a lack of organic meme production in the ecosystem.
In the past month, we have changed the comedy cemetery that was the NEAR memeverse into a vibrant park, full of fountains, children playing, and birdsong. Our twitter account has gone from 0 to 213 in less than a month, an i҉n҉f҉i҉n҉i҉t҉y҉ percent increase. We have received numerous orders from the NEAR official team, projects building on NEAR, and even random people who didn’t tell us anything about themselves. That’s right, we would make a NEAR meme for Vitalik if he asked for one; we don’t give a shit. All you gotta do is boot up your computer, fill out the request form our website, and Swine Guild will make your meme. Our only interest is creating content for the meme ecosystem, because as NEAR holders ourselves, we are interested in growing the community so that we can buy our second and third lambos.
In pursuit of this goal, we are conducting the following activities:
Outline of Swine Guild’s Meme Output
We’ve established a routine of putting out 8-10 memes every Monday as a weekly #MemeDropMonday since the beginning of June, in addition to the memes we make and share to accompany announcements and events shared throughout the week. We post said memes on our twitter account, we share them on reddit, and disseminate them through telegram and discord to bring awareness, hype, and a little fun to the things that go on in the ecosystem.
Meme Requests
Our service to NEAR doesn’t just stop with the memes we want to make, but we also offer a meme request service where anyone, anywhere can request memes about NEAR for literally any reason! We don’t even ask why! We just say yes! Memes can be ordered through our website, or at the following link: swineguild.com
To see our work or get in touch with us, follow us on twitter @SwineGuild, message us on telegram at @coyotefugly or @seriousbusinessname. Check out our video to learn more.
Consultation Plan
To ensure that we are adding value to the NEAR ecosystem, our roadmap includes a scale up plan. Each month, we will be expand our meme order capacity to include a wider range of stakeholders in our operations. In July, we gained access to the NEAR core team marketing Trello. This website outlines the main marketing goals of the NEAR ecosystem, which we have used to ensure that our memes are aligned with the interests of the NEAR team. In August, we will expand to reaching out to representatives of the most active projects in the NEAR ecosystem. In September, our consultation pool will expand to include the guilds in the NEAR ecosystem as well. If their orders exceed our agreed upon meme output, we will contract this production using our outsourcing fund.
Monthly Sandbox Contests
The second week of each month, we create a medium post announcing the terms of the contest. The theme of each contest will be centered on a relevant topic/project/feature of NEAR or within the NEARverse. The Swine Guild council will judge the winning memes, and the NEAR prizes are 50 for winning submission, 30 for second place, 20 for third place, adding up to a total of 100 NEAR.
Monthly One-off Events
Each month, on top of our rolling Sandbox contests and our weekly meme output, we will host a one-off event. This will come in the form of meme blitzes, other creative contests, AMAs, and collaborative content releases with other projects.
Budget
Administrative Duties
We want 2000 NEAR for administrative needs. This includes salaries for Sue and Coyote for their full-time work co-leading the guild. Their admin duties include
Scouring the web, social media, and telegram chats for relevant NEAR news, facts, and projects to highlight
Interfacing at events, talks, AMAs, etc.
Hosting monthly meme contests in the Sandbox discord server
Running the Twitter, Reddit, and moderating the discord chat
Making the memes for any meme requests we get
Memesmith Duties
We propose bringing on two part-time memesmiths who can help us expand our total meme output. We have already brought on help from two memesmiths, and they have been working pro bono this month. We propose a salary of 400 NEAR for each new team member. The following is a list of their responsibilities:
Monitoring the NEAR twitter to stay up to date on recent launches
Creating 10 memes a week relevant to projects launching on NEAR
Working with the SwineLords to plan social media posts for each meme
Identifying quality NEAR memes throughout the ecosystem and saving them into our personal stash
Sharing meme formats with the team
Onboarding and bringing up to speed our part time, outsourced meme laborers
Extra Expenses
This also includes expenses we have incurred and expect to incur as we grow and accrue more moving parts. This includes
Software and Adobe suite fees
Outsourcing meme packages to those who submit applications to help us produce memes via our Swine Guild application
Paying monthly for our website/domain
Below is our itemized budget
Sue - 1000 NEAR
Coyote - 1000 NEAR
Outsourcing meme budget - 400 NEAR
Memesmith 1 - 400 NEAR
Memesmith 2 - 400 NEAR
Sandbox contest rewards - 100 NEAR
Total - 3300 NEAR
And as always, oink oink
) because we’d just been so excited to get them working and creating, as they’ve been doing since.