ATOM GROWTH DAO – Growth & Developer Acquisition 2023
[Full Proposal IPFS] (https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmVr8zLF4KWTTNQ2wAyuSHygfEURrg2nP33b6aXrd19uDE)
Change log
- 2023-02-4 New post after a feedback cycle
Outline
Preface
On Dec. 19, 2022, Cosmos Hub Prop 88 was accepted, and a tax was created to fund the community pool, ongoing. This large pool of capital is used for ecosystem growth through grants, development, and community building.
This new tax signals that the community is not content with the growth of the Hub, specifically for maintenance, development, grants, and funding.
With the signaling proposal of the V9 Lambda launch, Interchain Security (ICS), consumer chains, and Replicated Security are quickly becoming reality. A new narrative is emerging for the Cosmos Hub, a sustainable stream of real yield to $ATOM stakers. The Cosmos Hub has seen the emergence of 54 appchains.
The consumer chain narrative is new, untested, and relatively unknown to teams outside the Cosmos ecosystem. We will take on this challenge and change this.
Our 3 objectives:
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Make over 1,000 developer teams Cosmos-aware. Create a developer and project awareness campaign around Replicated Security, IBC, and the consumer chain narrative.
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Support Replicated Security. AlphaGrowth will find, educate, recruit, and deploy grants to 20 or more DeFi projects that will launch on consumer chains. We will help find, educate, and recruit 1–2 consumer chain candidates.
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Map infrastructure and utility for consumer chains and map, foster, and communicate increases in ATOM utility.
Overview
For more than 18 months, AlphaGrowth has helped acquire developers and dApps on behalf of ecosystems. In 2022, we helped source thousands of conversations and 40+ dApps deployed on Aurora EVM. In late 2022, we began working with Kava EVM to drive adoption of the DeFi narrative. Within two months, we helped drive 14 new dApps to Kava and continue to drive 10–15 dApps each month. Example projects we brought to different chains: Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.
We have confidence we can help Cosmos Hub with awareness, execution, and impact.
Let’s dive into each goal!
Developer Awareness – Make Over 1,000 Developer Teams Cosmos Aware
The Problem
Most teams who begin building in blockchain don’t know the strengths of the Cosmos ecosystem. We need to educate developers on 2 separate topics: the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC) and Replicated Security.
In 2022, over $2 billion was lost in bridge hacks, accounting for over 70% of total crypto hacks for the year. $2 billion is the opportunity cost for not using IBC. We will help communicate this narrative to developers as a major value proposition for joining and building on Cosmos. The other narrative to pursue is the upcoming launch of Replicated Security and consumer chains. With Replicated Security, new chains will no longer require the startup costs required to recruit, incentivize, and convert validators.
In blockchain, there is a war for developer attention. Ecosystems that lean in and battle for attention will win in the long run. Many ecosystems and grant programs have proximity bias as a common flaw. In this context, that is that most grant programs fund their existing relationships. Unfortunately, the result is that hundreds of high-quality teams that could join the community and ecosystem are overlooked during the grant selection process.
The following are tested steps for expanding developer ecosystem growth:
Community Sponsorship
Expanding awareness of other developer communities is extremely important. In the past, we have helped communities such as Vyper expand to aligned events like the Python community event. We will provide guidance and support to find aligned communities for the Cosmos Hub. One of the highest impact activities is engaging with student blockchain clubs and blockchain developer meetups.
Hackathon Sponsorship
For over 10 years, the AlphaGrowth team has participated in, sponsored, and run hackathons for different tech industries. Recently, on behalf of the Vyper framework, we acquired excited developers to hack projects. The AlphaGrowth team also ran a $1 million marketing hackathon for the NEAR ecosystem and brought more exposure to Web2 marketers about the tools built on the chain.
Leverage the AlphaGrowth Platform
AlphaGrowth has a built-out grants CRM and the infrastructure, which will bring immediate value to the Cosmos Hub. With this infrastructure, we deploy over 20 grants a month across 4 ecosystems.
As of February 1st, 2023, AlphaGrowth has on its platform:
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1,636 project/developer team profiles
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840 grant submissions looking for their next chain to build on
Increasing the Available Talent
AlphaGrowth is an expert in employing high-value, low-cost activities as marketing tools to drive the initiative above, but not as the sole strategy for awareness of developers. We support ecosystems through social media campaigns on Twitter and LinkedIn, in-person meetups, cocktail events, and community-building activities.
Developer Acquisition Conclusion
For Cosmos to bring new talent to the ecosystem, the ICS and consumer narrative must be communicated to the broader blockchain ecosystem. AlphaGrowth will bring more awareness and talent to Cosmos. For this, we are asking for a total of 4,000 ATOM per month, comprising 3,000 ATOM per month to be spent on ads and sponsorship and 1,000 ATOM per month for creative and management services. With this budget, we will drive the IBC and Replicated Security narratives to allow the Cosmos ecosystem to dominate and drive blockchain conversation.
Support Replicated Security – by bringing 20 DeFi projects to launch on consumer chains
The Problem
The current growth experiment for ATOM token utility is the approaching launch of Replicated Security. Therefore, it is paramount that a community, we should put forward our best effort to make this launch successful.
We also know from experience that the consumer chains need to provide dApps with appropriate infrastructure or else risk losing them.
At AlphaGrowth, we help ecosystems by bringing utility in the form of dApps and guiding the conversation to obtain missing infrastructure dApps to come to stable ecosystems. How much utility there is for Replicated Security depends on how many dApps are built and how much utility is created on consumer chains.
Helping Add Utility to the ICS Launch
With the V9 Lambda launch and Replicated Security, AlphaGrowth will incentivize dApps to launch with upcoming consumer chains like Neutron & Noble. We will bring 20 or more dApps in the first 4 months of the launch provided all proper infrastructure is available. If proper infrastructure is not available, we may require more funding to help deploy needed infrastructure. For the highest quality teams, we will begin the conversation around building a consumer chain.
We will also introduce an RFP for a research initiative around version 2 of ICS. This RFP will require interviewing developers to understand the advantages they see in ICS and what they desire from Replicated Security.
Support Launches
As each consumer chain and dApp launches, we will use a portion of the marketing budget to help promote them to retail consumers. This includes but is not limited to social contests, social ads, referral programs, AMAs, and influencer reviews. Through a series of go-to-market strategies, we can raise awareness for the Cosmos ecosystem and launching projects.
Risks of Campaign
Having been in the trenches on multiple DeFi-centered EVM launches, the biggest risk we have seen is lack of infrastructure for developers. There are multiple infrastructure requirements we have seen that are needed to launch a successful DeFi ecosystem.
Key Infrastructure includes:
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Trusted oracles
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Premier RPC node providers
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Multi-sig solutions
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Available wallets
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IBC, bridges, and cross-chain messaging solutions
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DeFi primitives to build on
Other developer objections we have experience handling:
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High deployment costs
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Lack of liquidity drivers and vaults
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Project’s composability
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Lack of initial liquidity
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Tech requirements
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Lack of marketing support
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Deployment prioritization
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Stale ecosystem
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Lack of active partner projects
Conclusion – Support Replicated Security
With existing relationships with over 1,000 DeFi teams and projects, AlphaGrowth will excel at the challenge of bringing at least 20 DeFi projects in the first 4 months. We will also help educate, find, and recruit 1–2 consumer chain candidates for the community to evaluate.
There are risks associated with the Replicated Security campaign. To mitigate them, we will begin by mapping the existing infrastructure with an ecosystem audit.
Map Infrastructure & Ecosystem Audit
At the beginning of each campaign, we will take a snapshot of Cosmos Hub’s health and audit report to understand important KPIs and track their progress over time. AlphaGrowth will find all the Cosmos projects within its database, research on Github, and audit all dApps integrated and appchains deployed.
We will provide a roadmap and strategy for the ideal DeFi ecosystem layout. From an initial examination, we see that ATOM could benefit from: the addition of multiple types of infrastructure and DeFi dApps, money markets (lending protocols), bonding protocols, options, yield optimizers, vaults, voter escrow DEXs, leveraged LP positions, secondary bond market, wallets (social unlock, Web2 login), fiat onramps/offramps (Kado, Stably, Transak, Ramp), payments (Superfluid, MoonPay), debit card (stealth for now), cross-chain comms (LayerZero, LiFi, Paloma, Axelar), liquid governance, and name services.
Map Infrastructure & Ecosystem Audit Deliverables
We will provide a developer journey audit to identify onboarding blockers and subsequently provide a strategy to mitigate them.
We will map all current use cases for the ATOM token. This will help new users understand the value and utility of ATOM. This will include but is not limited to mapping all ATOM-focused CeFi trading pairs, DEXs, lending (money market, AMM money market), options, futures, derivatives, staking, bonding, order books, fixed-rate lending, liquid staking, collateralized debt positions (CDP), yield aggregators and strategies, and algo-stables (ATOM-backed).
Conclusion – Map Infrastructure & Ecosystem Audit
Top teams are attracted to chains with cutting-edge tech, daily active users, massive liquidity, and substantial transaction volume. However, they will prioritize chain deployments based on the state of the infrastructure, competitiveness of the program, and presence of projects to partner with.
“Developer attention will rain down on the ecosystem with the most fertile soil!” — Anonymous
Reporting
At AlphaGrowth, reporting is of utmost importance to communicate progress while gauging feedback to apply adjustments. Reporting and AMAs also encourage transparency, community collaboration, and excitement. We will share monthly reports and calculations on the campaign’s progress as follows:
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Progress of grantees
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Outbound pipeline status
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Feedback from developers and Review Committee
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Use of funds: ad spend, distributed grants
The team will establish direct communication channels with the community to post reports and receive feedback. We will also set up biweekly community office hours with grantees.
The Cosmos Hub community will always know where it stands and, more importantly, where it’s headed.
Team
The ATOM GROWTH DAO will be run by a team of 14 employees at AlphaGrowth. The mission of AlphaGrowth is to help fund the next 1,000 top crypto projects. AlphaGrowth is led by founder Bryan Colligan, who has over 9 years of experience in crypto. Upon the introduction of DeFi in 2020, Bryan left FT Partners investment bank to pursue his passion building the future of decentralized finance. For example, Bryan helped run a Web3 TechCrunch Demo Day: The Cross Chain Coalition WEB3 Demo Day - YouTube
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryancolligan/
Reviewer Committee
AlphaGrowth will mandate community hearings during the first month to select a community-led review committee.
The role of the committee member will be:
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Keep AlphaGrowth accountable
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Select DAO tooling to further standardize governance-funded operations.
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Discuss what kind of proposals are needed
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Create an environment to help projects iterate on their proposals
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Set milestones for proper transparency on how funds are being used
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Evaluate AlphaGrowth leads and conversations and make final decisions on grants
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Require 4 of 5 yes votes on any grant over 10,000 ATOM
AlphaGrowth will find, interview, evaluate, and select 4 candidates for the reviewer committee, with AlphaGrowth holding 1 seat for split decisions. We will hire from within the ATOM community. The stipend for the reviewer committee member is 400 ATOM per month.
Budget Request
Legal Setup
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Base rate (one-time): 2,000 ATOM
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Total cost: 2,000 ATOM
Map ATOM Utility – Ecosystem Evaluation Setup
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Base rate (one-time): 4,000 ATOM
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Total cost: 4,000 ATOM
Developer Acquisition Marketing
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Base rate (monthly): 4,000 ATOM
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Total cost (4 months): 16,000 ATOM
Support ICS-Monthly Business Development and Outreach
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Base rate (monthly): 5,000 ATOM
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Total cost (4 months): 20,000 ATOM
Reviewer Committee
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Base rate (monthly): 2,000 ATOM
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Total cost (4 months): 8,000 ATOM
TOTAL 4-MONTH SERVICE FEE: 50,000 ATOM
Grant Deployment
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Month 1: 10,000 ATOM
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Month 2: 30,000 ATOM
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Month 3: 30,000 ATOM
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Month 4: 30,000 ATOM
TOTAL 4-MONTH GRANTS: 100,000 ATOM
All-In Cost
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Total service fee (4 months): 50,000 ATOM
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Total grants (4 months): 100,000 ATOM
TOTAL ALL-IN COST: 150,000 ATOM
Bonus Structure
For every project and client to align incentives, we request bonus commission to be evaluated and voted on by the community. After 4 months, we will submit a signaling proposal for 10,000 ATOM tokens.
KPIs for bonus structure are:
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20+ new dApps to utilize ATOM via pools, money markets, utilities, and dApp integration on both Cosmos appchains and as utility on EVM dApps
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1 sponsored Cosmos ecosystem hackathon
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5 meetup and student organization sponsorships
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1,000+ applicants for Cosmos Hub grants
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Weekly AMAs on progress and new initiatives
Recipient
Conclusion – Why You Should Vote Yes
You’ve just read a proposal with a clear vision outlining our strategy for bringing more developers and new blood into the Cosmos Ecosystem. We gathered wide feedback to integrate community thoughts and help bring community collaboration. We already have processes and experience attracting projects. We have existing infrastructure: a website, CRM software, and over 840 available projects, and we know how to scale a developer pipeline. We will bring clarity to questions accompanying the V9 Lambda upgrade so that developers know which consumer chains are launching, which dApps are becoming available, and what can be done with the ATOM token.
It would be our honor to help the Cosmos community through this greater involvement, and we look forward to working together.
Governance votes
The following items summarize the voting options and what it means for this proposal:
By voting YES, you indicate support for funding the ATOM GROWTH DAO.
By voting NO, you do not support this proposal.
By voting ABSTAIN, you formally decline to vote for or against the proposal but want to contribute to the quorum.
By voting NOWITHVETO, you consider this proposal malicious or harmful and would like to see depositors penalized by revocation of the deposit, contributing to an automatic ⅓ veto threshold.