[PROPOSAL #34][ACCEPTED] Luna Mission - Funding $ATOM

Hub Proposals Community Spend
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Good day/evening to all.

For the past 6 months there have been intense and lengthy discussions (between community members) about the lack of marketing initiatives that are $ATOM oriented, from entities involved in the Cosmos Hub.

During the months leading to the completion of the Stargate Upgrade (which we understand is imminent) we identified that until the upgrade was about to launch there would be no point to promote a product that had not yet launched :rocket:.

On the other hand, we noted that efforts for educating communities, disseminating the idea and planting the seed should have been - at least in our opinion - intensified.

Yet we have always aligned with the ethos of the Cosmos idea and noble character and waited until the right time had come.
After a few days of deliberation on the Cosmos Hub’s Governance Working Group, with many participants contributing to the Cosmos Hub, we, members of the Cosmos Hub’s community, have come up with the following proposal.

Since we have all agreed that it is important to submit this on chain as soon as possible (ahead of the proposal for Stargate) here is the Candidate Proposal 34 for your review and consideration, awaiting your kind comments:

ABSTRACT:

This proposal is the by-product of an ambitious community driven initiative. Its purpose is to orchestrate and coordinate an effort to increase awareness on the value proposition of $ATOM and the Cøsmos Hub, informing communities, individuals, entities about the dynamics of $ATOM in the light of the upcoming Stargate upgrade. We aim to achieve this through undertaking a marketing campaign contracted to AiB. We propose that the community pool allocate 129,208 $ATOM to this initiative with immediate effect upon the proposal’s passing. The funds will be used towards the following actions:

i. One set of actions for incentivising, educating thought leaders so as to engage through media (Twitter, YouTube) for a period of 3 months and educate their audiences about $ATOM without any unnecessary hyperboles, something that would go against the values and ethos of our project;

ii. One set of actions for engaging the blockchain and crypto communities for 3 months via 3 monthly meme contests whose intention is to make $ATOM going viral on Twitter.

iii. One set of actions for a 3 month header banner and/or homepage banner advertising campaigns on 4 platforms with high and/or relevant traffic to the Cosmos Hub such as CMC, Coingecko, Blockfolio and Staking Rewards platforms, whichever of them have available spots.

iv. A maximum of 10% from the budget will be used to engage a high profile PR Agency to help with the Media and Marketing efforts. AiB and/or committee members will request and share offers from different PR Agencies and the offer containing the best marketing plan will be selected by the committee members through vote. AiB will maintain the relation with the PR Agency and will report to the committee on the status of deliverables.

We have requested and shall receive the assistance of AiB (Tendermint). We believe AiB (Tendermint) is one of those entities that have demonstrated an unparalleled dedication to the Cosmos Hub.

A multi-sig committee of 5 community members will lead coordination of the effort, and approve the above specified actions and forward funds to AiB upon completion of objectives.

Unspent funds will be refunded to the community pool by the committee.

MultiSig Address: cosmos16plylpsgxechajltx9yeseqexzdzut9g8vla4k

FULL TEXT OF DRAFT PROPOSAL

Proposal #33: Luna Mission: Funding #Atom

Preamble

“We reject siloed and centralised hegemonies; we believe in the promise of Cosmos for a truly interoperable and decentralised future for governance and finance; we provide the building blocks for the future of finance and beyond.”

We, the community of the Cosmos Hub ($ATOM) have patiently been awaiting the time when IBC, the protocol that will signal the second era of the Blockchain Revolution goes live.

We understand that it had been of the utmost importance to opt for and pursue excellence over marketing or shilling a (nonetheless amazing) project that was not yet finalised. This, in our view, aligned with the views and ethos of the founding fathers of this great project although we firmly believe that getting the merits of this project known is of equal importance.

This is for a reason: we have been students and true believers in the value proposition and fundamentals of this amazing technology since we laid our eyes on it and learnt about its merits/properties.

To us, Cosmos Hub is providing the building blocks for the future of DLT and beyond it. We believe that its impact on the world can be enormous. For us, it is hard to resist Cosmos once you get involved with the idea. But like all great ideas it has to be disseminated.

Thus, we have long come upon the realisation that it has not received the attention it deserves. We also realise we build in a space where reason and real values are not a given or guarantee for success. There have been many examples in the past, not just in this space where a great idea or execution thereof was not enough for a venture’s success.

We have decided that it is high time we coordinated, orchestrated efforts so that we see $ATOM becoming known to this space and beyond, We are convinced that people who see the potential, inherent value and ethos of this project will not be able to unsee and that they will be converted to believers and evangelists like ourselves.

We need to have the support of all: community members, delegators, validators and teams that have tirelessly worked to ensure the flawless, successful completion of the Cosmos stack and vision of its roadmap.

We will need more than their vocal support. We will need their vote. We will need their subsequent support for this initiative. We all need to do nothing more than spread the knowledge. Disseminate this great idea.

We also need AiB’s (Tendermint) help in order to execute on this ambitious effort.

Our proposal is requesting from the entire cosmos family to grant access to a portion of the community pool and allow a community spend of 129,208 $ATOM for marketing contracts over a course of 3 months starting immediately upon its passing.

We are convinced that, by this community spend, we will increase awareness across blockchain space and get the $ATOM spaceship ready for its intergalactic journey that few - but us - have foreseen. This is not about shilling a project with no fundamentals, this is about making the best project out there known across blockchain space and beyond.

We also think that this initiative is not only helping the Cosmos Hub and ATOM, ultimately it is a great initiative with benefits for the massive and ever expanding galaxy of the Cosmos ecosystem. Yet we are aligned with the ATOM2021 initiative and understand that for us - $ATOM holders - the utility of $ATOM should become known and strengthened via similar initiatives.

Ultimately we deem imperative that this initiative coincides with the Stargate upgrade.

4 Types of Promotional Activities to be funded with 129,208 $ATOM:

In order to achieve the goal of strengthening the public perception about the ATOM’s utility and understanding of communities about the value proposition of the Hub we have 4 main campaigns in mind for which we request your approval. The campaigns are detailed below:

i. One set of actions for incentivising, educating thought leaders so as to engage through media (Twitter, YouTube) for a period of 3 months and educate their audiences about $ATOM without any unnecessary hyperboles, something that would go against the values and ethos of our project;

ii. One set of actions for engaging the blockchain and crypto communities for 3 months via 3 monthly meme contests whose intention is to make $ATOM going viral on Twitter.

iii. One set of actions for a 3 month header banner and/or homepage banner advertising campaigns on 4 platforms with high and/or relevant traffic to the Cosmos Hub such as CMC, Coingecko, Blockfolio and Staking Rewards platforms, whichever of them have available spots.

iv. A maximum of 10% from the budget will be used to engage a high profile PR Agency to help with the Media and Marketing efforts. AiB and/or committee members will request and share offers from different PR Agencies and the offer containing the best marketing plan will be selected by the committee members through vote. AiB will maintain the relation with the PR Agency and will report to the committee on the status of deliverables.

Scope of Campaigns

The campaigns will be $ATOM related and should be aligned with the ATOM2021 initiative, increase awareness about the Cosmos Hub, the value proposition of $ATOM, the dynamics of IBC in relation to $ATOM without neglecting to point on the truly decentralised, sovereign, scalable, sustainable properties inherent in the project’s architecture and ethos as well as its non-competitive character to other chains within the ecosystem.

Since we are aware of the superiority of the project over any similar efforts on interoperability, honest and informed comparisons by thought leaders in the space are anticipated and will be coordinated during the course of this undertaking.

Release of funds:

Funds will be released to a multi-sig committee which in turn may - depending on each initiative and based on a majority multisignature approval - release the funds to: 1) Tendermint (AiB) that will act as a liaison between Cosmos Hub community and third parties and distribute the payments according with the marketing proposal or where appropriate, 2) directly to the entities or individuals ( e.g. contest winners or various contributors)

Funds’ Distribution:

The distribution of funds will be administered by 5 community members that have been selected via the governance working group. At least 3 will have to approve each spend for it to be released to AiB or any third party, according with the marketing proposal.

@johnniecosmos, @JoeDirtay, @jackzampolin (Jack Zampolin, Pylon Validator), @immasssi (SG-1 Validator), @zakimanian (Zaki Manian, Iqlusion Validator).

Every spend action related to this proposal has to be approved via multi-sig. At least 3/5 signatures are required to confirm a spend of the allocated marketing funds.

For administrative efforts, drafting the proposal and executing the marketing efforts, the 5 administrators will receive 100 ATOMs each for their time & efforts over the coming 3 months in helping to properly execute the above mentioned strategy.

MultiSig Address: cosmos16plylpsgxechajltx9yeseqexzdzut9g8vla4k

Refund of Unspent Funds to the Pool:

It is expected that amounts requested and allocated for each campaign will be depleted and spent. In the event this does not happen within 3 months of the passing of the proposal, this amount will have to be refunded by either AiB or the mutli-sig committee (whomever is in custody of the funds) back to the community pool.

Expectations from the rest of entities involved in the Hub:

We expect that our initiative will stand as a beacon for the rest of the teams/entities/individuals involved in the development of the Cosmos Hub in respect to pushing the project forward.

Educational material, articles on mainstream media, podcasts, interviews, social media campaigns, active promotion to e.g. the end of a Paypal listing, only form part of what we deem as an optimal and thorough and long-term strategy for establishing the Cosmos Hub ($ATOM) as the true game changer in people’s minds within this space. Since our resources are limited and the purpose here is not to deplete the Community pool, we expect the rest of the main teams involved in the development of the Hub or even teams earning value from their operations on the Cosmos hub and $ATOM to undertake efforts similar (at least in passion) to ours and support or supplement our efforts. Thus, we aim to motivate others by this limited in resources initiative.

AiB’s General Obligations to the Community:

Specific work tasks like the banner campaign & the thought leader campaign are expected to be covered by AIB. This can be done right away even before the proposal is passed to enable a faster execution of the proposal. Any tasks which are agreed upon and that are signed off by the administrators will then be commissioned to AIB upon delivery. Administrators expect a fully transparent report every 2 weeks showing the state of the tasks and additional information that verifies the proper execution of the community tasks (Receipts & documentation).

Closing Remarks:

Ultimately for us, the Community, Cosmos Hub ($ATOM) signals the second era of the so-called Blockchain Revolution. We can all be the messengers, but we need the message to be delivered sooner than later. Empower us with the necessary funding tools so that we disseminate and deliver the message across all corners of the space. For, beyond awesome code, we see an equally awesome community ready to undertake and support this ambitious initiative. We do not see this as a phoney attempt to shill an empty promise. We see this as an opportunity to inform, educate and create a larger follower base around the most important project in this space to date.

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Awesome to see this initiative but is there a breakdown of how the funds will be spent and where/why the amount (129,208 ATOM) came from?

Also any interest in writing this as a PR to GitHub - cosmos/governance: Resources for Cosmos governance ?

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Thanks for the response Ethan:
Here is the analysis of the amount and approximate plan of actions. Since it may deviate as to the scope of actions we decided to not put it word by word although my original draft included all those.

A. Thought Leader Engagement (Total Allocation 63,385 ATOMS):

The campaign will allocate :

5555 ATOM each to 7 major youtube thought leaders with a minimum reach of 100k followers and 3500 ATOM each to 7 major Twitter thought leaders with a minimum of 50k followers.

The thought leaders will receive payments in either ATOM or USD at the end of each month during the three month engagement.

Promotional work expected :

Youtube thought leaders:

At least 1 review each month for 3 months (at least 20 min each)

Twitter thought leaders:

At least 3 quality posts per week for 3 months

The Committee/AiB shall undertake to :

Educate thought leaders - among others - on the merits of the Cosmos Hub, ATOM2021 initiative, IBC, Bridges and the upcoming AMMs. AiB will coordinate drafting/signing the agreements with thought leaders. AiB will contact and get thought leaders signed ahead of the initiative.

Manner of release of ATOM payments :

Mutli-sig Committee which in turn will release funds to AiB

B. Meme Contest (Total Allocation 5,823 ATOMS):

The campaign will allocate :

100 individuals per month will receive awards in $ATOM in the following manner over 3 distinct monthly contests, one per each month.

Meme Prizes: 1941 $ATOM per month/competition ie 5823 $ATOM total for 3 months:

  1. 300 ATOM

  2. 200 ATOM

  3. 150 ATOM

4-10 70 ATOM each

11-15 50 ATOM each

16-20 30 ATOM each

21-50 12 ATOM each

51-100 7 ATOM each

Promotional and other work expected :

Multi-sig Committee and AiB will coordinate in promoting the contest; we expect social media engagement and participation from all members, holders, validators, delegators, teams of the Cosmos-Hub.

To enter the competition users will need to complete a meme that centres strictly around $ATOM and its value proposition. Users should post the meme on Twitter and add the following tags $ATOM @Atomviral #Cosmos - Only ATOM related memes will qualify.

Every day the @Atomviral account managed by the marketing campaign admins will retweet & like the 10 best memes of each day. At the end of the month the top 20 competitors will receive prizes based on how many times they landed in the daily top 10 as well as the engagement their tweets received. Judgement over winners will be at the discretion of the committee. Once a Campaign is complete prizes will be distributed and the following campaign will start.

AiB is expected to use its talent and use some nice graphics for the promotion of the competition.

Manner of release of ATOM payments :

Mutli-sig Committee will release tokens directly to winners at the end of each period

C. Banner advertising with CMC, Coingecko, Staking Rewards (60,000 ATOMS):

We deem All 3 platforms equally important for maximum exposure to the whole crypto space (CMC, CoinGecko) and delegators’ specialist sites where people who stake will be enticed to opt for delegating their ATOMS (Staking Rewards)

Promotional and other work expected/role of multi-sig committee AiB :

Optimum is for these campaigns to run for three consecutive months; AiB should be providing a financial plan to this end to the Multi-sig committee

AiB will commence all communications with CMC & Coingecko whereas Staking Rewards have submitting an offer already; the multi-sig committee will release funds to AiB in respect to each of those promotional activities.

AiB’s talent should be engaged/utilised for designing $ ATOM related material/banners, pointing to pages within the cosmos.network webpage (indicatively: Stargate, ATOM2021 initiative, IBC etc) on all three platforms above and coordinate with them.

Maximum reach is required. Thus, on top of the amount allocated by our community, we expect AiB to resource own funds to this end (adding funds to extend length of time these campaigns shall remain active).

Manner of release of ATOM payments :

Mutli-sig Committee will release funds to AiB

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If you see point iv. at the abstract of the proposal, it has been subsequently added to the draft that has been submitted here. Some alternative actions may further be added while others may be omitted. AiB is still in talks, getting quotes for actions defined above. In the spirit of the above, we deemed important to not include the above analysis.

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Things are still fluid: An example is that We have agreed that part of our actions will be to incentivise influencers to get paid in ATOM and stake but we don’t know if they respond or how many of them will be hired, whether all amounts will be allocated or diverted to other sorts of efforts. In the light of the above it is better (we think) to not define exact amounts other than the total expenditure, but we expect communications/suggestions from AiB and actions shall always be conditioned on the Multi-Sig committee’s approval.

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I suggest to spend some of this fund for branding/marketing/informing ETHPeg and AMM on Cosmos Hub. Creating informational/educational contents, planning events with prizes, advertisements on platforms.

These two dApps on CosmosHub will kick off the DeFi vision of Cosmos Hub, so it is very important to bring more users of these utilities on Cosmos Hub. Number of users and capital locked will naturally attract more Atom investors outside the community.

For this context, B-Harvest is currently considering to plan a trading/investing competition on Cosmos Hub AMM. We can proceed with this plan under reasonable funding. We think that trading competition event with reasonably large amount of prize is a good attraction point for traders outside Cosmos Network.

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Great input as always Hyung. I think that your project deserves standalone activities on behalf of everyone devoted to the cause of the ATOM2021 initiative. We will certainly do our part but our funding is limited. Please see the exact activities described above. I think that “thought leaders” (influencers) could be further educated so that they make presentations that address and point out at the value initiatives such as the AMM and Peggy bring to $ATOM. This has been our clear intention since the inception of our idea. We are thinking of setting up an education committee and educate on the merits of the Hub. I openly invite you to join had this been required. Also to clarify once again: Our purpose here is not to artificially pump. We are not interested in this. Our aim is to create a wider base of believers in the value of $ATOM.

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Finally needless to say, I am a big fan of your work and your presentation at Interchain Conversations was inspiring. So rest assured our efforts will be devoted to meaningful $ATOM related projects.

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We 100% support proposal #33 and are honored that the community has chosen one of us to participate in the signing.
As previously mentioned in the governance working group the matter at hand is urgency.
The bottom line is, ATOM needs exposure and it needs it now.
The proposal #33 is the right response by the community to market ATOM via multiple sources. Through polls in the working group many inefficient marketing means were filtered out and the consensus was to go with influencer marketing, banner ads (CMC, Stakingrewards.com, Coingecko and Google adsence), meme competitions and get a 10% boost from a marketing agency which currently closely works with Tendermint AIB.
We think that the combined effort from Tendermint and the agency to execute the community marketing plan is the proper support needed to make a big splash and position ATOM were it belongs before the upcoming/ongoing market cycle.
In direct support of the campaign, the community has set up a Telegram channel T.me/ATOMCosmonauts to enhance the viral effect that will be generated over the coming 3 months.

We are looking forward for the branding of ATOM to elevate to the high mark that the current development standard has set via IBC, Cosmos SDK and more. This effort is an unprecedented initiative which directly shows how much a decentralized community can move if unified to execute a common vision via on-chain governance.

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@ebuchman it is on Github i hope i have done it as per your request.

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Hi,

  1. why did you choose those 4 main campaigns? based on which data/analysis?
  2. what is the expected outcome? how are you going to measure the success?

Thank you

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  1. For the past 2 weeks all marketing options were discussed and put to a community vote via the governance working group to see which options have more weight. Then the top selections were compared and scrutinized further to optimize for maximum virality potential, least amount of spending and maximum reach.
  2. The expected outcome is to strongly increase ATOM exposure across the board. Success will be measured by tracking each campaign straight forward. The administrators will collect figures from the each and compare them on a weekly basis and make adjustments if needed.
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  1. We asked the community what the preferred methods of engagement were, we voted, & talked about the effectiveness of each approach, finally deciding to pursue multiple avenues. If convincing data shows another approach is more appropriate… they should have posted it while the community was talking about it and I’d love to see “data / analytics” on this topic that is reliable.

  2. The expected outcome and the ability to measure it varies for each avenue. The meme competition will mostly be measured by analytics and engagement. AiB will be the coordinator for the more subjective pieces and the multi sig will only release funds when it has been shown that tasks / milestones have been reached. This inherently is subjective and not perfect… but as a part of the multi sig I won’t be signing until I’ve seen evidence that the atoms have been used as expected. I’m sure this same stance applies to all signers. If funds go unspent for various reasons they will be sent back to the community pool when all is said and done

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What do they mean by community pool?
will they take cosmos from people who are staking cosmo?

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No, those atoms are own by all atom holders in the community pool. They can only Be used if the community itself approves for the spending via voting. You can vote yourself or accept the vote your validator makes.

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Two percent of all staking rewards generated via block rewards and transaction fees, are continuously transferred to the Community Pool. The funding is currently fixed at 2% of staking rewards but optionally, the funding rate may be modified with a “parameter change proposal” submitted through on-chain governance.
Currently the pool has approximately 570k $ATOMs.
This means that you are not getting charged anything in excess of what you already contribute when staking.

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Curious for transparency purposes, which of the suggested 6 community members had any involvement with drafting this proposal?

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Everyone in the multisig community was also involved in drafting the proposal and many others from the Governance and Price chat.

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Thank you all for your comments so far. The proposal has now been submitted on-chain under #34 and will hopefully soon be on voting period. Again, on behalf of the community, thank you for the comments and support.
Proposal 34 is available at the following link: https://www.mintscan.io/cosmos/proposals/34

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Can you guys please share the pubkeys used to generate the multi-sign with also the relative owner of it?