[PROPOSAL #89][ACCEPTED] Cosmos Ecosystem News Videos

Hub Proposals Community Spend
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Hi Cosmos Community,

I’m Hector, co-founder of Cosmic Validator. We would love to hear your feedback about this proposal before submitting it on-chain!

Summary

  • Cosmic Validator is a long-term Cosmos ecosystem focused validator that started validating the Cosmos Hub in 2019 itself, during the first year of mainnet launch
  • We seek 300 ATOM in a monthly funding, for a period of 6 months to continue producing high quality Cosmos Hub & ecosystem news videos

Cosmic Validator

We have been really involved within the Cosmos ecosystem and its community for several years already before the Cosmos Hub launch or the Game of Stakes. We were amongst the first validators in the Cosmos Hub since 2019 and we have been actively participating in governance since then, currently being one of the validators with the highest governance participation in the Cosmos Hub. We are also participating in the Game of Chains to help testing the upcoming Interchain Security. We are fully committed and focused on the Cosmos ecosystem, we are validating only networks within the Cosmos ecosystem.

Funding

The Cosmos ecosystem news videos project, at the time of writing this proposal, has no funding such as grants or sponsors. If the ICF grants program would reopen in 2023 then we would apply for a grant and if successful then the Community pool funding would be stopped and replaced with the ICF grant.

Work already produced

Since the launch of the project in July 2022, a total of 11 videos have already been delivered. Below are some examples of educational/in-depth assessment content in previous videos:

Proposal details

The Cosmos ecosystem, with the launch of IBC, has grown significantly and it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of all the important developments and updates. While news is shared on several platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Telegram, Blogs and others, the information is very spread and usually challenging for stakeholders to find it and avoid missing some important updates. Some projects exist trying to gather and putting together the main news, however these are mostly news headlines without in-depth assessments or educational content.

Keeping Cosmos stakeholders aligned and informed about important developments in areas such as governance, new technical features, project launches and upgrades or conferences is important and helps to have more constructive discussions.

Our goal with the Cosmos ecosystem news videos is to both educate and keep the broad Cosmos ecosystem community and stakeholders well informed, as well as helping to onboard new users to the ecosystem and increase the awareness about the advantages of building with Cosmos tech.

Deliverables

There will be two monthly Cosmos ecosystem news videos produced, so for the initial 6 months period a total of 12 videos will be delivered.

Funding amount

Total amount requested: 300 ATOM monthly for an initial period of 6 months, with a renewal if all deliverables are completed.

This corresponds to roughly 3,000 USD monthly and covers the production costs for two monthly Cosmos ecosystem news videos, including research and content preparation, filming and the required equipment, video design and additional operational costs.

Governance votes

The following items summarize the voting options and what it means for this proposal:

YES - You agree that educating and keeping all Cosmos ecosystem stakeholders informed and updated is important and thus wish to fund Cosmic Validator’s work
NO - You don’t agree that educating and keeping all Cosmos ecosystem stakeholders informed and updated is important and thus do not agree to fund Cosmic Validator’s work
NO WITH VETO - A ‘NoWithVeto’ vote indicates a proposal either (1) is deemed to be spam, i.e., irrelevant to Cosmos Hub, (2) disproportionately infringes on minority interests, or (3) violates or encourages violation of the rules of engagement as currently set out by Cosmos Hub governance. If the number of ‘NoWithVeto’ votes is greater than a third of total votes, the proposal is rejected and the deposits are burned.
ABSTAIN - You wish to contribute to the quorum but formally decline to vote either for or against the proposal.

Change log

  • 2022-11-22 Created initial post
  • 2022-12-03 We have updated the following sections: “Summary” and “Work already produced”
  • 2022-12-09 We have updated the following sections: “Summary” and “Proposal details”
5 Likes
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As long as you plan to be as impartial and unbiased as you currently operate and as you plan on reporting the truth, as you have been, I have no resistance to the proposal. Good luck!

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Thank you! Yes, we will continue operating in the same way since we launched the videos in July. We have projects contacting us but we focus on covering the most important and relevant news and we perform due diligence before sharing any news

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Hi @Cosmic_Validator, thanks for sharing this. There’s a lot of willingness on your part to help the ecosystem… I have no doubt about it.

But the truth is that if you’re good at what you do, simply because you care about objectively informing the community and also about future value, that’s something that’s really great!!.. and it makes a big difference from having to get paid for it. After all, I believe that through this, you have the space and time to express your opinion and talk about your work as validator…

All this, of course, if you first manage to succeed in this new part that you are going to get involved… Because the truth is that currently, your Youtube channel has very few subscribers and your videos have few of views and likes - for what we are talking about here…

So, what I want to say, considering the monthly amount of 300 Atoms that you are asking (which already has considerable value and will have much more in the future) is that there is a relative rush from you to ask for funds, when the required sample of your work is not yet available to the community…

Also, I would like to say that in my opinion, the wording of the voting option “NO” is completely wrong… no doubt that education and proper information is important for each of us but let me be able to reject this prop for many other reasons.

5 Likes
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Hi Andreas,

Many thanks for your feedback! Let me answer here your concerns:

-We launched the Youtube channel in July 2022, some of our videos got around 1k views which is ok we think if you consider the average views of all the other content creators/youtubers within the Cosmos ecosystem. We are not trying to grow fast, instead our focus is to keep delivering consistent and good quality news and educational content about the Cosmos ecosystem with an organic growth

-We have already delivered 10 videos which are available in the youtube channel, in the proposal above links are included with examples of just a few videos. As mentioned in the proposal, if the ICF reopens the grants program in 2023 then we will apply for a grant instead of a renewal proposal for the Community fund. About the amount of 300 ATOMS, this was estimated with the current ATOM price. Producing each video involves a team of three, one person to research and prepare the content, another person to film each of the sections and then the video designer. We wouldn’t be asking for support for the Community fund in other circumstances, but given the current market conditions and the large costs/work involved to produce each video, this proposal is to ensure that we can keep delivering videos consistently

-Our videos focus mostly on news and educational content, if we mention anything briefly about our validator is for example if we add auto-compound or Skip for a network, or similar updates

We respect your decision and thank you again for your time to provide feedback :+1:

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I’m in total support of this proposal and your great work. Will vote yes!

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Full support here as a validator + would support it ourselves. Im surprised validators that have funds dont support those things. This is 101 imo. Alas, we currently dont have the funds, otherwise we would just grant you this ourselves.

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I love having good validators around who create content.

My confusion with this proposal is why we would do this via a community pool spending and not using the delegation program for validators anyway? I mean, in there the option is to indicate if you are delivering content… then why not tackle it via that route?

And if the vids and the validator become more known, then people will also delegate to the validator, generating more income to be able to do more.

I personally would prefer the delegation route instead of a pool spending.

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Hi Leonoors,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. In the ICF delegation program there are different categories being evaluated such as engineering contributions, community contributions or public good contributions, both for the Cosmos Hub especifically and for the wider Cosmos ecosystem. With the current points system in place our project of Cosmos ecosystem news videos can only earn 1 point, independently of whether we have delivered 10 videos or more. We were told that the ICF grants may reopen in 2023, if this happens then as mentioned in the proposal above we would apply for a grant to the ICF rather than creating a renewal Community pool spend proposal.

Also, of course, if with time our videos keep growing organically and delegators want to support us more, and also if the markets recover then the circumstances would be very different and we wouldn’t need to ask for support to the Community pool to ensure the continuity of the Cosmos ecosystem news videos and avoid the risk of having to stop the videos due to a lack of budget.

Another point we would like to mention is that there are other great Cosmos content creators and the Community pool could be a good way to support them as well. In fact, there is a draft proposal to increase the Community pool tax rate from the current 2% to 10%, expected to go on-chain for voting before the end of 2022. So a small part of the Community pool could go to support the Cosmos ecosystem content creators.

Thanks again for sharing your feedback and participating in the discussion :+1:

2 Likes
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Point taken!

The size of the delegation for creating your vids might indeed not be enough to cover the costs.

Counting with an average of 30 days per month it would mean that the delegation should reap a rough 10 ATOM per day to cover this funding request. You need with the current numbers around 175k ATOM delegated to reach that point (counting with 10% commission). Indeed not sure that will be reachable with the ICF delegations only.

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Sounds really reasonable!
Cosmic Validator produce nice content!

We will vote YES.

P/S/
Just we want to add, that we produce video content for 2 years, and even if it’s in russian language - we have much more views than videos in english language.
And we have english subtitles for all videos, and for now, it’s:

Most of this videos about projects from Cosmos Ecosystem. This is high-quality content. We never ask nothing for producing of this videos, and it gave us very good reputation!
That’s why we are number 53 validator in active set of Cosmos without any delegations from foundation, and also I blocked in the main Telegram and Discord of Cosmos without any reason, but we still alive!

So, if in case of Cosmic Validator we will vote YES, we will not vote YES in case of every validator.

Validator need to do something without any help from the community pool, or we need to spend community pool not only to one validator, but for all validators who do something!

If you do something and it don’t give you sustainable development - maybe better not to do it?
Our videos attract delegators to us, and that’s why we can do this videos for free, without any help.
If your news don’t give such result, maybe spend a time and energy for something that is needed? And delegators will go to you, and you will not need to ask for the funds from the community pool.

Also, Cosmic Validator have 10% commission!
It’s too big commission as my opinion. We have only 3% of commission.
Maybe you need to decrease commission to attract delegators?

1 Like
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Thanks for your support and your feedback! We think that the Cosmos community realized especially after the last CoinBureau video about Cosmos that external people looking at the Cosmos ecosystem had mostly not updated or partially incorrect information. Moreover, we see that usually important tech updates news for example get a bit lost in twitter. We think that keeping track of all the important developments and explaining them to the Community consistently it is very important. Many people in the Cosmos ecosystem appreciate our videos and encourage us to continue. Just stopping our videos because of the current market situation doesn’t seem the best decision and we want to keep supporting the Cosmos ecosystem especially now.

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:fist_right: :fist_left:
Firstly, keep up the great work! I’m personally all for the building of a network of news channels in the Cosmos, especially to pull/attract/convert new viewers and potential 'nauts into the ecosystem.

I echo this sentiment, especially as someone personally interested in approaching contributing to this space through video medium via SM platforms (TikTok - YT - etc.) as I am not trained as a developer (but aim to learn nonetheless).

Great point here. As a newer twitter user myself (+ considering other’s - like myself - learning curve / learning disabilities/ adhd), it was hard to keep track of all the golden information/updates that were being shared). Although it seems that it is a common practice on YT, thank you for placing time stamps/sections into your description box. Things like this are personally so valuable/extremely helpful.

Ty again for your work and posting this prop.

1 Like
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This I don’t understand; why vote YES on one validator and NO on others? Equality is very important for me, so if you don’t think a validator needs support for creating vids because it should be possible to attract enough delegations then you should vote NO on this one as well imo…
Especially taking your remark of the commission into account…

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At the first: because we think that validators need to support each other in the development of the Network and Community!

At the second: Not everything is give results since the beginning!

Cosmos News looks like very interesting project, and we know that Cosmic Validator is true validator!
If they need help on this level of the development - we think is important to help!

Amount of the funds that they want to ask - not really big compare to Community Pool. This is not irrational spendings.

By the supporting of each other - we will create more stronger connection, that is very important for the Network security and Community Development.

About Commission - this is friend advice! We think that decreasing of commission from 10% to 5% (or kind of it) will help to Cosmic Validator to attract delegations.

We think that validators need to contribute for the development of the Network and Community by the different ways. And creating of content is nice kind of contribution.

If you have any other question - I will be glad to answer!)

1 Like
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Thank you everyone for your support and encouragement, we really appreciate this and helps us a lot to keep motivated and working hard to continue producing Cosmos ecosystem news videos. Today we released the next episode with the review of the 2nd half of November (https://youtu.be/TxV6RL71mOk), some of the topics covered are:

-Updates about the Game of Chains
-Interchain Developer Academy
-Juno Communications SubDAO
-Namada trusted setup ceremony
-ICF’s Technical Advisory Board

2 Likes
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I agree with this post, but doesn’t answer my question.

In your initial post you state; “So, if in case of Cosmic Validator we will vote YES, we will not vote YES in case of every validator.”

In your last post you state; “because we think that validators need to support each other in the development of the Network and Community!”

This feels a contradiction. Because first you say that you will not vote YES on every validator, but you believe you should help each other out. So if you vote NO on other case, you wouldn’t be helping out…

So I am trying to understand the line of reasoning why vote YES on one and NO on another. I do agree on helping out in general when the plans are good :slight_smile:

With respect to this thread; @Cosmic_Validator can you expand the proposal draft with a plan how to become independent of the community pool funding? I guess people won’t mind funding for a limited amount of time, but there must be a long term plan imo

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I believe that we should use the community pool more vividly, even if it might result in some trial&error process. Cosmic Validator’s proposal asks for a very small share of the pool and is limited in time, so there is no significant risk for the community here. Meanwhile, having more Cosmos-specific content is obviously beneficial for the ecosystem. P2P plans to support this proposal on-chain.

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Sure, it is mentioned already in the proposal draft that once the ICF grants reopen, likely in 2023 as people from the ICF told us, then we would apply for a grant to the ICF instead of doing a renewal proposal for the Community pool. Moreover, the current market situation is very tough so the goal of this proposal is to ensure the continuity of the Cosmos ecosystem news videos. By the end of this 6-month initial funding period, it is possible that the market could show some recovery and also we might receive by then more delegations from the community. Since we launched the Cosmos ecosystem news videos in July 2022, we have already delivered 11 videos fully funded by us without any grants or sponsors so far. However, given the important risk of potentially having to stop the videos due to a lack of budget in the current circumstances, we decided to publish this draft proposal after first discussing with some key stakeholders within the Cosmos ecosystem who gave us feedback and encouraged us to publish this draft proposal.

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I think it should be less… 250 atoms/ month… you guys do great work… but I’m worried that you will get voted down…

Based on the amount of atom’s

I’m in support because I watch these often… my main worry is the community. As we’ve seen what they would say…

Anyways good luck, keep working hard… just a suggestion… I think you should be good overall…

Keep working hard, I hope you get the funding