Secret Agency - Tax rate 0% proposal - TEMPORARY Funding via leftover resources

Secret Governance
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This proposal addresses the statement in proposal #129 concerning the 4% tax rate previously allocated to Secret Foundation, which was diverted to fund Secret Agency LLC:

“The Secret Agency DAO (a Marshall Islands NON-PROFIT LLC) will receive these funds until the TEMPORARY transition period of THREE months is over. After that, the TEMPORARY funding has to be reassessed by another governance vote. The community will decide what will happen to any remaining funds after the three months are over.”
– As in: https://forum.scrt.network/t/the-0-secret-foundation-tax-proposal/6783

The temporary transition period is about to draw to a close on May 6th meaning funding for the agency is uncertain until a permanent solution or another temporary measure is decided upon. Community members have shared various challenges they see with agency funding whether this be the SCRT price, the problems of a perpetual staking tax and/or the sustainability of the community pool.

The agency (at time of writing) still holds ~185000 SCRT (partially in the multisig and partially claimable from the contract) which is expected to grow till ~275000 SCRT (not accounting expenses) on May 6th. At current prices this constitutes ~200000 USD meaning we could pay our April, May and June budget, if price does not significantly decline, out of pocket. Our goal however is to ensure continuity of operations, this also requires a certain employee security. We would like to prevent only spending from the current reserves.

We (Secret Agency DAO) would like to propose (yet another) TEMPORARY solution that we think best allows us to keep working for the ecosystem, until a permanent solution related to a new Secret foundation is found, but also satisfies the community.

Secret Agency DAO STOPS receiving the 4% staking tax as previously stated in prop 129 and the tax rate is cut to 0%. However, we request to be able to spend the leftover funds in the agency wallet to cover a may and june budget of ~55k USD per month. We hope a new NPO will be available by July that can serve as the new funding entity and relieve oversight and sell-pressure concerns from the community.

** If the funding situation remains uncertain the Agency will move forward with a quarterly community pool proposal for the period (July, October, September) as early as the first week of June. This is to ensure Core network functions tackled by agency remain active and Agency staff have certainty of payout for July before they start their work in that month.

Agency is not sure completely removing continuous funding is the best decision to be made but wont go against the promises made to the community RE a temporary solution. We sincerely hope a new NPO is set up before July 2023 so we can all move forward as a network. The above agreement (to spend the leftover SCRt) will ensure that the Agency can continue to function as the primary operations company handling Developer Relations, Business Development, Content Creation and International events and activation for the Secret Network, whilst the new renewed Secret Foundation is set up.

If the community does not agree on the above proposed solution via an official proposal prior to may 6th the Secret Agency will aim to return the leftover SCRT and still set the foundation tax to 0% as requested in proposal #129.

Our Q1 summary is attached here, which gives a good snapshot of where our funding is spent and what we cover in our scope. We also invite the community to give feedback on our performance and welcome any suggestions as to where we should focus our efforts. Secret Agency Executive Summary Q1 2023

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Thanks @ertemann for abiding by the proposal :slight_smile: looks good to me.

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Here I will refer to my latest post about my concerns:

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We wont be able to share payroll with you sadly, would a medium or median per hour salary work?

I think its better to judge based on deliverables rather than hours though, feel free to provide direct feedback to the report so we can share the numbers or information you want to see.

Wether you see the Agency as being worth it is something you really have to determine on your own, i think it is. Without many things we do certain network functions just come to a halt.

Edit: full money spend is visible in the budget chart of the report and can also be checked on-chain.

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I’m judging by deliverance at the moment, since I don’t know the hours people get payed and how much so if someone has 1 hour per week and gets this amount of statistics I understand. But if this is almost full time, I really don’t. That’s why I would like to know.

What I find weird is that we did this kind of structure in the past as well, we knew how much people were getting payed and since other committees share their payroll I guess this isn’t an issue. (Governance,dev, support) this prevents people to give free passage in spending and give good insights from the community.

I would like to know who is in the team and which role they have, also share a regular pay of the role and to see the amount of hours they work.

If this isn’t allowed to share specific pays then get a medium pay per role.

So

Name
Role
hours

And then per role an average hourly rate.

Next to that, I’m just seeing the amount of money spend while seeing the deliverances, I do see things I like, but those are more overall regarding Dapp relations and the language being used for certain functions and do not require that much money.

Also I don’t think it’s good to see certain network functions halt and then agency taking it over with no experience in some parts. I do understand that this can be temporary, but I find it hard to believe that we can’t reach out to professional company’s to take over.

As I believe that community is important and also see no engagement (while partly coming out of a bear) I see less and less activity while the amount stays the same in what is being spend in overall on the agency.

Taking the note that engagement is not only agency, but secret foundation as well. So why throw so much money to it while not seeing good results compared to the 83000 SCRT per month “only for Agency”

I rather see all functions being removed and just pay task/ IRL event wise and particular promos and what is needed for regular lead.

Then you have a better structure and a more task based assignment to each person. If this is too much work, then it needs a quarterly FULL transparant ask on the forum every time. Even if this is a DAO, the money still comes from the public pool.

So we can prevent people to just receive resources since the team is awesome and great (if you know what I mean). Instead we need results in my opinion and professionals.

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Thanks so much for putting together your thoughts and engaging with the prop.

Sounds like one solution you are suggesting is that Agency outsources certain functions to “professionals” or a “professional company”. Am I understanding that right?

If so, what specific functions do you have in mind? Any idea on how these contractors would be paid and how that spend compares to current structure?

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I mean, better results from a better company and not just a group of people that just trying to hold the ropes together since no one else does. because that is doomed to fail. You need expertise for some parts and i think this is not taken serious.

At the moment we are spending a lot of money on things that are not good enough, to give you the example i had:

The amount of views on the content that is created, it is clear that this isnt worth the amount being spend, quality wise and marketing wise. Sometimes you need an outsider to see this.

If i hire a marketing/content agency that asks 55k (international/content is around 20k) per month to do certain things and they give me this kind of results, i would say, i will find someone else.

If the agency then says: Do you want us to quit to create content because this isnt that good(GOV chat). Then the message is clear for me. Because this means that you guys dont have the experience to lead this.

Ive got some friends with big marketing agencies and the way they handle it (not crypto related) is to network and contact influencers, Using ads, ect. ect. and then for small companies with more reach then this they invest 500 dollars per month in ads.

So current structure is very confusing for me.

Also, what is Secret foundation doing if you guys do the content? where is the marketing, its just so confusing. Thats why im curious how many hours each person is working and for what.

Same with University recruitment. Who is doing this and how many hours is this team getting? We have Secret University as well, is this double the work or just overlapping?

Thats why i think its good to have the community (neutral part) to take a look at the hours spend and team members to see if this is still worthy.

because, be honest, if you take a look to the summary and reflect on it, would you accept these statistics in a multimillion company that spends more that 55K on (Secret agency) and probably more 100-150K on (secret foundation) for the results presented? dont think so, not even speaking about the selling pressure that we cant have atm.

I still want to make clear that i dont have many comments on the VC part, since thats difficult and this takes time. But the rest of the agency is something i do review next to the secret foundation.

Sometimes it isnt nice to hear from people what is wrong or if someone has to much hours or salary, but that is the choice people made before entering a publicly funded DAO. This isnt a private company. Your shareholders are not 5-10 people.

hope to receive some answers from my previous posts as well this week.

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Definitely working to understand your perspective. I think part of what may be confusing is Agency’s relationship to Foundation.

The community does not fund Foundation in any capacity. They are operating out of reserves and are engaged in an organizational transition.

Right now Marketing is directed by Labs with Foundation as the primary execution layer although Agency is engaged specifically with content. Labs is commissioning Agency with specific written or video content that is valuable from a bizdev or marketing side.

International is not doing content but rather, leading regional and/or language-based Secret communities. This includes ground-level marketing, KOL strategy, IRL events and business development.

I really appreciate your comment that VC work is challenging work that doesn’t have an immediate influx of return.

Content is actually not so different.

With VCs, it’s constant outreach and conversation. You can’t measure success in those terms but there certainly won’t be any success without those ongoing efforts.

Similarly, we need to keep shipping high-quality content that supports major network efforts. But except with marketing… a “VC doesn’t invest”. The finish line is not so clear. If you know much about marketing (it sounds like you do), you know it is notoriously difficult to judge bottomline impact. That doesn’t mean we don’t try - just that it is difficult. But here’s some contextual data around that…

6-8 months ago our YouTube was a desert wasteland. No regular content was going out and the metrics weren’t great. In partnership with Foundation, Agency contributed some great videos to the channel and there is a marked improvement in metrics.

I haven’t seen metrics on the articles hosted on the learn portal but Foundation could speak to that.

That said, if you know companies that make videos and articles, really understand Secret and where we are going - and they can do this better and/or cheaper in some way, you should definitely reach out to Labs. They might be open to cutting this function from Agency.

However, it has been my experience that both Foundation, Labs, and the community are happy with Agency’s work with content and social. That doesn’t mean there can’t be dissenting perspectives though and we certainly welcome that.

As to your questions on Secret U:

Secret U is the learning pathway for developers.

Secret U recruitment is recruiting people to be a part of that. This takes place primarily through presentations to university-based blockchain clubs. Melch leads those efforts and - if you saw the metrics - they are pretty impressive. There’s no double work there and I think Secret U would attest to the value of these efforts.

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thanks for this clarification, still love to see a list with hours and members.

To get directly to the marketing part, they are not specialized in crypto so that wouldnt be the ideal situation and niche for them. (products, celebs and IRL influencer parties)

Labs is the dev side and i think mostly the marketing side of labs is bigger projects to my understanding (tarantino, Killroy, legendao,Secret Surge, terra fund, publicity,Ect.) speaking about that, love to see the parts each org is doing, SF,SLABS,SA

Even with the labs being inside, this makes the question even more relevant, why should we need 3 org inside secret network do the marketing and this is the result? Do we need that extra push that is difficult as well for the agency. that is the problem that i get, its confusing what scope if for what org and hours and roles will help with this.

The international part looks interesting, word wise, but if you want KOL’s you need a group that is constantly networking, thats when you get the results, multiple famous influencers, small and big ones. (big ones costs money most of the time, but the wasted hours you now make can be converted into that)

Im not saying im good in this particular topic, but sometimes common sense is also good enough. Marketing is the way to push your project. If this is going too slow, competitors will benefit from it. So rather spend the money on a marketing company or get with better plans and results.

About VCs, true, but that doesnt require a big team to do this and to my knowledge reading last threads, only Shahar, Natalia and Skrillah are doing this. So i think this is not the problem.

Its already a shame that youtube was a desert wasteland, but thats 6-8 months ago :wink: we are 385.000 dollars ahead with the process.

You can be happy with the work you guys do, but that doesnt mean it really is and the community? I guess the people that are active and get some rewards? didnt look to good on the governance chat last time. Partly because of SF, but transparancy gives a way to get more trust in the community.

Just my take, Get the hours with roles and members (known names) and let the community see if this is worthy, compared to the progress made last 6-8 months or maybe a shorter time period.

this will benefit the agency and community all at once, maybe the only downside will be that someone gets less hours because he isnt doing a good job, but thats part of life, right?

last thing, about Secret U, okay fair, then i would like to know which members are running this with hours and roles. but that can be in the list.

thanks for the quick reply !

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Gotcha - I hear that you are looking for clear hours and roles!

You’ve misquoted me a bit. Never said that Agency is happy with the work we do. Patting ourselves on the back means nothing.

What I stated is that Labs, Foundation, and the community (at least the very strong majority) seem happy with what Agency is producing.

That doesn’t mean we can’t get better of course. We’re always looking to sharpen, improve, and adapt. Anyone who doesn’t have that mentality will quickly fall out of favor (and out of work) with the Agency.

Personally, my area of focus is creating compelling written and video content that supports general marketing as well as BD focus. Communication is a personal passion for me and a craft that I have taken quite seriously though the trajectory of my professional career. If you have specific critique or improvements with content I would be grateful to hear that feedback and assimilate it into my work. (sean@scrt.agency)

One of the hard things about the transparency we are pursuing is that we can never show “everything” behind the day-to-day of work. It’s challenging to hear ideas about how it should be done when either a) a team is already doing that or b) there is a well-reasoned and highly contextual reason the team is doing it differently.

For example, you have some great ideas with KOLs and how to pursue that. And in your feedback, you’ve landed at option “a”. Six weeks ago Labs and Agency kicked this into gear. There is a discord chat for “KOL strategy revamp” with daily activity, a task board across SF, Labs, and Agency. And - most importantly - there’s a lot getting done around it. There is daily networking, engagement, and outreach. As you can see in the report, ten recorded sessions - that is a solid start.

I know that you want what is best for Secret and the community and appreciate your questions and points of concern.

I trust the community at-large to assess whether or not Agency is worthy of support and we will do all we can to accurately report on our operations and function.

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Sorry misread that part, yeah I do want a list, can you provide that ?

Also, who is the “majority” of community, can you name them ? Excluding the people getting paid by the pool/tax?

Also don’t want to speak outside through mail about specifics this is already a lot to typing and it should be obvious in a way that it doesn’t get much engagement. :slight_smile: , it’s more that you say that you do content and Bizdev and the general marketing, that’s seems to not go very well (marketing wise), you can have a KOL revamp where people talk daily, but that doesn’t mean it is working, otherwise we’ve seen a lot of exposure I guess. So it’s, or the one that is leading the revamp or the people that needs to do this task that are lacking the task they’ve been told to do.

If not, then it wouldn’t be hard to name a couple big influencers 5-10k views and above that are interested or are in contact with us, right ?

What do you mean with “everything”, that is not relevant right ?

If I have a KPI of getting something done, and I do an X amount of hours, then it should be done right ? Some delays, fine, but structural processes are not fixable if not taken care of the core problem if you keep failing at a task.

Same with marketing, if something isn’t working for a long time, or content isn’t working the way you hoped and you are getting payed good for it, then you should consider the thing you said yourself. Below quote, but then rather experience than mentality.

Also,How quickly is this ?

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You are right - this is a lot of typing! But we might be coming to the end of what is helpful. I sense that your opinions are fully formed and there isn’t much I can do to converse. I’m also noticing that you aren’t reading my answers very carefully. A few pieces to try and clarify:

  1. My work already receives feedback each week from Labs and Foundation. If you feel that that feedback is inaccurate, inadequate, or absent valuable perspective - my email was an invitation for you to provide specific feedback about videos or articles and how they could be improved. If you have specifics I truly welcome them (and surely a short email from you with those specifics isn’t much compared to what you have already invested in this thread).

  2. Agency does not do general marketing.

  3. It looks like you missed reading the “results” emphasis of the KOL section (and our report). 13 recorded sessions just in March. If you watch the KOL reel you’ll see channels with 44K subs, 10k subs, and ~1K subs. These efforts easily translated into over 100K views in a single month.

  4. Agency has terminated many positions since I’ve been involved. We don’t pay people to not work. When there aren’t results, I would estimate this happens within 2-3 weeks.

  5. Some of your sentences lose me a bit in these final paragraphs but I think you are saying “KPIs are important”. Definitely agree. We report quarterly on key metrics and performance indicators. The intro and conclusion of our report invite community members to address any KPIs that are missing from our work areas so we can include them in the future. If you have a specific KPI or metric that would indicate the efficacy (or not) of our work – please share here!

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RE the list:

I stated im the TG gov chat that the team will discuss adding such a breakdown into the report on friday when Skrillah and me are both back from a short holiday. Orageux provided some clear ways to add this info already which many seemed to agree too.

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If you guys get feedback already, I’m not very confident in general. Since I’m not the one that should correct this, I’m only sharing my concerns with this amount of money invested vs what I see in the results.

My mind isn’t fully formed yet, but I am fully formed in the way I would like to see the transparency.

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Im just responding on Sean and adding my requests. that said, I like the structure of Orageux, but I want to see hours roles and names.

If that happens, I’m okay with it.

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I’d like to see Agency focus on TikTok and Instagram instead of mediums we’ve already explored. Otherwise, I think the only thing really moving the needle here is BD / DevRel.

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I’d like to see Agency focus on TikTok and Instagram instead of mediums we’ve already explored.

We don’t control the Secret Network Instagram account, are you suggesting we set up an Agency Instagram account and dedicate resources to maintaining it? Or we create content for the main network account to post? Pinging @AnewbiZ007 for your thoughts on diverting energy from Twitter to Insta.

I don’t think there is a TikTok account set up but its not an app I want to install on any of my devices personally. :male_detective:

I think folks in this thread may be confusing the main network accounts which are run by Secret Foundation as being run by Agency. We do not run or control any of those.

I think the only thing really moving the needle here is BD / DevRel.

I agree and I think we should keep the focus of our efforts on onboarding dApps, devs and investors to the network. We can pump more resources into community & user growth during a more sustained bull market. Now it’s about attracting builders & keeping collaborations active.

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This opens our team up to personal attacks. It’s a no from me.

If the community signals that they want us to direct our resources towards a particular focus area we will do our best to achieve that as we always have.

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If you agree then why are we allocating almost 50% to activities other than those two?

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Its a good point & why we are retraining our International Community Managers & Coordinators to be able to tackle BizDev & DevRel tasks.

@Lucafortes7 has really shone at bringing in Latam VCs & dApps, and spearheaded the Secret Scholarships program for Secret University
@PepeVO1 is going through Secret University so he can help with DevRel in the future.
@Thepopeblack brings us many leads from Africa & helps to organise events there
@BertramCoins is moving into a leads gen & CRM maintenance role for specific SDKs from SCRT Labs
Illyana is tackling leads gen too as an intern

All of these team members were formerly mainly looking after international communities only, so they are marked in Q1 as International.

It’s quite hard to nail a specific function to our multi talented team, but we continue to empower them all to develop leads & include them in the conversation so they can develop over time.

Needless to say I’m impressed with the progress they are all making and you should connect with them to find out what they are all up to!

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