Secret Code Podcast Spending Proposal

Thank you. Our video tutorials are/will be very efficient and easy to use. We already tested the original on people who had the right wallets but had no idea what they were doing and they loved them, and were much less scared, and knew exactly what they were doing.

Perhaps written tutorials get more views, but in my experience people feel far more comfortable actually doing something, if somebody walks and talks them through it step by step. I believe, and it’s a widely shared sentiment, that one of the primary things holding Secret back from large adoption is the barrier of entry. By making things simpler and easier, this is lowered considerably. By having tons of tutorials organized, streamlined, and formulaic, new users can feel comfortable knowing where to go, and how to get one specific task done safely and efficiently at a time.

If you would like to see the original blurry version, please reach out! We’re ok showing some of our work, we just don’t want people’s first impression of our tutorials to show low-resolution.

Again it feels like you’re offsetting your buisness risk to the community pool, podcast is great for brand (Tor did a lot of them too) and you can find other way to monetize them than asking the community.
On the tutorial bits, we pay Education Committee quite handsomely already, keen to have some overlap but it sounds stretched as to why we would contract you through another community pool proposal and not directly through education.
On the amount of hours again it sounds unsustainable, 60/80 hours per week was what you quoted on the secret swap one, 15+ on this, I did not make numbers up

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How much is the bounty?

I mean this with all respect to you guys but I don’t support this proposal. The original snac mentioned a self sustaining podcast. I understand the desire to turn podcasts into a full time role, but the views don’t support it. The way I see it this podcast is your nodes differentiation from the others. You’re doing a service for the community in the hopes it helps drive your personal business. I don’t want to see the community pool be used to subsidize personal businesses but I am willing to give out money to help Kickstart them. I would much rather use this money to pay influences who already have an audience.

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The pool already helped kickstart your project, in exchange for little ROI but with a promise of a road to self sustainability. Out of the 3 plans presented for this purpose, the 3rd plan (continuous snac funding) doesnt even fulfill that requirement. As for the other 2, one relies on Enigma (or currently non-existent sizeable fans/audience willing to delegate), and the other seems reasonable (selling ad space).

The apparent problem is that in order to achieve self sustainability you need a sizeable audience. Otherwise your ad space and node are not profitable. Until then, unless Enigma steps in, it seems clear that you seek to get funding continuously from the pool.

Personally I cant find myself supporting this proposal. I think it would make sense to support this proposal once you have grown to a non negligible audience and there is at least something tangible of an ROI for the network.

I share Pauls concern that you are just seeking to offset your venture risks with a cushion of funding and in order to justify this, you are overlapping with work that is already expected from the education committee tbh.

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Sadly the reach is really non-existent and the amount requested is significant for little reward. Any project should be self sufficient and offer value.

I don’t support this.

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I’m sorry but I’m not sure what kind of initial ROI you were expecting from our podcast for $4k. We started with 0 followers, 0 subscribers, 0 views, etc. I believe we are growing and will complement awareness. This was gonna take time and I think everyone is aware of that. The Shade reveal we just did got 300 views in one day and that was outside our podcast scope. Secret Network is an extremely small community still so I wouldn’t say our small outreach is our fault. Our growth would likely just mimic Secret’s growth instead. I’m not saying we will be the platform that makes Secret go top 10 and I think that’s clear. On that note, our service is more so for the Secret community itself. This is completely different than going to a YouTube influencer for a 2 min shoutout. We offer something entirely different. As Secret grows, so does our audience.

We didn’t come up with this idea ourselves. We saw it work flawlessly in Terra and we saw the value it added. We believe Secret needed something similar and here we are.

As for the 3rd plan, yes you are right, that does not meet the definition of self sustainable. My fault, I just grouped it with the other forms of funding.

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This is the problem. We don’t have a viable funding option right now so we may not continue if there is no funding. Therefore, there may not even be an audience down the road. We likely wouldn’t need your funding if we do grow to a non negligible audience. The whole point is that we are at such an early stage so its the chicken and the egg problem. Funding would likely have to be by the good graces of the community or an enigma delegation as you mentioned.

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I personally have stated that we would be ok with removing the tutorial bits. Eric and I, especially Eric, see video tutorials as a great add. The Education committee doesn’t personally do video tutorials as Stefan mentioned above. They have a single bounty but video content in general is a good amount of work and there are no takers. The discretionary budget would be spread way too thin to support consistent video tutorials as there are written.

I agree with your sentiment in relation to the chicken and egg. However, I think the ask is super high. Even at the price of $1.79 which is significantly lower than today’s rate - that comes out to an annualised cost of $77,328 between the two of you (which I would describe as being part-time as the combined time is the same as one full-time employee in a business).

In an ideal world for me, you get a delegation from Enigma to help tide you by until you can find your own way forward but that’s only because it would be nice to see how far this can go for the Network. Most people that start a podcast don’t tend to get paid until they’re able to make their revenue streams.

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I appreciate the reply. As you are aware, we are not self sustaining. Eric in the SNAC post had this to say exactly.

“If our project isn’t self-sufficient by October 8 (3 months from today, but an estimation) our current plan would be to write a proposal for the community pool, as by then we will have provided ample evidence of our work for the community themselves to decide whether or not they think our project is worth funding. This would only be after expiring every other route towards self-sufficiency available to us.”

We haven’t misled, anyone. This is just the current situation. If you have any suggestions, we are open to hearing them.

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That’s fine with me and I agree with your statement. I would personally be willing to lower my ask as well, especially if we end up taking tutorials out. In a perfect world, I agree the delegation would be good of course. Again, I really hate to do this for some of the reasons mentioned above. I’ll talk to Eric about next steps.

I apologize for the defensiveness everybody but it is something Eric and I have put a lot of hard work into. Whatever happens is okay with me.

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We put 100 SCRT on video tutorial creation as can be found here:

The Secret Code podcast is more than welcome to take lead on this project as they come.

I personally don’t see a need for many more video tutorials at this point. Videos for bridging, converting, staking, swapping, LP’ing have all been made already by Brendan.

My suggestion is to continue building your brand and come back to the chain when you have more to offer it. I’m sorry to be so harsh. I have posts on Twitter that have more impressions. I’m not saying what you’re doing isn’t worthwhile, but it’s not currently effective. I want to move from a model of ‘were trying’ to more results oriented. I’m fine spending money for people to try things but it needs to be on a leash especially when it’s for people Beginning a private business.

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Eric I think you are a very valuable member of the community and I like your enthusiasm and passion. I do think that this proposal has significant overlap with awareness committee and in the interest of further fragmenting committees spends and accountability, I think it should be tied in with awareness where we can keep track of kpi and hold accountability.

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Ok, I talked to Eric and I will update the proposal with an edit at the end. If the updated version doesn’t pass, Eric and I agreed that it is best to stop the podcast and anything associated given the lack of support. So this is the final version going on chain with requests taken into account.

Update:

We continue what we are doing, no tutorials, no giveaways.

I’m willing to drop my ask to 750 scrt and Eric’s lowest is 1500 scrt per month. That is 6,750 scrt for 3 months.

Podcast KPIs still apply as well as anything else podcast related in the initial proposal.

Feel free to reply but know that Eric and I are going to chain with this regardless. If it doesn’t pass, we may still explore a SNAC but that is unlikely.

Thank you guys for the input, that is all.

appreciate the feedback. If I can afford to, I’ll try. I personally think that the tutorials are what will blow us up and grow us and the community as we gain awareness, but if people don’t think they’re needed or worth funding it is what it is.

Whether our proposal passes or not I think it’s important for the community pool to fund community led initiatives in the future, and not just be for committees. I loved (still do) the idea of the guerilla marketing campaign. I love what our podcast and media offers. I will continue to support all community led initiatives because I think it’s the only way that DAO’s can succeed long-term.

edit: Wanted to add that if you’re using the metric of impressions, we’re at over 5k on YouTube in the month and a half we’ve had a channel. Should we get funded and roll out the content we intend to, that will continue to grow exponentially, as has been the case to this point.

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Thank you. I agree and acknowledge that there is overlap, ideally with all of the committees. I’m concerned that the barrier for resourcing community initiatives may be too high. Perhaps it is the case that I’m wearing blinders and the podcast and media we produce, and intend to grow to produce, doesn’t offer the ecosystem the value that I believe it does. Regardless, if all initiatives are forced to be subjugated to committees, I fear that we will create the bureaucracy that many have claimed exists within the committee structure, which I’ve to this point disagreed with.

KPI’s and accountability are not limited to committees, and committees have often not upheld them. If the community feels strongly that we should be put under direct oversight by a committee as a condition of funding I’m open to it. As it is we certainly need to do a better job of coordinating with the Awareness Committees and Education Committees, and that’s on me.

Again, thank you for the feedback. I know you have the best intentions and I strongly value your opinion.

I have mentioned in the telegrams that I HAVE been putting in that many hours. The SecretSwap Committe Renewal Proposal quite clearly enumerates “40 hours+ per week”.

We can, and will if needed, try other ways of funding. But that will take away from the unbiased nature of our material, and enact a pay-to-play method instead, which I’m not a fan of. I believe this ask is an investment by the community, for the community. We have a community pool. It is only actively used to fund committees. I like our committees but want more, and have actively tried to be the change I want to see. If you don’t think we have provided or will provide the value that we’re attempting to capture to sustain the effort, I understand your ‘no’ vote.