Support Team Funding Proposal - Q2 2022

Secret Governance
1

Summary

This proposal is for on-chain funding of the Support Team for the period May 22nd, 2022 to August 22nd, 2022.

The goal of this Support Team is to be a first line of defense for users on the Secret Network, and have been present and active during nearly every NFT mint/major event both in the Secret Community Discord and Telegram, and as well as the project’s respective channels.

In total, 1293 tickets were closed from January 30th 2022 to May 4th 2022.

Retrospective

The Good

  • Due to the effort spent on education, the amount of questions received that are “simple” are drastically reduced.
  • Gas price reduction in Keplr means lower prices across the board for users. This resolved many “simple” issues with users itself.
  • Communication between SCRT Labs, Support, and Foundation is vastly improved, leading to smoother interactions and resolutions of widespread user issues.
  • Having a backup solution for IBC transfers, as provided by Sienna, has been a serious boon.
  • The increased presence of Support has had a large improvement, as we’re now have coverage in Discord, Telegram, Twitter, Keybase, and Reddit.

The Bad

  • API issues. These remain the ugly duckling of the ecosystem. With the upgrade it appears the issues are improved, but it’s too soon to declare victory.
  • UI issues. The majority of outstanding tickets are related to Sienna complications.

Target Deliverables for this Funding Period

Continuous Deliverables

  • Create, maintain, and organize support documentation across the Secret Network.
  • Assist platforms on the network with their user support, including but not limited to: Secret Network Discord, Secret Community Telegram, and SecretSwap.
  • IBC Relayer coordination/flushing/etc has fallen under the jurisdiction of the Support team.

Budget Request

The Support Team asks a budget for the compensated leadership roles and a discretionary budget for compensating those who are able to provide extended support.

Compensated Roles

@MrGarbonzo = $8000 / month | 40 hours per week

  • Providing community support for Secret Network since the first block

@reversesigh = $8000 / month | 40 hours per week

  • Customer service specialist with 10 years experience
  • Secret Agent Program on-boarding and coordinator

@TheWaffle = $8000 / month | 40 hours per week

  • 5 years experience in international business management, servicing top commodity traders and managing teams of 25 in West Africa, 20 in South East Asia.
  • 6 years experience in DeFi and Cryptocurrencies
  • Fluent in English, French, and Spanish
  • Community member and Secret Agent for more than a year, IGC member supporting the French community and awareness in French/European Cosmos ecosystem.

Discretionary Budget

Discretionary Budget = $600 / month

This is a 75% reduction from last quarter’s discretionary budget.

The team recognizes we can’t be everywhere at once, and would like to be able to reward and recognize members of the community that are going above and beyond by providing support/help by offering them tips, at the team’s discretion.

This proved effective the previous funding round, and we wish to be able to continue providing funding for those going above and beyond. As with the previous funding, the discretionary budget will be split evenly and distributed independently of the other members.

Total Ask

Mr. Garbonzo = $8000 / month
Reverse Sigh = $8000 / month
Waffle = $8000 / month
Discretionary Budget = $600 / month

Total Proposal Spend for 3 Months: $73,800
Plus 10% buffer: $81,000

Any feedback you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Best,
Reverse, Mr. Garbonzo, and Waffle

6 Likes
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The reality is that usage of the network and its dapps is down significantly over the past few days, and there is not a need for 3 full time support members.

I could probably be talked into 10 hours / week per team member.

Additional context for where I think the limited amount of liquidity remaining for $SCRT should be directed (copy / paste from Education proposal):

Not necessarily specific to this proposal, but I’d like to see a freeze on all non-dev spend from the community pool for Q3.

Project launches are being delayed, and we have not had a major hackathon for 5 months, possibly attributable to insufficient developer documentation and an inadequate testnet, among other factors.

Given limited resources, and the sizable amount of work remaining to be done to improve developer onboarding, I believe development items need to be prioritized above all else with funds conserved accordingly.

Assuming market conditions improve and progress is made on the higher priority items, I’d be open to resuming non-dev spend in Q4.

3

I don’t want to jump on the defunding bandwagon without more data.

Can you give a tickets per month metric since the start of the year until today?

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Sure thing.

It’s important to note that tickets closed aren’t a great metric to gauge Support efficacy.

In total, 1336 tickets were closed from November 1st 2021 to January 30th 2022. 
In total, 1293 tickets were closed from January 30th 2022 to May 4th 2022.

I’ll update the numbers shortly with more exact ones for the previous period.

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Sure, but having a metric per month does give an indication of what the trend of demand is.

This also isn’t directed at you, since you’re not part of the spend proposal even, but I also want to give attention to this point:

Sienna Network should be providing its own support people, not the chain. If this is only 1/2 bad points worth mentioning, and it turns out be a majority of the issues, it’s not a good look.

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Ah - Sienna causes most issues was not the intent for that point. I didn’t mean to suggest that most tickets are due to Sienna, but unresolved tickets. We have 2 sections for tickets - short term and long term. Long term are largely issues with Sienna, but don’t take up much Support time. Upwards of 10 hours per week across the team, no more.

The intention with that statement was more that confusing UI/UX continues to play a role in how Support’s time is spent.

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heres the monthly breakdown of the tickets since it has started. early on the numbers were low because at that time i was the only person handling support and most tickets were done through DM

July - 94 (launched mid-end of july)
Aug - 196
sept - 139
Oct - 733
Nov - 508
Dec - 424
Jan - 427
Feb - 403
March - 426
April - 414
May -176 (through 5/17)

Regarding sienna support. the tickets we see generally correspond to new launches. so for the last month or so its been a lot sienna stuff due to lend launch but before that it was shade airdrop tickets or secret swap migration issues

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You guys are EPIC :muscle::muscle::muscle:

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The Support Team does a fantastic job and is omnipresent in all of our core network channels. They will roll their sleeves up and get involved with any issue that Secret users have.

Aren’t you assuming that cutting off this team’s livelihood for 3 months is going to make this resumption as easy as just switching it back on in Q4? This is not how you build staff retention and would leave our users vulnerable to attack from scammers, severely impacting Secret Network adoption including new devs.

I suggest that anyone that wants to ‘defund’ this committee go and work with them for 1 week and see the complex, myriad issues that they solve on a daily basis. It is a blessing to work alongside such dedicated & skilled teammates.

The same goes for other committees. Engage & understand the work they do, before forming dogma. And also deploy a longer-term outlook on the market & the goals of the network.

IF IN DOUBT ZOOM OUT - SCRT IS HERE TO STAY BABY

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It is my hope that all committees believe in the long-term future of the network and understand that we have to scale back in some areas to account for reduced market demand.

Through thoughtful downsizing, we reduce overall network burn rate and provide more runway to the development teams working on the projects that will allow Secret to compete and win.

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I believe all the committees understand the actual market situation, the core of the issue is how to approach this eventual bear season (if 30k is what we call bear nowadays).

I think everyone should realise that focusing only on dev work without reaching out to users, educating them on the specificities of Secret while providing consistent user support will prevent us from reaching the userbase this ecosystem deserves.

Regarding the Support committee, we have lowered the ask, lead members being reduced from 5 to 3, with a lowered discretionary budget.

These last months, the user experience in the ecosystem has been nightmarish, from the Shade Airdrop congesting the whole network, to SecretSwap’s pool issues or SiennaLend, Keplr permanent issues and the Support Team has been available 24/7 to help users in their journey on Secret.
Some may argue that we should not support independent dApps, such as Sienna, but something we always claimed is that we support users of the ecosystem, and we will not start filtering users depending on which dApps they are having issues with.

We are still small, in a niche and complicated ecosystem: User’s good-experience (and eventual loyalty) should be a priority, especially during bear markets where those who stayed will spread words during next bull-run.

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Even if I were not part of a committee I would disagree whole heartedly with this sentiment. Actually I think community engagement and committees are MORE important in a downturn as that is when solid foundations are built and the legwork is done for the next leg up. Also by de-funding you would see a huge drop-off in community activity which gives the appearance of a dead project. We want the support team and others still out there answering questions and providing support as they do now.

Not sure where this downsizing requirement even comes from. Look at the numbers. There is plenty to survive.

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Community engagement is important and will persist through the efforts of Secret Foundation.

Having 4 entities (Secret Foundation, Education, Awareness, International Growth) with overlap made sense to capitalize on growth opportunities offered during a period of market expansion.

However, now that market has contracted, we need to prioritize efficiency in community engagement while maintaining or increasing investment in R&D.

Similarly, as it relates to support, combined daily volume across Sienna + Secret Swap + Stashh is averaging under $1m over the past few days, suggesting that 3 full time support members is not needed at this time.

We either proactively adjust to the market or with enough time the market will make us adjust.

14

As an early investor in Enigma , do believe that new projects are important. That said , if I do not have the support to make them work for me or correct my mistakes then those projects are “dead in the water”. Waffle & the team he is associated with have over recent times have returned the use of $10k in an LP pool which I mistakenly created. Successfully help me navigate “Shade” & “Sienna” just to name a few
. To take this confidence away from the “end user” would rate as one of the biggest business mistakes in history.

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I was under the assumption that the support committee wasn’t handling Stashh support. Since there is no Stashh dapp or support channel in the SN discord, I think everyone has been going to the support channel in our own discord server. So as far as I’m aware, we’ve been handling the Stashh support issues ourselves, but I would not know if they are getting Stashh questions via DM or other channels that I am not monitoring.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying it needs to stay that way, just that if people are considering how Stashh support needs should factor into the proposal, they should be aware that Stashh support is not currently part of their duties as far as I am aware. If it it will enter into their duties, an appropriate avenue of contact will need to be created so they receive Stashh support tickets

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I’m fairly new to Secret since Sept’21 but I’ll put my 2 cents here.

1/ Maybe overall scope needs to be discussed but defunding Support, Education and Awareness is a mistake in my opinion, especially in a donwtrend market.
That’s signalling either a project that don’t have a healthy treasury management or a project that is letting down its community during harsh time.

2/ When dev are looking at an ecosystem to build on, community and user base is as important as the tech differentiators. You could have the best tech or the best application but if there is no user why bother?

3/ I think it’s the time to double down on the community effort, successful project are build during bear. All “non-dev” committees did an amazing job so far. Didn’t see anywhere such efficient and responsive support, education and awareness committees where anyone can contribute to articles, content, exhibition etc … Educated community members spreading the word is far more valuable than any marketing campaign, it just shows how a project cares about its users.

4/ I’m not a dev but did we identify what is missing to bring more dev on Secret (dev tools, documentation, more slots for mentorship, high-level framework …) ?

5/ On a final note, all committees are important like a in company, where all departments have their importance to offer the best customer service :wink:

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Instagram had 13 employees and over 30 million users when it was sold to Facebook for $1 bn in 2012.

There will be a time for ramping back up community engagement, but now is the time for the builders.

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Winston, Again will say this to you. Believe that business development is important though to do that by taking Frontline Communicators away from those who you want to adapt those developments, is Bad business . Not all of us have your abilities to navigate the projects But without our money they are just a great idea that may have well stayed in the bedrooms where they were designed. Waffle & his team are in my humble opinion the Face of the Secret Network. Moving forward, if in fact we are in a winter with BTC @ 30k , then prompt service & resources to solve problems for us who are less gifted than yourself, will be what truly Sets the Tone for what the Secret Network Stands For. Giving confidence to those with enough money that they expect Prompt Service at the Quality that we now Enjoy ( to minimise stress from making an expensive mistake ) & those who are just starting out which will be lost forever through 1 bad experience, that will be the Valued Users of the Future. Please do not look to rob Peter to pay Paul, Look for ways both Peter & Paul can be paid because we need them both Equally !!!

Also if you go through all the sections on the Secret Network discord channel you will see that this team answer questions that move the conversations in a more positive direction many, many, many times which would not show up in your “Ticket” stats. To not allow paid time for them to monitor & make constructive contributions is again Bad business

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Different target audience, different times. You don’t need much support and education to use a social media, take a selfie and post a story.
Using DeFi, bridging asset and understand the underlying technology is a different story.

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I feel there is value to having the right folks greeting new friends at the door. I think it is beyond worth it to retain these very important positions. It makes sense to pay big for first impressions. These greeters make us look cool.

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