Hey chiming in here.
Some points are summarized from others and some points are my own.
- I think this falls significantly into a marketing expense.
It is correct that the POKT community, can and does in depth reporting for its own community, most protocols do.
The value that you are getting here is the consistent touch points into Messari’s user base.
Looks like there combined user network is about 1M qualified “investors”
That is a lot of potential buyers/stakers/evangelists.
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@JackPurdy_Messari do you have insights into where your direct investor base (the 300k subscribers) purchases their crypto from?
I have a concern that if POKT is not listed on Coinbase, Binance, or other (Trusted ) exchanges, that the reach will not directly translate into buys.
This could be mitigated if the reporting/marketing was somehow in tandem with a “direct to stake” partnership that is highlighted as well.
Or else it might be a “this looks cool, but I will wait”, and if your investors are waiting, then pocket should probably wait some as well too.
To @Dermot 's point certain marketing efforts definitely don’t manifest over night, but compound over time. A long term (prime the V.1 pump) consideration should probably be factored in.
- On pricing, I am bias because I hate negotiating at length (and I think penny pinching sours a relationship, which results in lack of motivation to go above and beyond - like more reports ad hoc because the team loves POKT)
We should instead ask.
- What would make 100k a year worth it?
- How can we predict if that goal is attainable?
- How can we track the progress or lack thereof towards the goal?
- How can we compare against similar efforts (in the past or now)
- How can we cap the downside in the event it isn’t working?
What would make 100k a year worth it.
- More then 100k in investments into a fundraising round.
- More then 100k in purchases of POKT and staking into nodes.
- A hire or community member/team that provides more then 100k+their cost in value to the community is onboarded through Messari Reports/Reach.
Without benchmarks from Messari competitors/Previous marketing expenses, this thinking albeit important would likely bog down this proposal and the result’n time could run the risk of ended up more expensive then we may be assuming.
How much is your time worth? How much is the teams time worth? How much would in depth assessing this proposal cost then?
Truth is the most successful leaders/projects can make calls when all of the data isn’t available. Because the picture is never perfect.
- On POKT vs. USDC.
Isn’t this a distinct business from Messari’s Investments?
I fail to see how making them receive POKT incentivizes them further to do anything differently, because of how there specific business is set up.
If the Messari team is constantly looking at POKT, and seeing good signals, they will buy POKT.
In my mind here, forcing them to take POKT and lock it is kind of cringe.
And forcing them to take POKT without lockups is just putting the ones on them to sell.
Since this is a proposal to the DAO and not to POKTs marketing team, the DAO budget on marketing is what needs to be considered. And I believe that the DAO is the one who should be absorbing experimentation by community members.
This being an experiment. and a less risky one because of reputation of Messari (hopefully this part ages well)
BUT, it is important for POKT marketing team to be available/motivated to monitor the results to make the experiment useful.
In summary this is what I think.
- It is important to have coverage in Messari.
- Cap the downside by testing impact for 2 or 3 months.
- Ensure that Messari team can maintain accuracy of updates in POKT (lots happen and change)
- The difference between paying in POKT and USDC is “who sells,” unless you force a lock up, which is kind of cringe for a service based business. You could rework the deal to happen monthly which would most likely result in lessened sell pressure as well.
- Wait at least until new marketing director has had some time to assess and prepare to monitor efforts.
- Pair it with some sort of “direct to stake” offerings to actually convert traffic. Or get listed on Coinbase lol.
There could be assumptions in here that are wrong.
But overall, don’t sour the potential relationships with messari (who has already done well with there reporting on POKT) with this proposal.