PEP-48: Quarterly Reporting through Messari Protocol Services

Proposals Ecosystem
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My basis still is- this is reporting + marketing cost/value play. Additional bulleted points around that basis -

  1. For any on-chain reporting and analysis, we should first explore solutions in-house, working with our existing partners such as poktscan or others. I would be surprised if those solutions wouldn’t be much x much cheaper, without the need to compromise quality.

  2. Please read #2 on Protocol Revenue Report - H2-2022 - #3 by kjenkins , where Kevin explains to me the dependency on V1 for certain type of data to be on-chain, after which independent dashboard players such as Token Terminal can pull data themselves.

  3. V1 is not a done deal yet, as far as I understand. Anything can happen with such major upgrades.

  4. Moving to Marketing- partnering with crypto native media such as Messari, Coin Desk, Decrypt, Blockworks, The Block (maybe) etc will be critical. We need to have costs and offerings from each one of them. Do we have anything else to compare against Messari’s?

Such decisions should ideally be a subset of the larger marketing budget and strategy. Arthur said that someone has already been offered for the Head of Marketing position. I recommend waiting for him/her to join and help us make those decisions. Might be a better timing from a confidence in V1 perspective and market conditions.

  1. Most Important- Given the market conditions (we are literally at the bottom), recent discussions and debates around treasury/runway, reactions to PEP 49, and reading the comments above, I don’t think this proposal or anything close could garner any support.

And therefore, I don’t think we have an alternative but to wait.

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Hey chiming in here.

Some points are summarized from others and some points are my own.

  1. 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.

  1. @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 :grimacing:) 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. It is important to have coverage in Messari.
  2. Cap the downside by testing impact for 2 or 3 months.
  3. Ensure that Messari team can maintain accuracy of updates in POKT (lots happen and change)
  4. 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.
  5. Wait at least until new marketing director has had some time to assess and prepare to monitor efforts.
  6. 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.

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My take on Pep-48 is that Messari is 100% crucial in supplying the critical data necessary for Pokt’s overall expansion and legitimacy. I think the key points to the benefits of it have been explained thoroughly enough in this thread.

With that being said I also think that this does not need to be implemented until Q3 of 2023. I feel as though Pokt can do much more in house leading up to the Messari reporting. There are several reasons why I see this as a relevant time period.

-Locking down a proposed Q3 start can give us an actionable item to add into the road map now.
-This although is not an exuberant amount of money is still a considerable expense especially in uncertain market conditions.
-With the soon hiring of a marketing manager many more “bang for the buck” plans can be rolled out.
-This will get us a couple quarters closer to the BTC halving which historically is a much better market time period where marketing ROI’s are much more efficient.
-The launch of the Messari reporting Q3 would provide solid marketable material at a pivotal time frame in the overall markets (historically speaking).

To summarize my proposed action plan:
Solidify a price in Pokt and stables with Messari now (I don’t see locking it as necessary).
Ink down proposed date to start reporting at launch of Q3.
Add this to the roadmap.
Get marketing manager to implement a strategy that would prepare for Messari’s reporting to be of maximum benefit to the Pokt ecosystem.
Integrate this with more exchange listings for ease of investor use.

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A few key points to touch on here:

Vesting Schedule
We’re open to it, we just need some cash to pay for USD denominated expenses @Cryptocorn

Timing
We often work with projects leading up to major launches or upgrades. We’ve seen the most success getting the data infra and reporting up beforehand to better highlight how much of an improvement that upgrade made.

I think @Dermot hit the nail on the head:

If we want v1 to have the maximum marketing impact on arrival, we need to start the work now

Marketing Classification
While I disagree with the marketing classification as the payment is going towards funding data analysis and research in creating the reports, I understand the thinking behind it as there is a growth component given the wide distribution and partnerships with Bloomberg et al.

That said, this is definitely not comparable to other services from crypto media sites @Caesar as while they may have paid research services it’s distinctly different from type of reporting. If you’re looking for close comparables Llama and Steakhouse do the reporting for several DAOs and charge $1m+ per engagement.

End user consumption
To clarify @Patrick727 the 300k is not strictly investors (apologies for the “investor relations” analogy its more aptly stakeholder relations comprising all interested parties whether protocols, node operators, exchanges, etc.) For some stats:

  • ~30% of the 300k are other protocols so there’s a large builder audience this would be getting in front of

  • 6% of subscribers work at exchanges. This is due to the fact most of the largest exchanges are our top Enterprise clients with several on our cap table (Coinbase and Kraken Ventures) making them some of our biggest power users.

  • Our distribution partners (Bloomberg, S&P, and Refinitiv) have over 1 million active users mostly tradfi funds, financial institutions, and large corporates. Anecdotally many of these players have mentioned these quarterly reports playing key roles in their diligence providing capital, participating on-chain, or partnering with in some meaningful capacity.

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Regular reader of Messari sir, big fan of Ryan Selkis and his year end reports.

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Hey everyone,

My colleague @ichiro and I are two analysts on the Messari team that cover Pocket DAO daily via the Messari Governor Proposal Tracker.

We recently published a research article “Pocket DAO: Exploring Proof-of-Participation Governance” outlining the new structural changes to Pocket DAO and highlighting some unique characteristics that make us optimistic about the DAO going forward.

As a show of goodwill and commitment to the community as we work through PEP-48, we wanted to publish the article as a free governance report. We hope you enjoy the piece and hope the article provides a glimpse into the type of work we can do.

We’re excited to continue to work with Pocket DAO as a long-term strategic partner and look forward to tracking the DAOs growth moving forward!

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This is an excellent gesture and thanks to y’all/Messari for doing this!

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So we’re still keen to work on a more long-term engagement with Pocket. I’ve gotten approval for the following amendments to hopefully make it more amenable to the DAO:

  • Reduce the buffer needed for us to accept $POKT intead of stables to 5% (making it $26,250 at the time of payment)

  • Add in a termination clause at the end of Q2 where the DAO can cancel the engagement if they feel they are not receiving enough value from our services.

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Hi @JackPurdy_Messari,

Do you provide a variety of services for DAOs and protocols at different price points or do you have a standard one that you are pitching in this thread?

I am thinking if there is a middle ground between “do nothing” and the one in discussion.

Maybe there are ways to start getting associated and get value through specific services (whether its content, reporting/analytics, marketing) before we go full-stack.

There is indeed an overwhelming excitement for Messari in the community. The response to the recent coverage is a testimony. The problem is the timing- market and other internal debates within the Pocket ecosystem.

Liquidity is poor in the market (although that could change) and its extremely poor for Pocket given no DEXs and no tier 1 CEXs. V1 test net has been pushed to Q4,23 and main net to Q1, 24, etc etc. 2023 will be another “year of building” for Pocket, without newsworthy catalysts that are visible at this point.

I still believe that there will be lack of support for a full-stack partnership with Messari at this moment primarily because of the timing, even though Messari is highly respected by the community.

Therefore I am curious to know if there are alternative ways (favourably priced for the conditions) to start the partnership and gradually build it over time.

@Jinx @Dermot @Cryptocorn thoughts?

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I think there is a lot to be said for the exposure that Messari brings to the table, and as you’ve often mentioned, the narrative is a critical part of the health of the economy. I am also divided on the timing, and the relative cost.

I guess there are two questions:

  1. Given a similar budget in the current market, is there another platform which might be a greater catalyst to broader cryptosphere interest in the protocol and token?

  2. Is this proposal “affordable” to the DAO (with the understanding that we don’t have a hard definition of what affordable means)?

If the answer to 1 is no (which I lean towards), then I think we have to wrestle with 2.

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  • I think Messari did a great report on governance and Pocket last week, kudos to the team that wrote that.

  • Mainnet is at least a year away, which is a lifetime in crypto. (PNF/PNI?) Should look to build a marketing plan commencing in q4: 3-6 months is plenty of time in crypto to build excitement. They should negotiate with a variety of service provider like Messari, and engage with those who will give the most perceived ROI.

  • The Pocket marketing team should come to the DAO with a proposal and budget, not individual vendors.

  • I’m against this proposal in its current form. Pocket marketing should put a plan together, negotiate with vendors and set a needed budget as a DAO proposal for v1 marketing work ($500k? $1M?). At that point, I’d be glad to see Messari as one such vendor that we work with, I fully agree they have the potential to bring a lot to the table for us, timing/management/planning needs to be enacted however.

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Thanks @Jinx and @Cryptocorn

In short, what I am curious to know from Messari @JackPurdy_Messari is that are there limited services plans to get the ball rolling, such as maybe one simple blog post per month (similar to what they recently wrote), etc? And that could be about opportunities and constructive criticism as well if needed, and not just about strengths.

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Hey @Caesar - thanks for the tag.

My perspective here, and please note that this does not reflect the view of PNF, is that we should be thinking in bets

And by this, I mean what is the probability that Messari will have a significantly positive impact on how the current community as well as potential contributors, new hires, customers, investors, etc etc perceive POKT? What is the potential value of a new game-changing hire worth? Or a new major investor? Or a new contributor or two worth? Or a major new customer?

Is any of this worthy of betting 0.65% of the DAO’s treasury?

And what’s our downside risk? Paying c.$50k (if we choose to trigger the termination clause at the end of Q2) for six months of Pocket being on the Messari portal and receiving two quarterly reports on Pocket, along with the potential for greater coverage in Messari’s general news coverage and governance updates via its newsletter and platform.

It feels like the community is leaning towards saying this bet isn’t worth it. However, if you say so because you believe the DAO needs to save its capital for another day. I would implore you to reconsider your frame of reference, as the purpose of the DAO is not to save money for another day. It is to invest money now for the future.

Leaving me to ask; thinking in bets, do you think this Messari proposal is worth the risk?

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Just want to echo Dermot’s perspective and add one point which is that even if we spend $50K the downside risk is less than that because we will learn something (Messari are gods; It was too early, etc)… the concept of intelligent failure is a really valuable way to think about how we reduce downside risk without limiting the upside

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@Caesar at this time, we don’t have another offering for recurring coverage outside this quarterly format.

@Jinx in terms of “affordability” I think @Dermot was spot on with his probabilistic thinking. You can think about it as a $50k call option on the possibility of a fruitful engagement that leads to increased partnership, investment, development, etc. Worst case the DAO has spent a fraction of a percent of the treasury, whereas best case there is a meaningful amount of new human and monetary capital in the ecosystem helping to grow the network.

Additionally, if the DAO deems the services are worth it and chooses to renew, the actual number of $POKT that spent from the treasury could very well be less than $100k worth of tokens right now since the payments are quarterly and we’re fresh off one of the most apocalyptic market environments in crypto’s history.

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Thanks @JackPurdy_Messari , have no further questions for now.

@Dermot and @b3n going all intellectual on an anon clown :sob:

Big fan of Annie Duke’s books! A very X 2 similar one is Maria Konnikova, highly recommend her books too!

I respect the opinions of the dissenters on this thread but I personally am leaning towards making this work. Therefore I keep coming back with something or the other.

I am agnostic about paying in POKT, specially through pressure and conditions. Whatever the community decides, I will be ok with.

@Jinx doesn’t appear strictly against from his last message.

I agree with @Dermot and @b3n on the 50k bet argument. Amongst us, can we agree on starting from Q3 onwards? So basically Q3 and Q4 for trial. Of course if you think there is merit there. I believe this will give us some basis to at least resume the conversation with the larger community because timing, V1, other catalysts or lack of them, exchanges, bank for the buck, etc have been laid out as factors. Otherwise seems like it’s a non-starter at this point.

Please feel free to put forward your comments/recommendations as individuals or representing PNF, whatever you decide is appropriate.

Having said all that, I humbly disagree with-

I would say it depends and is situational. Will leave this discussion for some other thread.

Thanks for engaging.

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Yeah, I’m leaning towards at this point.

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Love this whole post. :facepunch:

I’d start it in June for 6 months ending in November. No sense in building too much hype right now. And maybe if we sign something this month with Messari, they’ll be generous with their coverage even before the start date.

For sure its worth the risk!

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Is there a way to gather info on results for other projects that engage but later terminate such arrangements. What I worry about is coverage bias turning negative - whether deliberately or due to subconscious factors - for those who terminate arrangements. Practically, we may not be able to easily achieve “try out for 6 months and then terminate if not worth it” if the end result of terminating is worse off than having never engaged in the first place.

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So we haven’t had any cases of projects terminating. However, I can assure you that any separate coverage would not be impacted as our entire business is staked on our reputation as an unbiased source of information which we are incredibly mindful of in everything we do.

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