Apologies for the confusion, I’ve removed mention of Poktscan from the proposal.
For the community’s reference, one of our data scientists had several calls with the team to help us better understand the data architecture. In drafting the proposal, we wanted to mention how we would source the data which we plan on using their tools, however, there is no commercial engagement between Poktscan and Messari.
On the surface, I’m in favor of this proposal given Messari’s reach and reputation. However, I did have a little sticker shock at the price, and it was reinforced by asking for payment in stablecoin.
If your value proposition is that we should engage this service because it will reach a broader investor audience (with the unstated but clear implication that this could increase token value), why would you saddle the DAO with converting $POKT to stablecoin, when the upside you imply would happen benefits you if your reporting has the desired effect?
If I may add a few words-
This could be broken down into: a) Reporting b) Marketing
For a) benchmarking needs to be done against other players in the market to whom it could be outsourced. And then how much would it cost to hire a full-time blockchain data analyst by the DAO. My assumption is that both would be more cost-effective.
This could also be treated as a marketing expense- marketing through brand association. Messari is important and association would certainly help bolster Pocket’s brand value in addition to growing its reach and maybe even add to sales. The question is whether that’s worth 25k a quarter in stables at this time given other priorities such as V1, and/or are there alternative ways to associate with Messari in order to fulfil the marketing gains.
Deferral could be a prudent move instead of closing this one way or the other, while we get ourselves ready for such expenses.
I’m inclined to agree. The lack of a “bet” made on the success of the outcome (vis a vis distribution in native token) feels more like a simple pitch for services versus an ecosystem partnership.
Thanks for the post @JackPurdy_Messari
From my perspective, Messari is one of the most respected brands in the crypto space. I know that they only take on projects that they are genuinely interested in covering, so my first reaction is to be delighted that Pocket is now at the level of importance to justify its inclusion as a committed research partner. (Although, I would say that they are at least 12months behind in finally doing so!)
I don’t think anyone is implying this, but for the record, I don’t see this proposal as a pray-and-spray approach to make money from a random project with a DAO treasury.
In terms of the potential value add to the Pocket ecosystem, being covered in a similar high-quality manner as the other leading Web3 infrastructure projects as the Graph, Filecoin, Livepeer, etc, is a genuinely beneficial addition to Pocket being seen as more “legitimate” and “Tier 1” and so on… This is a pretty subjective and wishy-washy value-add to some, but I think it’s crucial for Pocket to have more independent long-term focused research shops sharing their thinking on the overall mission and vision and traction of the project, as well as to add further input around key changes to the protocol, and governance etc.
@JackPurdy_Messari can you share more detail on what the quarterly updates will look like for Pocket? And will they be coupled with interim updates around key changes to the protocol, governance etc? Another way to ask this question is how will this change how Pocket is covered when you are preparing other research articles and reports on infrastructure more broadly, or anything else in this regard. What new insights do you expect to bring to the coverage on Pocket quarter-to-quarter? And is there anything about the typical coverage from Messari that a casual onlooker may not appreciate?
Regarding the cost of this proposal, I think it’s a fair question to ask whether a material portion of the quarterly fees could be paid in POKT, as it will otherwise fall on the foundation to sell down enough POKT into stablecoins to pay such fees. I think the foundation will be able to suck up the coordination costs to enable this on behalf of the DAO, and the market should be able to absorb an additional $25k/quarter of additional selling pressure, but it just feels better if there is a degree of quid pro quo involved with the proposal. And I like the alignment point made by Jinx too.
@JackPurdy_Messari would you be willing to amend this proposal to 50/50 POKT and USDC? And does anyone else in the community suggest another proportion that they would be more happy with? cc @Jinx @Caesar
Lastly, re the following quote:
I don’t view this proposal as a hindrance to the aims of v1 unless I’m missing something @Caesar ?
If this is a point about wanting to hold funds back to make sure the DAO has enough to spend post-v1 - or something of that ilk. In that case, the DAO treasury is c.$6.5m (and growing), with only c.$1.4m distributed over the last two years, so I don’t think that the size of the current treasury is a material issue when considering this grant. Although, I think it’s still fair to question whether this is the right quantum for the partnership/service.
Hello Dermot,
Thank you for your question. I am not privy to DAO treasury and I am not a DAO voter yet. I would reserve any direct feedback on DAO budget and expenditures for now.
My comments above were around a slightly different approach in dissecting the above proposal into a) reporting and b) marketing from an expense/value standpoint, do the benchmarking and ROI study on both separately and then arrive at answers.
I am of an opinion that this is more of a marketing expense than reporting, and I greatly value marketing incidentally. I belief that Pocket is under-invested in marketing.
My V1 commentary was related to the marketing section of my breakup. Timing of an expense could determine how much value we extract from it. Post V1, Pocket is going to be more marketable and sellable. An argument could be that we could get more bang for the buck once we are better equipped technically and also have more success stories (such as a successful V1 upgrade) to tell.
A general advice is to not take the first option that we come across and before we are fully aware of other alternatives. And that’s also why I suggested deferral (in addition to V1 completion) instead of rejection. During that time we could continue engaging with Messari and getting more information about their offerings, and on the other hand do the benchmarking and comparative analysis against other alternatives.
Having said all that, we absolutely need reporting (and especially financial reporting) as I have raised a few questions and suggested starting points in this recent need: Financial Key Performance Indicators- Pocket Network . Question is how much should we be willing to pay for this.
Thank you for reading.
While having more prominence at Messari is a great marketing point and has value:
Messari has previously and will need to continue to mention Pocket: it’s business is to review and update on Web3 companies, Pocket (along with other Web3 projects) is it’s literal raisin d’etre and gives Messari value.
In essence, we get an analyst who is covering half a dozen other projects to write a quarterly report. Maybe a bit more mentions through Messari’s releases. Not downplaying this, it’s helpful, but let’s call a spade a spade please.
$25k/quarter is the sticker price. Who has ever paid sticker price for buying ads?
I appreciate there will be a long come back of ‘why it’s worth it’ etc etc. To drill down, an analyst writes a quarterly report- marginal cost to Messari is 1/6th or so pay for an analyst (that’s marginal, I appreciate the ‘but we have to keep the lights on’ argument).
Respectfully to Messari- I appreciate and applaud sales teams and the sales cycle. However, $25k a report is bull market pricing and all good negotiations start by anchoring a high price and then slowly coming down. This would be better to be done behind closed doors instead of the ultra transparency of the DAO as there are second order game theory effects to sales pricing. I think more negotiation on price is needed.
I would currently vote ‘NO’ on this proposal. However, with a more reasonable pricing in place I’d be happy to change to a Yes and support this proposal.
I would vote NO for this proposal. $25k is the unreasonable price imho even with all the Messari’s reputation.
Aside from that, mentioning Poktscan as a partner or contributor while there were no communication at all among these two parties isn’t looking good as well.
Appreciate all the feedback! To address these points:
Stablecoin payments - we’d love to be able to accept $POKT to showcase a commitment to the community. Unfortunately as a company we’re limited to holding tokens that are supported on the US regulated custodians we use.
For more details @Dermot they’ll be released as 4 quarterly reports similar structure and length to the examples I shared. In the interim we will (and already started) covering governance updates on a real-time basis by our dedicated governance analysts. By covering protocols with these quarterly reports it definitely helps inform other research reports.
For example, we started doing quarterly reporting for Balancer last year and having spent so much time with them we felt certain topics warranted reports of their own to go deeper on.
The veBAL Wars
Introducing Staked aTokens
In fact, one of our analysts started spec’ing out what one of these could look like for Pocket. Here’s an outline of another report we could include as part of the package to better inform the community on the existing governance structure and how its changing while providing actionable insight looking at voting power concentration, active voters, voter history, proposal history, etc. If you want an example of what this could look like - we did a similar analysis for Optimism
Regarding the sticker price… Don’t mean to be cheeky here but I can name 40 top protocols we’ve gone through similar processes with that paid sticker price. We’re not marking this up to make a huge profit we’re looking to cover the resources that go into this which I can tell you is a lot more than just one analyst writing the report. While yes blockchain data is all publicly available there’s significant data science and engineering effort to put it into any sort of usable state.
Going through the due diligence processes to get onto 3 of the largest research platforms in the world is no walk in the park either. We’re expending BD/marketing resources on distribution to ensure we get the most value out of these reports so they are not only read by most of the crypto world but outside our bubble to large players who are starting to not only get up to speed but actively allocate resources to interacting with web3 protocols.
@JackPurdy_Messari - I respect the hustle, I spent many years in a similar position, and so nothing I say is meant as an attack, either personally to you or to Messari, it’s a company with a great reputation and I have faith in its work. So please don’t take the following as an attack.
We as a community are having a major debate about raises and runway and how we need to tighten our belts, but then want to drop $25k a quarter on arcane research papers? A partnership with Messari has great potential IMO when we are ready with something new and exciting to maximise eyeballs to (v1). Changes to governance structures is a niche field within DAO research/lore and doesn’t justify an Ad spend.
To clarify this governance report we’d include for free - $25k is covering all that goes into each quarterly report with the much broader scope.
And @kjenkins we’re using Coinbase but I can check with our Finance team to see if we could onboard with Copper.
Alright so good news - we’ve found a way to make it work!
In order to accept $POKT, we’ll just need to add a 10% buffer to account for market volatility and additional costs on our end to accept native tokens.
This shifts my opinion on this proposal.
So now we pay more ($27,500/quarter) for Messari to instantly market dump POKT?
Without a vesting schedule (please correct me if there is one and I’ll recant this comment,) this is worse, than the DAO OTC selling POKT for stables.
Empower PNF to negotiate a one time fee for a review and marketing push when we have v1 out and something to promote.
I agree with Cryptocorn. This proposal should not be supported now, but reconsidered once V1 goes live so that we have something really worthy to throw so much money on it.
Reposting this, the rationale behind discussing this post-V1 has been laid out more than once in the thread above.
One thing I’d say here from my experience in startups and investing is that marketing does not just turn itself on overnight. It takes months to build up trust and awareness with the right individuals and institutions.
So whether or not you believe that this proposal is the right one, or the quantum in question is reasonable; if we want v1 to have the maximum marketing impact on arrival, we need to start the work now.
I would, therefore, argue that if you believe in the potential of a partnership with Messari, not to hesitate in putting it in place.
Messari is not a panacea in any case. But if you do not believe in the potential impact of a partnership with them, I would implore the community to be ready to back other such partnerships in the future. And to advance some of their own solutions sooner rather than later. As we do need to get ready for v1 well in advance of its launch.
My basis still is- this is reporting + marketing cost/value play. Additional bulleted points around that basis -
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.
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.
V1 is not a done deal yet, as far as I understand. Anything can happen with such major upgrades.
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.
And therefore, I don’t think we have an alternative but to wait.
Hey chiming in here.
Some points are summarized from others and some points are my own.
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.
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.
We should instead ask.
What would make 100k a year worth it.
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.
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.
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.