PEP-48: Quarterly Reporting through Messari Protocol Services

Proposals Ecosystem
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For those concerned about timing:

Jack has expressed flexibility on timing.

The reason Q2 was specified in the proposal was because this was the favorite in the informal poll that Dermot posted above. Note that Q2 start means the first report would be published July 1st.

However, I recognize that a forum poll isn’t the best method for measuring our DAO’s preferences, as it doesn’t leverage our tried and tested proof-of-participation voting model. A Snapshot poll would have been better. We should learn from this for future PEPs.

In my view, the path forward to measure the DAO’s preferences is:

  • Let the current PEP play out.
  • If it passes, this means a majority are comfortable with both pricing and timing. We will proceed with the Messari relationship as defined: July 1st start, $26,250 in POKT.
  • If it fails, PNF will publish Snapshot straw polls to get a more accurate measure of why the proposal failed – considering both pricing and timing. We will then take these results back to Messari and work with them to post an amended PEP that takes into account these signalled preferences.

This has been an admittedly messy process but the silver lining is that it has taught us a lot about areas for improvement in our PEP process. We are exercising muscles that will be very useful as our increasingly autonomous DAO forms more relationships with other entities.

I am optimistic that we will ultimately enter into a fruitful relationship with Messari, whatever the results of the vote.

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First report published on July 1st is still way too early. It’s obvious even from current voting result that it will be clearly rejected at this point. V1 TestNet is expected to be released on July 1st, but anyone who understands how software development works knows that it can easily slip to August. So, what’s the purpose of the first report on July 1st then? It’s a waste of money, a lot of money. This discussion should be revisited once V1 will be running on TestNet for a couple weeks without any major bugs. When something tangible can be worked on and when V1 will have more obvious features and characteristics, then we need Messari to cover the V1 TestNet status report and start hyping things up for the V1 MainNet launch. To be precise, first report should be published in October to maximize the efficiency of this Messari service.

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Thanks @JackALaing.

I warmed up to Messari’s proposal since my initial sceptical-neutral reactions.

Reasons:

  • Messari’s combined value in the space is unmatched. No single player has the combined capabilities of the brand name + crypto native media role & the target audience + marketing engine + high quality research & data science + more. I already knew this, looked again but couldn’t really find an alternative that covers so many bases.

  • For SER marketing I checked Coin Desk’s media kit, and boy they are not cheap. Coin Desk’s is just media and advertisement services.

Assuming that SER will pass, I thought that if we end up with Messari, we probably wouldn’t need Coin Desk for some noise on “emissions cuts”. It’s not V1 but it’s indeed a catalyst that generally does move token value.

  • I dug a bit (nothing deep) what other big boy DAO’s spend on similar services. Not apples to apples, as we are small but the amounts are hefty.

Putting all the above together, I did attempt some benchmarking and poking here and there in my limited time.

  • Messari going down from 100k upfront to a trial of 50k in 2 quarters also helped.

To digress a bit-

For the future I have suggested the following:

and @Cryptocorn 's insistence on RFPs, which I agree.

Good news is that PNF is either already working on most of the above or have agreed to do so in the future.

However, none of those are happening immediately.

So betting on Messari through this proposal felt right.

I am also excited about what it might bring to the DAO such as high quality eye balls, builders and contributors- the foundational blocks, and not just potential investors and narrative driven (of V1, inflation cut) impacts.

Regarding timing-

Ideally I would have wanted the 1st release by the end of Sept/beginning of Oct; I think few others support that.

But I didn’t want to make that insurmountable. Maybe we are early but we will learn something in 2 Qs. By that time, other internal processes for vendor/partner recruitment should be ready.

This is the first time the DAO (PNF) is trying such a partnership. Might as well support and celebrate instead of being anal. We will correct course in the future if we err, I thought.

Plus we have SER; if not Messari, I might anyway request the DAO for some marketing budget for Q2.

Should the actual voting have waited for some more time for better digestion? Sure, I would have preferred/wanted that.

But again, these preferences don’t really have any math and science backing. PNF/@JackALaing did what he thought was best at that moment and I would give him/PNF the "benefit of DAO ":slight_smile:

Regarding PNF’s stand in this proposal-

On this PEP, I kept inviting the individuals at PNF for their views because I was genuinely curious and was almost mad when they weren’t engaging.

So they did in their own way.

What shall I do now- be mad again because they responded?

Are they not supposed to freely give their opinions on such matters if they truly believe something?

Did anyone feel pushed or cornered? Well, I certainly didn’t.

Sure, PNF is a governing body held to higher standards because it upholds Pocket DNA (whenever ready), the DAO constitution and the PNF governance doc.

I would rather also have them express themselves normally (with disclaimers such as “in my personal opinion”), give guidance and be imperfect at times as we all are, than “not respond” and only speak from an Ivory Tower once in a blue moon.

For that I need to give them some respect & space; allow them to make some mistakes (generally are in hindsight) and not be always ready with a machete.

So thank you @Dermot & @b3n for engaging on this PEP and for sharing your thoughts!

I hope Messari passes in this round. If not, we will take another stab at it (maybe with an amended version) soon after and not let go of Messari.

Thanks for reading.

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I have voted in favor of this proposal. I see it’s leaning against; I hope there are some changes of heart.

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This proposal hit the Forum on January 5, more than a month after the creation of the Forum Pre-Proposal category. If this proposal had been posted initially as a pre-proposal, debate could have played out before it transitioned to a formal proposal (and all relevant “off-forum” background info could have been provided, instead of leaving some to come to light two days after the vote started).

If this had started as a pre-proposal, it may well have evolved into a proposal with sufficient support to pass - and we’d have been spared a “messy process.”

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@JackPurdy_Messari You did not respond to this post. I trust that you have no issue with accommodating this request.

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Apologies for missing that but yes will have them fact checked before publishing

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The DAO’s GRIP team, which is made up of Pocket Network experts, is prepared to enter a formal arrangement to perform this fact checking. Please let me know if that will work for you (if this proposal passes).

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This falls outside of the scope of GRIP’s charter, which is streamlining the proposal process for DAO members. I would be against GRIP billing for this service. The fact checking can be performed as part of the Foundation’s function of facilitating vendor relationships.

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Yes I agree. Plus this might also set a unique precedent- DAO members/DAO committees getting into such side arrangements/agreements with the DAO’s vendors & partners.

I will share my feedback about GRIP renewal post separately.

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Upon further consideration, I agree that PNF should take care of this. It is outside GRIP’s mandate and I withdraw my offer to have GRIP handle it.

TBH, my motivation for suggesting that GRIP review Messari copy is mostly to fix the typos and writing errors.

Take a look, for example, at Pocket DAO: Exploring Proof-of-Participation Governance:

  1. “Pocket DAO governance remains exceptionally active, with more than 50% engagement on some of the DAOs most recent votes.” [should be "DAO’s]

  2. “It also provided valuable insight into the DAOs future priorities” [should be “DAO’s”]

  3. “coordinate of a fair Pocket Network ecosystem for all stakeholders” [delete “of”]

  4. “Comparatively, the voters of token-weighted voting DAOs inherently value their governance voting powerless because their governance tokens were likely either bought on the open market, unvested, airdropped, or delegated to their respective voters.”[“value…powerless” - incorrect use of “value”, should be “deem” or “consider”; “value” means: “consider (someone or something) to be important or beneficial”]

  5. “To obtain a POKTDAO voting token, one must reach the corresponding level in the POKT Arcade community onboarding game and be verified as human by the existing PNC members.” [delete “the,” should be “by existing members” - as not all members need to verify new voters]

Sure, these may be minor mistakes. But they’re unprofessional - and that rubs off on Pocket.

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I’m sorry to hear that the article did not meet your standards. We put significant effort into this piece to cover important aspects of Pocket DAO that deserved more credit and attention.

With such a keen eye for details, I hope you can appreciate the added visibility this article provides for the community. We highlighted many of the DAOs strengths and feel that the piece might allow other organizations to draw inspiration from Pocket DAO’s unique structure.

We’ve now amended the article to address these minor mistakes. As Jack has stated, we always work with the correctly appointed DAO members to ensure we complete quality and fact-checking before publishing. We will continue working with the appropriate DAO representatives to ensure future Pocket content is as accurate as possible!

We hope for everyone’s sake that any unprofessionalism expressed here has not left a lasting impression.

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They’re not my standards. They’re the standards of the English language.

BTW, I was not commenting on the quality of the article per se.

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This proposal passed with 17 yays and 13 nays. Snapshot

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After reading some of the discussion in the unofficial channels, I think it’s worth revisiting this topic.

In the year (almost) since this proposal was passed, I have only seen one report from Messari regarding Pocket Network. I have also skimmed through their end-of-year report, which had a robust section discussing DePin projects, wherein Pocket was conspicuously absent.

This, in my mind, raises a few questions:

  1. What sort of reporting on Pocket has Messari done since this proposal was passed, and what content, if any, do they have in the pipeline to publish?
  2. Since the initial payment on July 1, have additional payments been made to Messari?
  3. Has the DAO gotten value for our POKT so far?
  4. Has the relationship with Messari “buil[t] hype for v1?”
  5. Is this a relationship worth continuing?

Questions 1 and 2 are best answered by PNF. I would opine a “lmao no” on questions 3, 4 and 5. I would even go further and posit that anon accounts on Twitter have done more to promote/market/hype the project, than anything Messari has done since this proposal was accepted, and any remaining funds earmarked for Messari may be better spent on onboarding more gateway providers.

I would be curious to hear thoughts from others in the community. Also, since I have a habit of being wrong about things, I welcome any corrections.

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Agreed completely. I don’t expect them to be shilling for us, but I am deeply confused as to why they are leaving us out of critical narratives.

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3 installments have been paid (1, 2, 3), corresponding with 3 quarterly reports: Q2, Q3, and Q4 to come.

Messari have also retweeted threads by their analysts (who write the quarterly reports), such as this and this, and Micah, one of the Messari analysts, participated in a DePIN Twitter Space on POKT’s official account.

POKT has also been mentioned in this DePIN Report and Michael attended this DePIN panel at Messari Mainnet.

Leaving us out of their end-of-year report is disappointing and I will follow up with them on this to understand more.

Are there any other key reports that the community feels we have been unfairly absent from?

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If you’re referring to the Crypto Theses for 2023 report, Pocket is mentioned:

And we expect more protocols will look to decentralize their node infrastructure (Pocket) and their compute and hosting (Akash).

Although we are absent from the associated DePIN map (which focuses on Wireless Networks, Sensor Networks, and Compute & Storage) and we could have also been mentioned in a more meaningful way in section 3.7, which talks about centralized RPC:

Centralized RPC providers are currently the lowest cost and easiest to use solution for reading blockchain data – Infura and Alchemy are the default solution for popular tools like MetaMask and OpenZeppelin.

It’s surprising that Infura’s DIN efforts didn’t get a mention in this section given it’s relevance, or that the significance of POKT’s participation in DIN wasn’t mentioned, or that Decentralized RPC protocols exist.

I think this calls for feedback to the Messari team on how their coverage of our sector can be improved, which I am relaying now, without resorting to ending the relationship.

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Blockquote If you’re referring to the Crypto Theses for 2023 report, Pocket is mentioned

I believe that report came out in early 2023. I was referring to the recently released “2024 Crypto theses” report.

After digging a little further I should also note, for completeness’ sake, that last July Sami Kassab wrote an article for Messari specifically focusing on DePin, and that his report did feature Pocket.

In any case, I appreciate the context, Jack. There are several events that I was not aware of, and it does appear that we are getting some value for our pokt. My only other ask would be if you could share with us any learnings from your follow-up conversations with Messari.

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Ah you’re right. It seems that the 2024 Report hasn’t yet made it into the list of Crypto Theses, which is where I was led astray.

POKT is mentioned visually in the DePIN Sector Map under RPC Networks, but it seems you’re correct that POKT, or any RPC for that matter, aren’t mentioned in the body of the text.

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