Pre-Proposal: Pokt x Messari Quarterly Reports

Proposals Pre-Proposals
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Good afternoon DAO members,

Just wanted to provide a heads up that Messari will be dropping over our renewal proposal for the next round of annual reporting coverage Monday morning EST. I’d like to take this opportunity ahead of our post to collect any concerns or feedback you may have & address them.

Messari has been working closely with the POKT team & community members to address past areas of concern in order to strengthen our relationship. I want to ensure you all have a voice in this upcoming decision so we can continue this partnership for years to come.

Please reach out to me here & we can discuss any topics you wish to raise ahead of our post.

Talk soon,
Corey

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I’m been involved and contributing to the POKT community for a while now >1y, and throughout this time I’ve not seen the value that the Messari reports have given to the community, the protocol or the brand, I’d love to be proven incorrect

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Welcome back, Corey!

I look forward to seeing the pre-proposal, but in the meantime, there are a few questions.

  • I see that the reports are available here, here and here. Can you give us some metrics regarding their reach? For example, how many page clicks did each report get? And what percentage of your total readership was that?

  • In your last post on the forums, you mentioned that Messari’s enterprise team “has been redefining what should be considered DePIN, and have been leaning towards excluding blockchain infra networks due to them solely being used for crypto.” Is that still the case?

  • So far three payments have been made, totaling approximately 2.67 M pokt, or ~ $558,000 at today’s prices. Considering the initial ask was $100,000 in stables paid in installments, then congratulations – you guys got a great deal! Is Messari is still holding those tokens?

Thanks.

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PNF paid Messari in stablecoins (USDC) on behalf of the DAO using PNFs own treasury as well as the DAO’s stable holdings from OTC transactions that occurred after the Messari agreement was entered into.

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Thanks for clarifying, Dermot. I was under the impression, from the wording of PEP-48, and the transactions highlighted by Jack (PEP-48: Quarterly Reporting through Messari Protocol Services - #78 by JackALaing) that the payments were in POKT. My mistake.

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Not your fault! The previous thread didn’t make it clear that those payments were reimbursements for stablecoin transfers already made.

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Hey @Lucky55 good to hear from you & thanks for the feedback. Its important to keep in mind the market conditions that have effected the relationship. Were finally coming out of this bear market & the fruits of our labor are close to unfolding. The value were building upon here is the third party validation & brand recognition Messari is bringing to the table for POKT.

These tradfi folks have been on the sidelines & are finally coming around to making actionable decisions. These types of buyers take time & require much more diligence & transparency prior to hitting the buy button. The compounding reporting of the past year of POKT is consistent & readily available to 10 trillion in AUM eyeballs now in the wake of real tangible headwinds such an the recent ETF approvals.

I’d be curious to learn more around what your expectations are for success. Id argue our partnership is more critical now then ever in onboarding new users to the POKT ecosystem. Let me know your thoughts.

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POKT DAO should continue contracting with Messari.

This will work doubly good if/when pokt gets deeper liquidity/t1 exchanges.

Messari audience likes DePin would buy POKT/run nodes do long term things.

Don’t let bear market blues confuse bull market needs.

Bull market is not about over optimizing spend(a tree) its about sending token(the forest).

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Hey Corey,

I think one of the biggest disappointments in our last year of research has been the perception that POKT has largely been left out of DePIN coverage. I know in January, you said you were rethinking the strategy on that.

Can you give us a sense of where you see POKT fitting into DePIN research and reporting in the coming year?

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hey @Jinx,

Some analysts believe it was a mistake that Pocket, other RPC protocols, and oracles were left out of DePIN coverage. We have addressed this internally, debated it, and convinced the previously skeptical analysts that Pocket, RPC protocols, and oracles should be included in DePIN categorizations.

Your allocated coverage analyst, Micah, has advocated for Pocket internally and personally sees Pocket as one of the most important protocols for crypto middleware. He believes Pocket will make a valuable and necessary addition to the conversations around decentralized physical infrastructure networks.

Will be working closer with core POKT team to strategize ways in which we can use media & other levers to strengthen our go to market efforts in the coming year.

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That’s great to hear. I think Messari does quality work, and certainly carries a strong brand reputation. I’d love to see what it looks like when we’re synced up in purpose.

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My feel here is that Messari dropped the ball last year, probably over-charging and then leaving us out of a bunch of coverage that we should have been included in.

However, I appreciate that Corey has acknowledged the issues and it seems that corrections are largely in place if we move forward with partnering with Messari for another year.

Given the above, the proposal has my vote.

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I am interested in this as well. Is this something you can share with us?

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In my opinion, 100k is a lot of money for “just quarterly reports,” while PR posts are not guaranteed, and as far as I know, Messari Enterprise is independent from these reports.

The only metric I was able to track is that Messari mentioned POKT on X about four times in 2023, averaging around 20k views per post.

Although the quality of the reports is indeed great, it seems to be a bit overpriced. In comparison, DAO could spend $100k to pay part-time content creators who can build Pocket brand awareness on a daily basis and use the remaining budget to fuel posts by influencers. Or spend it on X Ads.

Just my 2 cents.

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Hey @spenc valid points & I hear where you’re coming from. But lets be frank, paying people to shill for you isn’t going to attract real investors, at least not any tradfi folk.

The underlying value you’re getting here with 100k spend is access to the tradfi investors who actually move the needle on charts. The domains that read from terminals like Bloomberg, Refinitiv, and S&P IQ … are vastly different then the reach part-time contributors & influencers can attain.

The metrics of this relationship shouldn’t be viewed in this community from a lens of twitter mentions or views, but from opportunity creation of real world partnerships & network advancements such as polygon/starbucks & kkr/avalanche.

To do that you need diligence of the likes that Messari puts out to over 10 trillion in AUM to these tradfi folk that are heads down looking for the next great investment, especially with these positive head winds in this bull market.

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There’s no doubt Messari holds great value in the crypto space, but I don’t agree with the statement that “paying people to shill for you isn’t going to attract real investors,” because it’s essentially what you do as well - getting paid to write a quarterly report. These reports are indeed wonderful; hats off.

However, in the end, real investors conduct their own research whether they read about Pocket Network on Messari or elsewhere. While the ratio of real investors reachable via Messari versus elsewhere may generally be better, the cost per view is significantly cheaper elsewhere, especially when targeting the Messari audience.

We can also question and evaluate how Messari has helped Pocket Network attract investors who can influence market trends in 2023, if there’s any evidence of it. Additionally, last year’s reports were paid for, and I assume they won’t lose their effectiveness if Pocket Network decides to forgo quarterly reports in 2024. Therefore, these older reports should still attract “real investors” because it seems there’s no other PR work included in the $100k deal besides writing and publishing these reports.

I believe raw marketing metrics are still important. It’s something that can be measured and evaluated, while the impact of these paid reports on “real-world partnerships & network advancements” is at least arguable.

Lastly, based on the deals that Messari has with other, bigger, protocols, I would encourage the DAO to negotiate slightly better terms, aiming below $20k per report and at least one tweet per report.

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hey @spenc thanks for the feedback.

Only item id have to push back on is that we definitely don’t shill anything, were simply combing through public data & reporting on it. There is a reason why we command the market recognition that we do. Our clients value our non bias based reporting & we 100% protect our editorial process within the relationship.

You’re right in that the older reports are still valuable, but the rub here is consistency & transparency. Just like the stock market & how earning statements are viewed as investor relations material, so are these quarterly standard reports. Forgoing them sends mixed signals out to our community, tradfi, and within your own.

Our goal at Messari bar none is to usher in an age of transparency & trust so we remove the shady stigma we’ve all collectively been battling at dinner tables with friends & relatives for years now. I’d urge you to see the bigger picture here in what we all hope to accomplish with this relationship.

As far as price goes I hear you, it can seem expensive. Unfortunately we wont be entertaining any negotiation as that’s our standard pricing. This is great feedback though, ill be sharing it internally.

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You can certainly sway my opinion by providing hard data. I admire the work Messari does beyond these reports, and as you mentioned, it cannot be paid for, which makes it valuable. Ultimately, it’s a business - your primary research work is paid for by end users, while these reports are commissioned by those who order them. Here’s my takeaway:

You mentioned that “clients value our non-biased reporting,” but these quarterly reports are clearly profit-driven activities.

You mentioned skipping quarterly reports “sends mixed signals out to our community, tradfi, and within your own”, but you haven’t shared any data proving such claim. Not a good negotiating strategy imo.

You mentioned, “I’d urge you to see the bigger picture here in what we all hope to accomplish with this relationship,” but at the same time, the entire proposal is strictly limited to four quarterly reports, which are paid for by another 50 protocols. So, I might be missing where the bigger picture lies in the $100k bundle.

Moreover, you mentioned “access to tradfi investors who actually move the needle on charts,” but if we compare the dates when these reports were released, we don’t actually see such activity. Thus, it’s another baseless claim.

Regarding the old proposal mentions:

These reports would live as free resources on Messari and would be distributed through our newsletter, social channels, and third-party distribution partners including Bloomberg, S&P Global, and Refinitiv.
…
They will be distributed to a wide crypto native audience through the Messari newsletter comprised of 300k investors and builders in the space along with three of the largest traditional research platforms in the world.

  • S&P Global
    • Capital IQ: 12,000 enterprises
  • Bloomberg
    • Bloomberg Terminal: 325k users
  • London Stock Exchange (formerly Thomson Reuters)
    • Refinitiv: 40,000 enterprises and 400,000 users

it would be beneficial to provide a summary of how these reports performed in 2023 across all channels. I’m uncertain if I noticed Pocket Network mentioned by the “third-party distribution partners including Bloomberg, S&P Global, and Refinitiv.”

Basically, what I find disagreeable is this sales strategy. If you approach any reputable business, this vague proposal simply wouldn’t pass muster, but somehow it seems to work well with DAOs. I mean, if you’re asking for $100k, you should put some effort into it and demonstrate your value, especially considering last year wasn’t the best. It shouldn’t just be a copy-and-paste job with prices slightly adjusted per protocol. And even using the same argumentation and data from the old proposal, does that mean Messari has not experienced growth?

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