Shade Warrior (Ambassador) Program & Website Grant Proposal

Topic : Shade Warrior Program Proposal & Grant Request V1.0

Proposer : Melch18 (Shade Discord Moderator - Propose “Community Manager”)

Propose Date : 6/20/22

This proposal is here to outline the purpose, achievements, goals/KPIs & Shade Spartans responsible for building the Shade Warrior Community Program

Shade Warrior Platform (signup/login): Images below - link soon
Shade Warrior Handbook (missions to complete): Click Here to View

- Purpose of the Warrior Program:

The Shade Warrior Program exists to spread awareness of Shade Protocol, increase Discord community engagement, foster community growth & retention through trackable key performance indicators (KPIs) as well as filter high performers into Shade teams (dev, design, etc) & the Community DAO. The Warrior Program will give the Shade core team a direct community who actively participates in Shade’s marketing initiatives (increase social media presence, recruit talent & provide a presence at local IRL events). Consistent recruiting of Shade Protocol fans into the program will provide direction to actively contribute to the community & the chance to grow into a low contributing level, larger team hired position or Community DAO position.

- Notable Achievements from the Last Period:

Melch18 attended Dcentral Austin 2022 to recruit IRL for Warrior Program (self funded)
Warrior Handbook created (self funded)
Trackable QR codes created to Shade Linktree for Warrior Program Recruitment (self funded)
Warrior website/platform created by BigBoy61 w/ all functionality, ready for testing (self funded)
Moderated and helped grow Discord community from 2,500 to 9,400 prior to launch of program
Warrior Program ranks/points created & implemented in Discord with multiple bots
Weekly Discord community meeting started to welcome new members & answer questions
Two Discord moderators brought on board (bigboy61 & Sanyar)

- Performance Indicators by Which the Team Can Be Held Accountable:

No. of Warriors in the program ()
No. of Warriors added from previous funding period ()
No. of Missions completed from previous funding period ()

- Shade Spartans Responsible for this Program:
Melch18 = project lead & program creator, warrior handbook creator, artwork creator, program operator (onboarding warriors, validating/rejecting completed missions, removing spammers), recruit at IRL & digital events, create bi-daily mission, recruit warriors to team (dev, design, etc), hold bi-weekly meetings with mods, add dapp specific missions, weekly meeting w/ dalts

BigBoy61 = Discord Moderator duties, Warrior Platform creator & curator (built the entire warrior website), program operator

Sanyar = Discord Moderator duties & Warrior program operator

Roadmap

-Budget Request for Funding Period (07/01/2022 - 09/31/2022 (3 months)):

Melch18 asks for a budget for the compensated leadership role, two onboarding warrior roles, program hosting fees & a discretionary amount to reward high achieving community members

My ask is in USD, calculated to SHD on the day the proposal goes to review. USD if the value of SHD has changed by +/- 7% if/when this proposal is approved.

Project Lead & Creator:
Melch18 - $50/h - 20 hours per week - $4000 / month

-Discord Community Manager since 12/1/2021 (interviewed w/ Dalts & Carter)
-Designed & built the Shade Discord (bots, functionality, points/ranks, security)
-Held weekly meetings with Dalts for 6+ months aligning community & marketing efforts
-Held monthly meetings with two community mods to organize Discord efforts
-6+ months holding the “Onboarding Agent” position with SCRT Awareness Committee running
the program, recruiting agents, leading the university outreach & presenting to the schools
-Self funded trip to Dcentral Austin to work Shade booth generating 12 networking leads in 2 days
-Two years field sales experience closing over $1.2 million and 120 deals, two years phone sales experience closing and managing a $6 million dollar portfolio
-Built 2 successful start ups 1) phone app with over 3,000 unique active users and paying customers (no marketing budget) closing partnerships with the 2nd largest marathon series in the world 2) building real estate investing company employing 5+ doing over $500,000/annually

Two Onboarding Warriors:
Bigboy61 - 12.5 hours/week at 20$/h - $1000 / month

-Shade Moderator for 6+ months
-Architect & maintain the Warrior Program website & functionality
-Onboard warriors into program, validate missions completed, reject/reward points
-Continue moderating Shade Discord Server & recruit for warrior program

Sanyar - 12.5 hours/week at 20$/h - $1000 / month

-Shade Moderator for 6+ months
-Onboard warriors into program, validate missions completed, reject/reward points
-Continue moderating Shade Discord Server & recruit for warrior program

Fees & Discretionary Funds: (as program grows, cost/request would grow as well)
Hosting Fees (Amazon Web Services - Bigboy61) - $249/month (3 month total $747)
Domain Names (1) (shadewarriors.com) - $12/year
Email Server (ability to run reports & edit database) - $45/year
Shade Warrior of the Month $300/month - ( 3 month total $900)
Shade Warrior Mission Rewards @ Moderators Discretion $465/month (3 month total $1,395)
Onboarding Warriors (2) - $2,000/month (3 month total $6,000)
Project Lead (1) - $4,000/month (3 month total $12,000)

**Items for future development:

  1. Beginning of program rewards points to tokens awarded will be at moderator discretion. As program grows a formal points to token ratio will be publicly created
  2. Any discretionary funds not earned by warriors will be tracked in each proposal and rolled into the next funding periods request **

Total Budget Request for Current Funding Period:
Monthly $7,033
Three Month Total $21,099
Price of Shade = $8.15 (2,589 Token Request = 0.19% of grant fund)

Images of Shadewarriors website that will run this program




8 Likes

Phenomenal proposal, currently under review. Thank you for your submission! We will be following up over telegram after internal review :slight_smile: Would love to hear feedback from the community on this proposal!

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Thanks Carter. I appreciate the quick reply and I’m excited to see what the community thinks as well.

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I’ve worked alongside Melch in several capacities. You just have to look at all the work that has already been done for free… this guy is a doer and very confident in his ability to continue to execute on this program. Full support.

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Much appreciated. It must be a “sean” thing, we’re doers :grinning:

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There is no doubt that @melch18 as well as the others mentioned in this grant proposal have dedicated a substantial amount of their personal time, resources and capital to establish the Shade Spartan’s community and culture and thus I believe they should be compensated accordingly for their past and future efforts.

The Shade core team has discussed the importance of a strong and active community many times and in order to identify and empower high level contributors I think an ambassador program with objective ways to measure contributions from the community is imperative if you truly believe in Shade Protocols vision of being a truly decentralized, community run, public good.

Given this request is essentially a “trial period” for the program as they are only asking for 3-months of funding, I think the requested spend appears reasonable, given the breakdown of how the funds will be disbursed. I would support passing this proposal and would ask that we utilize the metrics and data gathered from this funding period to determine if the initial grant was sufficient or if we need to reassess the amount or allocation of Shade going forward.

Amazing work guys and I appreciate the transparency provided in the proposal.

6 Likes

Well said chem. Assessing the correct amount and areas to allocate was the most difficult.

Just for community knowledge here are some of the tools that guided my decision in this area.

  • bear market has discord quiet and we see much less activity = less active warriors = less rewards earned & less tokens needed here
  • As market conditions improve we’ll see more users join warrior program = more rewards earned = larger allocation here
  • This trial period will allow us to build all infrastructure and get this community program timed well with mainnet & community dao = more funding allocated to team/infrastructure for trial period.
  • With positive metrics I see a larger request being made in the future. This depends on community growth and where warriors will step up to join @bigboy61 / @KrakenCT /myself in awareness efforts (example: IRL events)

A lot of thought has been put in the last 7 months so I could chat this forever :slight_smile:
Make sure to check out the “training” page and “House of Shade” Mission in the handbook

4 Likes

Awesome work! This is probably one of the biggest steps forward that has the potential of changing lives of our community members. I can fully support this funding as i know how much work all three of them put into community building and much they still will even without this proposal!

Only one side note from my side: the web hosting costs seem oddly high?? Im not an expert at all but dont we have much better and cheaper solutions nowadays compared to aws? Im thinking of Akash Network or jackalDAO here maybe??

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Hey @rabbits !

I’m handling all the web hosting and website stuff for the Warrior’s project, so I’m in a better position to answer this than Melch.

The cost is very much a rough estimate erring on the high side. The server I’m looking at will be about 69.12 + storage and backup fees. The database will be $46.80 + storage and backup fees. There are also fees for the load balancer, docker container registry, and overall data transfer fees. The more traffic we have, the higher cost we’re going to incur. We should be under $250 a month (at least initially). We’ll have a better idea of cost after the testnet.

We’ll be hosting on AWS since that’s what I’m most familiar with, and I feel will be more stable than, say, Digital Ocean. I have no experience with Akash or Jackal. I do, however, have experience working with AWS in my day job. I work extensively with it. It’s a very refined product that is overall pretty stable. The stability does come at a cost as it is more expensive than some alternatives.

Feel free to let me know if you have any more questions!

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Also, that first site image is not the final site design. We’re waiting on some logos from the design team, but it will look like this:

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I’ll add that were planning on having a reporting tool that we’ll be using so we’ll hopefully be able to pull some good insights from our users to report back to both the Shade core team and you guys after the trial period is up.

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Thanks bigboy.

@rabbits I also believe it’s best practice to show a breakdown of any fee not used that can roll into the next funding period.

Although, post trial phase we’ll have more insight into the number of users we have and the exact cost too.

This proposal gave me motivation to translate Medium articles, creating Youtube content and what else i can. Amazing work ! :new_moon:

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Thank you Pausanias. You’d make a great warrior :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

A great note from @Aztec lead to this addition below clarifying “how individual warriors will expand SHD awareness”:

How Individual Warriors Will Contribute to Awareness:
Daily Missions within the handbook will promote shade social posts
Dapp specific missions within the handbook will promote use of each Dapp
Missions within the handbook will show Founding team which community members excel in:

  • YT video content creation
  • Influencer partnerships
  • Infographic / Design / Education experts
  • Warriors with Dev experience looking to build under SHD
  • Warriors who show consistent support across all areas & can represent SHD at IRL events

More built as the program grows but this is the starting focus. I believe focusing on small specific tasks will drive better adoption/awareness and show track-able success

2 Likes

Nice to see a grant like this come to light! I am sure Sean and team can make this work, so far i have very much enjoyed working alongside you guys.

1 small note - Could you host the website via Akash instead? Much cheaper and would be nice to integrate with Web3 as much as possible.

7 Likes

Hey Ertemann!

We could, but it would require additional time to get it to deployment since I would have to learn about Akash. Additionally, they don’t offer a managed DB service like the big cloud providers do (they really can’t since it’s decentralized). I wanted to stay away from self managing the database as that’s not my expertise.

We could host the DB in AWS and the app in Akash, but that introduces another layer of complexity and makes management more difficult (not to mention possibly open up more attack vectors).

2 Likes

After conversation with @schultzie today i think your assessment was completely right. Goodluck building out the website!

4 Likes

This seems like a reasonable request and trial. I think my biggest question is how are we thinking about this project in the context of Secret Agents and the Spartans. I feel like we need to really answer this question to be effective.

Secret Agents - Promote Dapps/Boost Content about things happening on Secret Network (including Shade)
Spartans - Dedicated users who have been hand selected for their dedication to Shade. These are the strongest warriors we have.
Shade Warriors - ??

It’s a really tough question, but I think one we need to answer. Is this a copy pasta of Agents? Do we want that? The strongest online community I’ve ever seen is the LUNATICS. There was no central funding. I’m comfortable doing some funding, but how do we make sure we foster organic interest in our product and not pay for likes/rts. I think fundamentally I disagree with the current agents model that has been structured.

If we think of the LUNATICS. Id say right now the Spartans are that. A group of people who stepped up to contribute without funding because they care about the vision. This is the most sustainable community we can achieve. We do need people to help organize us and ideate on how to best use our influence so a role like this may makes sense. What I’m mostly wondering is about how do we gather influence and community in a sustainable way.

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Think this is an awesome idea. While running nodes with Akash is a lot more of a hassle currently, websites, at least, are a breeze.

I support this proposal - in fact, stumbling upon this forum now makes me want to participate further in the Shade community (I’ve been accumulating for a while and am extremely bullish on $SHD).

Good luck with this, guys!

3 Likes