[PROPOSAL #34][ACCEPTED] Luna Mission - Funding $ATOM

• Moderator edit to add link to on-chain proposal: Mintscan - Chain explorer by COSMOSTATION Good day/evening to all. For the past 6 months there have been intense and lengthy discussions (between community members) about the lack of marketing initiatives that are $ATOM oriented, from entities involved in the Cosmos Hub. During the months leading to the completion of the Stargate Upgrade (which we understand is imminent) we identified that until the upgrade was about to launch there would be no point to promote a product that had not yet launched . On the other hand, we noted that efforts for educating communities, disseminating the idea and planting the seed should have been - at least in our opinion - intensified. Yet we have always aligned with the ethos of the Cosmos idea and noble character and waited until the right time had come. After a few days of deliberation on the Cosmos Hub’s Governance Working Group , with many participants contributing to the Cosmos Hub, we, members of the Cosmos Hub’s community, have come up with the following proposal. Since we have all agreed that it is important to submit this on chain as soon as possible (ahead of the proposal…

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Awesome to see this initiative but is there a breakdown of how the funds will be spent and where/why the amount (129,208 ATOM) came from?

Also any interest in writing this as a PR to GitHub - cosmos/governance: Resources for Cosmos governance ?

Thanks for the response Ethan: Here is the analysis of the amount and approximate plan of actions. Since it may deviate as to the scope of actions we decided to not put it word by word although my original draft included all those. A. Thought Leader Engagement (Total Allocation 63,385 ATOMS): The campaign will allocate : 5555 ATOM each to 7 major youtube thought leaders with a minimum reach of 100k followers and 3500 ATOM each to 7 major Twitter thought leaders with a minimum of 50k followers. The thought leaders will receive payments in either ATOM or USD at the end of each month during the three month engagement. Promotional work expected : Youtube thought leaders: At least 1 review each month for 3 months (at least 20 min each) Twitter thought leaders: At least 3 quality posts per week for 3 months The Committee/AiB shall undertake to : Educate thought leaders - among others - on the merits of the Cosmos Hub, ATOM2021 initiative, IBC, Bridges and the upcoming AMMs. AiB will coordinate drafting/signing the agreements with thought leaders. AiB will contact and get thought leaders signed ahead of the initiative. Manner of release of ATOM payments :…

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If you see point iv. at the abstract of the proposal, it has been subsequently added to the draft that has been submitted here. Some alternative actions may further be added while others may be omitted. AiB is still in talks, getting quotes for actions defined above. In the spirit of the above, we deemed important to not include the above analysis.

Things are still fluid: An example is that We have agreed that part of our actions will be to incentivise influencers to get paid in ATOM and stake but we don’t know if they respond or how many of them will be hired, whether all amounts will be allocated or diverted to other sorts of efforts. In the light of the above it is better (we think) to not define exact amounts other than the total expenditure, but we expect communications/suggestions from AiB and actions shall always be conditioned on the Multi-Sig committee’s approval.

I suggest to spend some of this fund for branding/marketing/informing ETHPeg and AMM on Cosmos Hub. Creating informational/educational contents, planning events with prizes, advertisements on platforms.

These two dApps on CosmosHub will kick off the DeFi vision of Cosmos Hub, so it is very important to bring more users of these utilities on Cosmos Hub. Number of users and capital locked will naturally attract more Atom investors outside the community.

For this context, B-Harvest is currently considering to plan a trading/investing competition on Cosmos Hub AMM. We can proceed with this plan under reasonable funding. We think that trading competition event with reasonably large amount of prize is a good attraction point for traders outside Cosmos Network.

Great input as always Hyung. I think that your project deserves standalone activities on behalf of everyone devoted to the cause of the ATOM2021 initiative. We will certainly do our part but our funding is limited. Please see the exact activities described above. I think that “thought leaders” (influencers) could be further educated so that they make presentations that address and point out at the value initiatives such as the AMM and Peggy bring to $ATOM. This has been our clear intention since the inception of our idea. We are thinking of setting up an education committee and educate on the merits of the Hub. I openly invite you to join had this been required. Also to clarify once again: Our purpose here is not to artificially pump. We are not interested in this. Our aim is to create a wider base of believers in the value of $ATOM.

Finally needless to say, I am a big fan of your work and your presentation at Interchain Conversations was inspiring. So rest assured our efforts will be devoted to meaningful $ATOM related projects.

We 100% support proposal #33 and are honored that the community has chosen one of us to participate in the signing. As previously mentioned in the governance working group the matter at hand is urgency. The bottom line is, ATOM needs exposure and it needs it now. The proposal #33 is the right response by the community to market ATOM via multiple sources. Through polls in the working group many inefficient marketing means were filtered out and the consensus was to go with influencer marketing, banner ads (CMC, Stakingrewards.com , Coingecko and Google adsence), meme competitions and get a 10% boost from a marketing agency which currently closely works with Tendermint AIB. We think that the combined effort from Tendermint and the agency to execute the community marketing plan is the proper support needed to make a big splash and position ATOM were it belongs before the upcoming/ongoing market cycle. In direct support of the campaign, the community has set up a Telegram channel T.me/ATOMCosmonauts to enhance the viral effect that will be generated over the coming 3 months. We are looking forward for the branding of ATOM to elevate to the high mark that the current development…

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@ebuchman it is on Github i hope i have done it as per your request.

Hi,

1. why did you choose those 4 main campaigns? based on which data/analysis?
2. what is the expected outcome? how are you going to measure the success?

Thank you

1. For the past 2 weeks all marketing options were discussed and put to a community vote via the governance working group to see which options have more weight. Then the top selections were compared and scrutinized further to optimize for maximum virality potential, least amount of spending and maximum reach.
2. The expected outcome is to strongly increase ATOM exposure across the board. Success will be measured by tracking each campaign straight forward. The administrators will collect figures from the each and compare them on a weekly basis and make adjustments if needed.

1. We asked the community what the preferred methods of engagement were, we voted, & talked about the effectiveness of each approach, finally deciding to pursue multiple avenues. If convincing data shows another approach is more appropriate… they should have posted it while the community was talking about it and I’d love to see “data / analytics” on this topic that is reliable.

2. The expected outcome and the ability to measure it varies for each avenue. The meme competition will mostly be measured by analytics and engagement. AiB will be the coordinator for the more subjective pieces and the multi sig will only release funds when it has been shown that tasks / milestones have been reached. This inherently is subjective and not perfect… but as a part of the multi sig I won’t be signing until I’ve seen evidence that the atoms have been used as expected. I’m sure this same stance applies to all signers. If funds go unspent for various reasons they will be sent back to the community pool when all is said and done

What do they mean by community pool?
will they take cosmos from people who are staking cosmo?

No, those atoms are own by all atom holders in the community pool. They can only Be used if the community itself approves for the spending via voting. You can vote yourself or accept the vote your validator makes.

Two percent of all staking rewards generated via block rewards and transaction fees, are continuously transferred to the Community Pool. The funding is currently fixed at 2% of staking rewards but optionally, the funding rate may be modified with a “parameter change proposal” submitted through on-chain governance.
Currently the pool has approximately 570k $ATOMs.
This means that you are not getting charged anything in excess of what you already contribute when staking.

Curious for transparency purposes, which of the suggested 6 community members had any involvement with drafting this proposal?

Everyone in the multisig community was also involved in drafting the proposal and many others from the Governance and Price chat.

Thank you all for your comments so far. The proposal has now been submitted on-chain under #34 and will hopefully soon be on voting period. Again, on behalf of the community, thank you for the comments and support.
Proposal 34 is available at the following link: https://www.mintscan.io/cosmos/proposals/34

Can you guys please share the pubkeys used to generate the multi-sign with also the relative owner of it?

Thanks for the detailed proposal writeup @johnniecosmos ! Really glad to see the Cosmos Community Pool resources being activated to be used for educating people more about the value of Cosmos Hub and clearer transparency into the dynamics of ATOM–specifically with Stargate coming up. It might be a forgone conclusion, but I really wish I had more time to check this out before the vote went out because I had a few questions specifically about some of the action items on the proposal and also the general guidelines and precedents that may be being set with more non-technical community proposals being put forth. As a note, I was looking at the fantastic description Gavin had put out on Community Spend Proposals ( GitHub - gavinly/CosmosCommunitySpend: Cosmos community-spend proposals education & best practices ). Just for the sake of getting a bit more clarity, could we address some of these topics? • Dedicated time for comments on proposals before vote submission • How the amount requested was decided and arrived at • Clearer KPI measurements • Checks and balances on the governance committee (or if it is even possible or reasonable in this situation) • Clear steps on…

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Just a great idea! I have been an ATOM holder for a long time, but I still have not been able to find anywhere what is the real value of this coin.

Hi Dan, great to see your thorough response on the proposal. I am sure others will join this conversation soon and cover your points. In a nutshell, in respect to the allocation of resources please refer to my response to @ebuchman Unfortunately, due to the pushing by the community for the marketing initiative to coincide with the Stargate Upgrade proposal there was not enough time to get quotes, then come up with something more concrete. However i am most concerned with the question about Checks and Balances. & Conflicts of Interest. So what i suggest for us to do is run a vote for all important decisions: i think we should make a group in Telegram and get the community to vote through TG polls: • on each influencer chosen, • on the marketing firm appointed, • decision making process for meme contest (you can see the exact amounts in my previous post this should remain unaltered), • each banner company hired • also in the event the allocation of funds deviates from what has been quoted above we could deliberate again through voting and decide alternate allocation. So although the community may decide to allow us to proceed at will i am all up for some…

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I think the best would be to have a separate spending proposal for each of the marketing campaign/meme contest/whatever you want to run. I understand it would be ideal to start the campaigns at the same time as the stargate upgrade, but doing things in a rush is always a very bad decision. A lot of ATOMs are requested with this proposal, and the risk of wasting funds is huge. I read this whole proposal just as a “budget allocation for marketing”, where you 5 will then decide how to spend it. I don’t have any doubt you will try to follow the “general community sentiment” about how and where to spend the funds, but is this really needed? I don’t think so, the community can express its opinion on every single subject way better if you create a separate proposal for each topic. A lot of holders are not even in the Telegram group or discord server, so I don’t see how can you reflect their opinion as well. Honestly, if I was you, I would never take the responsibility of 700k$ worth of ATOMs knowing that is very hard to understand what the community really wants without being biased with personal opinions or short terms interests. Lastly, I don’t know very well you all, but have…

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Hi @dimiandre Many thanks for the response. i know little to nothing about marketing, neither did me or anyone claim that they are experts. The community decided on actions that make sense through polls and rough consensus achieved on governance and the proposal is on chain for everyone to deliberate over. To this end AiB and a marketing firm will deal with this part (hiring marketing firm, approaching thought leaders/influencers, getting quotes for banner ads). The actions are outlined as follows and have been decided through i repeat a rough consensus process by the community on governance: i. One set of actions for incentivising, educating thought leaders so as to engage through media (Twitter, YouTube) for a period of 3 months and educate their audiences about $ATOM without any unnecessary hyperboles, something that would go against the values and ethos of our project; ii. One set of actions for engaging the blockchain and crypto communities for 3 months via 3 monthly meme contests whose intention is to make $ATOM going viral on Twitter. iii. One set of actions for a 3 month header banner and/or homepage banner advertising campaigns on 4 platforms with high and/or…

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Also the community or multi-sig does not undertake any responsibility for the efficiency of the plan. But in the absence of similar initiatives from teams/groups/entities that have traditionally profited from operations on the hub, the community requested this initiative.

Dan,

I really appreciate your ideas and also want this to be executed as well as possible. With that said, we will follow all of your demands if and when stake fish pays us to work on this for all of the time required, We have full time jobs Dude… I’m a peasant, not a lord. shouldn’t be a problem due to how large of a validator stake fish is. If that’s not cool, then I’d love for you to put up a better marketing proposal, get consensus, and execute with all of the professionals within your firm. It would save me a shit load of work

Thanks

This is an uncalled for snarky comment. Where is all this negativity coming from?

I also see that you are listed as one of the multi-sig members. How can I know now that you will make objective level-headed decisions? Unlike @johnniecosmos who has at least taken the time to properly read and address comments, you just went straight to negativity.

It’s very easy to add a huge list of things for us to do to make you happy. But we will be to the ones doing the work and spendings our time no?? What’s more level headed then valuing ones own time and energy. Feel free to vote how you wish and put together your own marketing proposal if you want. I would gladly let you do all the work and spend your time and company resources.

Thanks and please vote how you wish

I don’t understand this self-victimization that you are doing here. No one is asking anyone to put in work that they are uncomfortable doing. I hope you are able to engage in more productive discussions.

As a side note (this doesn’t reflect our validator’s official opinion), I don’t consider marketing to be a priority. I value projects, developers and community builders currently building on Cosmos and think funds should be entirely directed there. Still, nonetheless, I am keeping an open-mind and weighting the pros and cons of this proposal.

Ok…here’s what you should understand…I signed up to do everything entailed in this proposal that currently has an over 85% yes vote for… I didn’t sign up to whatever work someone on the Internet is telling me i need to do to make them happy… I encourage you and your team to vote how you wish.

I understand why marketing isn’t your top
priority at the moment, as an engineer I agree for the most part. But I did sign up to do my best to represent the community and make sure these atoms are only spent when it is proved they were earned…

I encourage you to make your own proposal if you have better ideas on how to spend community funds and to vote how you see is fit. That’s about all I can say brotha…

Thanks, I appreciate the clarification and dedication to the proposal. We’ll keep monitoring the discussions and come to a conclusion on our vote stance soon.

Hi JK and thanks for the input. None from the committee so far seems interested to take up on producing extra work on top of the already undertaken responsibilities described - in as much detail as possible - on the proposal. Still we would be happy to listen to ideas that contribute actual value to the proposal without creating unnecessary burdens on the committee. A suggestion of a good marketing firm within the specified budget limits, a suggestion of a thought leader/influencer etc. contacts, could go a long way. You can communicate you suggestions directly to AiB if you wish, as they will present the options to the multi-sig. We care not if it is you or someone else who proposes/gives ideas (we actually encourage as many suggestions of actionable stuff as people wish to contribute) we care that the Hub gets known and discovered across the space. We care that people are converted to believers in the value of the Hub and get educated into understanding its value proposition. Let us not forget a couple of things here: 1. AiB a reputable entity respected across the ecosystem is hired to the end of effecting this proposal and 2. the committee also comprises of two people…

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Furthermore, tweets like Chun’s on Twitter, do not contribute anything valuable to this conversation. I quote his tweet that i would expect from someone that wants to hurt not help the Hub: So the “massive step” for $ATOM would be how to make better memes? When was the last time @satoshi spend 129,208 $BTC for making memes or buying Facebook ads? This post demonstrates • a clear lack of understanding of the initiative; • an intentional distortion of the truth as the amounts he quotes or the activities he describes are either imaginary or cherry picked (two of you from Stake Fish are here so i am sure he knows what this is about), • a total disrespect for the community, and • a misalignment with the ethos of Cosmos. I would - at least - expect a little more respect from someone whose company has been yielding profits from the hub. twitter.com Chun @ stakefish.eth (satofishi) So the “massive step for $ATOM would be how to make better memes? When was the last time @satoshi spend 129,208 $BTC for making memes or buying Facebook ads? https://t.co/UlHe4X1eUp” Immasssi ⚛️ @immasssi Validators, the community needs your backing on proposal #34. This is a…

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I think a clarification is needed: everyone is free to think as they want and disagree, and Chun is exercising that right. Comparing Chun to the importance of the words of one of the trustees makes no sense. In any case, pointing fingers at each other never makes sense.

Personally, I expect the trustees listed in the proposal to keep their wits about them and not give knee-jerk answers. Especially considering the fact that Dan seems to have spent several hours studying the proposal bringing several ideas that could improve the proposal itself a lot in terms of transparency and organization, unlike many others who vote based on the name of the person proposing it.

I strongly believe that Cosmos at this moment doesn’t need “feuds” between its main actors and that we could agree to organize with Gavin’s help a Governance Community Call in which we can reason about how to proceed and the community can ask the trustees all the questions they need.

CC @Gavin

Re: your comment on Chun’s Twitter feed. His tweets are his own. He has every right to speak his mind, as do any of our team members. If we have any official announcements or stances, we do that from our stakefish handle. The fact that he (and I) go out of his way to post anything is because he cares at the end of the day about the future of Cosmos.

Now back to your response that starts with “Hi JK and thanks for the input.” I’ve been thinking about what is at the root cause of this proposal not sitting so well with me. I think it’s because fundamentally, I don’t believe Cosmos lacks awareness. Any serious blockchain developer is aware of Tendermint and the stability of Cosmos SDK. So then, I’m left wondering who the ideal target audience would be. I’m currently only seeing short-term speculators being attracted. While they shouldn’t be shunned, I also don’t think community funds should be spent to attract them. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this.

Hi JK, Thank you for your response again. I am not going to argue over your partner’s/associate’s tweet. Nothing more that can be discussed about it really. People can draw their conclusions based on his tweet i am sure. Going back to your response to me about the proposal, i fully respect your views. But unlike with a monolithic approach on reaching out developers solely, this initiative is about creating a follower base of true believers by reaching out to as many people as possible, namely to a wider audience. There is no doubt that failure IS an option. In a nutshell the purpose of the initiative is to make an effort to increase awareness on the value proposition of $ATOM and the Cøsmos Hub. The consensus among community is that the value proposition of $ATOM is not as apparent (among communities across the space) as the qualities of the code of the Cosmos stack among developers. So although i agree with your claim that the quality of the code is well known this has nothing to do with the $ATOM’s value proposition that is our concern here. Actually, the value of $ATOM is constantly being disputed even by people from within the Cosmos ecosystem. Hence the…

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Currently, my personal opinion is that this proposal had not enough public discussion around it before being created.

My concerns mainly revolve around the fact that some of the most though-out comments had very simple and repetitive answers to them. An example of such is Jelena’s comment on the GitHub PR of this proposal, which you can see here.

The only answer that has been provided to that comment, which was indeed raising the point of measurable success, was the following:

I will forward this message to the Hub Governance Working group. Again thanks for the extremely valuable and multi-dimensional feedback.

Unluckily, 6 days after the original comment, no further answer has been provided.

Currently, I am not inside the Telegram group and I honestly don’t plan to be. For this reason, I would like to better understand the following points as well:

1. Who is the community you are referring to inside the proposal’s text?

selected by the community

1. How have the 5 members been selected by the community? Is it possible to have full details?

Thanks for your patience and work.

thebluenowhere: why did you choose those 4 main campaigns? based on which data/analysis? johnniecosmos: i know little to nothing about marketing johnniecosmos: A maximum of 10% from the budget will be used to engage a high profile PR Agency to help with the Media and Marketing efforts. I appreciate your candour here, but the approach seems to begging the question. Deciding on marketing activities is exactly something that an agency can help you with, particularly if you have no existing expertise. I am not sure about the makeup of the Governance Working Group or particular contributors from ‘the community’ but unless they have specific experience and expertise in publicity then perhaps it would be better to focus on hiring a good agency and benefiting from their specialism in order to choose effective actions. thebluenowhere: what is the expected outcome? how are you going to measure the success? This is another key question (also asked in long form on the PR) and does not seem to have been adequately answered insofar as ‘why?’ johnniecosmos: 5555 ATOM each to 7 major youtube thought leaders with a minimum…

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Hi Riccardo, Good to see your post here. I do value your views for they have reasoning. I will agree that everything was done faster than normal but i am afraid i will have to suggest that you visit the governance and price channels so that you see why. Community wanted it to be submitted asap. Also, i agree to the point you raise about Jelena. To this end i forwarded Jelena’s message to the Governance group the morning after she sent it on GH and requested two esteemed members from AiB to review it and revert. This was done so that her comment on GH receives the necessary publicity and attention from people more relevant to the questions raised and the community’s review and consideration. Noone has responded to it to this date but i do not know how much can be done now before the proposal passes. Perhaps they already work on some of this? I do not know. The five members selected by the community (governance/price channels/atom related channels etc) were selected via a rough consensus reached among members while no objections were raised about them. The discussion is on Governance, it is lengthy and i am afraid you will have to join and review for your self. It is…

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Silas hi and good day to you! The campaigns were decided via a mixture of 1. polls and 2. discussion among the community while taking into account suggestions from AiB. And i repeat i know close to nothing about marketing. You really need to speak to AiB and ask them about the methods, outcomes, measure of success. Not much i can say or answer here. Regarding your comment about bribing influencers: The rewards are a means to an end. What we care about is for the word to be spread out, the world to understand the value proposition of $ATOM (no fake statements, no BS). Please see all my previous answers why we deem $ATOM’s value proposition must be communicated and why the community deems this quintessential. The ethos of the community in my view is of a high standard and quality; because of this it was always stressed out that this is not a typical paid shill but that it should be educational. So any influencer would have to engage in this spirit. Please join the governance channel or contact AiB directly if you think you have any other actionable stuff to offer. But please remember that the community is voting as we speak. And kindly ensure these messages are communicated…

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Thank you for the response.

johnniecosmos:

The rewards are a means to an end.

I don’t think the end justifies the means. It is possible to increase awareness without resorting to making large payments to those who’s authority is supposedly based on some level of impartiality. I understand this is not an uncommon practice, but I think it runs contrary to trust and in the longer term is counter-productive.

johnniecosmos:

it was always stressed out that this is not a typical paid shill but that it should be educational.

This doesn’t carry much water, particularly given the sums involved; this is more than a ‘contribution to the officer’s uniform fund’, it’s an unresolvable conflict of interest.

Furthermore, I would personally rather not have any ‘influencer’ who is willing to accept such a bribe to be associated with the Cosmos ecosystem.

But please remember that the community is voting as we speak

Indeed, which is why am taking the opportunity to dissent now, though the proposal looks to have plenty of momentum.

This doesn’t carry much water, particularly given the sums involved; this is more than a ‘contribution to the officer’s uniform fund’, it’s an unresolvable conflict of interest.

Could you please clarify this? Sorry i am sure it is a figure of speech but i did not get this genuinely.

Also Silas you sound like a guy who is thinking and i appreciate people with ethos and principles please suggest ways (more specific types of webinars, tutorials related to the hub), how this can be better, please also contact AiB.

I believe during the course of the next week/weeks anyone with good ideas like yours should communicate them and offer suggestions.

johnniecosmos:

Could you please clarify this? Sorry i am sure it is a figure of speech but i did not get this genuinely.

Sorry that was packed with a few too many culturally specific idioms!

I mean I do not think that asserting ‘not a typical paid shill’ has much merit in allaying the conflict of interest. Talk is cheap, money talks.

johnniecosmos:

Also Silas you sound like a guy who is thinking and i appreciate people with ethos and principles please suggest ways, how this can be better, please also contact AiB.

Is this not an appropriate public forum for this discussion? I have suggested some changes in the comments above.

I think only influencers who speak/evangelise/educate on the merits of the Hub and $ATOM in a coherent and not hyperbolic manner should be appointed. I am sure there are respectable and educated individuals among that crowd.

But i do get your points and cannot find a right answer to this i.e. what is better. I think we need to pick some momentum now Stargate is almost here though we need people with influence and people that can spread the news and the message.

I am sure a talented team such as AiB will come up with some great ideas. But i think that any actionable suggestion is important this is why people who care for the hub should offer ideas/suggestions.

I do not think enough people will see these comments. And i personally deem important that as many as possible do.

Here is one suggestion from me based on Hyung’s suggestion:

I think some of the banners could lead to your contributions to the hub that form part of the ATOM2021 initiative Hyung. You should e.g. create some educational stuff to be used by influencers or - alterantively - redirects from banners could get to your content. it should be stuff created for the initiative specifically. I do not know how this could be done but could you coordinate with AiB to this end and explore its viability/discuss with them?

My personal opinion on this proposal, backing up what Dan and JK have stated - having ATOM gain more exposure as an ultimate goal is great. I want that too. But how we get there is very important. Constraints should be placed on the tactics used and measurements we value to ensure that what we desire does not cheapen the long term vision we hold for this.

Hope to see more discussion on this. For those of us who work in the space, we can take the heat. We are used to it. Let’s all hold each other to higher standards.

melea votes on proposal #34 YES https://www.mintscan.io/cosmos/txs/537D811640D16D828E81C330FF8F65CC0E13C20D0DB8B82AD266DD477C0E8362 I explain From my personal point of view as a validator and not as a user, it is a proposal that escapes my understanding and I would vote NO. But as a user of the Atom coin I think it is a good idea, it should be noted that the thinking of a user is upward thinking, it is a trend, so as a user I think it is a great idea. I know that satoshi did not pay for advertising, but it is normal, Bitcoin never needs advertising for being the pioneer. So as a user I think it is a great idea to make Atom known to the world, simply because it is a good product and when they see it they will be interested as it happened to me when I saw the repository on Github for the first time. So, I’m honest, I want to be a good Validator, but I’m learning to be the voice of my delegates to express my vote. It is not my vote, in reality, it is the vote of all my delegates, and that I included in them I am only a small percentage, so I think that my personal opinion should not cover all the voice of my vote, not in this particular proposal. It may be that for…

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I think everyone is aligned with this your point is valid James, but in the light of the proposal passing (types of marketing activity have already been broadly defined and form part of the proposal) we will need to specify which these constraints are going to be in particular against each one of these activities.
We have already addressed some concerns but it would be awesome for all people who have contributed to the conversation to be specific so that AiB addresses these concerns and takes them into consideration.
An example of a constraint is that we should avoid cheap/tacky shilling by random or even influential youtubers for example.

Also, because i deem Selena’s input valuable i forward her post on the proposal’s Github PR here too, it was also forwarded on governance TG a week ago: Hi everyone! Jelena here from Informal Systems. Great initiative. Some suggestions below: It is pretty difficult to discern causality between ATOM price and marketing efforts around ATOM. So, how do you plan to measure audience reach as it relates to token adoption and more specifically token price appreciation? Perhaps this retrospective on the success of the campaign can be concretized within the proposal to be shared with the community at a specific date (i.e. 10 days after the end of the campaign). For example, is the plan to reach current ATOM holders and get them to buy more ATOM? Or is the idea to get new ATOM holders in the ecosystem? Or is it a mixture of both? This plan should start with audiences in mind and from there a plan on how to reach them (i.e. via memes, paid for advertising, etc). The “why” for this campaign should have a falsifiable hypothesis if we are to measure the success of this campaign. Based on discussions in the gov working group telegram chat, it sounds like this campaign is experimental…

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Many thanks Victor for both your vote and support to the community’s initiative.

johnniecosmos:

major youtube thought leaders with a minimum reach of 100k followers and 3500 ATOM each to 7 major Twitter thought leaders with a minimum of 50k followers.

I saw this one, … just because it didn’t mean to be seen

Seriously, thanks for sharing this discussion.
I am following up on things in the cosmos community for some time and I like the initiative to invest on marketing.
Let say that the world of tech can be stranger to the marketing for some … days, months, years ever .
But it is never late at least not for DLT !
JohnnieXmas

As a validator, stakefish has decided to vote no on proposal 34. This is not because there is disagreement on the proposal’s motivations, but it is mainly due to the rushed process, potential conflicts of interest represented, lumped action item controversy, and potential unwanted precedent setting its approval may support. To emphasize, we are aligned with the intent of the campaign for getting more exposure for Cosmos. We have been staunch supporters of the ecosystem very early on and continue to be so. We have supported the ecosystem through our own Cosmos specific grants program, grant.fish , and have been ensuring representation as one of the largest unique validator delegator sets. To reiterate, we want to ensure that due process in community specific governance proposals is respected to the highest degree and that responsible precedent is set to lay the foundation for future governance proposals for what we see as a fascinating and exciting future that is being ushered in with the coming of Stargate. These are the points that we’ve made in prior discussions and have had some time to discuss with the community: • Time for proposal specific discussion • Fund…

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I totally agree that Cosmos needs marketing,
but I disagree with Proposal #34 and I vote no.
I think setting dedicated marketing working group (same as @dan mentioned) is better idea for following reasons.

1. Marketing is endless maintenance, not the one-time promotion. However, I think proposal #34 only focused promotion plan. I do not doubt the importance of promotion, but promotion is usually not so effective without good marketing strategy.

2. For setting and executing marketing strategy, experts are highly required as much as software development. Though community should and could supervise marketing plan and give direction; for planing and execution of marketing, however, it is better idea that we have marketing organization consists with marketing experts, dedicated community members and developers.

3. Moreover, if we want to hire PR agency or marketing agency, it is better idea that in-community (in-house) working group exists. If not, outsourcing failure easily occurs.

Therefore, I think we need to call new proposal for setting marketing working group and its initial budget instead of proposal #34.

Dear Dan, That is a very well thought out response. With many terrific points. At least the community should be satisfied they sparked some conversation about marketing, educating, promoting the Hub’s merits. Again please kindly note this is about the Cosmos Hub. The intention is more exposure for ATOM, Cosmos ecosystem (or even ATOM) may or may not be benefited by it. You keep mentioning the Cosmos ecosystem so i need to stress this out as clearly as possible. I am fully aligned with all your comments about due process and not setting bad precedents and this is an understandable strong disincentive for someone to vote in favour of the proposal. Despite the good cause and good intentions of the community here. I do not know how we could run more proposals to deal with the shortcomings of this one. I mean if the community votes in favour of it we should go ahead that is what the vote is about. so let us be realistic and try and improve some things perhaps? Thus, i think there could still be ways to improve on the existing one as long as such improvements do not deviate from the wording and instructions of the present proposal or place burdens on the members of the…

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Thank you for your feedback Dan, The nr.1 point you keep stressing is the timeliness for discussion of the proposal. Proposal #34 was discussed in the dedicated governance working group for 2 weeks before a draft was put into place. Polls were made to get community feedback on what marketing effort should be prioritized. This lead to the dismissal of several ineffective and cost inefficient solutions. Upon consensus of dozens of participants in the working group, the idea was brought up by the community participants to select a signers committee to oversee the rightful execution of the planned steps. These members are now listed in the proposal as multisig signers. Including very active community validators and delegators that have zero conflict of interest. On the contrary, the signers were selected because of their 4-5 year full time dedication to the Cosmos Hub and ATOM. Upon community consensus 4 areas had the most backing: • Ad & Banner campaign • Influencer campaign • Meme competition • Marketing agency to support all efforts (Capped at max 10% of the total sum requested) Each of these campaigns will be executed primarily by Tendermint. The neutral signers…

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To tell the truth, it is a fact that the place where proposals should be officially discussed is the Cosmos forum. That we prefer to talk informally on telegram before defining the draft is more than fine, but we can’t fragment the communication channels because the teams, following many networks, obviously can’t keep up with what’s going on. As already analyzed by Gavin over the months when he was working on drafting a suggested procedure for this kind of proposal, posting the draft in the forum and waiting a reasonable period of time is one of the essential steps to make a collective and informed decision. I can’t accept that the result of a poll published in 2-3 channels of minor exposure is associated to a decision taken by the totality community of cosmos as well as its delegators, because objectively it is not a realistic comparison. Among other things, the participants who participated in the polls for the most part are anything but marketing experts, so they could, with all good intentions, have made decisions without having enough context. That’s why, instead, having left open the possibility to edit the draft in the forum before its publication would have been…

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Hi sweet Daniela thanks for the points you raise, I will only answer the ones that concern me. The community chose Tendermint so the trust placed on AiB is beyond any doubt at least as far as the community is concerned. A proposal does not bear a prerequisite for pre-voting on it. As explicitly stated above the proposal was a mixture of rough consensus reached among members and voting. I think this proposal had a lengthy and unprecedented deliberation process even unofficial voting on the merits of the proposal (trying to remember one on this or any other chain where this happened). Participation was active and no-one objected to the proposed committee or actions. Trustworthy people in it…Zaki, Jack…not talking about the community members. but anyone with an objection can raise it here. However, The test of this proposal is the on-chain vote. It seems that - so far - delegators and validators agree i.e. 80%. Please also read the responses more carefully, everyone with a healthy mind frame understands Stakefish is entitled to vote as they please and - very honourable of them- they have taken the pain and fully explained the reasons which are totally respected. I actually…

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@johnniecosmos really good points! Appreciate the response and potential plans of action you suggested! I agree that speed is definitely a motivating factor here in how quickly the proposal went out to a vote. Just also want to emphasize the points around sufficient time for discussion that others have brought up. These forums are places we’d like to see open and public communication where the proverbial clock starts ticking when drafts are submitted. But again, agree that we all know that we’re at the mercy of these market cycles! Would definitely love to see a long-term working group established with dedicated resources that represent the gamut of the different entities beyond that of the 3 month window we’ve set here with this proposal. I think the idea of a unified message echoed in solidarity backed by all entities in the Cosmos ecosystem would speak volumes to Cosmos’ rallying together and moving/looking towards the same horizon–especially to those external to Cosmos looking critically at us. I can reach out independently to some of the AiB folks if that’s what you think would be reasonable! Would be great to kick start some conversations for this longer-term working…

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That is an awesome response Dan. Thank you!

dan:

As you are on the governance committee, would it be reasonable as well to have some formalized methods of communication channels with the community?

Can you suggest ways here? Would you again mind speaking with Adriana and/or people you have comms with at AiB please? There are three channels on TG where $ATOM community is particularly strong.

Again thanks for the response and looking forward to the involvement of all in this!

Yep. Shot a message to some AiB members. I will be seeing if we can set up a chat with Adriana as well.

Will see if I can chat with Gitcoin folks to see if we can expedite integration for ATOMs into their quadratic funding product!

This would be very cool.

Here are some initial comments from Chainflow - To begin, thank you for the time, effort and attention you spent drafting this proposal. We feel, in general, that increasing visibility of the Cosmos network is a worthwhile endeavor. That said, allocating funds to marketing campaigns is tricky. It’s easy to spend a lot of money on lots of activities. Yet it’s hard to attain real and measurable results from such activities. At first glance, at least two of the activities, the influencer and meme campaigns don’t resonate well with me. I’m struggling to find the right words. Suffice it to say that I feel these campaigns may not present Cosmos in the most respectable light. It’s a serious project, with lots of potential. My concern is these campaigns may cause some to put Cosmos in the “heavy on marketing, light on form and function” category. The last thing we want is for Cosmos to be viewed as a scam-coin project. I’d also suggest that a campaign of this magnitude should be run by those with significant experience running similar campaigns. While I know and trust at least a few of the approvers, I’m not sure how much experience they have in this area. Suggestions I’d…

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I want to thank everyone in this thread for expressing their feelings. This discussion only makes the Cosmos community stronger.

I would like to echo a few of the sentiments mentioned above.

Going forward it would be nice if:

• Proposals targeted a longer discussion period. Giving everyone in the community ample time to comment. I understand that there was an extenuating circumstance this time.
• Larger requests are broken down into several proposals. So, each action item can be voted on in its own merit.
• Angle proposals to try and engage the broader community vs. core contributors.

Let us vote this proposal down in order to formulate a similar but better proposal.

Daniela 🐾 (catdotfish)

Hope we get monthly updates on this. Thanks

Hi, what is the status? Any updates so far?

We’ve been figuring things out since this passed. We’ve made several payments to various partners to increase our marketing footprint.

Will try and get something more comprehensive in out soon.

A lot of wrangling cats.

keep us posted with this luna mission we all voted for

Thread resurrection, but can anyone point me to where the report of how this turned out is?