Dapp Season 6 Proposal

The Dapp is here for another round! The Dapp WG focuses on the experiences of donors and project owners using Giveth to donate and raise funds! We also facilitate general communications, marketing, community, moderation and DevOps needs for the Giveth organization. The Dapp working group is the foundation for all of Giveth’s other products, features and initiatives.

Season 5 Retrospective

The DAO voted to give higher priorities to other Working Groups (notably Fundraising) from Season 5, so the scope of the Dapp was minimal, however we still got some stuff done!

You can check out the previous season proposal here.

Deliverables Update

Deliverable Status Notes
Integrate new networks based on grants we win Complete :white_check_mark: We did not win any grants to integrate new networks in Season 5.
Stop distribution of $nice tokens Complete :white_check_mark: We stopped the bi-weekly distribution of $nice tokens on December 24, at the end of GIVbacks round 78.
We announced it on Discord, removed relevant UI elements and updated our documentation.
Monthly Townhalls Complete :white_check_mark: Hosted 3 monthly townhalls, even managed to pull one off during the holiday madness
2 GIVtalks with Partners and aligned communities Complete :white_check_mark: We hosted 2 GIVtalks, one with DevCon Team Lead, Skylar and another with Griff & Lauren for a 2024 recap of Giveth. Recording are available on GIVtalk Spotify podcast (rate us 5 stars :star: :grin:)
Monthly GIVnews newsletters Complete :white_check_mark: Published 3 monthly newsletters, can view them all on Giveth News
At least 1 Impact Reports published Complete :white_check_mark: Published year-end recap of numbers and Impact report of Round 73 on Twitter
Giveth Verifier onboarding process is operational Complete :white_check_mark: Working with Nikola and Ashley we designed a process for onboarding vetted community members to become Giveth Verifiers, however interest in the program has been minimal.
Implement a Farcaster content strategy, schedule content and maintaining the platform with the objective of getting more website visits and extending the Giveth community Complete :white_check_mark: We Implemented regular posting of content on the Farcaster platform, including engagement of farcaster super-users, growing the giveth channel and user as well as improving our FarScore.
Platform Moderation & User Support Complete :white_check_mark: Community Support team banned scammers. Guided donors and project owners through support tickets and facilitated meaningful discussions throughout our Discord.

We assisted and resolved ~50 support tickets.
GIVbacks Eligibility Application Review & Project Listing Complete :white_check_mark: Project Verification team reviewed applications and new projects. Listing 110 new projects and added 17 GIVbacks eligible projects to the Dapp
Checking DeVouch & updating projects’ Vouched status Complete :white_check_mark: Project Verification team checked and update projects’ status based on vouches from Giveth Verifiers. 3 Projects have received the new Vouched status.
Monitor services, servers & security of the Dapp and resolve incidents Complete :white_check_mark: devOps team tracked resource consumption of our app and infrastructure regularly.

We merged vercel accounts with GM, saving on our costs, addressed resource consumption issues with our staging deployment and devouch deployments.

In addition they researched new RPC infrastructure to improve the responsiveness of the Dapp
Ambassador Program S3 IN PROGRESS :construction: 4 Ambassadors fully onboarded & 12 quests submitted.
Mint Giveth NFTs on Zora Done :white_check_mark: 76 mints on 3 separate collections launched and distributed via Farcaster.
Google Ads Campaign Failed :x: We tried to run a campaign but were rejected by google since we could not provide a DUNS number or business registration number.

We were preparing a Twitter ads campaign but based on stakeholder feedback it was decided a better use of resources would be to run a GIV token/GIVeconomy focused campaign.

Metrics Review

Metric Estimated Actual
GIVbacks Eligible Donation Volume $50,000 $353,438.06
Recurring Donation Volume $1,000 $1,254.31
Newly Verified Projects 40 17
Ambassador Quests completed 15 12

Spending

The DApp worked within the Shrink scope for the duration of Season 6, with a budget of $77,000 + ~$5,000 of extra community building initiatives that was negotiated post voting results. This would bring us to an estimated $82,000 budget for Season 5.

Total salary spending on the DApp during Season 5 came out to 99,797.80, with an additional ~$3,600 spent on infrastructure costs. However, of those numbers:

This brings our number of “manageable spending” down to $86,297.80, only 5.2% over the planned DApp budget.

Item Estimated Actual
Performance & Maintenance $42,000 $30,089.03
Decentralized Verification We didn’t budget for it :sweat_smile: $14,157.88 :scream:
Comms, Community & Marketing $17,000 $21,689.48
Operations $11,000 $13,509.52
Software, Servers & Subscriptions $7,000 $3,600
Ambassador Program $5,100 $3,251.89
Total $82,100 $86,297.80

Season 5 Insights:

Decentralized Verification needs some love. Overall the numbers of engagement from onboarding new Giveth Verifiers and active attestations from Giveth Verifiers has been rather dismal. We’ve onboarded 0 new Verifiers and a mere 60 attestations (at time of writing) have been made by current Giveth Verifiers to projects on Giveth.

Donors want a cart of projects! From the results of the Donor Survey the #1 most requested feature is to make multiple donations at once on the Dapp, especially around QF rounds.

Recurring Donations are still not getting much action. Only $1300 worth of donations was made using recurring donations in Season 5. From the donor survey we learned that:

  • 35% of respondants didn’t even know the feature existed!
  • combined ~59% of respondants don’t seem interested in donating recurringly.

We’re bringing recurring donations to Base as part of a collaboration with Superfluid and we hope this brings more attention to the feature. We think however further improvements can be made to the user experience.

Season 6 Overview

In this section we’ll cover our plans for the upcoming Season with a duration of 4 months until May 1st, 2025! We’ll cover initiatives we’re proposing to execute and breakdowns of specific deliverables, budget and targets to reach by the end of Season 6!

Donation Handler Smart Contract :heart_hands:

This smart contract would sit in-between donors and project wallets. All donations on Giveth would pass through this donation handler and allow us to pass in any custom logic on top of donation made on Giveth in an on-chain and transparent way. A Donation Handler Contract would open the path up for the following:

  • Bundle optional donations to Giveth along with principal donations in a single tx
  • Cart of Projects
  • Donation API
  • On-chain metrics from donation volume for fundraising opportunities
  • Simplified way to verify donation transactions in our DB (no more missed donations)
  • AI Agent based interactions and funding mechanisms

This feature only includes the development of the smart contract and plugging it into our current donation flow for Ethereum transactions, without any costs included for a professional security audit. Success Criteria Includes:

  • Reduce total Dev, Support and PM time spent on reporting and investigating missing donations and inserting donations manually to less than 1 hour total for Season 7. (Season 4 was around ~20 hours).
  • Donations to projects can be made outside of Giveth UI, through smart contract, and are registered in our database.
  • AI Agents can interact with Donation Handler smart contract, permissionlessly making donations to projects on Giveth.

Bitcoin Donations :heavy_dollar_sign:

Following the integration of Stellar, we have most of the user experience setup to handle adding Bitcoin as an elegible network/token to make donations in. This feature would integrate Bitcoin allowing donors to make donations in, and projects to receive Bitcoin! Bitcoin holds about 56% of the total crypto market cap, opening Giveth up to new audiences and donors. Success criteria includes:

  • Achieve $10,000 in donations on Bitcoin by end of Season 7.
  • 5% of Bitcoin donation volume are donations to the Giveth project.

Recurring Donations UX Modifications :arrows_counterclockwise:

Recurring Donations have not been performing well since launch, This initiative would explore improving the UX, incentivizing more users to try out and ultimately fall in love with this feature we spent ~7 months building. Success criteria includes:

  • Achieve $10,000 of donations made with recurring donations feature by end of Season 7
  • Recurring Donations comprise 10% of total donation volume through Giveth

Migrate Giveth docs to Notion :memo:

The current documentation portal is increasingly hard to maintain and organize. Editing, updating and translating the docs requires someone with developer skills and customizing its appearance and organization is complex and time-consuming. This initiative proposes to migrate the docs to Notion pages and beautifying it with a wrapper like https://super.so/. This will allow anyone to easily update and organize the docs with ease and flexibility, allowing Giveth to have updated and well-organized documentation. Success criteria could include:

  • User satisfaction above 80% on documentation portal through in-app survey, based on readability, ease of navigation and relevancy.

Rework Decentralized Verification :face_with_monocle:

We launched Decentralized Verification following up from finishing building DeVouch. This feature allows top tier Givethers and ecosystem experts to vouch for projects on Giveth, giving legitimate, non-public goods projects access to the benefits of GIVpower.

Traction has been sluggish on this new feature but we believe deeply that the project verification project should be decentralized, gaining more insights from the ecosystem on trustworthy and impactful projects. Reworking the program entails making minor to medium sized tweaks in marketing, community building and product aspects of the system. Success for this feature might look like:

  • Total Decentralized Verification eligible vouches surpasses 250 during Season 6

Proposed Scopes :microscope:

There are 3 possible scopes that Dapp WG can take in the coming Season, each with different deliverables, metrics and budget. The Season Snapshot vote will dictate the scope of this working group, depending on it’s signaled priority amongst other working groups, as decided by the Giveth DAO.

Grow :arrow_upper_right:

What we will do :white_check_mark:

Feature Development

  • Donation Handler Smart Contract
  • Recurring Donation UX modifications
  • Bitcoin Donations
  • Rework Decentralized Verification Program
  • Integrate new networks, deliver products and/or features based on grant requirements that we win

Community, Marketing & Communications

  • Migrate Docs to Notion
  • Monthly Newsletters
  • Monthly Townhalls
  • 4 GIVtalks

Operations

  • Platform Moderation & User Support
  • GIVbacks Eligibility Application Review & Project Listing
  • Checking DeVouch & updating projects’ Vouched status
  • Monitor services, servers & security of the Dapp and resolve incidents

Metrics :star2:

  • GIVbacks Eligible Donation Volume: $180,000
  • Recurring Donation Volume: $2,000
  • Verified Projects: 60
  • Decentralized Verification Vouches: 250

Budget :moneybag:

Item Estimated Cost
Donation Handler Smart Contract (no audit) $8,500
Bitcoin Donations $7,600
Recurring Donations UX Imp. $5,100
Rework Decentralized Verification $5,500
Migrate Docs to Notion $1,500
Performance & Maintenance $33,000
Comms, Community & Marketing $23,000
Operations $15,000
Software, Servers & Subscriptions $4,500
Total $103,700

Sustain :arrow_right:

What we will do :white_check_mark:

Feature Development

  • Donation Handler Smart Contract
  • Integrate new networks, deliver products and/or features based on grant requirements that we win
  • Rework Decentralized Verification Program

Community, Marketing & Communications

  • Migrate Docs to Notion
  • Monthly Newsletters
  • Monthly Townhalls
  • 3 GIVtalks

Operations

  • Platform Moderation & User Support
  • GIVbacks Eligibility Application Review & Project Listing
  • Checking DeVouch & updating projects’ Vouched status
  • Monitor services, servers & security of the Dapp and resolve incidents

What we won’t do :x:

  • Recurring Donation UX modifications
  • Bitcoin Donations

Metrics :star2:

  • GIVbacks Eligible Donation Volume: $100,000
  • Recurring Donation Volume: $1,500
  • Verified Projects: 30
  • Vouches from Giveth Verifiers: 120

Budget :moneybag:

Item Estimated Cost
Donation Handler Smart Contract (no audit) $8,500
Rework Decentralized Verification $5,500
Migrate Docs to Notion $1,500
Performance & Maintenance $33,000
Comms, Community & Marketing $21,000
Operations $15,000
Software, Servers & Subscriptions $4,500
Total $89,000

Shrink :arrow_lower_right:

What we will do :white_check_mark:

Feature Development

  • Integrate new networks, deliver products and/or features based on grant requirements that we win

Community, Marketing & Communications

  • Migrate Docs to Notion
  • Monthly Newsletters
  • Monthly Townhalls
  • 2 GIVtalks

Operations

  • Platform Moderation & User Support
  • GIVbacks Eligibility Application Review & Project Listing
  • Checking DeVouch & updating projects’ Vouched status
  • Monitor services, servers & security of the Dapp and resolve incidents

What we won’t do :x:

  • Recurring Donation UX modifications
  • Bitcoin Donations
  • Donation Handler Smart Contract
  • Rework Decentralized Verification Program

Metrics :star2:

  • GIVbacks Eligible Donation Volume: $80,000
  • Recurring Donation Volume: $1,200
  • Verified Projects: 20
  • Vouches from Giveth Verifiers: 20

Budget :moneybag:

Item Estimated Cost
Migrate Docs to Notion $1,500
Performance & Maintenance $29,000
Comms, Community & Marketing $20,000
Operations $15,000
Software, Servers & Subscriptions $4,500
Total $70,000

Next Steps

This forum post will remain up and open for advice until all other Working Groups Proposals entering this Season have met minimum advice process. After that we will move to a Snapshot vote to decide the priorities of the Giveth DAO for the next 4 months (until April 30).

When we have the outcome of the Snapshot vote we will meet as DAO Stewards to finalize the scopes of all WGs based on the available Season budget.

4 Likes

Not buying that AI Agents will have an easier time donating to Giveth if there are smart contracts… if we can deliver an API for them, that would be the optimal solution for that problem.

Also, I am skeptical that the transition to a donation handler will be that cheap.

RE: BTC only in Grow

Screenshot 2025-01-20 at 11.11.06 AM

Over 1/2 of crypto’s marketcap is in BTC

Crypto = BTC to most people

Over 25% of The Giving Block’s donations come from BTC

Endaoment also has BTC addresses for their projects, so we instantly could have 1000’s of addresses for BTC if that integration can happen.

In fact, Bitcoin is about 2/3rd of the donations on Endaoment staggering

I strongly believe this feature should be prioritized over all other features.

3 Likes

Those are fair points regarding BTC, I can consider doing BTC integration as a priority if the DAO votes with enough favour to make it happen.

To clarify your point though regarding the Donation Handler - The smart contract IS the API. We can spend a bunch of time making separate APIs for our centralized back-end all day, but I think the big brain move forward is to make a smart contract that makes us less reliant on centralized back-ends and leverages the blockchain as THE decentralized, immutable, uncensorable back-end for making donations on Giveth.

If we can deliver a smart contract that acts as an on-chain API endpoint AND sets us up for all these other features I think that is better spend vs. making a traditional API endpoint allowing external entities to insert donations into our database.

1 Like

I gotta agree with Griff here. I think it’s really important we add BTC donations. IMO, I think we’ve needed this for years. Opens us up to a whole other ecosystem of donors with major capital now.

1 Like

@mitch - major praise to your for putting together such a beautifully clear and well thought-out proposal. I love the overview & breakdown of the proposed products at the top and the cleanliness then of the lists of deliverables in each proposal.

Some thoughts on the BTC v donation handler concept - I’m a little wary about the scope creep on the donation handler. I think it’s an awesome feature that would be a big unlock, but it’s hard to believe that we could do it all in $8,500.

Along with what @hanners717 & @Griff are saying, I do think that Bitcoin is a nice feature, but there is one critical thing missing… Marketing. I’m not convinced that integrating Bitcoin would be such a splash unless we are thoughtful & coordinated around the community building, content creation & general Bitcoin-group infiltration…

What if instead of doing all the dev work there, we tried to rally some marketing & community building efforts around Solana as a proof-of-concept. Solana has a pretty massive community, but I don’t really see their users flocking to Giveth… and I worry that Bitcoin would be the same story unless we build out this critical aspect of its launch (marketing) that we did the bare minimum of for other chains.

Or, perhaps we could scope out the plan for marketing & community building around a Bitcoin integration and agree that it’s something we can do, before starting the dev work.

In general, in the dapp proposal here I see a lot of great focus on feature development & improvements, but really scant marketing plants beyond a sort-of maintenance.

1 Like

This is great feedback in general,

Regarding the donation handler I perhaps miswrote somethings in the feature description that are unclear. The $8500 is only to write and implement the contract for just making single donations on the app. That is not including the cart of donations, API, Agents or any of that. However it UNLOCKS the path to all the aforementioned capabilities.

This would mean no design or FE work, pure back-end and smart contracts. Honestly AI can write a smart contract for this with one good prompt and some tweaking.

Regarding marketing - this is also very valid, we integrated Solana network and honestly it’s been pretty flat, not a lot of our audience is on Solana. For the #5 coin by MC (well played XRP) we don’t see the action one might expect.

I assume if we did go for Bitcoin integration we would need to concurrently develop the marketing plan you suggest to make sure it’s a success.

In general we didn’t put much effort into marketing deliverables since there came some pressure from key stakeholders to focus our marketing resources around the GIVeconomy and GIV token.