Dapp WG Season 3 Proposal

Dapp
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Another Season of Dapp is here! The Dapp is here to focus on building, promoting and managing the overall success of the giveth.io Donation Application. Our primary focus is Donors and Projects and making sure they have great experiences interacting with Giveth.

The Dapp WG is heavily involved in many general aspects of Giveth such as website maintenance, marketing, communications, community building, user/donor/project support, platform moderation, and feature building.

You can check out our previous Season proposal here.

S2 Review

Core Metrics :star2:

Metric Target Actual
Season Total Donation Volume $70,000 $281,509.69
Season Total New Verified Projects 70 55

We blew past our goal of Total Donation Volume goal by 402%! This was mostly thanks to the Polygon QF Round which brought in $203,000 in donations during the round ($160,000 eligible for matching).

Outside of QF eligible donations made during the Polygon, MetaPool and part of the Giving Season QF rounds the Dapp brought in $64,585.20 of donations (as of March 18).

Sadly we did not meet our target of on-boarding 70 verified projects (at time of posting), we will be improving our Community efforts in this coming Season by bringing in more Community focused contributors.

Deliverables

Deliverable Status Description
Complete Superfluid Integration :x: FAILED Superfluid is still in development, reaching the final stages with QA starting now. Expecting release by the end of the month.
Complete Solana Integration DONE! :white_check_mark: Solana Integration was completed end of January
Begin email service migration DONE! :white_check_mark: Email Service migration was completed last week of February, working through some post MVP issues to improve the service, thanks to hard work by @ramramez
Specification & development of paid partnerships/grants eligible integrations or features DONE! :white_check_mark: We delivered the Arbitrum Integration in record time!
Hire a Marketing Expert DONE! :white_check_mark: We hired two Marketing focused contributors, Kareem & Denitsa into the Giveth Galaxy
Host Community call/Townhall events DONE! :white_check_mark: Hosted 3 townhall using the new format & templates provided by @WhyldWanderer !
Simplified Meet the Maker Interviews & content creation PARTIAL COMPLETION :warning: No new content of project interviews were created during the last season, but we did publish 5 interviews on Twitter this season that were captured previously.
User Support for Donors and Project Owners via Discord and Telegram DONE! :white_check_mark: Giantkin introduced a ticketing system making user support much easier to manage. Devs, PMs & project support team all chip-in to provide user support.
Communications of Giveth updates & community events via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Instagram DONE! :white_check_mark: @OyeAlmond & @missgene always providing updates across all channels, now also on Farcaster!
Outreach Campaign to onboard projects to Giveth PARTIAL COMPLETION :warning: @NikolaCreatrix took the initiative to onboard Gitcoin projects to Giveth using several strategies, we onboarded a few projects as a result of her efforts. However the Campaign aspect was not well defined and not very successful.
Giveth Monthly Newsletter Emails DONE! :white_check_mark: @anamarija09 prepares monthly newsletter with support from @aabugosh & the comms team
Monthly X spaces (3 for the Season) to provide external Giveth updates & spotlights for industry professionals. PARTIAL COMPLETION :warning: Two X spaces completed, but with ETH Denver happening during the end of Feb we lost the opportunity to do one each month and doing them more than once a month is too frequent.
Monitor services, servers & security of the Dapp and resolve incidents DONE! :white_check_mark: Huge upgrades to our monitoring and site reliability with focused work from all corners of the Development & DevOps team.
Moderation & non-user support in Discord & Telegram PARTIAL COMPLETION :warning: We haven’t done much with Telegram, the channels have all been turned off, save the announcements channel, needs a dedicated community person. Discord support & moderation always top game thanks to @Giantkin , @WhyldWanderer & @NikolaCreatrix
Project verification & listing DONE! :white_check_mark: @WhyldWanderer & @NikolaCreatrix are steadfast project reviewers, also onboarding @anamarija09 to help lighten the load.

Spending

:heavy_dollar_sign:Breakdown Estimated S2 Cost Actual Cost
Comms, Community & Marketing $47,550 $38,995
Design $12,550 $16,953
Development + DevOps $68,150 $112,329
Product $18,550 $18,210
Services $3,400 $7,223.94
Total $150,200 $193,710.94

Some notable spending:

Comms, Community & Marketing was 17% LESS than the projected budget, this was due to our marketing hires only coming through halfway through the Season.

Design was 35% OVER from 2 factors

Development & DevOps was 39% OVER from these unexpected factors:

  • Needed to overhaul donation verification and overall dapp stability.
  • Arbitrum Integration happened.
  • Superfluid is a much bigger feature than estimated.

Product spending was pretty much on target.

Our spending on Services was 212% OVER the projected budget, this was due to many services, software & subscriptions we have been paying for not properly audited and thus not captured in the previous Season’s estimations.

Season 3 Deliverables & Budget

There are 3 possible scopes that DAO Ops can take in the coming Season, each with different deliverables 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

What we will do :white_check_mark:

Deliverables

Feature Development

  • Build new Referral Program
  • Endaoment Integration
  • Project Attestation System - Decentralizing Verification
  • Specification & development of paid partnerships/grants eligible integrations or features

Comms, Marketing & Community Building

  • GIVnews monthly newsletters
  • Implement new Email strategies for user journeys in Ortto
  • Meet the Makers project interviews, published to social media channels
  • Launch another Ambassador Program season
  • Hire a Community Builder Lead
  • Communications of Giveth updates & community events via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Instagram
  • Host Townhalls monthly
  • 3 more Twitter/X space GIVtalks with guests speakers
  • Giveth Impact Report publications

Ops

  • Monitor services, servers & security of the Dapp and resolve incidents
  • Moderation & non-user support in Discord
  • Project verification & listing

Core Metrics :star2:

Donation Volume: $150,000

New Verified Projects: 50

Additional Metrics :first_quarter_moon_with_face:

  • Increase number of new user donations by 10% per month
  • Increase donations from emails to over 20 per month
  • Increase donations from search engines to over 100 per month
  • Season total new donors donation volume: $15,000
:heavy_dollar_sign: Breakdown Estimated S3 Cost
Comms, Marketing & Community $48210
Development & DevOps $125,700
Product $24,512
Design $11,810
Services $7,734.99
Total $217,966.99

SUSTAIN

What we will do :white_check_mark:

Feature Development

  • Endaoment Integration
  • Project Attestation System - Decentralizing Verification
  • Specification & development of paid partnerships/grants eligible integrations or features

Comms, Marketing & Community Building

  • GIVnews monthly newsletters
  • Implement new Email strategies for user journeys in Ortto
  • Meet the Makers project interviews, published to social media channels
  • Hire a Community Builder Lead
  • Review & Improvement of SEO
  • Communications of Giveth updates & community events via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Instagram
  • Host Townhalls monthly
  • 3 more Twitter/X space GIVtalks with guests speakers
  • Giveth Impact Report publications

Ops

  • Monitor services, servers & security of the Dapp and resolve incidents
  • Moderation & non-user support in Discord
  • Project verification & listing

What we won’t do :x:

  • Launch another Ambassador Program season
  • Build new Referral Program

Core Metrics :star2:

Donation Volume: $100,000

New Verified Projects: 30

Additional Metrics :first_quarter_moon_with_face:

  • Increase number of new user donations by 10% per month
  • Increase donations from emails to over 20 per month
  • Increase donations from search engines to over 100 per month
  • Season total new donors donation volume: $10,000
:heavy_dollar_sign: Breakdown Estimated S3 Cost
Comms, Marketing & Community $40,400
Development & DevOps $106,920
Product $15780
Design $9000
Services $7,734.99
Total $179,834.99

SHRINK

What we will do :white_check_mark:

Feature Development

  • Specification & development of paid partnerships/grants eligible integrations or features

Comms, Marketing & Community Building

  • GIVnews monthly newsletters
  • Implement new Email strategies for user journeys in Ortto
  • Communications of Giveth updates & community events via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Instagram
  • Host Townhalls monthly

Ops

  • Monitor services, servers & security of the Dapp and resolve incidents
  • Moderation & non-user support in Discord
  • Project verification & listing

What we won’t do :x:

  • Giveth Impact Report publications
  • Review & Improvement of SEO
  • 3 more Twitter/X space GIVtalks with guests speakers
  • Meet the Makers project interviews, published to social media channels
  • Hire a Community Builder Lead
  • Project Attestation System - Decentralizing Verification
  • Endaoment Integration
  • Launch another Ambassador Program season
  • Build new Referral Program

Core Metrics :star2:

Donation Volume: $50,000

New Verified Projects: 20

Additional Metrics :first_quarter_moon_with_face:

  • Increase number of new user donations by 5% per month
  • Increase donations from emails to over 15 per month
  • Increase donations from search engines to over 20 per month
  • Season total new donors donation volume: $5,000
:heavy_dollar_sign: Breakdown Estimated S3 Cost
Comms, Marketing & Community $37,880
Development & DevOps $66,000
Product $12,520
Design $3,500
Services $7,734.99
Total $127,634.99

Next Steps

This proposal will remain for advice process until all other eligible Working Groups have posted their Working Group Proposals and minimum advice process (5 days) has been met for them.

A single Snapshot vote :zap: will be created to decide the final priorities and budgets for all Working Groups for Season 3. Keep an eye out for it!

Thank you

@MoeNick @karmaticacid @Griff @MoeShehab @geleeroyale @Nicolas @NikolaCreatrix @WhyldWanderer @Giantkin @anamarija09 @aabugosh @OyeAlmond @missgene @amin @Kratijain @Cherik @ramramez @renjer @cquinterom096 @mateodaza @alireza7612 @maryam.jafarymehr @Tossynee @msaeedi @rodri_castillo @Stee @JakeS @marthendalnunes

for all your hard work during Dapp Season 2!

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Hey, Thanks @mitch for creating this one, I have some questions.

  • Why did you conclude that the “Product spending was pretty much on target”?
  • You said “Sadly we did not meet our target of onboarding 70 verified projects” But I can see a :white_check_mark: beside Project verification & listing in the table.
  • What’s your method for setting up these core metrics? can you explain it more?
  • Does “Build a new Referral Program” need resources? I mean it also has some reward costs. How does it affect the proposed budgeting? What needs to be done to call it done?
  • I don’t know what the Endaoment integration is and what value it may have., can you share some links if it’s a grant or if you already engaged some team members?

After these questions, I love to have some marketing moves around the DApp, I could not find any specific move around what you proposed.
For example, I suggest analytics tools, user questionnaires, and doing some
market research for reaching niche markets.

the third point is we should be a little bit worried about tech debts, The impact-graph is turning 4 years old and we eventually should call it legacy code. If I were a decision-maker I’d put some budget into renovating the code and leveraging the auto-test coverage.

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I’ll answer your questions in order:

If you look at the Spending here you can see we’re only a few percentage points off the estimated product spend we established at the beginning of S2

Good catch! While we did do the work around project verification & listing we didn’t onboard as many verified projects as we had hoped. So the way I think of it is that the project verification team did their job but something failed on the part of our community/comms/marketing in that we didn’t reach our KPI of onboarding projects.

The core metrics I usually use existing data from previous months or Seasons to estimate what we could reasonably hit. Once I have an estimate I usually converse with the dapp team to set our goals - this happened in our Dapp Season 2 halfway call that was around end of Feb. I also take into consider things like QF rounds .

yes it needs resources and lots of product research to understand our expectations from the Referral Program. Perhaps the wording could be different such as "begin research on new referral program.

We don’t have a DOD yet, but we could assume that it does everything that the previous referral program could do.

The Endaoment Integration hope to replace our Giving Block integration adding potentially up to 7000 non-profits that could be donated to on the Giveth UI. Here are some more details on this one: Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

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I think that we do need quite some comms/marketing around Giveth in general (and I’m trying to push this as lot for the GIVeconomy side), but some things on the list, even on “sustain” I’m wondering if they are creating the impact we want:

  1. Have we been able to correlate any increase on donations or other activity as a result of the meet the makers series?
  2. What is the goal of the Community Builder Role? What are they supposed to be doing?
  3. What about setting perhaps a specific budget around influencer marketing?

Anyway, these are nuances. I do hope that we be flexible around the activity of the marketing team, and try to optimize for impact.

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These are great questions!

I was looking forward to having more direction from the Marketing, Comms chapter by hiring a senior Marketing person, but that hasn’t panned out yet. I don’t pretend to be a marcomms expert so I need that strategist to inform what our initiatives should be in improving the main KPIs of the WG - donation volume and verified projects onboarded.

Currently the meet the makers didn’t do much work in the last season and this season is yet to be seen, mostly it provides us with ways to engage with our projects and provide social media content. That’s a great question to see if they correlate to overall benefiting the platform and until we put some effort into it and define tracking methods I couldn’t give you a good answer.

The community builder role would take over many tasks @WhyldWanderer and @OyeAlmond had been doing before @OyeAlmond moved into leading comms. Some interesting items such as managing a TG group, creating an Ambassador program, generally strategizing better ways to interface with our community members on Discord etc… generally there’s been a lack of strategy in community building and I hoped to fill that role.

The influencer idea has been broached several times in the comms chapter and generally there is no appetite for it.

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