Team: Ecosystem [success, development & advoacy]
Operations cycle: #1
Period: Aug 2022 - Oct 2022
Amount: $51200
Destination: Gnosis Safe (Multi-sig Wallet)
Address: 0x387f372284adab1b3E4f3bb1098aD060Aa5C4ADD
Signers:
- Ben - 0x579D7a028634b9d95f3382AC2A20C9F5Bcc99976
- Ashar - 0xf57B7C0025444c069dBfE12417729f22A13a399b
Ecosystem Success, Development & Advocacy:
Out of the estimated 20/30k daily active Web3 developers, it is reasonable to assume a concentration of builders exists within Layer 1 protocol communities. As an infrastructure partner API3 can provide value to these developer communities with a longer-term engagement strategy in mind, whilst supporting the early adoption of dAPIs.
Due to the nature of the API3 DAO and its role in building foundational infrastructure, there is a direct relationship between general Web3 innovation and API3’s place as a facilitator. Leveraging our unqiue position and engaging the growth of the industry with an ecosystem ethos is congruent with the DAOs overall mission and vision.
As such the ecosystem teams’ core mandate is to foster strong and strategic relationships with partners, deliver developer-orientated collateral & activities or provide direct support for dApps looking to use dAPIs through evangelism efforts. Holistically we will also seek to support API3’s presence in the industry.
This proposal represents laying the foundation for ecosystem efforts as API3 reaches key milestones.
What is the ecosystem?
The focus is on-chain ecosystem participants:
- Protocols
- dApps within the protocols
How have ecosystem efforts been delivered so far?
As dAPIs move into production there is a need for API3 to focus on driving more adoption. This shift means a further focus on the development of the ecosystem is now appropriate.
Ben has had a focus on ecosystem activity from within the core marketing team where he has been:
- Co-marketing with API, dApp & protocol partners
- Supporting & networking protocol partners
- Co-marketing with partners to amplify product announcements
- Driving developer advocacy efforts in partner ecosystems
- Introducing dApps from protocol partners to API3’s BD function
- Supporting Enterprise partnership development
- Working with ecosystem partners to support data feed integration requirements
- Raising awareness of and recruiting developers to hackathons/bounties
- Setting up of developer hub & testers guild
Additionally, Ashar Shahid has been supporting initial evangelism efforts since June. The Integrations team has also been assisting in the delivery of PoC’s for the last couple of months in conjunction with the Enterprise BD function.
A focus on adoption, laying Ecosystem foundations & value extraction
Why a focus on developer-first marketing & advocacy?
This proposal focuses on developer-orientated activity, delivering ecosystem activities & marketing to builder communities. Working closely with developer evangelists & partner protocols, I expect efforts in this cycle to take form as:
- Tutorials & guides
- Technical workshops
- Bounty challenges
- Physical meet ups in key cities
- Direct builder education
- Supporting of PoCs / dApps
- Supporting of dApps adopting dAPIs
- Amplifcation of adoption & product launches
- much more
Ideally these activities take form as mutually beneficial efforts produced with protocols that inform, educate and interact with builder communities, with a focus on building trust & driving adoption.
Momentum building of ecosystem activity
To underpin the direction of the ecosystem, we will deliver a vision & priority for these efforts derived from stakeholder objectives, insights from user testing & advisors in API3’s network. This will be clearly defined and supported by UX research.
As touched on above, there has been light re-organization across the DAO. Ashar S & Camron H are shifting to focus on developer evangelist duties, building on their responsibilities as core protocol developers & integrations engineers respectively. Additionally, other DAO participants such as Jacob G & Erich D (to name a few) are independently driving developer-focused engagements.
From an ecosystem perspective, our role would be to support these efforts, raise awareness in partner communities and extract marketing value for API3. Additionally the ‘developer advocacy resource’ is to alleviate the non-technical aspects of evangelism efforts.
These efforts also require relationship management, project management and marketing skills - which is a day-to-day fundamental element of this role. Additionally, proactive planning of ecosystem activity can ensure we are aligned to protocol activity & builder requirements.
How is value realized from an Ecosystem focus?
Short-term value realized by:
- Delivering activities & resources that increase trust & familiarity around API3
- Turning partner dev evangelists into API3 champions
- Proactive & reactive developer evangelism efforts to support early adopters
- Referrals to the business development function
Please see an example:
Delivery of the QRNG workshop with Moonbeams developer relations team
This was organized from an ecosystem marketing perspective, proactive planning and pitching the format of a workshop format to ecosystem partners. Yet the workshop delivery requires technical expertise to deliver educational content directly to builders.
Shortly after Exiled Racers utilized API3 QRNG, with The Damned Pirates Society following suit. General rapport with the Moonbeam team increases, with a handful of introductions facilitated for price feeds since. Additionally, projects on other protocols took note of this adoption with inbound requests noted from BD.
Longer-term value can be realized by:
- Positioning the API3 brand & community as developer-first
- Supporting a developer experience that forms trust and unlocks advocacy
In summary:
Through focusing efforts on engaging our core audience of smart contract engineers we can support longer-term adoption whilst extracting marketing & BD value.
What is the day-to-day of the Ecosystem Team?
If we apply ABM principles to protocol partners with a total addressable market (TAM) of 20k-30k, we can deploy focused marketing tactics across protocols where price feeds are accessible.
Recognizing that developer-focused marketing activity builds affinity with our core target audience, we will seek to drive a program of work that;
- Supports & builds credibility with ecosystem partners
- Delivers developer-focused materials, activities & engagements
- Extracts marketing & business development value via developer-focused activities
- Validate and manage the delivery of co-marketing activities within the ecosystem
- Engagement & manages dApp interactions that require developer evangelism resources
- Plan & deliver developer evangelism efforts, whilst aligning & driving awareness with partner ecosystems
- Example: Product design support for a PoC or Demo Project, project management of activities (SoW, development planning), driving of awareness
- Raise the profiles of API3 developer evangelists
- Directly engages & educates grassroots Web3 engineering communities: engagement of hackathon participants & Web2/Web3 developer evangelists, educational sessions to university cohorts, builder engagement at conferences
We are already seeing a requirement for the facilitation of the above. As we gain further momentum it seems clear that this scope of work will further expand, particularly if API3 is to run future hackathons.
An element within this role will be correctly assigning ecosystem enquries or opportunites to the correct internal DAO participants.
How does this differ from Marketing?
The core marketing teams efforts are focused on bringing awareness to the API3 project as a whole, with an emphasis on content production, channel management, community management and the API3 website. These efforts take a holistic view on API3 and all our audiences.
Activity that involves protocol partners or is focused on Web3 builders will be led and organized by this team. It would be expected that any wider marketing activities that are relevant to protocol engagement would be communicated internally in appropriate ways for strategic alignment.
Ecosysem outreach & future suppport of the API3 incubator
Midhav will be facilitating proactive engagements of developer communities seeking qualified meetings with hackathon participants, blockchain university cohorts members, evangelists or external incubator participants. The core purpose of these efforts is the direct education of grassroots builders and supporting attendance or awareness of API3 ecosystem activities.
For example if a meetup planned in London Midhav would target London focused developer communities to support attendance, if it is an online workshop on ‘How Oracles can help you win your next hackathon’ Midhav would focus on engagement of hackathon participants.
If these engagements are delivered towards the end of the cycle we should have engaged 24 qualified grass roots teams or influencers. Whilst the focus is on uncovering short term opportunities for the DAO around adoption of dAPIs, starting these engagements could support awareness of the API3 Incubator later in the year.
Other considerations:
- To gain momentum and network effects there would need to be a initial focus on North America, EMEA and India/Dubai/Thailand. We see the LATAMs team’s efforts as complimentary and would support when needed as well as align on activities when logical.
- The Ecosystem would support the introduction of credits to protocols when ready.
- There would be the intention to grow the team in a future cycle depending on results in shown the initial months and/or increases ecosystem demand as data feed access scales.
- In regards to reporting I will be setting OKRs aligned to the deliverables outlined in the proposal, updating regularly vs these.
- Potential metrics:
- Leads generated via partnerships
- User onboarding experience rating
- Optimisation of time to value (TTV)
- Increasing revenue per user
- Channel growth
Team structure
Ben FT - Ecosystem Lead - $6000 pm
- Strategy & planning
- Proactive & reactive partner management
- Supporting BD activity
- Ecosystem marketing & development
- Manage developer-hub & partner portals
- Project management of evangelist activity
A more detailed breakdown of the ecosystem lead role can be seen here: Ecosystem Lead Job Spec - Google Docs
Midhav PT - Ecosystem Development Executive - $1500 pm + incentive
- Engaging blockchain cohorts, hackathon participants, dev evangelists & other grassroots dev communities
- Outreach to support the attendance ecosystem events
- Support set up of events
- Coordination of early stage dapps for the incubator
Incentive structure -
- target of 8 qualified meets per month
- Meeting booking incentive of $50 per qualified meeting, if the target of 8 is met all meets are boosted to $100, capped at 10 per month
This structure is inteded to enable Midhav to work autonomously but focus on these outputs
Midhav will have support by a) having appropriate educational materials b) resources to reach these communities organically c) support on outreach strategy & surrounding processes
Resource requested
| Grants | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 18000 | Ben | 6000 | pm |
| 7500 | Midhav | 1500 + Incentive | pm |
| 25500 | TOTAL |
*dependency on evangelist resource
*dependency on creative & content production resource
| CORE BUDGET | RESOURCE REQUEST | FURTHER BREAKDOWN |
|---|---|---|
| EVANGLISM SUPPORT | ||
| 3000 | Support demo projects & PoCs | |
| E.g resource for front-design design/development | ||
| 5000 | Strategic bounty initiatives | |
| Challenges around docs to support testing | ||
| Bounties associated to workshop challenges | ||
| Supporting exposure to hackathons - short term EthLisbon / EthBerlin, as well as exploration of EthGlobal | ||
| Hot wallet | Potential further bounties should workshop series gain traction | |
| 2500 | Incentivize user testing, potential use of UX Researcher | |
| 10500 | TOTAL | |
| ECOSYSTEM MARKETING | ||
| Creation of tutorials/guides/workshops, bounties & support for direct engagements | ||
| 1000 | Set up of platform to house content | |
| 1000 | Video editing & animation | |
| 1000 | Support for education material creation | |
| Amplification of evangelism efforts to builder communities | ||
| 2000 | LobsterDAO / BanklessDAO | |
| 3000 | Defiant / dApp Radar (newsletter banner placement) | |
| 1200 | Placement on PolygonScan with 100k impressions | |
| End of cycle 1 - mini-API3 hackathon | ||
| 1500 | Basic access to Devpost @ $1500pm | |
| 1500 | Other (potential venue hire, travel, tooling costs etc.) | |
| 2500 | Building a presence at Polygon Connect events | |
| 500 | Tooling for ecosystem marketing | SendGrid, Whimsical |
| 15200 | TOTAL | |
| 25700 | ECOSYSTEM RESOURCE TOTAL |
Grants = $25500
Ecosystem resource = $25700
Total request = $51200
Any funds not utilized will be brought over to the following cycle.
-– END OF PROPOSAL—