Team: Ecosystem development & advocacy
Operations cycle: #2
Period: Nov 2022 - Feb 2023
Amount: $42700
Destination: Gnosis Safe (Multi-sig Wallet)
Address: 0x387f372284adab1b3E4f3bb1098aD060Aa5C4ADD
Signers:
- Ben - 0x579D7a028634b9d95f3382AC2A20C9F5Bcc99976
- Ashar - 0xf57B7C0025444c069dBfE12417729f22A13a399b
- Jacob - 0xa3a413d7536f28c811518649b1c93d5d25fcb790
Summary:
In regards to the overall strategy of the ecosystem team, there are no major changes to that outlined in proposal #1. I still believe long-term value can be realized by supporting the creation and driving awareness of developer-orientated activities to partner communities.
Changes to the product roadmap and introduction of OEV mean the team will go into planning mode around the service, cooling down awareness-driving efforts instead nurturing relationships formed in the prior cycle. By redelivering the materials created in cycle #1 I expect we can still increase awareness around Airnode, ChainAPI & QRNG whilst switching the material creation focus to price feeds & OEV.
This will be supplemented by the production of reactive technical guides, supporting the guide migration efforts and exploring bounty initiatives. Within this cycle, Jacob will be focused on core technology development and supporting the delivery of the OEV project ensuring knowledge transfer into relevant collateral.
Additionally, due to the proposal voting sequence concluding towards the end of Nov I have decided to shift this to a 4-month period. As a two-person team, it seems logical to maximize the administration/planning time spent to cover a slightly longer period, or at least for this cycle.
Ecosystem OKRs:
Within reason, I seek to make team efforts open and accessible for the DAO and community to view.
- The reporting technique for the team is OKRs.
- OKR % updates on subjective progress across cycle-long objectives, that assist with team focus.
- The OKR updates also provide a structure to transparently/openly share details around team activity.
I post these onto medium or store them within the Ecosystem Gitbook: Ecosystem Team Space - API3 Ecosystem Team
Cycle 1 re-cap:
We originally set out to expand our presence within the Polygon ecosystem, this has translated into;
- Demo sessions being delivered with supporting technical guides
- Acceptance as a beta participant in infrastructure portal
- Representation in Polygon documentation
- Co-hosting a developer brunch
- Expansion of dev-rel network
Mutual introductions re partnerships & PoCs - Hosted on podcasts and socials
Alongside this we have;
- Published guides into several developer-orientated publications
- Seen two technical content pieces trend, with 35k & 15k views on linked pieces
- Invited to be a publisher on betterprogramming
- Created an unofficial tool to support an identified problem area for developers using QRNG
- Set up the API3 Testers Guild and supported the delivery of insights around developer-experience
- Research & exploration into Vitepress guide formatting
- Created and delivered an educational seminar with a supporting technical guide (with learnings)
- Progressed relations with primary chains
- Seen a presence within the Eth Global hackathon community
- Explored bounty challenges with grass-root developer communities
Learnings from cycle 1
1- The ecosystem team should not take on a large hackathon sponsorship, instead focus on grass-root engagements.
TLDR; I do not think the ecosystem team is equipped to independently take on either an API3-owned hackathon or large hackathon sponsorship. Ashar & I have discussed that a hackathon-focused proposal could be formed in the future, with Ashar being the more appropriate leader there.
Short-term delivering smaller and intimate bounty initiatives could provide fruitful developer engagement. This also enables us to gain experience in surrounding elements such as feedback capture, developer engagement, community building, learning material creation and challenge setting.
So far such opportunities have been presented to us as a;
- hacker house with a key chain partner, costing in the range of $3000-$5000.
- blockchain cohort bounty challenge with 150 developers, with a challenge requiring circa $300-$500 of API3 tokens.
2- Progress with demo projects has been slow, this requires additional resources to deliver demo projects at scale.
TLDR; in proposal #1 we outlined that we would look to push forwards in delivering demo projects. At the moment we have 2x front-ends and 2x solidity contracts, but these are not currently integrated and progress is slow.
Please see these materials:
- React front-ends:
- Base solidity contracts:
By the end of the cycle we expect two demo projects focused on QRNG to be ready for external use. That said, from a technical standpoint, these efforts have been deprioritized.
To drive forwards with more structure & consistency, we would need access to full-stack & solidity development resource. However, this would see a 30-40% increase on our budget, with quotes in the range of $14k-16k from consultancies & circa $10k from freelance developers.
My view is at the moment this would be unneeded bloat in the proposal. So far we have spent $1k on the front-end designs and I’m happy to persist with the project over the next cycle to see if we can integrate using resource at hand. If others feel indifferent or see a solution elsewhere around this topic please let me know. We would also be happy to assist any community members able to take this task on, with retrospective grants a possibility.
3- Ecosystem Marketing needs to consider engagement alongside external acquisition
TLDR; there is a need to take ownership and generally drive engagement on the entire journey into the API3 community. This being from external acquisition through to internal engagement, driving activity in partner communities as well on API3’s channels.
There are two key reasons to act on this;
- A lack of efforts around engagement reduces the impact of resources invested in the acquisition of developers.
- Foundational efforts to form content can help with API3’s presence in the industry and reduce content/communication gaps, which can be detrimental to co-marketing.
This entails a concerted effort to become publishers, drive a calendar, form content around key topics and distribute appropriately. Scheduling and copywriting will be coordinated with Tom and hopefully, we can achieve momentum with this across the coming cycle.
Focus areas & deliverables for Nov - Feb:
We seek to amplify the materials created in cycle 1 whilst switching a focus to preparations around price feeds & OEV over a 3-6 months period.
-
Engagement and relationship building with chain partners
-
Lead on partner chain engagement strategy
- Engagement of surrounding entities
-
Serving dev-rel activity such as demos, guides, bounties
- engagement of chain developer communities
- support of key product updates
- start focusing on materials on DeFi space/builders
-
Delivery of learning materials to grass-root developer communities
- Seek to present to a range of Tier 1 blockchain societies
-
present collateral such as guides via live sessions
-
Support feedback collection
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Define and activate a strategy to increase Ashar, Vansh, Jacob & I’s awareness in development communities
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Producing & publishing engaging technical guides
-
Support the optimization of the guide section in new Vitepress
-
Maintain a content calendar to support engagement on API3 channels
OEV project support:
- Supporting OEV efforts, building momentum toward early-testers / users
- Community building
- MEV learning materials
- Chain engagement [forum pitch, supporting collateral]
- Supporting OEV onboarding processes
- Mapping processes & customer journeys (e.g OEV Auction)
- Supporting docs and guides creation (where appropriate/needed)
- Stimulating OEV adoption: advocacy, workshops, bounties
- Building presence within the MEV/Searcher community
Additional:
- Exploring grant processes
Core Team
Ben - Ecosystem Lead
Lead on strategy, ownership of resource spending and ensuring execution of deliverables, alongside being hands-on across deliverables.
Vansh - Developer Relations Engineer
Before managing the deployment of AIrnode to API providers in the integration team, Vansh spent a year supporting the build of the developer ecosystem for Algorand at Hype Partners. Vansh has added a great deal of value in cycle #1. Moving forwards he will:
- Deliver developer-focused articles/guides that address developer problems
- Research and collect user feedback on developer problem
- Support the distribution of guides
- Support team Vitepress migration where required
- Support sessions on API3 channels/chain communities
Contributors
Jacob - OEV Lead
As the core delivery of OEV is complete Jacob is going to focusing on how we deliver OEV to chains, dApps, and the searcher community.
Ashar Shahid - Core Developer
Supporting the team on strategy and technical workflows.
Rollover resource
During cycle 1 there was circa $14450 remaining in the Safe multisig, which will be rolled over. Please see a breakdown below on what was spent against resource requests from cycle #1;
Ecosystem Cycle 2: Spend & Carry Over breakdown
Ecosystem Resource Request
This budget has light resources that is IMO appropriate for the Nov-Feb period. The resource requests and rollover funds are intended to support the planning & material creation around OEV with ad-hoc resource support, creation of materials and engagement within certain communities.
| Description | Cost | Units | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ben Salary | 4500 | 4 | 18000 | |
| Vansh Salary | 3800 | 4 | 15200 | |
| Costs | 33200 | ECOSYSTEM GRANT REQUEST | ||
| Dev-rel / advocacy | 2500 | 1 | 2500 | Supporting the development of dev-rel materials & activity |
| Ecosystem marketing | 2500 | 1 | 2500 | Ecosystem engagement: copywriting/creative + operational support |
| OEV project support | 3000 | 1 | 3000 | community set up, chain pitch support , OEV focused advocacy |
| Presence at Polygon Connect events | 500 | 1 | 500 | Attendance of Polygon Connect event, specifically Bangalore + EthIndia |
| Tooling / expenses | 1000 | 1 | 1000 | Whimsical (x2), SendGrid, bit.ly, link.tree (x4) |
| 9500 | ECOSYSTEM RESOURCE REQUEST (USDC) | |||
| Developer bounty- blockchain society | 1800 API3 | 1 | 1800 API3 | 300 x 6 bounty |
| 42700 | $ ECOSYSTEM REQUEST | |||
| 14450 | CARRY OVER USDC (approx) | |||
| 57150 | ECOSYSTEM GNOSIS CYCLE #2 USDC (approx) | |||
| 1800 API3 | ECOSYSTEM GNOSIS CYCLE #2 API3 |
Total request for 4 months: $42700 + 1800 API3
–End–