All right, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to our second iteration of eight point talks
Today we're gonna be talking about reward programs
We've got Forbes web 3 and open campus joining us today as well as the thank you team and all city from the governance working group
Over here at the eight point down. We're gonna set the room up. Let everybody find their way into the stage
Please do like and read share the room. Thank you for being here
We're gonna play a little bit of music while we wait
What a perfect introduction what a perfect perfect song and perfect introduction for the stage today, thank you
Everybody for showing up and not only for showing up
But for showing up early we showed up early today. We showed up. We showed out early. It's Wednesday. We got excited
We got a lot of stuff going on over here in the Abe coin Dow
And if you guys haven't and by the way, you guys do have just over six hours
just about nine hours to get your votes in there if you haven't for this week's AIPs and
Before we get into this discussion just to let everybody know we are just an informal group of highly motivated and active members of the community
Not here to represent for the AIP coin foundation or answer questions on their behalf
But happy to share information and create the channel here with the community
AC AC thank you as well for setting this up
I think maybe we'll throw it over to you first to kick it off that highlighter green shirt and that black background for some reason
It's just sticking out and staring out at me for everybody that doesn't know AC has put so much time into coordinating these stages
For us and getting this set up for us
So big shout out to AC and for anybody that doesn't know please do just give us your introduction as we jump right into these discussions
Yeah, excited to be here really excited to welcome Forbes web 3 open campus will Manny welcome welcome and
Yeah, excited to chat about reward programs
With the quickest humblest
Introduction ever. Thank you and board AG. Thanks as well for being here
We'll get our AIP coin Dow regulars out of the way for those who are familiar
But for those who don't know Gee, please do give us the the intro for us
No, I'm sorry glad as always I appreciate the time of was taken
I think it's our second iteration here of a point talks and
It's always good to hear from other parts of the community the web through community and see how we could all help each other out
100% I've been seeing Thank Ape blowing up the timeline at least my timeline. I don't know about everybody else's so maybe a
Particularly relevant time to have this discussion and speaking of particularly relevant
I do have this orange background and for those of you who don't know I'm lost here behind the hodler collective account
I'm one of the facilitators for they point out. We got our disclaimer out of the way
So no need to worry about that, but I've got my beautiful orange background brother here dilly dilly
A resident orange background menace. I mean for anybody who's not familiar
Please give us the introduction and let us know what you've been working on over here
Thank you loss for those who don't know me I'm dilly dilly I've been an ape with you guys for the last three years I
Migrated from being a sustainable catch and release digital cartoon monkey trader to being the new ish CS lead for Thank Ape
Looking to spend as long as possible growing with you guys and building building up the style
Love it love having you here. Love to have another orange background in our ratio and thank you for showing up and again
We've got will here will part of the new campus team and part of the open campus community there will for those who don't know
I'll switch in the PFP at mid show to just increasing the ape ratio. Oh you love that you
Objectively, we are the ape coin down. You only need one ape coin to participate
You do not need the board a but I mean objectively we kind of love to see it will for those who don't know
The loss I hear brother I had to you know show off and you know when it comes 12 10 a.m.
My time, you know, I got a switch care fees. Hey everyone. I'm
Will so I run an online university Courtney campus
We do a lot of great work in the upskilling space for new leaders
But outside of that we do a lot of collabs and partnerships with other Dals
Through open campus. So I'm here joined with mo for the animoca team or passport on to master this
But yes, so excited to be talked about education
So excited to be talking about, you know onboarding the next generation of holders into this beautiful that we're building welcome
Love it. Love it such as a lovely voice and you said you were gonna you were gonna throw it over to money many
Gm GM everybody so so happy to be here with my fellow apes. My name is Manny
I'm leading the web 3 department at Forbes and
On a high level our job is really just to make sure we have we believe some cool
experiences and meaningful products for our community and on a granular level
We love doing partnerships and conversations just like this
To really get nitty-gritty on what's going on in the space because Lord knows right now
It is moving way too fast and I can barely keep up
But so excited to be here talk about rewards and how this is going to really impact the space for the year
Love it. Love it big year big year big rewards. I mean, thank Gabe recently approved with 6.9 million apes
So if you're listening in wondering why is it important? Why are these why are these guys the number two discussion up here?
Well, it's a big discussion. There's a lot going on here
and if you guys didn't know there are plenty of ways for you to get involved and
And we've got dilly-dilly here for you guys now to run up those dms
I mean he's here to take all those dms in for you. You know, you see him on the timeline
Poking at us a little bit. Well, he's here for us to poke right back at so we we love to see that
We're gonna learn more but before we do Muhammad. Thank you for joining us mo head of tokenomics over animo
Could you love to see it love to hear it?
Great apologies everyone for being late. That's great to be here. It was always I
Don't own an ape NFT. I'm sorry guys. I do own a coin. I did work on a coin and a queen now
back in the day for launch
But I will I will try my best to be an official member and maybe an orange background just for you guys as well
I would love to hear that that's that's that that's that influence that slide influence that orange that that beautiful orange influence
But no, you're you're a total member here just with that one input. Like I said, it's not a trick
It's not a lie. You do just need one a point full access to the entire doubts. It's actually pretty crazy
I've yet to hear anybody with a comparable situation anywhere
But enough of that will please break us right into our topics for today. I mean, we're talking about reward programs
We've got Forbes web 3 here. We've got open canvas. We're talking about education
Did we lose will did I lose will I?
Lost will I could fix this we could fix this
We can fix this or Manny we could we could start with you too while we're we're fishing will out of the audience
Absolutely. Let's just dive in guys. There's so many exciting topics to talk about
There's a lot going on in the space and I want to hear from the experts you guys on reward systems
So AC I'd love to start with you
I mean in your experience
What type of rewards do you think have really proven to be most effective to keep people engaged?
There's so many both digital in real life rewards. What's really on your mind and what gets you excited?
That's a great question. I think it's super important today's kind of landscape with so many things grabbing our attention
And you know really trying to pull people into the dowel
So from a governance perspective a program that's really worked out really really well for us that keeps people engaged
We get a lot of meaningful sort of contributions as we run on what we call the community governance improvement program
And how this started was something just kind of like opening up the floor opening up the submissions form for our community
If they had any kind of actionable ideas that we could kind of put in place for them
So that started to gain traction really really well recently. We've actually expanded it to include
You know our community members to just let us know sort of what kind of skill sets they have so that we can lead into
Them as service providers when we when we need so certainly from a governance perspective
That's what's really worked out for us and really really great program. So
That's so awesome to hear. I think it all just comes back to community right and how do you continuously keep them engaged happy?
Dilly Dilly, I'd love to take this to you as well
I mean even with thrive coin and all the groups and for organizations you're a part of how do you think about rewards?
Do you guys like to sort of look back at creating meaningful experiences for your community? And how do you guys do that?
That is a great question, and it's it's literally everything that season five sense making has been about for us
We've spent the last month and the next two weeks basically just gathering as much data and insight and feedback from everybody in the community
On what they want to see going forward and that has like allowed us to really curate and craft different experiences that we think season six through eight is going to be able to
To do for us. So, for example, one thing that we're personally exploring is creating more of like a
Reciprocal rewards relationship between builders and community members that that creates a sustainable growth on both ends, right? So how can we create contributions that guide our community members to
MBA and community businesses to help get more awareness for their products get more interactivity for their products and create a relationship or work with them.
We don't actually have to be, you know, continuously guiding going into the future. We can create something that will become self sustainable.
And that also comes with different reward types to write like those reward types don't just have to be the 4.2 million eight that we have to give out. It can also be the types of products and services that our community is already offering in their business models. So,
All of that is like exactly what we've been gathering over the last month. And even though I kind of expected it from my experience in a coin and as an ape.
It's being reinforced more every day, like what what people are looking for. So that's that's where we're at right now.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'd love to dive in deeper on this and ask you a follow up. What we notice a lot of times and especially at Forbes also is people love being part of the narrative and the decision making
Especially with brands that they love right like for them to have access to actually impact the roadmap in a meaningful way kind of goes a long way.
And I'm curious to get your thoughts on that. Do you think that's really the way for web three parents to continue to innovate with their with their community.
Yeah, I think that's honestly the only way you know for for a doubt where every person, you know,
Every person's voice is very much heard and every person wants to have their voice heard
Especially this community. I mean, we have we have very loud Twitter fingers. Right. So like everybody's got an opinion. Everybody's confident and sharing that opinion and we want to make sure that that we are open and listening to all of it.
Only in, you know, a few weeks that I've been here, the amount of DMS that I've had from people that have given me paradigm shifts on the way that I should be thinking about crafting these contributions has been like
So eye opening. So we've done in a few ways to we have guided workshops where we've taken segments of the community and we've actually had these like
Awesome brainstorming mural boards where people can go and like
You know, talk about what's what are the wind in our sails for the Dow right now. What's working really well for us. What's holding us back. What's holding us back that we don't really have control over
And through that we've actually seen these clusters of contribution types and like categories that everybody seems to be on the same page about so
Half of it for us is gathering feedback. The other half is making sure people feel like their voices are heard and then showing that back to them in the way that we execute
That feedback loop. It is so so important. And I think as long as brands have that you're already like almost there. You're already sort of winning just the fact that your members feel like their voices being heard, whether it's big or small, you're sort of already there. So thanks for sharing your thoughts on that would love to ship gears. Now, I want to hear like examples of things that are really making an impact in the space. So, Mo, you can start with you. Are there any examples of successful reward mechanisms that have happened?
Has been implemented by Dows that you just think have gone a long way and really made an impact.
Oh, tough question. I think that there's been there. There have been a few examples, actually. I think when like DeFi is probably a good place to start because you start seeing the early Dows more so than DeFi
And if you have compound and maybe curve financing how they iterated their tokenomics to include the obviously they had the CRD token and then they introduced the CV.
Different to the Dow mechanisms we were seeing that relate to culture, but these were the early, maybe some of the early iterations that we saw and then maybe fast forward to culture based Dows and like Ape again is an amazing
example where just by being part of the Ape ecosystem, by owning a board Ape, by owning a mutant Ape, that's why being able to attend ApeFest.
That's a form of reward for your loyalty where people, ApeFest was held in Hong Kong in November and people traveling all the way from the, literally the other side of the world, from the west coast, all the way to Hong Kong.
So they can spend one day with their fellow edge together and I was lucky enough to be able to attend and it was one of the best experiences of my life.
I can only imagine someone who's been part of that journey from day one or from earlier, even someone who's a new participant into the ecosystem and coming in and feeling that, genuinely feeling that it's not just a bunch of JPEGs, monkey pics or
it's a community coming together where everyone is enjoying this and it's all because of the community, it's all because of that bond, that togetherness that's there and it's
Web3 is super amazing because you get to build alongside the community and what Gilly was saying earlier, half of it is outbound but the other half is inbound and it's making sure that you've got that feedback loop and they're iterating and they're taking on board all of the information that's being thrown your way regardless if it's positive or negative and just seeing how you can continue to add value.
Because it's not easy building alongside the community, there are so many different voices that are there. I know I've sort of gone off on a tangent, but maybe I'll pause there.
No, that was perfect Mo. I think we don't talk about this enough, like building a community, we're also making sure every single person, whether somebody hundreds or thousands feels heard, that is so hard to do.
And so I'm glad that we have this phase to really discuss that. Gee, I'd love to ask the exact same question to you. What are some examples that you have seen have been really great like reward mechanisms implemented by your DAOs?
Well, I think this was a softball because I'm part of the ThankApe team here. So I can say for us at
ThankApe or at 8. It's for me, I feel like ThankApe. And I think you highlighted something where you talked about, I guess, even the contributors who may feel like they're small. I think that has been really key also for my learning and understanding in our DAO, that we really do have to accelerate people through our DAO.
And even if they're starting at small contributions, we all know that's not like what the end journey can be, right? They just need to take that time. So they need to get educated in our DAO.
And we've seen we have great examples of that in our DAO where people came in and they thought that they were just here to listen to space, make a little bit of APE coin.
And then they become such like APE coin has transformed like how their Web3 life and even IRL life has been because that just shows the potential.
And so that we can really cater not only to you. I mean, you're going to have to have big projects that are going to be venture back companies that you're going to have to go fund so that they can deliver some big technology changes around your DAO.
But it's also important not to neglect that you have these motivated community members as well and ones that even they're not part of the community yet, they're always going to start, for the most part, as a new entrant.
And you've got to work them through the funnel of working through your DAO and understanding.
So I think it's been really, I think, key for us to learn that you have to make sure that the educational pieces are there. And I think we're working on that, especially at Thankape and what you guys are doing here as well.
I think that has been my biggest learning personally. And I'm excited to see for our DAO how to really kind of move them through more of that funnel.
I think we've done a great job in year one at Thankape, because it does take time, right, like developing our strategy at Topofunnel.
But also now we're really moving forward as our DAO matures. Okay, now we have this engaged community, of course, we're always going to increase the community.
But now how do we harness that talent in a more focused direction, aligned with the vision of the DAO and just get those resources all rolling in the same direction around a few key initiatives, I think, is the next step for us.
Yes, super solid answer, G. And I think, you know, being a new entrant, a new, you know, real community member, it's really seeing how do you sort of make it easy and seamless for new entrants and existing holders to, you know, obviously understand the entire process.
And you mentioned the whole education piece. It's so critical, especially when you're seeing, you know, more eyes look into the crypto space, but also, you know, the board, the APECON community.
Maybe I can, you know, throw this question over to A.C. Obviously, you've been, you know, day in, day out crushing it with kind of building out the strategy, building out the thesis.
But, you know, how are you kind of thinking about, you know, further elevating the retention and engagement, especially when you're, you know, working with so many different types of community members from so many different geographies?
Yeah, this is a good one, Will. And I mean, our talks, especially, I mean, we've got APU coming. I mean, we can chat about that maybe a little bit if we got in a little bit if we have time.
But, you know, part of an education and really kind of strengthening the DAO, which is paramount for me, is making sure that people are going through these programs, right?
And so how are we going to do that? How are we going to make sure that people see these resources, but not only see them, they take advantage of them, right?
And then, again, through that, we can really kind of strengthen ourselves.
So, again, just, you know, maybe a soft answer, but just to sort of circle back on the importance of reward programs and how they're presented and just really making sure that that messaging is getting out there so people understand it.
It's clutch, right? And I also just really, you know, final thought is that really just sort of making sure that these reward programs, they're strong, right?
So that we're rewarding people for meaningful contributions, right?
And I think that that's actually something that Thank Ape's done a fantastic job at.
I think when they first came in with season one, Humblebrag finished first place overall with season one, Thank Ape, just saying.
But, you know, I think that the just sort of the approach has really, really matured and these moonshots that they do.
And again, just the strength of the program overall really will really kind of dictate the strength of the community as well.
Yeah, yeah, thanks for sharing that ACM.
I think, you know, it's so important to constantly build up that infrastructure to get to that maturity, especially as we go to year two, year three and and and.
And, you know, maybe, ideally, I'd love to hear from you because you've obviously seen so many different type of projects and folks come your way.
What are some of the key lessons that you're seeing in terms of retaining, engaging community members that want to contribute and pay it forward?
Yeah, so AC brought up a great point.
And it was particularly it's been a challenge for me over the first month is how can I make sure that all of the contribution types and the ways that we're incentivizing people to engage is very thoughtful and that it's just not like a one note type of retweet this and, you know, click and interact with that.
And, and that's where, as I said before, you know, as people have come into my DMS, it's been like moments of epiphany that continue to happen over and over again.
So within ThankApe, the way that we really think about that is sort of like a pathway. That's what we call them in the back end. It's a pathway.
And you'll see if you go onto the site that there's, you know, there's governance, there's sense making, there's culture and community, there's builders.
And the principles behind it is basically we can take that, you know, top of funnel really broad approach to how do we get people to start using this thing.
And by the end of that pathway, we want them to be experts at it and fully understand and really contribute. So you may take somebody who just like she said, you know, they just want to get a little bit of a coin and listen to a space.
And maybe they'll do some of the things that we have right now. And, you know, while we're, while I'm talking, they go to ThankApe and they retweet this post and they do this survey.
But by the time that they've reached the end of that pathway without realizing it, they may be submitting a proposal to become a builder for an MBAC community business.
So it's not just about finding the most thoughtful approaches to all contributions. It's how can we funnel people from the more mindless activities and make them into very, very thoughtful contributors.
And it's been my favorite challenge so far. And being here, honestly, is like that, you know, I kind of inherited this sense making season right as we were about to launch off from it.
So I've had to pick up the pieces together as I go. But it makes me really excited for season six, because I think we're really getting on to what we can do for the rest of the year to amplify this thing to the max.
Yeah, and I think one big part of this work, as you mentioned, is just constantly iterating and making sure that we're tweaking and sending the right message.
And, you know, I'm so excited to see how we can further dive in to help with the communication, the education, the upscaling side of things.
Mo, I'd love to sort of hear from your side, because obviously, you've been doing a lot of DAO support, infrastructure, tokenomics advisory outside of APCOIN.
Can you share a bit about, you know, some of the, you know, reward, infrastructure that you've seen that's been quite successful, especially, you know, surviving multiple years and multiple sort of longer terms.
What do you think on your side of the fence?
I think there's been lots of learnings. I think the idea of or one of the ideas of incentives versus motivation.
Some people need the incentive there to be able to come in and do something because they know there's a reward at the end of it, while others have that motivation to come in and to add value, regardless if there's a reward or there.
So I think that's a big one. I think talk about tokenomics aspect is having a softer currency that's in the middle.
So maybe like a loyalty point or an airline miles or something equivalent that you can then use in different ways.
So it might be to unlock experiences. It might be then convert into a token that's DAO ecosystem.
But another learning as well is when we talk about the structure of DAOs is we know token-weighting works.
We also know the limitations around it, but it's amazing because it's I need one token to be able to enter an ecosystem.
But we look at some of the most advanced democracies in existence, and they tend to have a two-tier structure.
Is it the Senate or the House of Representatives in the US or the House of Lords and the House of Parliaments in the UK?
So maybe some two-tier structure DAOs as well, where there are different responsibilities within each tier, if you like, or within each house.
So these are some aspects. I think also, and this is an idea that just came to mind that you sometimes have contributors who are motivated,
who may not own in this specific example of AIP coin DAO, who may not own board AIP.
So maybe that can be one of the highest rewards. If I come in as someone from the community who doesn't own one of the NFTs,
if I'm able to earn an NFT just through my contributions, and that's a symbol of my achievements.
So it really depends. Each DAO, each ecosystem is different. There's a different ethos, a different set of morals, if you like,
and finding what has a right cultural fit and a right ethos fit as well is super important.
Because the way we understand rewards can be very different, where to come full circle to some rewards is just also financial incentive at the end of it.
But other rewards can be recognition of hard work that's been put in and then anywhere in the middle of that spectrum.
Yeah, and I think one thing that we definitely can't shy away from is the complexity of the ecosystem that we're building right here,
especially the past few years. We've had community members come in, community members come out, new products and assets get picked up.
And like you said, it's taking that very detailed view on each and every person that wants to contribute at Valley and hopefully create with us.
And maybe I could swing this over to Lars, because obviously you've been here for a very long time.
How are you thinking about balancing rewards between long term holders versus new members that are looking to dip their toes into our ecosystem?
Yeah, I appreciate it. And it's a good question and especially relevant in our DAO.
It's complex and there's so many layers, but ultimately what we have is a lot of people that do care.
And you don't see that across every other ecosystem. And particularly for us, we've just hit this two year milestone.
So happy birthday, happy two year anniversary or whatever you want to call it for us.
And in that time and looking at the state of the DAO now, we're at AIP 410.
So no shortage of ideas, tons of people. Like I said before, people here are care.
They want to get their ideas in. We've proven now at this point, right?
We're not just some flash in the pan. You guys are seeing what's on the timeline, right?
Oh, everybody's on Solana. And then you went to sleep and you woke up and now everybody's on base and you're going to wake up and go to sleep.
And everybody's going to be on AIP chain next. So like we've proven that we're here.
We're not just going to disappear next year. We've been here for two years. We're not going anywhere.
And this is regardless. This is without Yuga steering the ship, right? It's the 8-point DAO.
Yuga is not the ones that are at the top of the ship here.
The people that are holding the tokens, you guys that have 8-points that are putting these proposals up who are voting on these AIPs,
we're the ones that are steering the DAO. We're the ones that have shaped the way that this DAO is.
Yes, Yuga is a contributor in the ecosystem. And yes, they gave us the tweet, right?
They want to keep contributing and support the AIP chain.
But ultimately, it's up to us. And that's really going to be the next step where it's like it's still early.
Like, you know that the 8-point DAO has been here. You guys have been looking over.
You guys have seen us having these discussions. Maybe you guys have been indifferent.
Maybe you guys have been interested, curious, confused, what have you.
But the thing is, like, the white paper for the AIP chain isn't even out.
Like, we're basically still here on day one.
And those of us that have been here since what you may think of as day zero,
that have been getting this institutional knowledge effectively for our DAO and helping to establish it,
now it's our responsibility to help all of the other people that have been looking in and watching
to come in and figure out what their path is, to come in and figure out how it is that they're going to be able to contribute,
because the DAO is not going anywhere. And now is the time, right?
Like, the market is excited. People are here. People are coming back. People are coming in.
Now is the time to grab all of these people that are coming back, these new people,
these people that were here before that got this interested and are interested again.
Now is the time, right? Like, we've got to strike while the fire is hot.
And just resetting the room real quick. We're just talking about rewards programs.
But specifically, we've got the Forbes Web 3 team here.
We've got the new campus, open campus team, as well as Board AG and Dilly Dilly from ThankApe.
And thank you all for joining us. And just a quick reminder,
we're not here to answer questions on behalf of the 8 Point Foundation.
Not able to, not here for, but happy to share the information with all of you here in our community.
And speaking of all the excitement, I'm like the wag-me-guy, I guess, sometimes you look over,
and Lost is always just excited. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be everywhere.
I'm spamming emojis, gifts, whatever. I'm happy. But the long-term vision is here, right?
We're thinking critically. We're comparing proposals. We're figuring out what the goals are here.
And Mo, I want to turn it back to you now. I want to turn it back to you to just get a little bit more sense into the discussion.
What are some of the challenges that DOWs face when we're designing these rewards systems, right?
Like, how do we find that balance of getting contributions that are meaningful to the community,
as opposed to what ultimately ends up looking like or being spam?
How do we overcome these challenges?
I think Mo may be having some technical difficulties lost. I just seen on the back-channel Twitter might be acting up for him.
It does that. It does do that.
AC, I can hear you fine. Maybe if you can... Oh, sorry. I've seen the question on the back-channel.
So what are some challenges DOWs face when designing rewards systems, and how can they overcome them?
I think one of the biggest challenges is actually being static, is designing a set of reward systems
and assuming that that reward system will last a test of time, when in fact the results from static were very dynamic.
Which is why this seasonal approach works really well, where you have the season and the feedback from the community.
And that's what you're seeing in the space as well. You understand maybe what the different motivations and incentives are.
So having an approach over a period of time and that approach changing, I think is something that's super important.
And then also, when we talk about collaborations, you might have different collaborations that entail different kinds of experiences or different kinds of rewards.
And then how do they fit in if we take this seasonal approach that it might be?
I mean, we saw the recent Formula One redacted team wanting to do something with apron.
What if there were tickets? What if there were experiences that all of a sudden, I'm an F1 fan?
That's super interesting for me. Or maybe I'm not an F1 fan and I'm waiting for something to happen with the NBA or with football or soccer, as it's called in the States.
Or it might be something entertainment wise, or it could be education, or it could be an airdrop to one of these memes that are going crazy on Solana.
I mean, it could be absolutely anything. So it really does depend on what the flavor of the month is, if you like, where the community is headed.
And it's just, again, that feedback loop is super important to make sure that the rewards that are being handed out are rewards the community actually wants.
Because if you're handing out something that people don't care about, you actually lose that attention.
And attention is so important in this space, especially the cyclical nature. Now that we are in a bull market, there's so much noise out there.
So how can we make sure that the people who actually matter are retaining them, and we're making sure that that value is consistent over time?
So I know probably three or four answers spread out, but it's a combination of that and some more.
Love it, and thank you for the save there, All City. Very, very fluid. And thanks to Mo for bringing in the old aviary.
I mean, just taking me back to my days of like Six Flags, I guess, walking through with just birds, everybody.
AC said, is that a Disney movie? Is this like Frozen's going to just put your finger out and one of these birds is going to come into our space with us, maybe, if we're lucky.
Daniel, are you there behind the Thank Ape account? Is that you? Are you here with us?
I'm here. I'm here. Can you hear me lost? I do. I can. And I love to hear you. And thank you for being here.
I want to throw the question to you next, because if for those who may not be familiar, those who don't know, Thank Ape is sort of like this subsidiary of Thrivecoin, right?
It's like our eight point Dow specific branch of Thrivecoin.
And so you guys do and you specifically, Daniel, have insight across some of these other Dows I've seen, for example, like Thank Ape and Thank Sui.
So you guys do have very direct insight to some of these other ecosystems.
So maybe you can give us just some insight on some of these challenges that you guys are facing as you're designing these reward systems and how you're overcoming them across the communities.
Yeah, look, I'm going to build on some of the things that were just talked about.
When we started, it's really important to deeply understand the needs of the community.
And those needs are changing over time. And we certainly learned that with Thank Ape.
I mean, when we started, the most important thing to the community was governance and figuring out how to get people involved in governance.
But as we started to understand as a community what that looked like, we watched as needs started to shift.
And suddenly the most important thing was figuring out how to honor and support and to some degree onboard artists and people who were supporting and reinforcing our eight point culture.
And once we did that and started to see a lot of excitement and success doing that, the most important thing was figuring out what it meant to build and support a builder community in a coin and so on and so forth.
So what ends up happening as we build communities and we're building this community together from the ground up is that there's going to be a series of critical needs.
We're going to address them and then there's going to be a new series of critical needs. So that would definitely be the first thing.
The second piece is figuring out how to reward and value creation.
Right. How do we reward people? How do we reward projects specifically when they create value?
And that's a really difficult one. And we've learned that as we've gotten to see the process work over the last two years, right?
Rewards happen at different times. Sometimes people are rewarded up front. They don't have to create any value and sometimes it's on the back end.
And generally speaking, what we've learned is when people can be rewarded at the appropriate milestones of value creation, it appropriately incentivizes them to create the most amount of value.
And, you know, we have noticed this with Thank Aid, but also with our deployments across ecosystems, you know, every single project that we funded gets rewarded at value creation at different milestones of value creation.
So how do we know that it created value? Because people promised a set of value, a set of impact that they were going to create and then they went and did that.
And so it deserves a reward. And what that does is it doesn't just create efficiency in a community. It also creates trust and trust, particularly in distributed decentralized communities, is so important.
So that would be the second one. I can share more, but those are the first two that come to mind.
No, I love it. I appreciate it. And thanks for coming up here with us, Daniel. And where are you joining us from? Are you still where you have today?
I am in finally sunny Lisbon, Portugal. Hopefully we've made it through kind of the rainy season and it is absolutely beautiful. Where are you?
I'm in the Bay. I'm in San Jose. I'm looking across the water at these GDC folks all having fun and going crazy for games. I didn't make it over to the conference, but I'm seeing all the posts. I'm getting a little bit of foam even from my own local region.
Yeah. And I mean, maybe I'll throw this one back over to you too while we have you here. And because I think it's particularly relevant as we're discussing Thank Ape.
And you do, like I mentioned, you do have these insights sort of across this ecosystem and not just the UGR, the eight point ecosystem, but really this blockchain ecosystem.
Are there any specific metrics or performance indicators that other DAOs are considering or that you guys are finding are particularly relevant as you're evaluating the success of these rewards programs?
Yeah, sure. So there's a metric that we've been playing around with a lot recently. It's a little bit unique to us, but we hope that it catches on to some degree. And we call this metric monthly active contributors.
And we track it across all of the communities that we support. And for those of you who don't know, we support not just Ape coin, obviously, but also Arbitrum and SUI and others.
And what monthly active contributors are, are people who come back on a month over month basis to the DAO and they contribute value in ways that are directly aligned with the needs of the DAO.
That's what a monthly active contributor is somebody who does something valuable and connected to and reinforcing stated needs of the DAO.
And so we've been tracking this metric now across different communities. We believe it's a really valuable one because this is different, right?
What we noticed when we looked across ecosystems is that generally speaking, they had figured out how to attract farmers and bots and symbols, but they hadn't figured out how to attract real talent.
People who contributed their heart, their soul to communities. And we're able on a daily, a weekly, a monthly basis to contribute their talent to communities.
And so it's been really important for us to figure out what are those contributions that are really meaningful to communities?
What are the kinds of projects that people need to engage in that can create real value? And then how do we track the people who do that?
So that, again, that's the first one that comes to mind, but I'm happy to talk about other metrics, you know, a lot of communities right now, especially, you know, we're thinking about a chain.
Obviously, they're thinking about DAUs and they're thinking about TVL and, you know, they're thinking about stuff like that.
But what we're going out after is really trying to understand when value happens and when it happens in a repeatable, continuous way.
It makes a lot of sense. And I know you guys have been spending a lot of time on this and really dialing into it as it's relevant to the 8-point DAO.
And it's tough because there are so many people that care and there are so many platforms that people care on, right?
We're in the forum. We're on Twitter. We're on Discord. We're in Farcaster, right? We're everywhere. We're everywhere that we can be.
And we do have this sort of theme at the DAO that we want to go and we want to meet people where they're at, right?
We don't want to force them to go anywhere. We do want to respect this sort of decentralized ethos.
And people throw these words around, decentralized, and what does it mean?
But at the end of the day, we want to go where people are at and we do want to make things available.
We want to have equal access to the opportunities, to the information, to the assets.
So I definitely think it's particularly relevant here. And I want to throw it over to All City.
All City, you've been working in particularly with the Governance Working Group on the Community Governance Improvement Program.
Is there anything that you've been tracking or any updates that you have relative to the governance group and how the program's been going?
And anything maybe that you're looking at relative to the success and certain metrics that you're tracking?
Yeah, I think, you know, with budget 317, with AIP 317, that was our previous budget cycle.
I think that's when the program was introduced. So we kept it in sort of a beta program.
We really kind of just wanted to see sort of like how this is going to work, what kind of response we were going to get from the community.
Primarily lives in Discord as well. So some of the things that we're looking at down the road definitely is to expand this program in terms of where that visibility is, right?
So where can people find it? That's going to be key.
Number two, again, just to kind of circle back to the sort of the service provider angle of it, this is something that's been really great, right?
So I mentioned it earlier, we've opened up this second type of submission where people can say, hey, listen, this is my work experience.
This is sort of the time that I have. This is where I'd like to contribute, right?
And then we can kind of build this basin of like a pool of resources, of community resources, where we can reach out to the community as service providers.
Not necessarily always taking precedent over, say, groups that we're working with outside of that.
But for a lot of things, this is fantastic to keep that rhythm going in the community, to really kind of keep people engaged.
And it's really also become a feedback loop as well, because what we've found is that through these submissions,
people are often providing a solution as well, right?
So they're not just sort of saying, hey, listen, I do this, or I can do this.
They're actually saying, I do this, and I think I could help here.
And this has been really, really strong for us.
Like I said, we've made a couple of great hires, a couple of good ones on the social media side.
We're getting ready to unveil a big hire where we're going to be able to have day-to-day content on the GWG account.
This is going to be particularly important moving forward.
It's always important for governance any time you, you know, you have to have messaging.
So I'll leave it at that.
But certainly, definitely love hearing Daniel speak about everything that Thank Ape's done.
And certainly, we try to learn and emulate a lot of things that they're doing over there.
I really appreciate that AC is spending time talking about the feedback loop,
because we're only as strong as our community.
We're only as strong as the thoughts and opinions of our members.
And that is so, so well said and an inherent part of Web3.
So thanks, AC, for bringing that up.
That actually makes me think more about the important role of transparency in a DAO.
And Dilly Dilly, I think you would be perfect to talk about this to start us off.
How important do you think transparency is when you're communicating these reward mechanisms to your members?
And how do you think DAOs can really ensure that there is transparency throughout this entire process?
As far as transparency goes, I think it all comes down to reporting, right?
Like in a season like we're running this last month in the next two weeks,
like it's not enough for us to just take the feedback and then say,
hey, this is what we found and this is what we're doing.
Like, you know, you are aligned with this.
It's really important that we take all of the reporting from those findings
and that we present it in a way that's visual and comprehensive to everybody
so that they can look at it and say, okay, like this is the popular consensus.
This is where we have decided as a community to go.
And that is something I've also learned along the way too, right?
Because if there are moments where I have slip-ups or where I haven't even recognized how important that transparency is,
it's been reminded to me very many times in the Discord, in private conversations,
in DMs from individuals that care so much about the DAO.
I'm constantly reminded of it.
And it was actually, which will be part of reporting later on,
but in the first survey that we had done where we had identified short and long-term priorities,
I was really surprised to see that beyond a chain as a, you know,
where do you rank this and in terms of importance beyond ecosystem development,
branding, market positioning, transparency was higher than all of them.
So we're seeing that it is one of the most important things that the entire community wants to see.
I think we're in a space where...
We're in a space where...
We do everything out in the open that everything's being built in public.
I think we lost you for a minute, Dilly.
Oh, yeah. Somebody had given me a call for a second.
We're in a space where suspicion and skepticism are particularly high,
especially with the anonymous nature of the entire industry.
And it's our job to compensate for that by showing that we not only have genuine intentions,
but that we can show what all of it amounts to.
I completely agree with that.
Like, I think speculation will always be a key part of this.
And look, I mean, we're trying to figure out ourselves, right?
Like, we're Forbes, we're a legacy brand,
and we're trying to enter into this new ecosystem.
So we also are thinking about transparency
and how to make sure that the speculation is low
and people actually believe in what we're doing.
So completely there with you and the Thank Ape ecosystem and what they believe in.
Mo, quick thoughts on your side as well.
What are you thinking about in terms of transparency for DAOs?
And how do you make sure you still continuously have that as you grow further?
So I think it's like we've heard it from the feedback before,
and it came out as number one.
And I'm sure in a lot of DAOs, if you ask that question,
if it's not number one, it's in the top three.
I think it's super important.
But I also think there's a – or I guess it's a pay doubles advocate.
When is it okay not to have transparency?
And I do think there are instances where there might be a partnership that's upcoming
that maybe if it leaks, it will spoil the terms of the condition and not happen.
So then you'd hold back until something is announced.
And that's when that transparency would happen.
Or if we compare it to working in a Web 2 business
and the business has had a good year
and everyone's getting a nice little bonus on the side
where maybe there isn't that transparency there.
So you get that surprise and you get that feeling of, okay,
we've added value and we've been rewarded retrospectively
knowing that reward was coming.
So I think in general what transparency is needed,
especially when we talk about what Web 3 has over Web 2,
and it's the community and it's that trust
and how we're able to create trust in a trustless environment.
Transparency is the glue that binds all of that together.
But there are also instances where not having transparency can keep things –
and it's positively reinforced, I guess.
But then maybe a question back to the rest of the panelists.
We keep talking about feedback loops.
How do we feel about looking back at –
maybe this is something that's being done and it's in its ignorance
if it is so apologies in advance for that.
But looking back at some of the ARP proposals that have been passed
and sort of judging them on the success and the value
that they've actually brought to the ecosystem at timely intervals,
be it six months, 12 months, 18 months,
just to see what the value of that proposal is.
Well, G, he wanted to turn it to the panel there.
Do you want to touch on that one?
I mean, talking about following up on proposals,
I mean, who better to turn it to than you?
Actually, am I the only one that's audio is running a bit?
Yeah, I think everybody rubbed a little bit.
But I think Mo just was touching on this idea of following up
on proposals after they've been approved
and sort of maybe transparency in that regard as well.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we had that conversation about it
on your other space, like last week, Lost.
I think for us, even as a Dow, it hasn't –
we don't have that process in place yet.
I've had some passionate comments about it.
Like, we need to get this in place
because in the day, we have to hold these AIP authors
Let's say, like, when we're doing something at Thank Ape,
when, you know, maybe some of our seasons where –
or you're either rewarding after they've done it
or, you know, you give a deposit,
and then, you know, a season later, you give them the rest.
That's just not like how our standard AIP process goes.
You know, authors are free to propose, you know,
as they see fit to develop their business and the funding for it.
But I think that's certainly something that's lacking right now
And I think we're going to see, like, our governance working group
taking the lead in helping us address that issue
just because we need to see, right?
And it's not even just, you know, getting an update,
but also, like, that awareness for the rest of the community
to know, like, these amazing projects exist
because there's also that side of things
where I feel like we've underutilized
the utility of some of these projects
because they're not – no one's following them up
and there's no channel to kind of disseminate them properly
Again, it's kind of like a hodgepodge of, like,
Some people are posting an update here.
There's a post once in a while on Twitter.
Yeah, it's nothing cohesive.
So I think at some point in our Dow,
we're going to have to just start connecting the dots.
Like, the pieces are there.
We just have to put them all together.
And speaking of All City, let's come to you, All City.
I mean, as we're looking at closing it up here
at the top of the hour, too,
you have a hard stop for some of our guests
and do thank everybody for spending all their time here
and patience in dealing with Twitter
and the ruggedness of that.
But AC, and particularly as is relevant to our ecosystem,
I mean, how are we looking at improving?
How are we looking at optimizing
not only the existing reward mechanisms,
but this idea of transparency after the rewards
Yeah, I mean, I think reporting is key.
G hit a really good, you know, interesting note there
when he mentioned just sort of on the exposure end as well, too,
because I mean, this can work both ways.
I mean, not only is reporting critical for the Dow
to kind of maintain and sort of understand
what the success rates of these AIPs are,
how we're doing as a Dow,
how we're doing in governance
in terms of giving people a platform to succeed.
This is all critical for the success and strength of the Dow.
But also, I think like by structuring
our reporting system correctly,
it will provide more exposure for these projects.
And it looks social proof and social,
there's probably a better term there,
but like it's a thing, right?
So people are going to be more inclined to do better,
to deliver when they know that the community is looking.
And so I think it's a win-win,
and definitely there's a few ways
that we're looking at doing this right now,
and we can't wait to share a little bit more when the time comes.
Well, this is the top of the hour.
This is the end of the stage.
And I mean, what an active community we do have.
you guys have just about nine hours now.
It's just about eight hours to get your votes in.
If you haven't for this week's set of AIPs,
they'll be closing at 6 p.m. PST.
410 AIPs in the AIP coin Dow.
No shortage of ideas from the community.
But if you have an idea, you only need one AIP coin.
You do not need a board AIP to be a part of the AIP coin Dow.
If you can go to apecoin.com, click discussion up at the top,
that'll take you to our forum.
That's where all these ideas live.
That's where you can get your started.
And we're talking about all these 410 ideas,
maybe 100 or so approved AIP authors.
But at the end of the day, what is our story?
We've got the hackathons.
We're talking about how many things that have been approved.
But where's our narrative?
You have to find out next time.
We'll have to have more discussions.
We'll have to get to this conclusion.
We'll have more of these spaces and more content coming out of this account.
Very quickly, definitely keep an eye up on that snapshot if you guys are
putting your votes in this week.
Keep an eye out for next week's set of votes.
We're looking at a whole new set of proposals going live.
And in that basket, we've got no shortage of large ideas.
So definitely keep your eye up on the snapshot.
And again, thank you all for being here.
I'm going to play a little bit of music,
let you all find your way out of here.
This one is nothing personal.
We're going to play a little bit of music.
We just want to be small in the world out there.