[DAO:4113ee8] MetaFiends – viral attraction of new users to Decentraland

Governance
1

by 0xa8c7d5818a255a1856b31177e5c96e1d61c83991 (AndreusAs#3991)

Should the following $240,000 grant in the Platform category be approved?

Abstract

A complex project of viral attraction of new users to Decentraland via a gamified platform\social network that houses online educational courses for all the aspects of Decentraland content creation, a competitive model for presentation of user-made content to the community as well as monetization means for the said content. The project is designed to be fully integrated in the current Decentraland ecosystem, support the MANA flow and directly contribute to the treasury.

The aim of this project is to help new metaverse users by delivering the most important tools for mastering the brave new world of meta: knowledge and practical experience as well as convenient tools to utilize and demonstrate those skills in entertaining fashion.

Grant size

240,000 USD

Project duration

8 months

Beneficiary address

0xd2eD5CA455405E05055dcd66891b3bA97cC0E5F6

Email address

metafiends@gmail.com

Description

Due to character limitations the full grant proposal text is here: Full grant proposal - Google Docs

MetaFiends – a viral attraction project which aims to attract lots of new users to Decentraland by offering them to join a continuous system of Entertainment-Learning-Profits (ELP) that will ultimately encourage them to stay in the metaverse becoming its active users.

How will it work?
The project consists of a gamified platform with social network elements, free educational online courses dedicated to all the aspects of Decentraland content creation, and the most attractive and entertaining element: two types of so-called “Challenges”: competition-driven, Decentraland-based games with prize funds used to reward those who beat them.

1.Entertainment
Our main audience are young active Internet users who are still not familiar with the metaverse.

The best place we can hook them at – social media of all kinds.

The best thing they can be hooked with – an occasion to express themselves in a completely new, entertaining, accessible way showing the end result to the world.

We merged these concepts with our ELP formula and invented a model of viral attraction activity – the “Challenges” mentioned earlier. Such an activity is an ideal way to acquaint new users with our project and engage them in the ELP system we propose. We believe that such an approach will make a thrilling experience for new users by the “first contact” with metaverse ultimately leading to them becoming active Decentraland users.

The core of the activity: utilizing simple, Decentraland-based drag-and-drop style construction kit (similar to the Builder) and short tutorial videos, new users of our project create simple, yet entertaining Decentraland games. It’s the first type of the “Challenges” mentioned earlier.

Once the game is finished, users can “challenge” their friends on social media to beat the game by posting a “story” (like on Instagram) or tweet containing the game’s link, a short auto-generated reel-like trailer of it and a list of friends who have been challenged.

The first one to beat the game receives a small bonus in MANA, and everyone who beats the game is encouraged to make their own “Simple challenge” by using the construction kit mentioned earlier.

Once the challenge is finished, it can be published for friends to beat, thus involving them into our ELP system!

  1. Learning.
    This part of the project incorporates the already mentioned tutorial videos for the construction kit but is not limited to it.

Once a user makes and publishes their “Simple challenge”, they are encouraged to begin an online learning course that is split into modules, contains ~90 lectures and includes everything one needs to know about creation of content for Decentraland. Each video lecture will be ~10 minutes long.

The whole educational course is free, but paid NFT certificates are planned for those who do homework and complete final tasks of the course. Both homeworks and final tasks are thoroughly examined by mentors.

Once certified, a user is ready to begin earning via our platform.

  1. Profits.
    The project will incorporate 6 ways to earn profits: beating simple challenges, developing and beating more advanced challenges with prize funds, promoting the project via social media, mentorship fees, becoming a project’s ambassador and making new content for the platform.

You can find more by following the link with full proposal info: Full grant proposal - Google Docs

Roadmap and milestones

ROADMAP AND MILESTONES

  1.  Pre-production phase (2 months)

  •      creation of project’s documentation;

  •      creation of specs for the planned software solutions;

  •      creation of the educational course structure and conception;

  •      creation of the platform’s website structure;

  •      creation of scenarios and scripts for the course;

  •      creation of feedback forms for approbation participators, creation of necessary feedback metrics.

  1.  Production phase (4 months)

  •      educational video courses production (screencapture, CG production, montage, sound design etc.);

  •      backend and frontend development of the web platform;

  •      development of all the visual pieces, needed for the project (design development);

  •      development of the declared software solutions.

  1.  Approbation and marketing phase (2 months)

  •      project testing;

  •      approbation sessions for volunteers;

  •      iterative process of fixing bugs and finetuning of the systems.

  1.  Launch phase.

  •      launch and post-launch support of project’s users and systems;

  •      continuous content creation for the project.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2

I suspect people will want to see some of the documentation before awarding $240k

421cxzsv

3

Hey, @jar0d ! Thank you for your feedback!

I’d like to point out the full grant proposal here as well, it was mentioned in the grant proposal, too: Full grant proposal - Google Docs. We couldn’t add it to the proposal due to character limitations.

The document contains a much more detailed description of the project as a whole, and can be seen as a basis for the project’s documentation that contains each and every small detail of the planned project. Those details are planned to be developed as part of the pre-production stage and are meant to be basically tasks for those, who are resposible for their fulfillment.

As for the specs for the declared software solutions: we will update the document, mentioned above shortly. Again, they won’t be presented in each and every small detail just yet, but it will be sufficient to give the community a clear idea on how we’re going to fulfill our plans.

In the meantime we’re ready to answer technical questions, that may (and surely will) appear.

Cheers!

1 Like
4

Instant no for me, I read your breakdown and I wondered, you are asking 50,000$ for marketing, but your description is very unclear on how you are going to do it.
All those numbers all just put up there to fill up the 240k which I can genuinely tell by looking at it.

Imagine when you did just put up numbers and then for the last part you figured hey let me just put 1$ there in order to fill it… very unprofessional for such a big amount.

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Voted NO.

5

Hey @jar0d, I wouldn’t even waste my time reading it if he can’t even put up a serious bussiness breakdown…

1 Like
6

You are asking for a quarter million dollar grant but you have not spent $60 to mint your name… Sorry, I cannot support.

2 Likes
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Hey, @InJesterr !

The 1$ sum in the graph is due to the form, not supporting entries without specified sum, needed for the job. We defintely never thought a 3x3 estate would cost that much, and it’s mentioned both in the text and in the entry.

As for the marketing plan - thanks for your feedback, we will elaborate on this shortly.

Hey @Canessa! Could you point out whether it’s required to have a minted name in order to apply for a grant or not?

8

This is a hard pass for me.

1 Like
9

I guess she is saying something else, its not required but its weird to have no name minted and show your support like this towards Decentraland.

Dont make the mistake to buy it just because to get a better chance at getting this grant passed because there are multiple things not right with the whole request.

According to the CMO, the average marketing budget as a percentage of a company’s revenue should be around 11.7%

multiply 190000$ by 0.117, which gives you:
190000 x 0.117 = 22230$
Therefore, 11.7% of 190000$ is 22230$ and that is what you are allowed to spend on marketing.

Next time when you are about to ask 240k make the wise option to visit an accountant so he can advise you the expenses & make the breakdown for you it will cost you max 100 - 200$.

10

In what way it is related to the project, then?

As for the support: we’re not asking for the grant just because we’re decent individuals, who fulfilled an abstarct list of conditions, we’re proposing a project, that aims to directly pay to the Decentraland treasury during it’s lifetime, thus supporting it. It’s been described in the document.

As for the marketing expenses: we plan on collaborating with real life schools and educational institutions all around our country. In this context, the sum we ask for is deemed to be more or less sufficient for what we’re striving to achieve.

I have asked our marketing specialist to provide us a more detailed plan, it will be translated and posted shortly.

Could you elaborate on this? We’re still eager to discuss the project itself.

Cheers!

11

You are requesting an grant of 240k for a project that aims to attract new users to DCL, However there are several issues with the proposal, including lack of detail about the project’s technical aspects and feasibility, lack of a clear business model, and unrealistic expectations for the number of new users that will be attracted. the proposal lacks a clear timeline and milestones for the projects development and implementation. so basically the proposal is not convincing and does not provide enough information to justify the requested grant amount.

1. Lack of clear and detailed plan: While the proposal outlines a general idea of the project, there are several missing details about how exactly the platform will be built, how the educational courses will be designed, who the mentors will be, how the profit models will work, and more. Without a clear plan, it is difficult to determine the feasibility of the project and how the grant money will be used.
2. Unrealistic expectations: The proposal suggests that the project will attract “lots of new users” to DCL and “encourage them to stay in the metaverse.” However, there is no clear research to support these claims, and it is unclear how the project will achieve these objectives.
3. Overestimation of impact: While the proposal suggests that the project will have a significant impact on DCLs growth and development, it is unclear how realistic these claims are. Additionally, there is no clear indication of how the project success will be measured, making it difficult to evaluate its actual impact.

2 Likes
12

Is this a serious grant request? Looks like a joke for me.

Voted NO - instant NO

2 Likes
13

Despite what others have mentioned, I find no social information or a website for Metafiends to determine what you are all about other than the information you provided. i saw 1 linkedin profile on the team list on the google doc. I am also wondering what type of presence you have in DCL. (No a name is not required to apply or receive a grant. Just some peoples way of determining a level of commitment but when they have a lot of VP it does seem like an encouraging reason to get one if you want their vote).

1 Like
14

Sadly will be voting no on this proposal as I believe 240k is too much for this project!

15

Hey!

Even though there is a roadmap and milestones attached, we understand it could be improved, thank you!

  1. How exactly the platform will be built: the document has been updated with the tech stack we are going to use when developing the platform and it’s overall structure, you can find the description in the respective section of the document (Full grant proposal - Google Docs). As of the detailed specs you may be talking about - it’s a task, that is planned to be done during the pre-production stage, and requires quite a lot of time, dedication and funds - hence the application for the grant.

We already have an educational programme designed, and it has also been translated and posted in the document (direct link: DCL_Course_Programme - Google Docs). The overall structure of the course and it’s features (such as our plans to make the course a story-driven expirience with CG movies) are described in the document already. The exact scenarios are once again subjects to dedicated work of our team - which demands time and funds. Hence is the grant application.

It’s already described in the document, that every certified user of the platform can become a mentor by having a sufficient rating and applying for the position. But right after the project’s launch (and untill we have enough certified users) the mentors department will be comprised mostly of the team members.

As of the profits: the document clearly describes how we’re going to gain profits and what’s for Decentraland in it.

  1. The whole document describes how those goals are going to be achieved. The whole system is designed for it, still we do understand it could be elaborated much further.

  2. Here is the reply from our marketing specialist:

Marketing reply

"We have consulted both the accountant and the market researcher.
The rule that the marketing budget amounts to 10% of the total budget is not a dogma or good taste, but a terribly outdated approach, absolutely unfit for a successful media products. There are two variants as exceptions to the rule:

  • Large iconic brands with 10% of the total budget, which is so large that it suffices for a full-fledged advertising company. Such bigwigs can have a smaller advertising budget - 2%, 3%, but their figures cannot serve as a guidance for newcomers to the market. A beginner a priori invests in marketing, because in a competitive environment he needs coverage and recognition, citation, repeatability and, excuse me, but the beginner must become regonized to the audience.
  • Companies that have a stable niche product, often (but not limited to) selling essentials and a local sales market with an established territory. Again, you can allocate less than 10% to marketing, because all you need is to maintain stable demand for a product / service. In all the other cases 10% for marketing is the most dangerous thing! There is the danger of wasting the money without getting any result. Marketing is a wayward thing, you need to understand that sometimes investing a little or not investing at all will mean the same thing from the point of view of efficiency.
    SOV - share of voice - an important indicator that is not achieved by unreasonable saving on marketing.

I repeat, in cases like ours - market entry / audience recruitment - the marketing budget is formed based on the goals!!! and at the same time on the possibilities of the budget. That is, a balanced approach is needed here, developed as a ratio of needs and opportunities. I must say right away that we understand perfectly well that it would be nice, from the point of view of forming a grant budget, not to include marketing at all. Or to allocate so little that this amount would not attract attention, being a drop in the ocean. However, any promotion specialist would immediately doubt that the project would be implemented at all, because the once famous saying “excellent goods do not need advertising” has outlived itself. Nowadays, the lack of a serious approach to marketing is a minus and a hole in general planning. I will add justification to the requested amount for marketing - there is a rule not to ask for more than 30% when applying for marketing investments. This is a good rule, but it is vague because in addition to clear financial indicators calculated when determining investment attractiveness, it is customary to look at the content of the project and correlate it with costs.

In our case, we stick to this rule - we request a little more than 20% of the total budget. From a human point of view, the money is not small, from the point of view of the advertising budget it is small.
The project should reach self-sufficiency and this is how we plan it.

Please note that the conditions for filling out the grant application did not include the point of limiting the marketing budget to 10%. Accordingly, we were free to declare the amount we believe necessary. I will also add here that according to general practice, when requesting investment, it is customary to ask for no more than 30%, not 10% for promotion. We are asking for a little more than 20%. This is dictated by the special features of the project and its promotion plan. The project will become self-sufficient solely due to user engagement. We ensure this involvement with a viral challenge transfer system from one user to another via social networks. In order for the virus to spread sufficiently, we have calculated the amounts that we plan to spend on promotion in the social networks. More on this below.

And again I note that initially, the conditions for applying for a grant did not include a restriction on the marketing budget. There are grants that set such limits. Since there are no limits, it means that we have the right to offer any spending solution.

More about what we plan to spend the marketing budget on - the main focus is social networks.

The choice is firstly due to the fact that we need to support our system of viral spread of challenges, and secondly, because our potential audience spends 80% of the time there.

Types of promotion that we will use:

  • collaboration with thematic influencers (we are currently negotiating some Russian bloggers, and they are ready to reduce their prices for our project, because they believe it is attractive. But the final agreement will naturally be struck the moment the project goes into implementation);
  • advertising in social networks for the target audience;
  • maintaining thematic channels (YouTube, Medium, Twitter, Instagramб Еудупкфь).

You may ask what ratio we plan to use to distribute spending in these areas? We will answer that we plan to move gradually. The marketing strategy is not implemented in two weeks and much will depend on how the parallel tests of the release of our products (challenges, courses) and advertising tests (where more comes in, where less) will pass. It is also important that we would like to spend some of the money to promote the project abroad, to an English-speaking audience. To this end, we are negotiating with foreign agencies specializing in promotion abroad. Yes, we are aware that the search and approval of specific platforms is going on. However, if there is a general line of promotion, this is normal and natural. It would be much worse to approve everything without a test and analysis of their effectiveness at the project start stage (and in the absence of similar projects and their previous experience).

For ourselves, we have decided that we believe that within the specified amount, we will in any case provide the project with substantial support during implementation. It would be incorrect to change the ratios of budget items after the start of implementation - for example, an increase in marketing and a decrease in the share of finance for development, while redistribution of funds within one item is the norm for a new project. This is a gradual, careful approach, within which we are more than responsible for spending money. And we emphasize again - we have specifically provided for a test mode and the possibility of advertising (to assess effectiveness) during its period. We did not mention it earlier, but if we stabilize the distribution channels from the very beginning, then we’ll get the result, of course. However, the greatest result is achieved (in cases with new projects that have not previously been on the market and the new companies that do not have a ready audience) by manual marketing mode in the first six months. This, perhaps, does not sound like large companies, but it really reflects the approach of the organizers interested in the startup."

  1. And here goes what those metrics are based on: Metrics - Google Docs
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All in all, we do understand that the current proposal is lacking in presentation and details.

Thanks for all the feedback, that’s been provided here. Based on it we’ll focus on making an MVP and elaborating on the project’s documentation now to fully demonstrate what we’re aiming to achieve and how we’re going to do so.

Cheers!

17

MetaFiends – viral attraction of new users to Decentraland.

This proposal is now in status: REJECTED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 1% 2,588 VP (59 votes)
  • No 98% 6,907,259 VP (162 votes)
  • Abstain 1% 44,999 VP (8 votes)