FWB Summer 2023 Vision & Budget

In the first half of 2023, we successfully reconfigured FWB’s operational model. Here’s where we’re going next, and how we’re getting there.

FWB is making great strides toward creating a sustainable operational model while meaningfully decentralizing. Last quarter our contributing team worked alongside our community to vote on fundamental proposals that have already changed how FWB operates. By implementing a suite of “System Upgrades”—including updating FWB’s membership mechanics, forming a separate software c-corp, and creating a legal wrapper for the DAO in an UNA—we are in a prime position to further our work and grow our community, all while navigating the larger market.

Over the past few months, we reduced the DAO’s average monthly burn by 77% and implemented a highly effective partnership strategy, putting us on pace to generate $980,000 in revenue this year. Together, these wins have given us a much more comfortable runway. With our second-ever FWB FEST right around the corner, we can’t wait to gather our community from all corners of the world and celebrate the next chapter of FWB.

Heading into the summer of 2023, our contributing team’s focus will be on implementing all of the approved System Upgrade initiatives, producing and marketing FEST, and working with the community to introduce new proposals aimed at further decentralizing FWB. From opening up more partnership and revenue-generating opportunities to electing a new mayor, our work over the next three months should position FWB to move towards a fully community-driven model that enables emergent initiatives to drive the DAO forward in a sustainable, equitable way.

Read on for a comprehensive overview of what we accomplished over the spring, and for a deep-dive into the DAO’s focus, strategy, and proposed budget for the summer of 2023.

SYSTEM UPGRADE UPDATES

Over the past several months, we developed and voted on three major System Upgrade proposals, which you can find outlined in our Q2 Budget + Strategy. Below we’ve summarized how each initiative will be moving forward over the next three months.

MEMBERSHIP MECHANICS

With the passing of the updated Membership Mechanics proposal in April, the Product and Membership teams have started to map out the plan for transitioning from token-based membership to NFT-based membership. The target timeline is to complete the transition process by the end of July, in anticipation of FWB FEST. Work on the smart contracts for the NFT-based membership has already kicked off, and we’ll be making announcements for how existing members can claim their Membership NFT in the coming weeks.

ESTABLISHING A SOFTWARE C-CORP

Since the passing of the software C-Corp proposal, FWB’s Product team has been talking to existing, vision-aligned FWB investors about participating in the new company’s seed round, which is being led by a16z crypto. More updates about this will be released in the coming weeks.

UNA FRAMEWORK

As the last System Upgrade proposal to go to vote, the UNA proposal has officially been approved by the community!

By forming an Unincorporated Nonprofit Association (“UNA”) around the FWB DAO, our organization will be formally and legally recognized. Becoming an UNA will also enable us to pay taxes in a more straightforward way, will limit the liability of DAO members, and will open up the door for our community to seek tax-exempt status. Forming an UNA is a necessary next step for FWB to become more decentralized, and aligns with our vision to operate as a community-owned network.

The UNA association agreement can be read in its entirety here.

UPDATES AND NEXT STEPS FOR ONGOING INITIATIVES

Beyond our work on the System Upgrade initiatives, we've been hard at work producing experiences, events, and partnerships to push our community forward. Here's what's next for a few of our largest ongoing initiatives: The FWB App, FWB FEST, Event Keys, and Partnerships.

FWB APP

The FWB app was released in February of this year as a new kind of members-only social software, built by and for our community. With around 50% of eligible FWB members now onboarded, the FWB App has maintained an impressive average monthly retention rate of ~60%. These promising figures demonstrate that the FWB App has the potential to become one of the primary ways (if not the primary way) that members connect with each other, keep up to date on all things FWB, and make their voices heard.

As our Product team continues to improve the app’s user experience, they are now focused on refining the social feed to encourage more meaningful conversations, introducing end-to-end encrypted DMs between individual users and groups, and integrating in-app governance.

Not on the app yet? Members holding $75 FWB can get it here.

FWB FEST ‘23

At the beginning of this year, our community voted (nearly unanimously!) to bring back FEST as FWB’s annual community pilgrimage to Idyllwild, CA. Over the past few months, we successfully launched this year’s festival and announced an unprecedented lineup of speakers, performers, collaborators, and partners. As we count down to August, we are laser focused on marketing and producing the festival.

FEST is a destination gathering of new-internet communities and a temporary network city for creating culture and exploring new ideas. Conceived as equal parts Woodstock, Black Mountain College, and 1964 Hacker’s Conference, FEST is about bringing together 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓺𝓾𝓪𝓭𝓼 of the new internet to combine forces and come together as one community, in one place, for one weekend only. Read more about the thinking behind FEST in our MANI.FEST.O.

Key FEST23 highlights:

• $735,000+ in expected partnership revenue from partners including Uniswap, OpenSea, Seed Club, Highlight, and more to be announced.
• 10+ collaborator communities including Zora Zine, Refraction, Metalabel, and Rhizome.
• 50+ confirmed speakers, performers, and community contributors.

EVENT KEYS

In December of 2022, the FWB community voted to fund V3 of our global decentralized events program known as Event Keys. Since the beginning of 2023, FWB members have pushed this proposal forward by hosting 25+ events both online (shoutout Urbit) and in physical locations around the world (in some cities for the first time ever, shoutout Helsinki). Together, these member-hosted events have garnered nearly a thousand RSVPs from our community. To take Event Keys even further, in May we introduced FWB’s Decentralized Dinner series as a way to encourage more members to host local gatherings, and so far this has led to hundreds of participants dining together in locations all over the globe.

This summer, we encourage more members to think outside the box about new ways to connect with one another IRL and URL. Lite Key and Event Key applications are still open. And, of course, stay tuned for our next round of prompt-driven events.

PARTNERSHIPS

FWB is on pace to bring in $980,000 through partnerships by the end of Q3—far surpassing our initial goal of bringing in $850,000 by the end of the year. We’ve found the most success centering our partnerships around onboarding web2 brands into the web3 space, and introducing legacy brands to our community through FWB-produced events. Over the course of the next few months, FWB will be focused on bringing community members more directly into the partnership-cultivation process, enabling us to scale up our efforts and overall footprint.

WHAT'S NEXT: NEW INITIATIVES TO FURTHER DECENTRALIZE FWB

As a community-owned social network, putting the "decentralization" back into "DAO" has been at the core of crafting a future for FWB. We want to empower all members to have a sense of ownership and control over the future of the organization, and aim to break away from traditional top-down models where power and decision-making rest in the hands of the few. We are progressively working to distribute authority, empowering all members to have a say in shaping where we're heading.

This means running elections for future roles and turning previously centralized initiatives into community-led ones. Here are a few of the ways in which the next season will be emphasizing a new level of decentralization for our squad.

FWB MAYORAL ELECTION

Historically, the FWB Mayor has been tasked with developing FWB into a cohesive community-run organization, leading the founding team in establishing a vision for FWB, and hiring, organizing, and inspiring talent from within the DAO to develop and execute various strategic initiatives. Since FWB’s early days, Alex Zhang has been the DAO’s Mayor, but with the passing of the UNA and as FWB continues to further decentralize, the role of Mayor will evolve to operate as a leader who collaborates directly with the operational team and the community at large. This initiative will include developing an equitable electoral process—including defining the role, outlining the candidate nomination process, and deciding on term limits—and is also established within the association agreement for the UNA. Stay tuned for the proposal discussion to go live in Q3.

RELAUNCHING FWB FELLOWSHIPS

Over the last few months, a team of dedicated FWB members has put forth a proposal to relaunch FWB’s fellowships program. Driven by a desire from the #social-impact channel to take actionable steps to proliferate the knowledge and impact of the DAO, we arrived at a proposal to bring a new cohort of 25 fellows into the FWB ecosystem, which the community voted in favor of.

While the inaugural Fellowships program focused on bringing artists into the DAO to realize creative projects, the next generation of fellows will be a wide-ranging group of creative thinkers and makers working on impact-driven projects.

The target date for Fellowship applications to open is June 30.

COMMUNITY PROPOSAL FUNDING IS AVAILABLE!

As we work to further decentralize, it’s important for our community members to play a key role in proposing initiatives that help to determine our organization’s overall roadmap. If you have an idea for an initiative that aligns with FWB’s mission of being the social convening point for the individuals, squads, and institutions using decentralized technology to build a better internet, then be sure to drop a line in #governance-general.

Q3 PROPOSED BUDGET

With the above in mind, below is an overview of the resources we’ll need from the FWB treasury to bring our vision to life.

Q3 Budget Key Takeaways:

• Heading into Q3, we are operating as a lean Contributing Team. We currently have 3 full-time contributors and 8 part-time contributors.
• Recurring compensation has been cut from $167K in April to an estimated $60K in June (approximately a 64% reduction).
• Operational overhead costs are mostly due to professional services and servicing partnerships.
• The new software C-Corp (the new entity housing the product team) will be reimbursing the DAO for expenses related to their operations in Q2.
• Here’s a report-back on our Q2 actuals.
• You can also read the full proposed Q3 budget here, and join the budget discussion here.

Q3 Budget:

HOW TO GET INVOLVED THIS SUMMER

It's going to be a big summer at FWB. Here are specific ways members are invited to get involved with FWB over the next three months:

• COME TO FEST! That is absolutely the best way to become more fully immersed in everything FWB, and it’s the most fun weekend you’ll have all year—we promise.
• SUBMIT A PROPOSAL to the workshop forum. Learn all about this process here.
• PARTICIPATE in the soon-to-launch mayoral election process.
• SHARE THE FELLOWSHIP APPLICATION with your networks once it’s live.
• HOST A DINNER PARTY or IRL/URL Event Key. Apply here.
• Help generate NEW PARTNERSHIP LEADS and warm intros for FEST by dropping a note to partnerships@fwb.help.
• SUBSCRIBE TO THE TL;DR NEWSLETTER. Every Friday we send out all the FWB news and opportunities from the prior week, fully contextualized for your easy-reading pleasure.