This proposal puts forward a substantial administrative budget, to be implemented by the SlingShot Foundation, aimed at fostering community growth and further development of the SlingShot ecosystem.

Original forum post: https://discord.com/channels/1087517906709000342/1115978566832767056

Link to a PDF copy of the proposal on IPFS: https://pin.ski/3X0mfYR

CID QmecBph93HfVjHsJga16T6TK8gcoFZ1sgPwFmJLzRgdMJD

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Summary

SlingShot DAO has a great community but In order for SlingShot DAO to truly thrive, and achieve its global mission, it needs more members and broad ecosystem development.

This proposal puts forward a substantial administrative budget, to be implemented by the SlingShot Foundation, aimed at fostering community growth and further development of the SlingShot ecosystem.

Outlined below is a 6-month operational budget for the Foundation.

This budget covers the SlingShot Foundation's ongoing and expected costs and prioritises a budget for efforts in marketing, product and engineering.

All funds within the budget would be used exclusively in pursuit of SlingShot DAO's mission and the growth of the SlingShot DAO ecosystem.

This budget does not include any provision for idea grants or rewards, which are currently managed by economic parameters in the Governance Framework.

Authors

Winglash#0001 / winglash

Sponsorship

Tabby NFTsorBust Monty

Proposal Type

Initiative Proposal

Community Incentive & Rationale

SlingShot DAO has garnered an (epic) small community who together innovative using the DAO's dApp and structure to enable the ideation, curation and creation of a community governed IP library.

However, relatively speaking, the DAO has few members.

For SlingShot DAO to thrive long into the future and achieve sustainability across its ecosystem, community growth is needed.

A further consideration to such efforts is also the technical development required across the DAOs property and ecosystem to support such growth and reduce the friction for new members and new audiences to join SlingShot DAO. 

At the moment it is difficult for audiences less familiar with web3 to join the community.

For example, initiatives such as supporting social authentication (i.e. Google SSO), abstracting web3 frictions (i.e. integrating a custodial wallet provider) and abstracting user gas fees for on-chain interactions are all considerations for technical development that would support member growth across both web2 and web3 audiences. 

This proposal outlines a high-level budget for the SlingShot Foundation over the forthcoming 6 months. The end motivation is to enable and realize community growth over the next 6 months, providing future opportunities and further ecosystem development.

As of the date of this proposal, the SlingShot Foundation currently has 6 full-time contributors, 1 part-time contributor, and the Special Council engaged to support the SlingShot DAO ecosystem. The proposed budget anticipates the need to hire an additional 3 full time-contributors over the course of the next 6 months.

In total, this sums to an operating budget of $883,720 USD over the next 6 months.

To prioritise rapid growth, the budget gives priority to Product, Engineering and Marketing functions.

The expected allocations within the budget are:

1. Product + Engineering 32%
2. Marketing 21%
3. Operating Expenditure 21%
4. Contingency 16%
5. Legal + Foundation 6%
6. Treasury Management 3%
7. Software 1%

At the time of writing, and assuming use of USDC for the budget, this would leave $355,030 USDC in the SlingShot DAO Treasury for all other purposes such as idea grants, cash rewards and other initiatives.

The Problem

1. Currently, SlingShot DAO has a low community member count and limited runway for growth.

2. Without achieving near-term substantial growth, SlingShot DAO will rapidly deplete resources and will likely lead to sustainability issues.

3. Technical hurdles present a challenge to community growth and would benefit from further development, such as high friction UX for Web2 users, difficult self-custodial wallets (Metamask), gas fees, fiat onramps, blockchain and token education, reliance on SlingShot DAO Treasury for idea funding, and operational overhead to administer epochs.

The Opportunity

 1. Encourage community growth through various marketing and community development initiatives. 2. Improve the SlingShot DAO ecosystem and UX to better attract new users and support growth. 3. Further develop the SlingShot DAO ecosystem to operate at scale and further decentralise and incentivise administrative overhead to the crowd where possible.

Potential Risks

Risks if this initiative is not pursued:

1.  Without budget allocation to the SlingShot Foundation for ecosystem development and community growth, SlingShot DAO risks slow to stagnant growth. Slow growth could lead to limited network effects and poor idea distribution, fewer collaborations and emergent opportunities, a smaller pool of ideators and thus potentially limited quality of idea submissions, restricted token distribution, and impaired future sustainability for the DAO.

Risks if this initiative is pursued:

 1. Potential risk could be the mismanagement of funds, which may not yield the expected results in terms of growth and development. This risk can be mitigated by careful planning, diligent implementation, and regular auditing.

Key Terms

SlingShot DAO

A decentralized autonomous organisation, that is governed by the holders of $SLING token.

SlingShot Foundation

A Cayman Islands foundation company that helps the Slingshot DAO by managing the community’s requests while following a common goal and principles.

UX

User Experience.

Epochs

The voting cycles within the Slingshot dApp where community members vote for ideas to be built in virtual worlds.

Governance Framework

The published community governance framework that defines how members can make changes to the way the SlingShot DAO operates and governs.

Specifications

Actions

1. Allocate $883,720 of USDC from the SlingShot DAO Treasury to be used by the SlingShot Foundation for the facilitation of growth and development activities over the next 6 months.

Measurements of Success & Desirable Outcomes

Measurements of success would be all KPIs associated with community member growth and engagement.

Examples include:

1. Member Growth
   1. New member sign up (day/week/month)
   2. Active members (daily/weekly/monthly)
   3. Conversion rate of website visitors to signups
   4. Member retention rate over time (days/weeks/months)
   5. % Member action tracking
      1. Submit ideas
      2. Votes
      3. Claim Rewards
      4. Refer a friend etc
      5. Submit feedback
2. Tokenomics
   1. $SLING locked
   2. Voting Power Available
   3. Voting Power used per epoch
   4. Unique ideators
   5. Idea submissions per epoch
   6. Unique voters
   7. Votes per epoch
   8. Average lock duration
   9. Epoch participation rate
3. Social Media Growth
   1. Likes
   2. Posts/Tweets/Views
   3. Reposts/Retweets
   4. Subscriptions/Followers
   5. Comments

Impact on Working Groups

N/A

Economic Impact

1. Allocation of $883,720 USDC from the SlingShot DAO Treasury to be used by the SlingShot Foundation.

   This would leave $355,030 USDC in the Treasury for build grants, cash rewards and other initiatives (based on Treasury holding of 1,238,750 USDC at the time of writing).

Further Considerations

Regular reviews and audits of the expenditures and achievements should be conducted to ensure the effectiveness of this proposal.