Rationale
“When marketing” has been a persistent question in the Hydra community.
Our team has always strived for a responsible and balanced approach of putting value and product development at the focus.
The issues that were identified with the Qtum based HYDRA have become a limitation in the past, due to the inferior conversion ratio of pretty much all attempts to expand into cold audiences.
The difference in solidity version, the need to downgrade, the unconventional wallet periphery, and the lack of access to hardware wallets…were all issues that stacked up and were making experiments ineffective.
This has lead to a situation where focusing on the solutions to these problems had to come as a prerequisite before returning to a successful trial-and-error approach. Otherwise it would have translated to irresponsible spending, causing unnecessary inflationary pressure, with potentially limited returns as growth and adoption.
Hiring new agencies, trying new strategies, boosting exposure via new means…these are all instrumental things that need to be a fundamental aspect of Hydra’s operations, in order to ensure its wellbeing.Just like staking is instrumental in securing the infrastructure, a small inflationary budget needs to be allocated to empower Hydra to have a stronger voice in the blockchain industry.
Given the approval of HydraGon, the restraints and the concerns for inferior conversions are mitigated and we believe that marketing activities can begin with a strong focus on the technical strengths of the new protocol.
Project HydraGon L1 and Project Prometheus can be the spearhead of an extensive on-going campaign.
The potential timeframe that will take for the deployment of HydraGon is fairly short ( 6 optimistically for test-net and up to 12 months pessimistically for main-net) and should not pose challenges to new users as this falls well within normal turnaround times for new technology launch in the industry.
Proposal
As a result of all of these factors, we propose allocating a $34,000 budget per month for stimulating marketing exposure.
This includes, but is not limited to
- Social media promotion
- AMAs
- KOL / influencers content syndication
- PR and editorial publishing to quality crypto media
- growth hacking and guerilla marketing
- other activities that may help or support the efficiency
The current mint rate, when broken down into the strategic aspects of the development of the ecosystem as per the Hydra whitepaper are as follow:
Staking: ~82,350 blocks per month * 6.23 Hydra per block = ~521,275 HYDRA
Liquidity incentives: 24,000
Marketing, Communication and partnerships: 0
This translates to:545,275 HYDRA emissions per month with distribution:
- 95.6% for Staking and securing the infrastructure
- 4.4% for Liquidity
- 0% for Marketing and Communication
It is very important to consider that the emissions for staking benefit from auto-compounding and a large percentage of the community does not effectively release the full amount into circulation. But still, the share of distribution is clear and needs improvement.
While the new model of HydraGon should handle excessive inflation in unsuitable conditions for staking, nevertheless, at present, the current setup neglects marketing and communication.
This being an issue, also should also translate to a big room for improvement, because, with an insignificant change in the emission structure, the ecosystem could benefit from marginally improved resources for marketing.
With just 34,000 $ equivalent, the underlying marketing budget would translate to ~28,000 HYDRA per month which should be sufficient to employ 2 or even 3 agencies that may complement each other by focusing on key areas in which they are particularly strong as expertise and area of operations.
If this is implemented, the new distribution will be:
From previous 545,275 HYDRA emissions per month to new → 573,275 HYDRA per month
- 91% for Staking and securing the infrastructure
- 4.2% for Liquidity incentives
- 4.8% for Marketing and Communication
According to Chapter 2 of the DAO framework, there should be clear KPIs for the services that are provided, with diligent reporting.
Also since new inflationary spending applies price pressure on HYDRA, each hiring should be extremely carefully managed to ensure it brings at least a reciprocal deflationary demand via onboarding new community members and stimulating adoption.
Each month to be evaluated, before next month payment to be allocated. And in case a service provider underperforms, the contracting to be terminated.
Risks
Our team has undergone a number of experiments in the past, and the individual performance of these tests were not very convincing. Also, it is difficult to have a direct measurement of the impact, because not all activities result in direct traffic.
Duration
This proposal is for creating a continuous campaign that would effectively retarget cold audience via systemic communication. The rationale behind this is that the “journey” of a community member does not happen instantly, and multiple exposures could be required for a cold member to engage with the project. The subject of the experiment would be to evaluate whether continuous exposure would compound an effect at the latter stage of the campaign, opposed to individual isolated activities.
Shortlisted Agencies
We’ve communicated with multiple agencies, and have narrowed down the selection to 3, which seem to focus on different areas.
This proposal should be perceived as a marketing framework, and if deemed necessary, any of the agencies can be replaced with a different one.
Agency 1
Collibri Group → https://colibri-group.org/
Their proposal is structured as principle price list with-> Hydra comprehensive marketing offer - Google Docs
With stated strengths for KOL and social media posting. Also owners of Coindar and capable of syndicating some partnerships through their extended network.
Agency 2
Atoz-PR → https://atoz-pr.com/
Principal Price list → HYDRA PR - Google Sheets
Agency strengths are PR, Editorial materials publishing across a wide network of media as well as KOL.
Agency 3
Cryptic → https://crypticweb3.com/
Agency claims various fields and has focused more on organized twitter campaigns. Has provided principle offer which is being provided here for reference:
Diamond Package (10M+ Followers) - $15,000
(sample accounts from the package…
Drake Bell (https://twitter.com/drakebell?s=21&t=3bvhkVc1f8h4auc3pKaajw)
BSC Daily (https://twitter.com/bsc_daily?s=21&t=3bvhkVc1f8h4auc3pKaajw)
Crypto Tony (https://twitter.com/cryptotony__?s=21&t=3bvhkVc1f8h4auc3pKaajw)
Cryptic Twitter Campaign
Ruby Package (250K+ Followers) - $2,500
(sample accounts from the package…
Cryptic Maestro (https://twitter.com/cryptic_maestro?s=21&t=3bvhkVc1f8h4auc3pKaajw)
Cryptic (https://twitter.com/crypticsmma?s=21&t=3bvhkVc1f8h4auc3pKaajw)
The budget allocation
As a start, the following allocation to be distributed among the three companies:
Colibri Group : $12,000 → focus on TG growth, AMAs and KOL
Atoz-PR -: $12,000 → Focus on PR and editorial publishing
Cryptic: $10,000 → focus on Twitter promotion, AMA and content syndication
Terms of payment
50% Advance, in HYDRA for first month, translating to a total risk of $17,000.
After deliveries are made for first month, the subsequent payment will be made and an eventual continuation of the long-term campaign will be made.
At the end of each month, each representative of each agency will be required to provide a report with all executed activities, so that the community can review and decide if performance is justifying the matching inflation.
Adjustments to the budgets can be made in favor of the agency that performs better, and stimulating a fair and competitive microenvironment among the three agencies is among the priorities of the proposal.
This way each agency will be incentivized to provide maximum effort for securing a higher trust and higher allocation from the DAO.
As with all payments, budgets to be considered in fiat equivalent and paid out in HYDRA according to the market rate. For the purpose of avoiding misunderstandings, the community should expect service providers either to micro-liquidate or to fully liquidate the remitted amount in order to secure the runaway for their operations and to be able to meet deliveries according to the terms of their proposals.
Execution
Since the scope of the offered services are quite different and the possibilities are diverse among the portfolio of the agencies, the execution will be focused first on picking a specific plan that the agency would believe to be offering the highest probability for impact. Then as data are gathered, decisions will be made on how to modify, polish and/or alter the plan.
So it is important to retain flexibility for micro-control within he provided services, while working closely and leveraging from previous experience of the agencies.
