Service Provider Name & Overview: Balancer Community Group [BCG]

Leader(s): Andrea, ReptilePresidente, CryptoComical, JoeyWong, Danko8383, CosmeFulanito

Pledge to abide by the DAO’s Code of Conduct 4: yes

Pledge to abide by the Accountability Guidelines 3: yes

Domains of Operation: Marketing, Growth

Length of Engagement & Budget: Quarterly Basis renewable, (118,500$)

ETH Address to Receive Funds: If this proposal is accepted by the Balancer Community, the newly formed BCG will communicate, in due time, a Multisig wallet to where the requested funds should be transferred. This shall happen before the commencement of Q3 2022.

Balancer Community Group Proposal (Q3)

The Balancer’s governance system has undergone a sudden paradigm shift moving from an organization that included different subDAOs loosely coordinated by a central entity (Ops subDAO) to an ecosystem of independent groups with clear and defined objectives and associated budgets.

The new structure presents an opportunity for all those individuals who care about the future of Balancer to rally again and form close-knit teams with the focus on the Balancer development through specific areas of expertise.

With the following, we propose to establish a “Balancer Community Group” [BCG] managed by members of the Balancer Community to explore the development of partnerships, alliances and related marketing activities.

The BCG wants to focus on the following strategic areas:

1 – First time responders: being the front door officer for all those third-party projects that intend to interface with BalancerDAO;

2 – Leverage Areas Of Strength: actively search for potential synergies between Balancer Protocol and Tier2 DeFi ecosystem players who could consider Balancer products as the best vehicle to maximise their position in the market;

3 – Community Growth and visibility: support Balancer DAO through marketing activities that include but may not be limited to social media campaigns, AMAs, promotions and events;

TL;DR

• [BCG] represents the DAO’s relationships, networking and strategic partnerships, helping the growth of the ecosystem through qualified members of the Balancer community.
• Balancer DAO will be represented through its community members in events and media, as well as collaborating with third-party projects on how to engage with Balancer, building a dedicated SP team.
• [BCG] will also actively work to attract TVL to Balancer through veBAL tokenomics (incentives and bribes).
• Team compensation on a monthly stablecoin (or equivalent) payments.

Research

• Partnership subDAO

In Q1 2022, BalancerDAO voted to build a dedicated Partnership team for Q2, in order to respond to prospects and seek synergic usage of the Balancer ecosystem, in a community oriented and decentralized path forward, especially BoB (built on balancer) initiatives and veBAL partnerships.

Providing KPIs for the Partnership SubDAO proved to be a difficult task due to the nature of the position itself. However, the data that can be disclosed shows a constant effort to support projects that are close or want to work within the Balancer ecosystem.

In the first six months of its inception, the Partnership subDAO interacted with over 150 teams and projects, opened +300 tickets, participated in leads, intros, follow-ups and redirections for a total of +500 virtual meetings.

The majority of this work goes mainly unnoticed and may not be objectively measured, but regardless of its intangibility, it is a fundamental piece of the service Balancer has offered to the DeFi community. [BCG] not only intends to continue the work carried out over the past six months, but wants to bet on it, expanding the team with members who have demonstrated dedication and willingness to support the work done so far.

Although it is evident that Balancer Labs has done an excellent job in developing a network of relationships and interactions with major players (Element; Gyroscope; Fei just to name a few), we also strongly believe in the need to target the second and third tier markets. A market landscape full of talent and potential great partners.

This market, which is irregular and jagged, needs meticulous attention and a dedicated team that knows the Balancer ecosystem well but is lighter, more agile and financially “viable”.

• Marketing subDAO

The Marketing subDAO was also established in Q1/2022 and carried several tasks including growing the online community, community awareness, bounty programs, and AMAs. This work has been an important part of the Balancer DAO success.

Furthermore, the first six months of operation demonstrated the importance of having representatives of the BalancerDAO community at events organized in person to demonstrate that Balancer is not only an excellent product, but also has an innovative community that has developed a self-management system, still considered at the forefront of the DeFi ecosystem today.

While our marketing effort presents an active engagement on the current market meta, the [BCG] team will also aim at the expansion and growth of both Chinese and Latam communities. These markets stand out for their rapidly growing adoption of cryptocurrency and huge unexplored potential for DeFi.

[BCG] will continue the delivery of services, providing operational consistency under a restructured and more robust organization.

Growth Blueprint

Team Composition:

• Andrea (Coordination);
• Cryptocomical (Marketing, Graphic designer)
• Reptile Presidente (Marketing, @Balancer twitter, AMA events)
• Joey Wong (Chinese community, @Balancer_China twitter, Medium articles, and selected docs)
• Cosme Fulanito (Latam Community, @Balancer_Esp twitter, @BalancerBrasil twitter, Medium articles and selected docs)
• Danko8383: (Team Support)

Advisors:

• Eagle (Legal attorney, Risk Assessment, LexDAO, BanklessDAO)

Workflow: [BCG] commits to build updated Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to reduce subjective opinions and with the intent to streamline processes, built based on previous learnings and experiences on Partnership subDAO workflow. The workflow will be adapted to the new working environment and will be completed once there will be more clarity regarding all the working groups the BCG will have to interact with. This proposal may serve as a written commitment for the creation of a new workflow that integrates multiple service providers in a complementary manner.

Areas of Responsibility:

• First-responders in the community to projects seeking interactions Balancer;
• Promote Balancer products to third-party teams;
• Active participation in media coverage (AMAs, podcasts, interviews, articles etc.);
• Engage with Tier2 protocols and communities that can potentially be integrated into the Balancer ecosystem, especially FF (friendly forks) and BoB;
• Research on newborn blockchain projects and connected tokens (use-cases, liquidity, tokenomics);
• Attract and retain liquidity (TVL) through veBAL tokenomics: boosting incentives for staking, revenue distribution, liquidity incentives allocation (gauge voting system) and external incentives or cross project incentivization (bribes and related byproducts)
• Risk assessment (first-responder shielding) through an analysis of the potential partnerships from a legal perspective;
• Risk mitigation for the [BCG] based on contractual agreements able to limit BalancerDAO’s responsibilities;
• Maintain media presence for increased awareness around the BalancerDAO ecosystem;
• Improve ease of recruitment of projects and users by facilitating increased opportunities for education of the Balancer Model outside of our current ecosystem partners.
• Growth for foreign language communities (Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese)

Other deliverables:

• Educational pieces (articles, tweets, videos) on engaging with BalancerDAO relations;
• Updates (tracker) and meeting notes for transparent follow-up and offboarding;
• Event tracker and report (attendance, achievements, leads etc.);
• Marketing teams support (support to Grants for Marketing focussed Grants);
• Chinese Community marketing (social media and articles), in Chinese;
• Latam Community marketing (social media and articles), in Spanish and Portuguese.

The Fork Factory Program:

[BCG] claims leadership on vetting new Friendly Forks proposals, given the experience of the team and the intention to leverage learnings and the valuable feedback received from the Community in the past.

The Fork Factory Program aims to become a state-of-the-art project, not only limited to support leading to forum proposals, but expanding the scope to any team seeking help and providing guidance navigating the Balancer ecosystem, from initial contact to full protocol deployment. Teams seeking the [CGU] can expect assistance on tokenomics, risk assessment, legal assistance, design, and community engagement.

Community will be invited to follow-up with Friendly Forks engagements and evaluation through presentations, RFC, proposals, AMAs etc.

Key Objectives:

• To continue current service of assisting projects approaching the BalancerDAO in a timely manner;
• Partner outcomes: leads, follow-ups, introductions to relevant Balancer ecosystem partners; (more engagement of the different communities), veBAL participants (more TVL), DAO relationships (public announcement of monthly new relationships);
• Identify Balancer AOS and actively promote the Balancer technology;
• Ongoing partnership follow-ups;
• Friendly Forks follow-ups (evaluation and presentation of the teams to the BAL community).
• Events attendance with proactive participation at events and meet-spaces (in every important event connected to crypto, the [CGU] team will provide a personal presence

Success Metrics

Partnerships:

• All third-party projects are assisted in a timely manner
• 30+ ongoing partnership and FF follow-ups. Outcomes are objectively measured through: bribes, veBAL participants and DAO relationships.

Goals for Q3:

• Engaging 3 (1/mo.) DAOs to partner with Balancer, migrating treasury to 80/20 pools and benefiting from LM incentives (pref. bribes)
• Following up 5 BoB projects and reporting their merits and struggles

Marketing:

• Community attendance, following Balancer’s bigger presence in major events
• Proactive participation in online events

Goals for Q3:

• Grow the Balancer DAO Twitter account to 7k followers by end of Q3
• Hold 9 AMAs (3/mo.) on Balancer Discord
• Sponsor 2 relevant media opportunities (irl events, newsletter, youtube, etc).

Growth

• For Chinese community:

• Grow @Balancer_China twitter account to 800 followers by the end of Q3

• Grow Balancer DAO YouTube account Chinese videos views to 500 in total by the end of Q3

• Complete translation of https://docs.balancer.fi/ 2 to Chinese

• For the LATAM community:

• Grow @Balancer_Esp twitter account to 300 followers by the end of Q3.

• Grow @BalancerBrasil twitter account to 300 followers by the end of Q3.

• Complete translation of https://docs.balancer.fi/ 2 to Spanish

• Complete translation of https://docs.balancer.fi/ 2 to Portuguese

• Sponsor 1 relevant media opportunity (irl events, newsletter, youtube, etc).

• Active participation in 3 AMAs during Q3 (1/mo.) about Balancer tokenomics

• Provide support to users in the Spanish channel on Discord.

Budget allocation per Quarter:

The [BCG] recognises the difficult market conditions and intends to have a responsible approach that could give confidence to veBAL tokenholders and serve as an example towards all the stakeholders who intend to contribute to the development of the ecosystem.

For this reason, all members of the [BCG] self-limit their compensation to a maximum of 15,000USD per quarter (or 5,000USD per month) regardless of their role, quantity or quality of the service provided.

[BCG] seeks a total (cap) allocation of $118.500 USD. This will cover Ballers compensation, advisors, digital resources (domains, digital storage etc), conference attendance (capped refunds), media sponsorship and marketing initiatives.

Team:

Ballers: $82.500 USDC or BAL equivalent

Advisors: $6K USDC or BAL equivalent

Partnership budget: 30k USDC (cap)

[BCG] will hold a budget to cover marketing opportunities and partnerships to further develop Balancer’s ecosystem and growth, as well as content creation and sponsored media coverage. Unspent budget rolls over to the next quarter. If BCG dissolves, remaining funds will be sent back to the Treasury.

Breakdown (for internal reference only)

Ballers: $82.500 USD or BAL equivalent

• Andrea: 15K USDC
• Reptile Presidente 15k USDC
• Crypto Comical 15k USDC
• Joey Wong 15k USDC
• Cosme Fulanito 15k USDC
• Danko8383 7,5k USDC

Advisors: $6K USDC

• Eagle: 6k USDC