There is one issue I have with this. Reporters are voting on this and they have direct interest in the outcome.

The DCL Report Increasing Awareness and Empowering Community This proposal is now in status: REJECTED. Voting Results: * Yes 51% 2,364,283 VP (97 votes) * No 49% 2,337,111 VP (40 votes)

I'm so grateful for your vote of confidence and sharing with others the truth here, we are committed to serving this community, its our home <3 I'm going through all feedback now and already working on finalizing our Plan B grant proposal which is a reduced $120k plan focused purely on content quality to maximize our impact as reporters and how much we can cover/support projects in Decentraland. I'm expecting a 2M NO vote from DG, and we haven't met our threshold. It's all okay, and in the end we have the important insights we need to get this passed to we can take next steps with the DCL Report. What will that be? 1. We are working on a 30-second CGI animated intro (akin to Ricky and Morty) for DCL Report, should be ready in 2 months 2. We will focus on Quality and Community Service over the next 6 months to organically grow The DCL Report, build content that properly educates existing and new users on our ecosystem values, and secure the sponsors needed to sustain our operations without DAO grant funds. 3. Grow/Reinvest for more awareness through our own success and growth! <3 The DCL Report is a platform to ensure we as a community always have a voice, a platform, and a landing place for new metaverse explorers. Together we will make it <3 expect that in the next revision the main issues we see that need to be addressed are as follows: <!--td {border: 1px solid #cccccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}--> Grant Size too Large A $240k grant would put DCL Report at $360k in funding in 1 year Investing in Advertising is a "Money Pit" which unsubstantiated ROI DAO Grants are for creating we should invest all funds on building Funds for Reporter Equipment too high Let us know if you see anything else, all of these items we 100% can address these issues and as a result get this passed, and get back to building <3 love you all

I am voting yes on this proposal. It is a lot of money. Kevin and his team have shown after being awarded grants in the past they follow through and deliver on their objectives. Decentraland does need more visibility. I'd rather the Decentraland Report receive the funds than some half-baked entrant who doesn't understand how to onboard people. I know the Report will continue to grind and gain the visibility that this world deserves. The Report has been a figure in DCL for a long time. The people on this team are tested and proven. I'd prefer that the reporters get paid more since they are the boots on the ground and an essential component to this project. The Foundation will continue to create their "tent pole" events that make a big impact for a short period of time and then fade away. This is a decentralized platform and we can't count on a central entity to do all the heavy lifting. The DCL Report has been and will continue to be out in the virtual streets, making the one to one connections. That takes effort, time, and money. Yes, this will grow the client base and increase recognition of Kevin and the DCL Report. It will also benefit Decentraland.

"Rewards Features Development (6 Months, 3 Developers + Security Audit): $65,000" He quotes that this amount of the previous $120k grant was spent on a smart contract that airdrops NFTs, out of curiosity we got a quote from a developer to see how much this would cost and was quoted less than $10k for these features. @MetaRyuk I don't think their current metrics show a successful use of the initial grants. Majority of the effort up till now seems to be put into getting people to use and build out the xpand platform using DCL DAO funds

From the comments here, I understood you were granted 120,000 before. What I am concerned with is the effort that was spent after your previous grants. I've been building on DCL for over a year now and following the news from various channels but this is the first time I heard about the DCL Report. I've never come across any promoted tweet from any DCL Report twitter account. Do you have any metrics to quantify your success from the previous grant? I looked at the website thedecentralandreport.com and the website is not as attractive when compared to other websites promoting/reporting metaverse and NFTs. There are only 5 blog posts and all were made in January 2022. The social media shortcuts were link to your personal Twitter and Instagram accounts rather than any social media accounts with the words Decentraland or DCL on it. I'm quite concerned if this grant was to benefit you rather than DCL as a whole. And It looks like you really need to do a whole lot of marketing on social media including promoting tweets. I voted No. Because more could already have been done with that 120K especially in terms of social media marketing. I mean 5 blog post only? and all were made in January? Seems to have a huge gap in effort. Your Twitter profile does not have the word DCL or Decentraland on it. Your Linktree is mostly promoting you than DCL. I'm concerned that the majority of the budget is used to promote individuals rather than Decentraland as a whole.

Thank you CKbubbles for your comment and clarifying why you voted NO. It may be worth noting that this budget was created and agreed on by all reporters. We agreed to accept what is budgeted so we could invest in the things we believe will be essential to hitting our goals. So if you are voting no because you think Reporters should get more funds, know this goes against what the reporters are asking which is for the funds to go towards other deliverables we have prioritized. Hope this makes sense! With that said, the team is going to take this into account and appreciate your feedback and thanks again for commenting!

Hey Kevin and team, y'all know I'm a huge fan, and friends with many of y'all! I wanted to clarify why I voted NO. It's because there's so much going to marketing(which you know I believe in the power of it), but not much going to the reporters, and that is the reason. Most of the content created is by the reporters and I cant rationalize not paying them more. Hope you understand, and wish y'all luck with the future of the report, you know I'll be following!

Thank you Carl, appreciate your kind words. In the end, paid sponsorships are less viable and available in the bear market, so while its possible right now not consistent enough (unless Mountain Dew wants to hit us up!! :P) We would also run a risk that if we ask for sponsors to cover the cost of this effort, it could dilute the message and overall authenticity of our effort which is to recruit creators into a realm of possibilities in the metaverse; not a corporate push. With that said, we do not want to be asking the DAO for funds and believe by achieving our mission in this strategy, we can also build a community base that can sustain our operations through subscriptions which we get a 90% margin on. Additionally 10% of our revenues return to the DAO to repay our grants to date. We absolutely would be open to these deals to bolster our efforts, if any sponsors are interested in doing this you know where to reach me! <3

I'll highlight our assumptions onboarding along our timeline: Timeline: Month 1-2: Complete Landing Page and Marketing Materials Content planning Launch of DCL Report Newsletter Schedule Conference Attendance *we won't see massive growth here as we will be creating the content and positioning the team for execution* Month 3-4: Begin A/B Testing Marketing Campaign and Audience Targeting *this is where we would expect to see us reach 10-20% of our goal.* Month 5: Report results and metrics *This is a checkpoint to ensure we are on track, by here we should be at 40-50% of our goal* Month 6: Optimize Campaign Upon Completion: Case Study *In the last month we should be spending the largest amount of ad spend and be making additional growth resulting from compounded efforts bringing us to 75 - 100% of our goal.* Key Progress Indicators which we will track and report during campaign: Landing Page Traffic and A/B Testing Results, CTR, New community members Thank you, I agree setting these goals are good metrics to keep grants on point for what they aim, and if not, they can absolutely be revoked. "To be honest, I don’t think that you will achieve this new user goal, but I would still like to see you try." Thank you!! Even though you may not believe (we will have to change this :D ) I appreciate the opportunity to try and show you what we believe is possible and would serve the whole ecosystem well! This isn't "marketing" as much as it is recruiting creators. Bear or Bull; Builders Build.... Let's do this <3

So there is no doubt in my mind that @KevinOnEarth is passionate and committed to the decentraland platform, nor do I believe that his past history was poor. I actually think the work was very good. However the question is - $240,000 worth of value? That is a big question to me. Also may I also add, why not ask for paid sponsorships since he has seen success? It takes 30 seconds to add a small commercial in the middle of the show for a paid sponsor. His show targets a specific type of viewer which is very valuable to those seeking it. I am not certain, why some of this cost cannot be subsidized by that? Rather than the full cost going to Decentraland?

Approximately how many new users are you planning to onboard each month? Or all 100K will suddenly appear after your grant ends? I would like to see some predictions of new users for each month, so that if this grant is not bringing in the expected amount of new users, it can be revoked. To be honest, I don't think that you will achieve this new user goal, but I would still like to see you try. You are doing amazing job, but I don't think marketing would work well during bear market. DG recently has been focusing a lot on marketing, although it is mainly aimed at their new app which is seperate from DCL, but still they have airdropped DCL wearables and held events for different communities. Has it brought in thousands of new users in DCL? No.

Thank you @pablo I couldn't agree more! Thank you @Anon1776 , I don't like to get into specific pricings because often, the people I'm doing deals with are giving me a much lower rate than they would usually charge, for the point that they love DCL and our mission at the DCL Report. With that said, for the sake of transparency and so people can be aware the cost of a 6 month development and coordinated content effort like this: Wearables for Monthly MetaMoment and Giveaway Prizes: $6,500 Video Content Editing and Management: $15,000 Community Manager (for transparency, this was my role): $15,000 Rewards Features Development (6 Months, 3 Developers + Security Audit): $65,000 DCL Report News Station "From Scratch" Renovation: $18,500 These investments were around solving the problem of scalable and trustless rewards distribution. In that, we have been a success! I'll be streaming 7pm EST again today, if you want to join I can show you how it works!

Sure, I just copy/paste from aside conversation, main thing is: **> I think marketing from a community perspective could be really good** And I can add, granted or not, Kevin has been committed and passionated about decentraland platform since quite time ago. As a Decentral community "influencer", he is a top reference. He just want to put hands at work to improve the ecosystem. If not now, when? why to grow slower? I think is better to invest while alive than forgotten. With a rich ecosystem, similar or not decentralaized alternatives will be behind decentraland when they appear. If decentraland has a strong community focus, I think this is the way to go right now.

[quote="KevinOnEarth, post:49, topic:15869"] DCL News Station, and the Airdrops for token, automated claiming, and the security audit [/quote] Appreciate you giving more details, so you mention these 4 items were the most costly, could you please break down what % of the budget went to each of these 4? My concern is that the previous rounds of funds have been spent in a way that are not bringing in the engagement that was expected, even though the funds weren't targeted at advertising, if they were used to built tools that people really want, then the engagement numbers should still reflect that. The average views/engagements after spending $120,000+ look very small in my opinion...

The DCL Grants are meant to be spent during the period of the grant itself, so we abide by those terms and finished the previous grant work on time. The funding for our previous grant covered building the new DCL Report News Station, doing monthly wearable airdrops, building our community smart contract features, and conducting contract audits. One blockchain developer alone is something that costs a great deal, let alone the ongoing cost of maintaining the platform. I would say the feature that cost the most would be between the DCL News Station, and the Airdrops for token, automated claiming, and the security audit. From there the ongoing cost of having a project manager, and video editor, those were also some long term heavy operational costs. In terms of "what are the average views/engagements that DCL Report content in general gets after spending $120,000+ in DCL DAO grant funds": We haven't spent any money on targeted ads/marketing so I can't give you a CTR or other metrics mentioned in the proposal, the last proposal was specifically build and content work. In such though, I can at least say in the last year, my channel alone has gotten 150k views, and not to mention other reporters. We have now created consolidated channels across platforms so in this strategy we will execute, we will come out with clear numbers on how an investment like this can draw engagement value, and if that is worth continuing to invest in.

how much of the $120,000 from the previous grant is still available? or was all of that spent on building the token claiming and automated NFT drop feature? could you share the details of why the dev work for something like that cost $120,000? which feature cost the most and what did those devs charge for the work? and in regards to the metrics, you mentioned that "Over 300 Videos Published, and over 100k views" what are the average views/engagements that DCL Report content in general gets after spending $120,000+ in DCL DAO grant funds?

@Kat a detailed breakdown of the previous grant funds, usage, deliverables, etc, can be found here (which has been noted in the DAO proposal) https://kevin-on-earth.gitbook.io/the-decentraland-report-or-a-p2e-news-channel/ Our public trello (which has tracked the progress live along the way) https://trello.com/b/sQvxkNoK/the-decentraland-report As well as the updates being made along the way on the grant proposal itselves: https://governance.decentraland.org/proposal/?id=71499ee0-99c5-11ec-831d-95af4f79cd2a To be clear, the deliverable goal was to create an automated rewards distribution system (which has completed it's audit by the same lead developer who created Decentraland's smart contracts) along with building our Metaverse News Station (-78, -54) Would you want metrics on things like how many rewards have been distributed? How many compromises or how much downtime? Doing my best to provide people with information that's easy to access, if the materials provided above don't paint a clear picture I can try and simplify here: Deliverables Completed: - Monthly Meta Moments Wearable Drops Highlighting DCL Creators - Automated Airdrops, no need to "drop eth addy" - Automated $REPORT token claims - Roles Assigned for bonus tokens supporting other communities like DG, or owning a DCL name - Twitter engagement based rewards bonus for like/retweet/tag reporter team - DCL Report News Station @ -78, -54 - Coverage across Major News Networks (I could go write down all the views If you want?) - The first team providing 7 day a week news coverage, and continues to do - The first Decentralized News Network to DCL - Established DAO for voting and decision making for DCL Report - Reporters earn custom wearables for reaching Report milestones - Coverage in 5 Languages (English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic) - Over 1.5 years of publishing Decentraland centric content and committed community reporters - 2 Months of Billboard Space already purchased using $REPORT tokens - Large scale coverage on air for DCL brands reserved using $REPORT Token - Over 300 Videos Published, and over 150k views I could spend more time further quantifying the impact and the metrics across the board, and if there was a specific number you want to see just let me know!

The metrics and a detailed breakdown of the previous $120,000+ in grant funds should be shared in writing here or provide a clear link on where to find this information. What results in terms of metrics has the previous grants brought in? @Kat is asking a very valid & concerning question that is not being answered openly for people to be able to read.

also you can find updates on the individual Grants if you want to review there too 🙏 it’s not that we can’t talk metrics, but maybe easier for me to point to where that Info is?

Did you join in the spaces? Appreciate your concern, but like I said, join the twitter spaces (which there is a recording if you still want) and you would have a lot of metrics and ways which DCL report has created value to date 🙏

It concerns me that you took the time to write the above response and take it to Twitter but didn't drop a link to those metrics.

Kat there are plenty of metrics and information around that I'll be happy to give you to review. I've said this before, I believe the right thing to do is not ask for a huge grant up front but rather start small and build up to bigger more large scale impact projects. I was here when grants were first even made available, so yes, The DCL Report has here for 1 year and 10 months and in that time have been awarded separate grants for smaller deliverables which you can see all the updates and information on those grants themselves (they have updates sections). Up until now we have invested in building our Decentraland community a Decentralized News Network with automated rewards distribution of a $REPORT token. All this information is logged between our gitbook, website, and you can see all of it in action at https://xpand.gg/community/the-dcl-report I appreciate your scrutiny so I'm only trying to answer your concerns here, I do not believe it should be a reason to limit funding because we have been here longer than most, and pioneered the Grant program (still receiving less funding than many projects!) If you want a list of ways in which the funding to date has benefitted the platform, I invite you to join us at 12pm EST when we will have a Twitter spaces to discuss this further. Much of the team will be present, we will get into all the details on how we have impacted DCL so far for people who don't know, and discuss further our plan to bring 100k new creators into the Decentraland Ecosystem by making them aware of the creative opportunities and inspirations around Decentraland, via subject matter experts who are voted on by the DCL Report DAO to report weekly and preserve our history as a creative community, for us by us. Link to Spaces: https://twitter.com/kevinonearth999/status/1579845856509169664?s=20&t=1-eXYkKqeI6UsyF0AIRCnA

Hey Kevin, I agree with many of the points you make here. However, The DCL Report has been granted funds for four different DAO proposals afaik. https://governance.decentraland.org/proposal/?id=71499ee0-99c5-11ec-831d-95af4f79cd2a https://governance.decentraland.org/proposal/?id=f9d7ab30-1e5f-11ec-ac84-77607720a240 https://governance.decentraland.org/proposal/?id=29468410-dc00-11eb-9110-69b867ba991b https://governance.decentraland.org/proposal/?id=f97ebc10-0450-11ec-bf2e-8bc0e796957b The services the team provide are valuable to the platform and as such The DCL Report has been granted DAO funding of 127 300 USD. It would be great to see more metrics on how these funds have directly benefited the platform before investing a further 240 000 USD.

Kat, we are doing direct advertising of The DCL Platform. We are reporters, we cover the latest events/news/creators in Decentraland to show new users everything that is possible through the eyes of our 8 subject matter experts. We stream daily, across 4 languages, to give everyone an opportunity to discover Decentraland. The main idea being, DCL is hard to access because it relies on having the right knowledge, and having the right hardware, something most people don't have. The DCL Report as you know has been doing this for over 1 year and a half and has never asked for funds to raise awareness of DCL until now, and I believe it is a crticial time to do so. Respect your vote, but I think on the basis you mentioned voting no "money from the DAO which I think could be better used in other ways, such as direct advertising of the Decentraland Platform and its amazing possibilities." then you are may be voting on something you actually want to support. In addition to that, Decentraland does not want to take on the responsibility of conducting direct marketing/ads, it relies on community members to take on this duty and not many team are doing this.