Announcing the Start of the Dogeparty Foundation 2021 - Q&A Period (Nov 15th - Nov 30th)
The 2021 Dogeparty Foundation nomination period has concluded and the 8 candidates running for the 5 Dogeparty Foundation Community Director seats are listed below
Voters can review the nomination process and basic candidate bio information available in the forum post linked below.
Questions
Please use this thread to ask questions of the candidates about their positions on various topics and how they feel they could best help move Dogeparty forward.
Do you agree with the current suggested use of community funds listed below? If no, how would you divide the funds up and what would you suggest spending them on?
35% – Developer Fund (pay developers to maintain platform and add new features)
25% – Marketing & Promotion (pay for trade shows, hackathons, advertising, etc.)
20% – Exchange Listings (pay for exchange listings on popular exchanges)
10% – Founder Compensation (reimburse founders who built the Dogeparty platform)
10% – Legal Fund (pay any legal expenses which may arise in the future)
Developers and a sound marketing team will keep this platform growing and evolving and I agree that 60% of the suggested funds use goes into these two areas. If for whatever reason more funds are needed I’m sure the community could host an NFT auction and raise the additional funds and let everyone have a great time in the process. But from my perspective it’s most important we have developers paid well enough so they can keep the platform running correctly while adding innovations. No matter what field it is, marketing always sits in the top 3 things a platform needs to grow and survive. So this is a decent budget breakdown.
I think most of the money should go into getting listed on an exchange; that will cost a lot. I think being on a decent exchange will get you circulating a lot faster than any big marketing plan. After that, I don’t know, depends on how much everyone is working. Devs of course do the most important stuff. I like these little niche groups of card makers rather than some marketing shill. I basically disagree with the entire plan. Vote for CryptoMinx…she is amazing.
The suggested use of community funds sounds reasonable to me. However, we have very little information at hand right now. Without some further details (e.g., exchange listing costs) it’s kind of hard to suggest a different spending pattern.
Some in the community (at least that was my understanding in the main chat) are questioning the founder compensation. While I think this is a fair compensation for all the unpaid work and expenses so far, one could alleviate these concerns in the following manner: 5% is paid out at the end of 2021 and the rest is paid out at the end of the first quarter of 2022. For instance, this approach is used for top-level executive stock compensation.
The other important dimension is about the timeline of spendings. It’s kind of an extension of your question. Will the money be spent in the first quarter 22 or stretched out over the whole year (or even further, e.g., if there are no legal issues).
Exchange listing for tier 2 exchanges like dex-trade.com will cost about 10-15K… IMO we should start with a single exchange listing and wait to see how much daily volume is running through the exchange on the market pair before we consider getting added on other exchanges… not much point in being on a bunch of exchanges if there is no demand/volume… as Demand/volume grows, we can get added to additional exchanges
Also, each of the founders spent $5K of their own money to reboot the platform as well as invested 3 months of their time rebuilding the platform to get it functioning again… the fact that some members of the community are questioning the founder compensation is very disappointing, considering that none of this would exist if we didn’t stake our hard earned money and time in rebooting this platform… FYI 10% of $600K is 60K, dividend by 3 founders = $20k per founder… so, we aren’t even talking about a large amount… and the founders certainly could have earned more had they invested that money and time/energy in other projects… we invested our time and money into Dogeparty because we believe in it long-term and we have hope that the community understands that and compensates us for our time with the 10% founders compensation
I agree with the slow rollout to exchanges. Listings can be expensive and we do need to make sure there’s enough demand to make best use of the funds.
Secondly, can there be a bylaw where 10% of the platform income goes to the Founders on an ongoing basis? I feel like you guys deserve so much more than a one shot thing ( and certainly more than 20k each).
The bylaws can be whatever the community elected foundation decides. I personally would not really be supportive of a residual 10% founders fee… we are not really looking to extract funds from the community, just get reimbursed for the value we have/are providing. We rebooted the dogeparty platform because I loved the platform back in 2014 and we felt it would be a great way to add some utility and actual use-cases to the Dogecoin blockchain.
Just to clarify what the 10% founders compensation includes :
Reimburse us for the $5k we each invested and 3 months of development and testing we did to reboot the dogeparty platform
1 Year of keeping the platform functioning as designed, including fixing any unexpected issues that arise (already fixed 2 issues that took the platform down and got things back up and running within a few hours)
1 Year of Server hosting for dogeparty.xchain.io (currently hosted on 5 different servers to handle the load, as well as paying for cloudflare.com load balancing, etc) as that is the only way to view the transactions on the Dogeparty network, and xchain.io APIs power the backend to dogewallet-desktop.
In the interest of clarity, if the dogeparty foundation decides not to reimburse the founders the 10%, then the above items will no longer be applicable and the community will need to figure out a way to pay for the ongoing server hosting fees, xchain.io yearly licensing fees, and cover other operational expenses which are now being born solely by the founders.
The Dogeparty Community funds are to be spent however the Dogeparty Foundation and community elected community directors decide, and we fully support that. I am confident that this community recognizes the value that we founders have provided by rebooting this platform and will elect community directors that will represent their views
40% – Developer Fund (pay and also hire developers to maintain platform and add new features)
20% – Marketing & Promotion (Can lower the % here, the community can be used for a lot of the promotion)
10% – Exchange Listings (We only need ONE good exchange from the beginning)
10% – Founder Compensation (reimburse founders who built the Dogeparty platform)
10% – Legal Fund (pay any legal expenses which may arise in the future)
10% - A budget used for any unforeseen things not covered in the previous budgets.
This is my budget for 2022.
I think it’s important to add at least one more person to the dev team during 2022 so that we can make sure that the platform is secure, stable, and safe. Keeping it alive and functioning as well as looking for ways to expand. Maybe making a new wallet, or adding features to the existing one.
I’m also assuming here now, that the founder’s compensation is a one-time thing, if yes then the % here will be used as marketing and dev funds during 2023, since I do believe that by the end of 2022
we will have at least 2.5k active users, and it will be time to focus more on marketing and an even bigger push on dev.
*This is of course not set in stone since we don’t even know the full budget.
Would also like to add a small budget for one yearly meet-up with the members.
To meet each other at least once a year is IMO important.
Personally, I feel like someone has placed a lot of thought and effort into the percentages outlined. The outlined allocation allows the founding members to continue building the platform as imagined in a manner that does not place them in financial hardship. The only thing I would to see modified within the outlined is the separation of hackathons from the marketing and promotions umbrella. One of the biggest challenges with non-mainstream chains is getting developers to build platforms on these chains. Hackathons not only bring promotion within themselves but allow the Dogeparty developers and freelance developers to test the boundaries of the chain capabilities. Personally, I see hackathons as more important than marketing and promotion, once a strong reason to use the platform is established the marketing requirement will result in a higher ROI.
For the founders 10%, as someone that works with developers, you actually pay for what the systems they know. To place any founding member into a place where their time is not respected, a replacement of knowledge will end up costing the platform 10x in the long run (if you could find someone to replace them).
J-Dog, thank you for the additional information. That should alleviate any concerns I heard from the community so far with respect to the 10% earmarked for the community founders. It also makes 100% sense to concentrate on one exchange at the beginning since liquidity is split otherwise (on two of more places) and more money than necessary is spent for listings.
Generally the suggested allocation of funds make sense, and I also agree with some of the candidates suggested modifications/additions. The developer fund and exchange listing (one) are probably the most critical up front and founders should certainly be compensated for their expenditures of personal assets and time spent. I also agree with the notion of adding a budget for unforeseen expenses per Wizard’s suggestion, but it may not need to be 10%. To Doggfather’s point - we need a great deal more clarity around the funds available for use and also the timeline. In order to start writing checks for expenses we need to understand A) how much $ is available and B) how long that $ needs to last. With that established a multi-year budget needs to be put together based on actual costs. What do developers cost and how long do we need to pay them and at what intervals? How much does it cost to attend trade shows and hackathons? How much does advertising cost and how long do we run ads? What are the costs to gain exchange listings? Is there a premium for the better exchanges and if so are we willing to sacrifice more $ today to gain those listings in order to enhance our visibility early on? Founder compensation needs to be understood in more detail - again, in terms of $ and timelines.
This may seem like a very short answer but for me it really depends on the numbers of what exactly is available when the BERN is over on Dec 1.
These are really general categories and I want to make sure that the foundation has enough Capital long-term to accomplish all the things they need to do.
In a general sense I’m not opposed to the percentages, but I wouldn’t sign off on these percentages without knowing the total amount of capital that we’re talking about.
Fair enough, I respect your perspective. My thing is I know you guys will continue to add value throughout the community until you guys croak I suppose. From a cultural perspective my folks make sure those that provide such valuable knowledge are compensated and recognized for long long periods of time. But I think it’s absolutely fair for you guys to get your investments back.
However, I do think seeing what the actual budget looks before we paint things in stone is important too. And I still stand on most of the funds going towards developers (and this should include whatever keeps Dogeparty running from a technical perspective) and marketing.
What is the nomination members views on the current selling points of the chain? and what development areas could be pushed to gain traction in these areas?
My views on the current selling point are;
Low transaction cost
Easy dividend structure
High decentralized nature of the infrastructure
To gain traction personally I would like to see;
More documentation and discussion of the possibilities of what the chain is capable of
Marketplace with inbuild browser wallet connected to dex
Hack-a-thons
As a non-technical person, I believe we need to understand in layman’s terms the full capabilities of the chain before any one path is decided upon.
Hey David,
Great idea to also shoot questions as well!
I have a slightly different view of the current selling points of Dogecoin / Dogeparty:
Even though DP is cheaper and faster than Counterparty and Ethereum, there will always be an even faster and cheaper chain. Hence, that is not our main advantage.
I’m also not quite sure whether we can pitch the decentralized nature of infrastructure too much given that Dogeparty war not running for a couple of years.
I think that the unique selling proposition is the very large, young, and Meme-crazy Dogecoin community. There are 2.2 mn r/dogecoin subscribers on Reddit. There are 1.6 mn Robinhood clients on the waitlist for their crypto wallet (and most of them hold Doge).
2014 Dogeparty token also separate us from the many newer projects. There are collectors seeking these even if the artwork is recent, as you observe with Goldenshibe and the like [update from Nov 26].
Hence, the key question is how to attract those guys to translate their Doge enthusiasm to Dogeparty NFTs.
That involves two steps:
Make them aware about Dogeparty, which is mainly a marketing / social media issue.
Make it easy to buy Dogeparty NFTs. I think that those ppl prefer to use a simple mobile app. Screening through the dank Dogeparty cards, clicking on those they like and drop some Doge. Ideally (I know it’s a big wish list), the app has a simple mass market version (just for buying / selling / sending / receiving Dogeparty NFTs and Doge) and a pro version for those who want to create token and to set up dispensers / DEX orders. At the moment, the Desktop app is rather targeting the experienced users.
There are some valid points here, the main issue I see here is that if NFTs go into a bear market and hype dies, what will fund the continuation of this project and chain? Like a portfolio, it needs to be able to weather all storms.
I personally think the main selling points we have going for us are indeed the low transaction fees and the fact that Dogeparty is much faster than what the masses would be used to coming from the centralized (e.g. CEX, Robinhood, etc.) side. Also there is definitely a bit of a fun factor on this side. The NFT’s this community has been creating have been amazing.
However, although making an NFT is cheap here on Dogeparty I can definitely see some limitations that would be off-putting to artists looking for a chain to mint on. And technically since some chains have creating fee-less minting, I feel that Dogeparty would have to adopt some of the shiny features of other chains in order to attract more artists so we can grow on that front.
Note I am not a tech person either so I don’t know what this would entail, but if royalties could be built into the platform that would be a major incentive to artists. Secondly I also agree with the concept of a marketplace and I am literally experimenting with app creation to see if I can make one that could be a place holder until something along those lines is developed.
Also DPuniversity is wonderful. The thing is the majority of people like things that are really easy to navigate from a intuitive standpoint. And…a majority of people don’t like to read so there would need to be a how to video on ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.
However, if dp university and the platform could be put into a functional app. Dogeparty as a whole would be cooking with gas. Especially once the greater Dogecoin community taps in.
But until we have I think a system that provides a really streamlined user interface process Dogeparty will grow a bit slower than we would like, but we would attract long term hard core crypto enthusiasts.
So in a general sense, what would help bring a lot of traction is an app and easier user-interface from my perspective.
Possibly adding some defi-elements like staking and farming but I’m not sure Dogeparty would like to go down that route. Also NFTs can be used for more than just art. I see people selling like real estate via NFTs all the time. So if we can build a reputation for ‘functional NFTs’ as I like to call them that will open up a whole new world of possibilities that will attract a lot of new users.
