Cow Community meet-ups by Spicy Punks

CoW Grants Program Rejected Grants
1

Grant Title

CoW Community meet-ups by Spicy Punks

Author

Sahil Thakur

About You

Sahil is a technology maximalist who has experience working with projects like ICP, Algorand, Aave, Polygon, etc. He started his web3 journey with Finstreet working as a content creator along with managing partnerships with crypto projects. He has helped scale Finstreet to one of the biggest web3 learning communities in India. After Finstreet, he is focused on bringing the web3 revolution on the ground through Spicy Punks, India’s first web3-themed cafe for meetups and community-building exercises for web3 founders and enthusiasts.

Grant Category

CoWmunity Growth

Grant Description

Spicy punks is India’s first web3-themed cafe which is focused on conducting web3 meetups. Being self-sovereignty advocates we never found a space where we can interact with like-minded individuals, so we innovated the Spicy Punks to be a comfort for all our Web 3.0 fam. On a regular basis, we are conducting meetups so that all who share a similar vision in Ludhiana can discuss on the same platform all the important aspects of web3.
Website: https://spicypunks.com/
Please refer to our community meet-up for ICP: ICP community meet-up by Spicy Punks on Vimeo

Grant Goals and Impact

Spicy Punks is looking to organize community meet-ups to help educate users about the CoW ecosystem and spread awareness about defi. We will be discussing the important developments in the CoW ecosystem along with an introduction to the important elements for a deep understanding for the attendees like swapping using CoW etc. These events will directly contribute to the growth of the CoW ecosystem. We will include CTAs to join the CoW communities on different platforms and use CoW live to make the attendees familiar with CoW. These events will highlight the benefits CoW provides and attendees will be encouraged to actively interact with the CoW ecosystem.

Milestones

We will be completing the 5 CoW community meet-ups within a time frame of 8-10 weeks from the time of approval of our grant with an average audience size of 40-50 people in each event. We will be educating and spreading awareness about defi along with CoW at these events.

Grant Timeline

We will be completing the 5 CoW community meet-ups within a time frame of 8-10 weeks.

Funding Request

We are requesting $5,000 for organizing five community meet-ups.

Budget Breakdown

We will be providing free food and drinks to all the attendees during the event. We will also distribute custom-made CoW stickers and other giveaway goodies based on Q/A to attendees. We will also be getting the standees and other marketing materials printed. We will be providing the following to all the attendees:

  1. Zero entry free
  2. Hands on experience swapping using CoW.
  3. Free food and drinks
  4. Custom-made CoW stickers and other giveaway goodies based on Q/A to attendees

Gnosis Chain Address (to receive the grant)

0x6202f5b965584957300Ce79191c88A8b3AbF37e3

Referral

N/A

Private application?

I have read and agree with the COW DAO Grants Program terms & conditions:

:ballot_box_with_check:

Contact details

Telegram: @Sahil_Thakur07

2

While I admire the effort, I do not believe this represents value for money, as the acquisition cost per person is too high.

If 100% of the attendees become Cow Disciples, it would cost $20 per person, based on your metrics. (50 people per event * 5 meet-ups = 250 people / 5000 * 100 = $20 per person).

For example a Google AdSense campaign can bring attention to the Cow Protocol and acquire over 1000 people for a similar cost base.

1 Like
3

Thank you for the point @netrunner.eth We organize events where we introduce our community and attendees to the project along with practical demonstrations of how to use the platform. This way ensures higher user participation on the partner platform in comparison to other alternatives like Google AdSense. Also as per our experience with Aave and ICP meetups, these events create a strong word of mouth, and in-person recommendations of the attendees usually create network effects as they experience and discuss the product firsthand in the meetup itself. The attendees of the meetup are usually thought leaders/ first movers in their respective communities and groups. Hence if on average we consider 10 recommendations from each attendee then the actual cost of acquisition per user will be much lower than we anticipate in the very first place.

I would be really thankful if you can reconsider the offering of these metrics as this will give you a better understanding of the value proposition of these meetups.

4

I agree that if 250 attendees introduce 10 people to the protocol then it reduces cost of acquisition to around $2 a person, however it is hard to measure, and therefore difficult to determine value for money. I will be interested in hearing what the other grant committee members think on this matter.

2 Likes
5

I understand your concern regarding the value. We offer to start with 3 meet-ups grant for $2,500. Once we demonstrate the results we can do the next round of meet-ups.

6

I am new to this forum, but I came across this proposal on discord and I couldn’t resist to add my opinion as a member and enthusiast of the CoW community…

I’m sorry to be so frank, my intention is not to disrespect or offend you, rather to make you reason about the proposal you present and maybe consider an improvement if you legitimately want to contribute to the development of the community

The website referenced in the proposal seems to be related to an small local food delivery cafe where some web3 meet-ups are organised from time to time, for me it does not look deeply involved with the web3 community, asking money this way just to arrange some talks about the project seems smelly at least.

The pictures about past meet-ups showcased in the website and the Vimeo video linked, only show about 15 to 20 attendants, half the 40-50 you mention as “the average” audience, and I doubt 100% of those attendants would really engage and bring other people as value users of the CoW Swap platform, so from the beginning those $1000/meet-up seems a really high request considering the potential low value in exchange even in the best scenario and observing the details and the way in which the described conditions are apparently being inflated.

I have been co-organiser of large meet-ups since early Ethereum days and let met tell you that the spirit of meet-ups is not to make money from them, even if you want to use the money to pay food for the attendants (food that by the way I guess is sold by the same restaurant organising the meet-up)… The stickers seem totally home made (inexpensive) so where are actually going to spend that budget?

The negotiating tactics like “we offer to start with 3 meet-ups for $2500” seem like a warning flag for me… Man, if you are interested in helping the community, you just should organise the meet-ups for free, and maybe give food for free and charge for drinks, so with the extra audience you would end up getting an extra income for the cafe during meet-up days… then once you grow a relevant community size, start organising more engaging activities and larger events that actually require help in the form of grants, but I don’t share your way of selling “the offer” that nobody asked for, to organise the meet-up in charge of money… I feel offended by this behaviour as a meet-up and communities organiser, as a CoW community member, and as a web3 enthusiast in general.

If it depended on my vote, due to the tone and half truths used in this request, the doubts that are raised, and the difficulty of obtaining reliable metrics and monitoring of the proposal impact, I would vote NO to it without hesitation.

I strongly believe that the CoW community has much more productive ways to spend these funds, although this, as well as my entire answer, is simply a subjective opinion to raise the debate.

I don’t want to discourage you from continuing to arrange these types of events and keep growing a small community, but I’m a bit tired of this culture of taking advantage of the treasuries of large projects with these kind of requests…

Provide value and then ask for funds to expand that value, that should be the way IMHO, and above all, aiming to generate a Non-Zero-Sum Game situation.

2 Likes
8

Thank you for your views. Will work on the updated proposal internally.

9

While not to discourage grants for Community Development, in my opinion the grant details outlined do not demonstrate any benefits to CowDAO.

Example - yesterday Cowswap trialed limit orders, with a total cost of $0 that translated to direct use / promotion of the protocol to an audience of similar size stipulated in this grant (excluding existing staffing costs).

If there is a material change in the size of the audience, and potential customer acquisition, with reasonable budgets associated and defined KPIs / means of measurement, I would be happy to revisit a grant with such details.

1 Like
14

Speaking of… I get my local milk delivery every week! I love it. :slight_smile: