Grant Proposal: Istanbul Blockchain Week

Community Grant Applications
#1

Grant ID: 2xdak2f

Summary:

Turkeys leading premier blockchain week

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

If available, please enter a link to your project below:
https://istanbulblockchainweek.com/

Are you applying as a team or individual?:
Team

What type of grant are you pursuing?:
Project (one-off)

Please select the category your project best fits into:
Regional Community

Please select who you think will benefit from your project?:
Other

How much funding are you looking for? (USD):
20000

Provide a breakdown of your requested funding:
We have a variety of sponsorship opportunities that will help onboard a whole host of new developers, audiences and interested web3 and web2 community members, including institutional organisations to The Graph. We have top tier participation from some of the highest market cap projects, as well as internationally renowned speakers, and we would love for The Graph to be a part of this journey with us, to help you grow your community, project and reach to a new height.

Have you applied for (or already received) funding from somewhere else?:
Yes

If yes, please describe where you’ve received funding from and how much you have, or will, receive:
We have a variety of top quality sponsors already, and are focused on bringing on the best of the best as sponsors moving forward.

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
This depends on your goals. But similar projects are benefiting from attracting builders / developers to their ecosystem, growing their audience and community massively, creating large scale brand exposure and awareness, and having the opportunity to network with some of the leading projects and businesses both in web3 and web2 to further supplement their future growth.

What can you share about any past work that is relevant to this grant?:
As a group, we have successfully held 7 offline and online events around the globe, and Istanbul Blockchain Week is our flagship, leading event that promises to help the web3 ecosystem grow, prosper and weather the storm of the crypto winter!

Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
Further to the above, as a holding group, we have been active in the web3 space since 2015 - have partnerships and networks in place with some of the leading projects, have had speakers and participation from big names such as CZ, Charles Hoskinson, Gavin Wood, Sergey Nazarov, Edward Snowden, Emin and many more to add to the list.

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
Because we know The Graph is a quality project, with a clear long term vision, and clearly invests in growing your community, solutions for web3 and committed to shaping the future of web3. These are exactly the type of projects that we want to partner with.




Primary Community Poll

Do you fundamentally support this grant application, knowing that the final scope and grant amount may differ from the requested proposal?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters




Grant Committee Vote

Do you recommend this grant to the DAO?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

1 Like
#2

Hi, thank you for applying! I have some follow up questions regarding this application:

  1. “Provide a breakdown of your requested funding” - Could you elaborate on the funding request in terms of dollar amounts and allocating expenses?

  2. Does this event have a “hackathon” component to it or is it strictly lecture-based?

  3. “we have successfully held 7 offline and online events” - Is this (offline + online) = 7? or 7 offline and 7online? Do you have links to the outcomes of the previous events to show results/expectations?

  4. Are you open to different levels of funding then what is proposed?

  5. Can you provide sponsor package details?

Thank you for your time!

1 Like
#3

Hi BrainFried, many thanks for reviewing our application! Happy to answer your questions:

  1. “Provide a breakdown of your requested funding” - Could you elaborate on the funding request in terms of dollar amounts and allocating expenses?

  • In short, the dollar amount would depend on the level of sponsorship and resources that The Graph would allocate to having a significant, and meaningful presence at Istanbul Blockchain Week to gain a meaningful ROI. So for example, our sponsorship options range from $5,000 all the way up to $100,000+ and provide various levels of exposure and impact accordingly.

  • Taking a simple sponsorship as an example, Silver Sponsorship at the flagship event IstanBlock which is priced at $25,000, provides various speaking opportunities, booth presence, branding exposure and VIP all areas access to the entire event over the course of the week.

  • However, if we went specific into IstanHack (which is the official 3 day hackathon of Istanbul Blockchain Week), then a Silver Sponsorship would be $20,000 and has different deliverables, such as workshops, tracks, challenges, talks and branding exposure.

  • If you were to send members from the team in addition, then there would be the additional expenses of travel, accommodation to take into consideration. However, as mentioned to one of your core community members, we would be happy to explore how we can make this more of an economically viable investment for The Graph!

  1. Does this event have a “hackathon” component to it or is it strictly lecture-based?

  • It does indeed have a dedicated 3 day hackathon, running from the 14th to the 16th of November.

  • IstanHack is a 3-days hackathon that was born to provide an IRL platform where local and international developers and entrepreneurs can learn and create the future of Web3, together.

  • A 72 hours straight web3 focused chain agnostic hackathon where multiple platforms put out their use cases and add to the prize pool, giving developers in Istanbul an opportunity to pick and choose challenges & chains giving them the power to choose their outcome.

  1. “we have successfully held 7 offline and online events” - Is this (offline + online) = 7? or 7 offline and 7online? Do you have links to the outcomes of the previous events to show results/expectations?

  • The former. Offline + online = 7.

  • We shared some examples of the calibre of participants, sponsors and speakers from our previous events already, but to share some statistics - we have drawn in attendees in their thousands, ranging from multiple disciplines from developers, enthusiasts, investors, traders, institutions, gamers, students, government and many others.

  • Our events consistently draw in top tier media partners, to help our sponsors get the highest quality PR circulation and exposure as possible, as well as a variety of exclusive VIP events that ensure the fruition of the most promising partnerships, deals and networking takes place.

  • These are elements we have consistently delivered on.

  1. Are you open to different levels of funding then what is proposed?

  • Absolutely. It was a bit tough with your selection, because it was quite binary, either up to 20k or over 20k, but as mentioned, we have a variety of different opportunities available, which we would be more than happy to explore and discuss.

  • The key thing is to ensure we create a win-win situation. A level of funding that is comfortable for The Graph whilst providing you with exposure and ROI that is really going to drive meaningful impact.

  1. Can you provide sponsor package details?
  • As mentioned, there are various sponsorship opportunities available, but based on your initial questions and our immediate knowledge of The Graph, I’ll share 2 in particular with you:

  1. NFT Day + IstanBlock Sponsorship Deck:
    DocSend
    Passcode: IBW2022

  2. IstanHack - Official Hackathon of Istanbul Blockchain Week Sponsorship Deck:
    DocSend
    Passcode: IBW2022

Hope that helps, and please let me know if you have any further questions, or if I have missed any important details!

Best,
Jan.

#4

Hey Jan thanks for posting this!

Are you in contact with any advocates who would like to participate in the event? If the DAO were to be an active sponsor for the event, I would want to ensure we would have someone (likely an event evangelist) who will be able to be there to man the booth and provide assistance during the hackathon for anyone interested in utilizing The Graph. With that set up it seems like it could be a great way to connect with more developers.

How many participants were involved in the previous in person hackathons?

1 Like
#5

Hi @DataNexus,

I met one of Jan’s colleagues at NEARCON and I have been in contact with Jan to explain how our Community Grant Program works. I will be able to go to IBW to man the booth, and assist where needed. Hopefully 1-2 Graph Advocates from Turkey could assist me. To support the hackers during the Hackathon, I suggest we set up a IBW-thread in our discord. In this thread, our technical teachers could help out with subgraph development questions (we had something similar setup for the ETHOnline hackathon in the ETHGlobal server).

The IBW team was very professional in their communication, and their website looks very clean. I also appreciate the sponsor-packages being shared with our community.

I have a follow-up question for @Jan-IBW, in the sponsor packages for IstanHack it says “Bounty provided by sponsors”. Is the bounty for the hackers included in the sponsorship prize, or would a bounty need additional funding?

1 Like
#6

Thanks for your comments and questions @DataNexus and @Colson.

To answer your questions, in terms of developer participants in the Hackathon, we expect between 80-120 developers taking part over the 3 day Hackathon.

However, there will be a greater number in attendance to Istanbul Blockchain Week in its entirety.

To be clear, with regards to the booth, the booths are in the main foyer of the event, and typically this is not included in the Hackathon sponsorships, but if this is an important element for you - then we can facilitate this if you were to go for Silver or higher in terms of the sponsorship for the Hackathon.

@Colson I think you have some great suggestions with the discord channel, and having this open to the developers to ask questions as and when they need throughout the duration of the hackathon - as education is a key component of what we are looking to deliver.

With regards to your question on bounty, this is completely at your discretion, and would be a sponsors own bounty that would need additional funding (this falls outside of the sponsorship packages, hence why our sponsorship fees are actually very reasonable). So it is totally up to you what level of a bounty you are looking to offer participants.

Hope that helps guys, and happy to answer any additional questions you may have.

3 Likes
#7

Hello All, checking in to see if you have any other questions at this stage?

I totally appreciate you have your processes that you must follow through, but taking time into consideration, it would be ideal if we could reach a conclusion by the end of next week - to give ample time for planning and prep.

Here if you have any more questions!

@DataNexus @Colson

1 Like
#8

With Colson being in attendance and setting up additional advocates who can help during the hackathon I think this is a great grant to proceed with.

Personally I’m less interested in sponsoring the NFT Day and InstanBlock and far more interested in sponsoring InstanHack since our primary consumer base is pretty developer focused. I’ll leave the conversation about sponsorship levels to the grants committee assuming others are in agreement with the sponsorship.

2 Likes
#9

The majority decision of the Grant Committee concludes to not recommend this proposal for DAO funding. Please recognize that this is not a statement on the proposal itself, but rather an aggregated reflection by committee members taking into account a number of factors, such as alignment to The Graph and web3 ecosystem, budget available to support grants and prioritization relative to other proposed grants.

Below you find brief feedback brought up within the committee to not recommend DAO funding that may help you to submit successful grant applications in the future:

The Grant committee, at this point in time, does not think Graph AdvocatesDAO can adequately support Istanbul Blockchain Week 2022.

Thank you for submitting this proposal and you are encouraged to stay engaged in the Graph community. You are also welcome to submit new grant applications in the future with proposals that may generate stronger support from the committee.

2 Likes