Grant Proposal: ProXifyDAO

[admin]

Grant ID: 3885q39

Summary:

ProXify is a community of creatives that teaches, connect, mentors and improves contributors to offer technical services such as development, product designs, researches, copywriting, illustration, proposals and the likes, to other organizations, foundations and protocols. Our mission is to connect and provide jobs to our contributors through annexing the digital market by maximizing and improving on their skills

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

Are you applying as a team or individual?:
Team

What type of grant are you pursuing?:
Long-term (continuous)

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

Please select who you think will benefit from your project?:
Indexers, Delegators, Curators, Subgraph Developers, Other

How much funding are you looking for? (USD):
10000

Have you received funding from somewhere else?:
No

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
Our vision is to help other protocols/project handle their technical, including researchs and extensive needs. ProXify DAO, as a community, will provide technical and extensive services that facilitate The Graph’s indexing; as well as provide technical advise on its products. We aim to help The Graph execute certain tasks that needs to be done such as the RFPs.
On another hand, we are also mentoring new contributors while engaging hem in whatever task we are executing, increasing workrate and productivity in the web3 space.

What can you share about any past work that is relevant to this grant?:
As a community, we just launched and at that, we do not have a portfolio yet. However skilled and experienced contributors came togther to develop this community as we see it is something that will be beneficial to not just a project in particular but the web3 space and beyond.

Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
Our community is categorized into different proxies based on roles and skill sets:
Content proxy
Design proxy
Research proxy
Campaign proxy
Onboarding proxy
Operations proxy
Finance proxy
Tech-Dev proxy

Below is a list of current core contributors with defined roles:

Michael(ifun#9490)
He is a content and graphics creator. Also a DAO Tooler for web3 protocols and projects, currently a core contributor at Aragon in this regard. DAOs in areas of operations & growth, campaigns and strategies. One of the founders of ProXify and will be leading our operations, research and finance teams.

Temitope(temitope#8944)
Currently a core contributor at Aragon, was into construction in Nigeria and recently dived into the web3 space. He will be contributing to the project in terms of onboarding new contributors to the DAO, giving a walk through on what the project is and how to actively contribute to whatever task is being currently worked on.

Hamzat(hamzat_iii#5660)
Hamzat is a technical writer and content creator, also with notable experience in research, moderation, and graphics design. He is currently the lead for the content proxy.

Krivix(GuilderFi | krivix#5916)
Krivix is a graphics UI/UX designer and will be contributing to the design proxy. He is currently the design lead.

Bash(Bash7963)
Bash is a graphics and content designer, has experience in creating infographics to be used in issues such as newsletters and public posts.

Pinky(Pinky#1772)
Pinky is an AI designer and developer and is currently contributing to our tech and design proxies.

Faith(Royalty#3684)
Faith is a research expert, content creator and copywriter. She has worked over at CityDAO and BanklessDAO Education guild and PeopleDAO research club. She is also a contributor at DIA DAO and Aragon. She is actively contributing to the research proxy.

Seun(olokoji#8748)
Seun is a cofounder of this DAO, he is the team lead of Research and Campaign. He has experience in DAO legality from his experience in the studies of law, in the University of Lagos. He has worked as a volunteer in various campaigns both on web3 and politically. He is actively contributing as a research expert and campaign lead.

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
We beleive having a long term contribution to The graph will enhance our experience and workrate and this is the right start our community needs.

Community Poll

Do you support this grant application?

• Yes
• No

Grant Committee Vote

Do you recommend this grant to the DAO?

• Yes
• No

[Lorena]

Thanks to apply for a grant
1.- Could you give a detailed breakdown of the $10000 funding?
2.- Could you give a detailed list about what you planning to do?
3.- Could you explain what services are you offering and how can The Graph benefit of that services?4. Any additional information to clarify the proposal

[ifun]

Thanks for your response, really appreciate it
To answer your questions:

1. so basically, ProXify has 8 core contributors that will help oversee and facilitate the community (looking at working 4-5hrs time per day). We estimate a budget of $300 per month for each contributor. Each contributor will have a set of deliverables and KPI set, at the end of the month, a report is done and if the deliverables are deemed achieved, compensation is paid out. This is set for 3months and moving forward the community will be compensated based on rewards paid in from work done. Other expenses are covered by the $10,000 budget such as tooling and external skilled contributors to mentor onboarded contributors either through a learning session or by whatever effective means agreed upon

2. ProXifyDAO, as a community, has a laid out plan to do the following:
   -help onboard people as contributors in the web3 space and helping them upskill, as well as engaging them in projects that would help them garner useful experience.
   -in doing the above, also provide technical services to partners (this include conducting technical researches, operations, devops, analytic work, community engagement and social awareness)

3. The Graph would benefit directly from ProXify DAO in a sense that the collective services of our experienced proxies/contributors will always be readily available to The Graph Network. Services like economic reports, research reports, audio-visual tutorials, press releases, articles and guides, tooling and a bunch of other stuff. (We are currently looking to take up similar tasks to the RFPs or even the RFPs themselves)
   -ProXify DAO can exist as a beta testing team for The Graph network. Knowledgeable proxies/contributors of the ProXify DAO can always exist to test The Graph Network’s products.
   -ProXify DAOs experienced developers can also help build some of its products.
   -ProXify DAO would utilize the power and experience of its marketing experts to help grow its online community.

4. As stated in the initial application submitted, certain experienced contributors in the web3 space came together with the idea to establish a community and ProXifyDAO was launched. Our primary focus is to onboard people who:
   -do not have any knowledge nor do they know about DAOs and web3 space in general but have certain skillset
   -do not have any knowledge nor do they know about DAOs and web3 space in general and do not skillset.
   We aim to educate about web3 and the opportunities involved. Our idea is that more skilled contributors in the space = a win for the web3 world and also a win for the onboarded contributors. In order to efficiently do this, we brainstormed and figured actively engaging onboarded contributors (after they might have gone through series of educational sessions and acquired some sort of skill) is the best approach in making the whole process work - we, as a community will help projects and protocols carry certain work/task that needs to be done and will therefore improve our contributors’ learning process.

[Mr.1776]

Thank you for submitting your application. Also, congrats on building out your team! That’s no small feat.

After reading through your application and follow up responses to @Lorena, I have a few additional questions for you:

• It sounds like you have assembled a skilled team. However, I’d like to know what specific technical support for The Graph protocol you’d be providing to folks who need or request assistance.

• On a similar note, what specific KPI’s would you set for your team to achieve if you were funded and how would those KPI’s be connected to The Graph specifically.

• Can you define a little more clearly what the “tooling and external skilled contributors to mentor onboarded contributors” piece of your budget is for?

• You mention that your team would provide services such as “economic reports, research reports, audio-visual tutorials, press releases, articles and guides, and tooling”. I understand your collective team does not have a portfolio yet, but could you share any previous work from your individual team members that could demonstrate the ability to deliver the services listed above?

• How familiar are you with the technical components of The Graph protocol currently?

• Can you provide a bit more detail on how you would manage onboarding, upskilling, and engaging new community members and participants of web3 and The Graph? Please be as specific as possible.

Thank you!

[ifun]

Hello and thank you for your reply!
Answering your questions:

• Yes, we have a skilled team who came together with this initiative to provide technical and creative services to the web3 space. These services include but are not limited to - Research reports, designing and deploying subgraphs, product testing, UI/UX designs, Technical documentations, Blog articles on products related to a protocol(The Graph for instance), Technical Analysis, Product Tutorial videos and articles on how-to-use.

• We have a set of defined KPI that we have set and looking to achieve in Q1:

• Apply to The Graph RFPs and complete at least two of these
• Seek out to partner with startup DAOs and protocols and offer technical services that will improve their standards
• Onboard at least 100 contributors into the community
• Commence the first workshop and bootcamp upskilling series with a maximum of 25 contributors for a start.
  These KPIs are for Q1 and we believe these are connected and linked to The Graph because we aim to be a point of contact for The Graph when it comes to seeking technical support. We are painting a scenario where there is a long term partnership with the protocol so The Graph has a seamless access to getting technical support from a community of skilled contributors as at when needed. This will also be the same case with other projects in the web3 space - we aim to be a technical solution hub!

• Tooling - we will need to subscribe to some paid tool package that will facilitate some processes such as onboarding and upskilling processes. The upskilling process is still in process of being well defined so I can not give out a list of specific tools that we will be implementing. I included this based on my experience as a DAO Tooler, most tools will require us to get the paid version to explore most features. We also have intentions to invite other experienced contributors in the space to come abroad our community and organize a learning session that will increase productivity and impart knowledge - these contributors will have to be compensated - even though as little as it can go.

-Yes, the collective team does not have a portfolio as we just launched but I reached out to contributors on the team as of now and collated their respective portfolios in the google doc here - ProXifyDAO Collated Portfolio - Google Docs

• Our contributors who have technical backgrounds are well familiar with components of The Graph protocol but for a contributor such as me, I am not totally familiar but always seeking to get the in-depth knowledge, this is same for all core contributors. If this question is still not well answered, feel free to rephrase so I can properly address it.

• We have experienced contributors to handle onboarding, upskilling and engaging new members and participants of web3 and The Graph. Temitope is one of our contributors, currently a core contributor at Aragon Network DAO in the community engagement guild and he has been doing great stuff over there. He intends to do even more at our community and he will be leading the Onboarding process. The onboarding process will include but is not limited to the following - in-depth learning session centered on introduction into web3 (this will have a well defined structure lecture format - not defined as of now), getting to know who is skilled and who needs to be engaged in the upskilling program that will be organized, getting to know interest of new onboarded contributors, explaining and giving insights on how they can contribute in the web3 space, exploring opportunities that can be found in the space, fixing onboarded contributors with mentors - these mentors will have >6months experience involved in contributing in the web3 space. Our primary focus will be targeted at engaging our community through The Graph RFPs - we applied to these but still expecting a feedback. We believe it will be more efficient onboarding and upskilling contributors into the space by engaging them with tasks that will be monitored by our core skilled contributors.
  In regard to upskilling, we intend to organize a series of workshop bootcamps for contributors who are interested. To make the upskilling process an efficient one, we will be limiting the number of contributors that we can enroll into the bootcamp program, at least, for a start. We believe it will easier and more efficient to work with and upskill a not too large number of contributor at a time - this bootcamp is planned to be recurring based on the outcome of the first and so open to future applications for those who are not able to partake in the first.

Happy to clarify any more questions and concerns,
Regards.

[Mr.1776]

Thank you for your answers, I really appreciate it. A few follow up questions for you:

• Can you share a link to The Graph RFP’s you have applied for?
• Thank you for sharing the respective portfolios of your contributors. After reviewing the links, it looks like most of the team’s experience is in frontend engineering. Can you explain how that experience would provide your team with the tools needed to provide research reports, deploying subgraphs, and technical analysis / support?

Thanks again and I’m looking forward to your responses.

[ifun]

Here are the RFPs we applied to

• https://www.notion.so/Graph-Economic-Report-4391dba860a94bd19b4d9c20b6602e53
• https://www.notion.so/Indexer-All-in-One-Video-Tutorial-Series-702a5469d01c42db94f1cebb6f1660f6
• https://www.notion.so/Indexer-Excellence-Guide-5ec9bded063d46138f10dee5a49b2f99

Again, we are a community and the links I included in the gdoc representing portfolios of some of our contributors are limited. I will like to reference that I included that we preferred not to use individual contributors’ portfolio while applying to grants but as we are a start up and just had our first partnership with DomainDAO over the past one week, we do not have a laid out portfolio.
ProXifyDAO is categorized into various teams who work hand in hand. The frontend engineering folks for instance are in the Tech Proxy/team. We have content, design, translation and research teams that handle respective duties. I hope this answers your questions.
Also if you go back to the original proposal summary, you will find some more detail that will help explain this better. Thanks!

[Oliver]

Thanks for this submission, I feel this type of service can become very useful in the broader web3 ecosystem.

For context, the Graph AdvocatesDAO and Graph SubgraphDAO have been established to execute itself many of the services described in this proposal. There is a dedicated onboarding team that has onboarded over 150 Advocates already over the last few months. The DAO & Advocates are actively providing community care and education across dozens of Graph Forums, Telegram and Discord channels. Advocates are contributing to the Graph ecosystem with creating Graph specific content, translations, welcoming/mentoring web3 newcomers or organizing online and on-site events across the globe. The list goes on and is quite long, the DAO with its growing list of 40 members is engaged in a wide variety of activities to support the growth of The Graph & web3 ecosystem.

With such seemingly significant overlap of what the Graph AdvocatesDAO is already executing today, I am curious about how you think your proposals exactly fits into the ecosystem. Are you proposing to take over some responsibility from the Graph AdvocatesDAO or do you plan to fill specific gaps that you feel are currently not sufficiently addressed? Thanks for elaborating

[ifun]

Hey! Thanks for the response, I find your comments quite interesting.
I am aware of the Graph AdvocatesDAO and the Graph SubgraphDAO and the program they run, however, I will say there should not be a limit to how many organizations offer services such as the ones described in our proposal. For one, the web3 space is a very large one and the more organizations offering these services, the more streamlined the process is. Also, organizations like the Graph AdvocatedDAO, for example, is unpopular and not known in areas like Africa where I come from. At ProXifyDAO we aim to reach even areas such as Africa while expanding the scope of our services. Linking this to how our services will still be of use to The Graph - like I said in a previous reply, we applied to some RFPs but have not been reached back to with any feedback, guessing the process takes quite sometime. In the increasing world of web3, all and more hands will be needed on deck to attain maximum efficiency and to always deliver quality results - we look to contribute to The Graph.

[Oliver]

The Graph is a permissionless protocol and ecosystem where everyone can join at any time and start contributing right away, like thousands have done before. That’s the beauty of web3 and everyone is invited to do so. This is a grant application though and the DAO’s goal is to ensure that funding to grants is mission-aligned and distributed so it helps the growth of The Graph and web3 ecosystem in the best way possible. Let me get down to the KPIs that you have specified earlier:

@ifun

Apply to The Graph RFPs and complete at least two of these

If you apply and complete RFPs at The Graph, then you already get compensated for such efforts via the RFP amount itself and should not be double counted for in this grant proposal

@ifun

Seek out to partner with startup DAOs and protocols and offer technical services that will improve their standards

Can you provide a list of DAOs and what specific technical services you are referring to? What kind of standards are you looking to improve and how would that tie back to growing The Graph or web3? Specifics would be very helpful

@ifun

Onboard at least 100 contributors into the community

Can you define what you mean by ‘contributors’? What exact protocol or ecosystem roles would that refer to? What would the onboarding process look like and what means successfull onboarding in your view?

@ifun

Commence the first workshop and bootcamp upskilling series with a maximum of 25 contributors for a start.

What is the exact scope of these workshops and which protocol roles would you be targeting?

The Graph is one of the most complex web3 protocols and there are ton of ways to participate. I am happy to see your excitement to engage in the community and we want to make sure that the scope of how you would engage with grant funding is clearly understood within the ecosystem.

Also, exciting to hear you are from Africa as that is also an important region to The Graph. We have Indexers in Africa who are deeply engaged in philanthropy (DePhi) to spread the mission of web3. We have onboarded some 30 members from the African region into the DAO and/or Advocates Program who are actively engaged online and on the ground. Last year, Lagos was one of the few locations across the globe where African community members celebrated The Graph’s 1st birthday. There is also Graphrica, which focuses on the growth and development of the African region maintaining their own discord server.

Africa is a large region and The Graph is continuously looking to attract more community members there. Reaching out to some of the above listed resources may help you gain a better understanding of what is already happening and how your team can engage, collaborate or identify specific programs that The Graph community feels strong about supporting.

[ifun]

Hello, happy to hear from you again!
First, I will like to make clear what the funding requested is for. We are requesting to be funded with $10, 000 to be used majorly as compensation for core contributors currently in our community - the allocation and breakdown have been outlined in a previous reply, reasons we request this for core contributors presently have also been addressed. See here

@ifun

so basically, ProXify has 8 core contributors that will help oversee and facilitate the community (looking at working 4-5hrs time per day). We estimate a budget of $300 per month for each contributor. Each contributor will have a set of deliverables and KPI set, at the end of the month, a report is done and if the deliverables are deemed achieved, compensation is paid out. This is set for 3months and moving forward the community will be compensated based on rewards paid in from work done. Other expenses are covered by the $10,000 budget such as tooling and external skilled contributors to mentor onboarded contributors either through a learning session or by whatever effective means agreed upon

Answering your first question on getting compensated for efforts made in completing RFPs -

@Oliver

If you apply and complete RFPs at The Graph, then you already get compensated for such efforts via the RFP amount itself and should not be double counted for in this grant proposal

these rewards are intended to go into our community’s treasury and we have currently implemented a project management tool, Dework, to reward contributors in our community who will collectively work on any RFPs and tasks we secure after applications, not just the core contributors.

@Oliver

Can you provide a list of DAOs and what specific technical services you are referring to? What kind of standards are you looking to improve and how would that tie back to growing The Graph or web3? Specifics would be very helpful

Currently, we have established a partnership with DomainDAO (https://twitter.com/proxifydao/status/1554112468951113729?s=21&t=pgQIDC7AypsvllEsJ13ONQ) and have a list we are working with - this list will keep on being updated by our research team. Find link to google sheets here - List of DAOs for ProXify - Google Tabellen
As for how we decide who to reach out to. Our research team have been tasked to find out protocols/DAOs that experience difficulties getting any product/technical service (this occur often among startups but not limited to this set).
In simple terms, we are looking to improve the ease of Getting Jobs Done! Streamlining the process, we look to be a reliable point of contact in the web3 space when it comes to getting quality technical services.

@Oliver

Can you define what you mean by ‘contributors’? What exact protocol or ecosystem roles would that refer to? What would the onboarding process look like and what means successfull onboarding in your view?

By ‘Contributors’, I will give an instance to explain what we mean by this. A particular dev who has 20+ experience but does not have any knowledge of web3. That is what we mean by contributors. We see a whole great potential outside web3 and we look to onboard them into the space.
The onboarding process is not finalized yet as you may agree with me, it takes a while and some trials to get a successful onboarding process. Right now, we are looking to implement tools such as DoDAO to facilitate the onboarding process. A contributor will be said to have been successful onboarded when they complete tasks and participate in works that promote web3 - we will use our project management tool to guage this./

@Oliver

What is the exact scope of these workshops and which protocol roles would you be targeting?

The scope of these workshop is from a mentorship Point of View. Here, people who do not have any skills but are eager to contribute to web3 are engaged and upskilled - this is one of our major mission as a community, to upskill members who show dedicated interest in contributing to the enhancement of web3.

Addressing ‘‘what protocol roles’’, as stated in the proposal summary,

@admin

Our community is categorized into different proxies based on roles and skill sets:
Content proxy
Design proxy
Research proxy
Campaign proxy
Onboarding proxy
Operations proxy
Finance proxy
Tech-Dev proxy

we are not limited to certain roles and are instead, looking to expand these outlined roles.

I appreciate the info on the various programs happening in Africa and Lagos especially. Thanks, will definitely look into them, as they interest me a lot and can be of great benefit to the community and personally.

Happy to answer any more questions and resolve any uncleared comments, Regards!

[Oliver]

Thank you for taking the time to respond. As a concluding note, I am still left with a sense of vagueness with this proposal. The core element appears to be about onboarding and supporting The Graph community in various ways. Yet, at no time do I see any specifics in this proposal that reveal an intimate understanding of The Graph protocol or ecosystem, both of which are incredibly complex. For a team to provide active support in the ecosystem, one would need to have confidence that the team not only possesses generic technical expertise, but also specific protocol knowledge. The “roles” that we have in The Graph Network are Indexers, Curators, Delegators, Fishermen, Subgraph Developers, etc. They all have unique needs and I don’t see anything mentioned anywhere or if those roles are fully comprehended.

We have a lot of community-driven support and education initiatives in place today at The Graph. IOH is covering the Indexer experience, Curation Station collaborates on everything around curation, Graphtronauts have established themselves as the onboarding platform for non-tech folks entering The Graph ecosystem as Delegators and we also dozens of regional communities across the world from different geographical areas bringing people together in their local language. The list goes on, but what all of them have in common is that they have taken advantage of the permissionless nature of The Graph and simply started being active in the community. Months later, as they have developed reputation in the community and contributed visible value, grant applications make sense and are fairly straightforward to award. This may be an alternative path worth pursuing for this proposal, which is to demonstrate directly how you translate your ideas effectively into action in The Graph ecosystem. There certainly is a lot of room to contribute and opportunity to engage which I hope you consider exploring.

[ifun]

I will like to make clear of a thought here. Our mission is not to support just The Graph with our services, we are looking to do so to web3 space in general and we have chosen The Graph as one of our major point of reference because we know how much experience contributing and supporting the protocol will be to us. That being said, the issue of we not understanding The Graph protocol or ecosystem might be due to misunderstanding of your question asked on protocol roles. We as a team have done extensive research on The Graph and while you might be correct we do not have a complex understanding of the system, we have sufficient knowledge. Individually, we are experienced core contributors in this space and know all about The Graph and its ecosystem, not just The Graph, many others.
What you are proposing in the later part of your comments here does not fit into our community as this seems more like an individual process and way of doing things. Right now, we have a community of over 100 members who are divided based on roles, with different skilled level where some have little or no experience and others are well experienced. That said, I will ask you to revisit your comments here and see if this fit because it clearly doesn’t.
Again, our intentions are to support The Graph and other protocols based on the proposal summary and replies to comments, we do not seek to take alternative paths as this defeats the mission of ProXifyDAO.

[Oliver]

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:

Proposal does not appear within scope of a community grant as it asks to fund another DAO to perform the same tasks that the Graph AdvocatesDAO aims to deliver

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