Hello @Lorena, payment to any influencer is not included in my proposal. I am also against the idea of paying influencers. As I mentioned, I’m going to ask influencers, who are my friends, to support them in “free” organic sharing. Apart from this, no fee will be paid.
Thank you for your understanding🙏🏼
For transparency reasons I would like to ask you again to prepare and publish here in the Forum as a comment the answer to the question about Turkish ecosystem participants (delegators, curators, indexers, possibly developers who were also part of the Turkish community) and the updated version of the budget with the changed timeline to quarters, as discussed during the interview
Thank you 
We agreed during the interview to change the grant period to quarters 
Thanks again Julianna for your kind message, I will answer meticulously.
In order to make the process both less complex and more sustainable, I revised my proposal to a one-year grant instead of two years as a result of our discussions. In addition, I reduced the budget that I requested as $14,500 to $8,200 within this framework.
The final version of the payment plans of the one-year budget is as follows:
Initial funding:
1000$ tools (in full)
1440$ 40% of your compensation for the 6 monthsFinal funding:
2160$ 60% of the compensation after 6 months and delivery of the objectives of the grantNext: Quarterly grants (first quarter):
Initial funding:
720$ 40% of your compensation for the 3 monthsFinal funding:
1080$ 60% of the compensation after 3 months and presenting the deliverablesNext: Quarterly grants (second quarter):
Initial funding:
720$ 40% of your compensation for the 3 monthsFinal funding:
1080$ 60% of the compensation after 3 months and presenting the deliverables
After the one-year period is over, I can apply for a one-year grant again, depending on the success of the community administration. Likewise, as I stated in the above comments and presented, there is no change in the community management plan. The only change; a one-year plan and budget reduction instead of a two-year grant. The monthly payment will be ~$600 (equivalent to GRT) as I mentioned before.
In all this one-year period, I will first submit my report at the end of 6 months. Afterwards, I will prepare and share progress reports and statistics every three months. So there is no change in the reporting system that I mentioned above.
In response to the other question you asked; as I said in our interview, it will take some time to prepare my detailed report on Turkish ecosystem participants. Because there may be many people on this list and it is very difficult to determine the number at the moment. Anonymous ones can also be found among them. For this, I will share announcements to our community and communicate with all of them one by one. And as new ones join, I’ll add them to the same list and update them. Thus, we will have enough data for a precise number.
I will not only keep the growth statistics of our social media platforms such as Twitter and Telegram, but also the statistics of Turkish curators, indexers, delegates and developers in the Graph ecosystem. I aim to reach the real number of them by making regular announcements to our community in order to access the right data. And I will also decide what strategy I will follow in order to grow in line with the data we have.
I think a very productive year awaits us.
Let’s keep working to make the Graph Protocol even better!
Hi Onur,
Thank you for your response.
the increase in the number of members and interaction on social media platforms indirectly and in parallel, has a great impact on the growth of the Graph ecosystem
Firstly, I do not completely agree with this. Translating over 200 messages from the telegram (Telegram: Contact @graphprotocolTR) it seems like most interactions are about the price of BTC and GRT. Growing that number to 300, 500 or X interactions has no added value in my opinion.
However, more interactions about contributions to the ecosystem would be very valuable to me. If you agree with this, how would you increase the number of interactions about contributions?
Secondly, how does the amount of views/impressions on twitter relate to ecosystem contributions?
If I am understanding you correctly your argument is: Number of interactions go up = contributions go up. I do not think this is true.
Thank you for sharing this. I see there is not a hard no on price discussion. After translating hundreds of telegram messages over a couple day period, it looks like the group is currently mostly talking about btc/grt price instead of the Graph Ecosystem.
Is that observation accurate? Do you think that subject promotes protocol adoption?
I would agree that working with influencer could (and probably would) accelerate adoption. However, I would object paid influencer marketing. I will come back to this later in this post.
I did not fundamentally support this grant application at that time, which is why I voted no. This may change in the future.
You:
payment to any influencer is not included in my proposal. I am also against the idea of paying influencers.
Also you:
As you know, these people usually charge a fee. I would like to state that I will use some of my budget in these collaborations.
I’m sorry, but are you not completely contradicting yourself here?
I would like to ask the grant committee to draft up a 3 month grant agreement that will be reviewed every quarter to see if the continuous grant will be extended another quarter. I would like to see hard and clear KPIs in this agreement. If this proposal is made, I might change my vote. I am not convinced.
tools $1000?I think it was explained in the Forum couple of times by different DAO members and it was also emphasized in the interview that we don’t support any kind of collaboration with influencers, it doesn’t matter if it’s paid or free (@onur-TheGraphTurkey argued that some of them are his friends and will not charge for it - it is still no). The same applies to price talk - that’s why one of the requirements from the Grant Committee raised during the interview was the question about ecosystem participants and contributors to the Graph ecosystem coming from the Turkish community, which should be presented in the Forum for the Grant Committee to be able to proceed to the grant agreement.
I also believe that the 1-year grant schedule is still not feasible. I would rather agree with the schedule 6 months - 3 months - 3 months.
Firstly; We have 1100+ people on Telegram. Among them, of course, there are those who talk about the price of $GRT and those who talk about $BTC, which affects the whole market. Most people trade and see exchanges as a platform where they can make money. As in the rest of the world, the training and development part of this sector is behind the trade part. Isn’t our whole purpose to educate people, raise awareness and make them contribute to the ecosystem? That’s why we’re here. As we increase this number, we will be more likely to reach people who will contribute to the ecosystem in the future. These people are potential ecosystem players and there is a possibility that delegators, indexers and curators will emerge from them over time. So as the simplest example, $GRT investors are a potential delegators. In this context, the possibility of reaching people who contribute to the ecosystem will increase with training series, events, organizations, announcements and increasing interactions in which the benefits of the Graph Ecosystem are mentioned. Unfortunately, not giving importance to Telegram & Twitter platforms by saying “I don’t think they have any added value” and ignoring them is not a point of view that I agree with.
Secondly; The Twitter platform is the cornerstone of the blockchain ecosystem (I think we agree on that). This is the most active social media platform where the “communities” that make up the projects follow the news feed. It is the social media where people like a potential investor, ecosystem player, developer/indexer/delegator contributing to the ecosystem are active and first look at. What do you think of a blockchain project that has 3 followers on Twitter, hasn’t posted a single tweet, and is not followed by anyone? What would be your perspective on that project? Let’s think the opposite now. Wouldn’t the Twitter profile of a blockchain project, which uses Twitter regularly, interacts with its followers, receives high levels of interaction, increases the number of followers and is active, contribute more to the ecosystem? So an important piece of the puzzle we’re trying to complete here is Twitter. And increasing Twitter engagement means reaching more potential ecosystem players. In this context; more interaction means more individual people. The more unique people interacting with your Twitter profile, the more potential players that can contribute to the ecosystem. So the amount of views/impressions on Twitter undoubtedly has a linear relationship with ecosystem contributions. I am commenting on this issue as someone who has a master’s degree in digital marketing. Unfortunately, your thinking this way or my different thinking doesn’t change anything about it. Our opinions should always be respected, but there are marketing realities. More interaction/more people = more potential ecosystem players.
Third; As I said at the beginning, the vast majority in this ecosystem, including our global group, are trying to make money. The way to make money is to trade (the majority of societies think this way). For this reason, it is normal to have $GRT price chat in all groups. All of us are engaged in educating our communities, raising awareness and trying to involve them in the ecosystem through activities. Most people who engage in price chat (GRT/BTC - GRT/USDT) are potential long-term investors. As such, they are potential delegators. Raising awareness for them to become delegators is one of the things we all want to do. Likewise, investors with software knowledge are potential indexers. Those who want to make different contributions by being included in the ecosystem are potential curators. What I want to do is to raise awareness of all of them to contribute to our ecosystem and to ensure that our community grows on this axis.
Fourth; I explained this in the presentation on Discord. I guess you missed that detail because you weren’t there. But that’s okay, I’ll gladly try to explain it again. We agree on the contribution of working with influencers. We also agree that it doesn’t make sense to pay them tons of money. This may seem like project shilling from the outside, so it is often unnecessary. However, getting involved in venues such as influencer events and physical blockchain clubs may require fees. I want to spend time with them to explain the Graph Protocol to them by meeting with them in real life. Financial support will be required for this process. "I paid $1000 to CryptoXXX because he’s going to tweet, “Graph Protocol is so cool!” I never want such a thing, nor do I think. I will need to allocate a share of my budget for this and similar cooperation opportunities. This is what I want to talk about.
Fifth; I respect your opinion. I share with you what I have done and will do with all my transparency. If you’re not convinced, that’s okay. As I shared what I did before, I also stated that I would report what I did afterwards at the end of each grant/payment period. I think this is what it should be.
Finally; I will have to pay for professional marketing tools such as marketing, measurement, statistics, graphic creation/editing, video editing, etc. It will also serve as a small budget, which I will use until the next grant payment as a starting point.
Thanks.
Thanks @juliannaMLN for your feedback.
As you mentioned, I already stated 6 months-3 months-3 months at the top. This schedule is suitable for me. It was just a plan I outlined for the process after the first period were complete. We can start with 6 months first. At the end of 6 months, I can submit the reports and apply again for the next 3 months.
This is quite reasonable.
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 Telegram channel of the Turkish community predominantly focuses on discussing the price and speculation of the GRT token and others projects. As Graph AdvocatesDAO we are keen to fund communities that are involved in building and developing The Graph ecosystem with the aim of increasing its adoption, rather than focused on price speculation. For this reason, we decided not to proceed with your grant. Thanks for your understanding.
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.
Sincerely,
Graph AdvoatesDAO