Grant Proposal: The Pond

Community Grant Applications
#1

Grant ID: 863g83h2b

Summary:

The Pond is a web3 news / information site to give a curated white hat crypto website. This allows people to have a safe, fun and informative space to learn more about web3.

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

If available, please enter a link to your project below:

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:
Education

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:
Funding would support site costs, incentivize authors and allow us to further grow this project.

Have you applied for (or already received) funding from somewhere else?:
No

If yes, please describe where you’ve received funding from and how much you have, or will, receive:
n/a

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
We believe that there needs to be a more trustworthy and relevant crypto native site with curated content. A place where real people involved in web 3 are able to share information without shilling projects and being disengenous. A curated crypto Medium run by white hats in the industry.

What can you share about any past work that is relevant to this grant?:
Yunt Capital is the parent company and they are a small venture capital firm attempting to be white hats in the space. Yunt is a small firm using their own limited funds. As part of being the white hats in the space they have created ThePond.wtf as a way to give back. Share information, guide ‘normies’ from the non-crypto life in a safe space helping them find their way and expand the Web3 community.

Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
Creation of Yunt Capital. Advisors and investors in Parallel and many other web3 projects. Members on the guidance council of Echelon foundation. Tokenomics, defi and general web3 users and proponents.

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
General proponent of web3. Believe The Graph is another of the white hats in the space and essential for the advancement. Believe that Web3 is the way to bring innovative methods to many current solutions. Financial freedom for many, with banks failing today it is an obvious next step




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

#2

Thanks for your application.
1.- Could you clarify what your proposal is? I am not so clear about. Are you propose a educational website?
2.- Could you do a breakdown of the cost of the proposal?
3.- Who and how many people make up the team and what roles would they play in the proposal?
Thank you in advance

3 Likes
#3

Hey! Thanks for taking the time to apply for the grant!

As I read it, I have a questionable opinion, because it is not very clear how exactly you want to add value to The Graph.

Also, I would like to know if it’s something in the form of a website, about the amount of people, stats for the day, week, month.

Or would it just have to be articles?

Thank you!

3 Likes
#4

I have reviewed your website:

So if I understood correctly do you want to create a WTF is The Graph article or what?
Or it will be a series of articles like a specific section in your top menu dedicated just to The Graph?

Can you be so kind to clarify this questions, and also the previous two?
Thanks

2 Likes
#5

Sorry for the late response.
The submission for the grant did not allow for a lot of expansion.
Thank you for reviewing the website. The request isn’t for funds to write an article about The Graph. We’ll eventually have those up as well as many others.

The goal of the website is to be a valuable and trusted resource in the web3 space. The grant process allowed for funding to overall web3 projects which improved the ecosystem. That’s the core ethos of The Pond. Give good reliable information to many.

We’re a relatively new site, there’s hosting fees and we’d like to start creating a fund for quality articles by guest writers. No grant money would go to the founders, it would just be to pay for expenses and fund some of the authors.

Generally if you believe a respectable web3 positive site is important, than The Pond is important.

#6

@Lorena The team is mainly comprised of about people. We had an outside UI person, a web developer and some core team members. The outside people were paid for by our founders, the web hosting fees were as well. The remaining 8 people have been writing articles, doing quality control.

It is a labor of love and The Pond isn’t looking for profit, the goal is to expand web3 awareness and create a safe informative space for new members to the web3 community.

Currently people go to sites like Medium or the Forbes-like Medium which are filled with bad information, people pumping bags and generally bad actors. Sure there are good people on those sites but there’s so much junk and misinformation.

The goal is to use grants from communities like The Graph, Nouns Dao and others that offer grants to help support the maintenance cost. Use the funds to help attract new authors while having an overall editorial board to help curate this.

The request was for $20k which seemed modest to start an endeavor like this. None of that money would go to the founders, it would be used only for site costs and new authors.

We have been offered advertisements but feel it goes against the spirit of being a meaningful and trusted resource.

Thank you for your questions.

#7

Thanks for all your time spent in submitting the grant proposal, and to answer our questions.
I disagree on qualifying Medium or other blog platforms as filled with bad information. It all depends on who is publishing content and the reputation they built in the community. So, it is not a problem with the platform, but rather with the authors.

After reading carefully your proposal and your answers, I do not see any specific correlation with The Graph for this grant, and I do not see a well structured proposal to improve the ecosystem awareness and adoption. I’m going to vote No. Thanks for your understanding, and again, for submitting your proposal.

1 Like
#8

I respect that, again the grant was more in the spirit of advancing web3 which falls under the Graph Grant structure.
And I agree with you that there is very high quality articles and information on Medium. The challenge is without a curation process there’s also rugs and potential bad actors.

Thanks for taking the time to read the proposal.

#9

Unfortunately, this grant proposal did not generate the level of support in the community to move it to the next phase of the grant application process.

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 community support.