This thread is dedicated to ideating and executing on 2020 SAFE Network marketing initiatives in support of key milestones such as:
Vaults Phase 2
Public Testnets
Exchange Listings
Fleming
To get a sense of interest in supporting marketing initiatives for MaidSafe and the SAFE Network, I’ve created some polls in a post below:
To get us started, I’ve thrown together this preliminary timeline:
2-4 weeks before public testnets announce SAFErace (competition to find/fix bugs)
Launch Public testnets
6-8 weeks before Fleming, announce SAFE The Internet (contest for developing marketing campaign in support of Fleming release)
2-4 weeks before Fleming launch activate winning SAFE The Internet marketing ideas
Launch Fleming
1-4 weeks after launch, host local Fleming release parties and announce The SAFE Challenge hackathon series (tournament style with opportunity to progress from local to cross-regional/global virtual hackathons)
4-8 weeks post Fleming launch, host local hackathons
8-12 weeks post Fleming launch, host cross-regional hackathons
12-16 weeks post launch host first global virtual hackathon
These thoughts rely on general knowledge of release timing so that we don’t take to the streets too early. That being said, there’s no need to know the specific day when a release will happen, just the window within a number of weeks.
As we decide on what to execute this year, we can adjust the above timeline. If anyone has additional ideas/suggestions on what we can do to support releases and exchange listings (e.g. trading contests, affiliate marketing, etc.), please share.
Next steps would be to refine marketing strategies/tactics, define auxiliary social media and SEO marketing support, estimate associated costs, hold community voting/fundraising, create tutorials to support hackathons, etc.
Will we - or anyone have that much notice(2 - 4 weeks) that public testnets or Fleming are ready?
Yes David and the team will know when we are within a day or two because the internal testing will all be going well but Id hope they would not be sitting on good news after all this time.
So maybe we should be going all out on these initiatives now …?
Or at least getting some clearnet page templates together for the bug hunting?
Oh no, you guys will all know within days/hours of us, it’s gonna be warts and all testnets and hopefully delivered at a high rate of iterations. Expect bugs, we do
I think we would need to raise some funding for this. Like we can’t have a contest for marketing ideas and be like congrats you win now go pay all the costs to make it happen It’s a worthy cause though, and I would donate to the pot for sure!
IMHO the marketing strategy should be centered on SAFE’s progress.
Of a near-to-intermediate timeframe the primary milestones are:
Vaults Phase 2
Fleming
Maxwell
Each successive milestone should be accompanied by a marketing plan and exchange goals. For example, the exchange goals for Vaults Phase 2 could be to have support for 1 decentralized exchange and 1 centralized exchange serving the US market.
A gradual exchange approach will afford the opportunity to capitalize on SAFE progress and marketing effort while avoiding the risk described by @andyypants
As we collate and distill the lists of decentralized and centralized exchanges, and collectively rank them, we will be able to simply pick from the lists going from most to least preferred until exchange goals are met for each milestone.
We definitely need to raise funds for this. I’ve been doing some digging and the avg ICO allocates $500K to marketing alone. Massive projects like XEM spend $240K a month (~$3M a year). A budget as big as XEM’s is unrealistic for this project at this time, but hopefully we could collectively raise somewhere close to the vicinity of $500K for exchange listings and marketing initiatives. I know that sounds like a lot; however, not only was the last raise over subscribed, but many people still wanted to contribute.
I’m doing the math on how much marketing initiatives like a code bounty or hackathon would cost. To that end, does anyone know approximately
how many lines of code the public testnets would hold?
how many bugs on average have been found in previous testnets?
how long previous testnets were up?
how much devs expect to earn per bug found?
the minimum you’d expect to receive for a first, second, third place hackathon finish at a local/city level and at a regional/global level?
Agreed, and that may simplify things. For that matter, would it be possible to automate bounty payouts?
Yes, but is it worth the effort?
Surely we can get someone trustworthy from the community to send the MAID to the lucky recipients after the bug is marked valid by the devs.
How many actual transactions do we expect? IMHO if it is <100 then its more bother than its worth to automate it.
The lending round offered potential direct profits in the form of 1.5X returns of MAID on what you paid in. I wonder if there is a way to tokenize this so that people contributing felt more like they were investing then donating. Not sure if there is, but I will deff think about if there is a potential way!
My questions above are designed to help hypothesize how many bugs the public testnets might have. If anyone else has another way of trying to back into that number, please share
Agreed. How might something like that be structured and would MaidSafe (either the company or the foundation) need to be involved? I think the simplest way would be for MaidSafe to hold a marketing specific raise under the same terms as the last one.
I think the low headache way to do it is just make some ERC20 or Tron tokens and sell them to people. We can say these tokens represent your non-voting shares in this enterprise. However we will make it clear this is like a SpaceX thing. We won’t be profitable for a long time. I could see maybe one day when the Maidsafe company is not struggling for money anymore, we might be the go-to they hire for more marketing efforts. At that point these tokens could turn a profit.
Also we don’t have to raise all the capital selling the tokens to straight up investors. We could use them to reward bug bounties and stuff. I think some people might like the idea better that they are earning a piece of a bigger movement, not just a 1 time payout then scram.
This would be difficult to do for anyone based in the US. However, if someone in a jurisdiction with a more favorable regulatory environment could do this, that could work.
What would be the selling point? Tokens can be traded 1:1 for MAID (I.e. as value of MAID rises so does the marketing token)? If that were to be the case, an entity would need to currently hold the equivalent value of MAID.
For what other reasons might someone want to hold these tokens?
Well people do issue tokens all the time, so clearly that’s not illegal everywhere. I am pretty sure it would be legal for me to do from Canada but not 100% sure, like I would have to be to do it.
I thought about schemes like this. In the end though if we make it complicated like that other barriers come up and I think we end up spending all our time making our crazy dr suis machine work So what I propose is simply you are buying a piece of our “club” that may or may not one day make money you would earn dividends on, or we just buy back the tokens.
Well for one thing it would be kinda like a badge of honour you helped out X amount in this important issue. If you just found some bugs on your spare time and were rewarded this medal of honor maybe that would be just fine even if they never had cash value.
That kind of makes me think of Kickstarter rewards. It could be that participants purchase the tokens in MAID or BTC so that the Community Marketing Foundation has the funds in MAID to pay for marketing activities as well as in BTC to pay for exchange listings.
easiest way is to trade the for the native token of the chain we are using ie ETH or TRON. After that we can just trade them into whatever is most appropriate for what we are doing. But ya I am kinda hyped that maybe people would do work to just earn the tokens and be like there’s something cool for my collection. Like I am not even saying sell this as a penny stock. I am saying sell it as a nothing stock, but if by chance it becomes something good for you lol.
THat’s cool and will find plenty traction in here BUT… we want a bug-hunters from outside this community as well. The whole bug-hunt thing has two objectives
1 Find the bugs duh…
2 Raise awareness amongst geeks/ pro bug-hunters about the SAFE network itself.
That second population may be less likely to be enthused by a token representing a project that is frankly, not easy to fully explain in 2 minutes and if they don’t get it immediately they may well move on. Plus, it’s in Rust and competent Rust bug-hunters are thin on the ground (well that’s my impression). So despite my earlier call for the bounties to be paid in MAID, on reflection, maybe we need to think about paying them at least partly in BTC or ETH.
Yes these are great points. Maybe we would have to make it an option do you want us to pay you out now in BTC… or if you prefer to “donate” your time we give you some of these magic beans lol.
It’s a worthy cause though, and I would donate to the pot for sure!