Funding implementations of common good parachains - Green Bay Dollar billboard marketing

Hello everyone!

I want to open a discussion about whether it is appropriate for the Kusama Treasury to fund implementations of common good parachains. The main reason I'm opening this up to the community is because I am hopelessly biased - I'm in the midst of implementing Encointer technology in Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA. This particular implementation is called Green Bay Dollar and we've thoroughly enjoyed getting the community currency launched on chain. The Encointer Association allocated a two-tier grant for our community in referendum 22: $2,000 upfront for prelaunch preparation and $5,000 upon launch and action plan. These amounts have been extremely helpful in getting our community off the ground and you can review our use of the these Treasury sourced funds in this spreadsheet. Keep in mind we just received the postlaunch grant and have yet to roll out our action plan with those funds.

The $5,000 postlaunch grant will certainly go a long way - we have plans to book tables at local college campuses, boost posts on GBD's facebook page, purchase a mailing service to send out flyers to all local businesses, purchase GBD branded printouts (e.g. a seed phrase backup card, paper vouchers, event posters, etc.), and buy some items to list for sale in GBD. These expenses along with the cost of website upkeep, snacks and room reservation costs for cycle meet-ups, and registration fees for relevant local events (like craft shows, conventions, or our own informational sessions) will be covered by the postlaunch grant for at least a few months. And keep in mind that none of the grant funds are being used to compensate the time and effort we're spending to administrate all of this - we want to get the most out of the funds!

Unfortunately, these funds won't last forever and I am fairly confident that the GBD community will not be autonomous with its marketing by the time they dry up. Take for instance the pioneer Encointer community in Zurich - the Encointer team spent ~$75,000 over ~3 years to get this community to a place that is reasonably autonomous and they're going to spend another $15,000 per month for the next few months to accelerate its growth. While I don't expect the same spending ambition for GBD, $5,000 can only go so far. And the remaining funds that the Encointer team received for "Seed capital for first few international communities" shouldn't go to GBD; they should go to other communities trying to implement the tech.

With that said I want to ask KSM token holders, should the Kusama Treasury fund implementations of its common good parachains? If so, to what extent?

This is a heady question so I'll offer a direct example of a potential funding request for Green Bay Dollar. I recently met with some folks over at the local Lamar Advertising office to discuss GBD's marketing. Lamar is one of the largest outdoor advertising companies in the world with hundreds of thousands of displays across the United States and Canada. They have an "annual rotary package" where they rotate a 14-foot x 48-foot (4.27 x 14.63 in meters) vinyl bulletin across locations in Green Bay every 4 weeks over the course of a year. The vinyl print is fully insured so if it's damaged they'll replace it for free. The total cost of this campaign would be:

• $1,600 for the vinyl print
• $20,150 space cost ($1,550 per 4-week period)
• Total = $21,750 (or ~600 KSM at current prices, give or take 150 KSM with price swings)

Lamar put together a proposal for our consideration which you can all review here (if that link doesn't work for you, you can see a static version of the proposal here). We'd work with Lamar to pick the locations that would make the biggest impact. According to Lamar, the average number of impressions per week per location is ~148,000, so it'd be reasonable to expect ~7.69 million impressions over the course of the annual campaign. That comes out to something like $0.002 per impression.

To give you an idea of the design of the print, here is a prototype of the design (we'll work with Lamar's designer to optimize spacing and sizing of the various elements):

To give you an idea of the size of this thing, the Kusama logo in this prototype would be printed 7 feet wide (2.13 meters), so the Kusama ecosystem would definitely get some exposure in this marketing campaign. It's important to me to make sure that Kusama gets recognized as a crucial component of GBD so if anyone thinks the Kusama logo needs to be bigger, let me know!

To bring it back to the main question of whether the Treasury should fund common good parachain implementations, allow me to share my internal criticisms and thoughts:

Other parachain implementations don't get funded, so why should Encointer implementations get funded?

The biggest reason I believe Encointer implementations are inherently different from other parachains is because it was voted in by the Council as a common good technology. Encointer didn't compete to win a parachain slot and they have no intention to profit off of their lease. Similarly, Green Bay Dollar has no revenue model whatsoever since it will never be a speculative asset (i.e. it won't be listed on any CEX or DEX anywhere) and it doesn't really offer a product or service - it simply acts as a supplemental currency for the Green Bay area. That being said, I still don't think time and effort should be compensated for implementing Encointer anywhere. In the spirit of being a common good, I truly believe all participants should volunteer their time. I believe only reasonable products, materials, and marketing services should be compensated by the Treasury.

This is an unsustainable precedent that we would be setting.

I truly believe that the Kusama ecosystem is more than capable of judging each funding request on a case-by-case basis. For instance, if a project simply mints 100,000 Statemine tokens and asks for $100,000 to create a fully backed currency, KSM holders would likely strike that down because I don't think the Treausry is in the business of being collateral for an arbitrary currency, maybe aUSD excepted...? Plus, GBD isn't asking for an exorbitant amount of funds - only about one fifth of 1% of the entire Treasury to fund a billboard marketing campaign for a year in an NFL hotbed. If, however, we set the precedent of funding time and effort for common good implementations then I would say that is an unsustainable precedent, at least for professionals in first world countries.

How can we be sure that Green Bay Dollar will catch?

Honestly, we can't be sure. GBD is an experiment and that's exactly why I'm here appealing to the Kusama Treasury - we're all experimenting here. Rest assured that Steeber Solutions is completely committed to GBD. It's our first web3 implementation for our community and despite many setbacks, we have persevered and always come to the conclusion that it's worth it. I've dedicated myself to Kusama and I hope that my dedication to one of its fruits, Green Bay Dollar, can serve as a testament to the web3 paradigm in the Green Bay area.

Kusama shouldn't be paying for branded billboards anywhere.

I agree. A billboard with just Kusama branding on it doesn't really make sense to any locale since Kusama is a globally decentralized technology. The reason Green Bay Dollar is a different is because we aren't marketing Kusama per se; we're marketing a technology built on Kusama that is directly related to a specific locale. Green Bay Dollar is the reason why Kusama branding should be on a billboard in Green Bay.

What if prices swing up? Won't the Treasury lose funds on the realized excess?

I can't speak for future implementers of common good parachains, but I am more than willing to use only enough to pay for the campaign and not a penny more. Any excess caused by upward price swings would be refunded directly to the Treasury upon USD realization of the KSM.

Why pay for a year when you could do 6 months?

If you talk to anyone about billboard advertising they'll likely tell you that consistency is key. The best billboards stick around for long periods of time, it's the best way to make sure everyone in the community has a chance to recognize it and internalize it. We'd work with Lamar to pick a good number of locations to diversify the reach while not spreading ourselves too thing across the area.

Why not pay for 2 or 3 billboards then? Or a 2-year campaign?

I'm definitely not against this idea but it might be excessive/spammy for the community. Plus I don't want to ask too much of the Kusama Treasury. Lamar seems to think the 1-year campaign is the ideal value and since I'm not an outdoor advertising expert, I'm certainly defaulting to their recommendation.

Summary

One of the biggest issues Green Bay Dollar is facing right now is recognition and acceptance. We're certainly working hard to increase awareness of GBD to the Green Bay area but nothing will compare to the grandeur of a massive bulletin plastered with GBD's branding. I truly believe that a year-long billboard campaign will do wonders for opening the community to the technology while introducing them to the real utility of Kusama.

Ultimately, I hope this direct example can serve as a catalyst for everyone to share their thoughts on the main question of this post: should the Kusama Treasury fund implementations of its common good parachains? If so, to what extent?

Cheers!

Adam