Allocating the Annual Marketing Budget From POL

Proposal
1

Background

Offering best-in-class on-chain trading experience has been MUX’s top priority. After the launch in August 2022, MUX’s resources have been prioritized on development; the dev contributors shipped the leveraged trading aggregator, new network deployments, leaderboard, referral system and dozens of UX improvements to benefit traders. However, the protocol exposure has been low due to the lack of marketing resources. The protocol designed to supercharge traders couldn’t reach its targeted users, which was discouraging.

Moving in 2023, MUX launched several marketing campaigns, including airdrop, onboarding quest, media exposure amplification, co-marketing activities and more. Fortunately, the campaigns were effective; we have seen organic trading volume stay above $10M daily and have over 200 daily active users.

To consolidate and further increase the protocol exposure, MUX contributors hope to run constant campaigns and want to propose allocating the marketing budget from the POL to fund marketing activities.

The POL is valued at $7.96M as of Feb 15th, 2023, which has increased over 20% since launch. In addition, 30% of protocol income will continuously be added to the POL. As a reference, between Jan 14th and Feb 14th, 2023, over $140,000 went into POL.

Proposal

The MUX dev contributors propose to allocate $400,000 annually from the POL to fund marketing activities, aiming to increase the influence and let MUX reach more traders.

As the exposure constantly increases, the trading volume and protocol income are projected to grow along the way.

The $400,000 annual marketing budget will be utilized in, and not limited to, the following categories:

  • Onboarding campaigns like airdrop and interaction quest
  • Marketing and educational content creation
  • Partnership building
  • Wages for marketing contributors
  • Influencer incentives
  • Additional marketing efforts

Next Steps

  • Community discussion surrounding this proposal
  • veMUX holders vote to approve/disapprove the proposal
6 Likes
2

I support this proposal in full and will vote in favor as long as everything is done transparently. We really need more exposure out there.

Looking forward to the vote.

2 Likes
3

Fully in favour of the proposal with a slight structural ask.

I would like to propose 30% of the protocol income continuously flow to a MUX DAO treasury multi-sig wallet, initially being seeded with the $400,000 budget you have outlined in an effort to build our treasury that can be strategically deployed for not only marketing efforts but for:

a) Security - increasing Immunify bounty to a healthy Bounty:TVL ratio
b) Grants - enabling community contribution and execution for important tasks that are otherwise limited by MUX team headcount (see dYdX grants or GMX community tooling)
c) Community Contributors - creating an environment that promotes core contributors to act as quasi-team members to further promote and amplify protocol interests
d) Runway buffer - just as a safety measure although I know that we’re good in terms of runway

The added benefits are:

1- Creating an additional SEO vector by getting DAO treasury aggregators like open-orgs.info, DefilLama and Messari to track MUX to influence investment intent
2- Taking the first major step in further decentralising governance and positioning the protocol to be slightly more regulation proof
3- Creating an interesting business opportunity for MUX in case the protocol wants to open a line of active treasury-management-as-a-service by building historical performance data.

6 Likes
4

+1
400K is a ton of money these days… we have “influencers” doing reviews on tiktok/yt/twitch/insta for very reasonable rates.

So, yes, tracking KPI’s… cost per new user is crucial.
Also, remember, keeping existing users is always cheaper and more effective than acquiring new ones.

Low hanging:
.Mux LPs that are not mux traders, yet
.incentivize trading+LP combo
.tiers
.Merch competitions (also opens doors for D2D partnerships): hoodies, beach towel, t-shirt, bikini, bag, backpacks
.Merch sales (below cost price) at expos
.incentivize new deposits (tiers) to both new and existing trading accounts
.have influencers use the mux platform in their live trading and/or recordings

3 Likes
5

Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

Agreed that building a MUX DAO treasury with multi-sig wallet will have long term benefits for the protocol and the community. Also, the mentioned treasury fund use cases are highly relevant.

The dev contributors will set up a formal MUX DAO treasury in the near future as the protocol continues to grow.

1 Like
6

Very good point, will focus on trader retention as well.
And thanks a lot for listing different approaches!

1 Like
7

Good to see MUX deploying money to kickstart Marketing in a more aggressive way.

I am totally in favor of this proposal and although most have already been said by other chads I want to reiterate the most important part for me:

  • Setup a real DAO with its own treasury feed by part of the trading fees
  • Setup a sustainable and attractive bug bounty program
  • Before starting Marketing campaigns we should setup tools to track metrics to review effectiveness and readjust strategy when needed
  • And last but not least Transparency
3 Likes
8

lot of great posts here. Have seen a few comments about kpis for this campaign - definitely agree!

Few comments here have been around DAO treasury - maybe this is wrong, but isn’t POL technically DAO treasury right now? If so, then separate mult-sig would be something of a specific marketing budget, right?

Also I think discussing ve model vs GMX tokenomics model is worth it - largely as a way to increase access and participation. I think broader community and governance overall would benefit from improved access and engagement - lot of smart takes in these comments :slight_smile:

2 Likes
9

Sorry for the delayed reply here.

  • Agreed that a formal DAO treasury will be beneficial for MUX in terms of governance and transparency.
  • Currently the protocol has a bounty program on Immunefi. We’ll add more clear indications of this program on the app and docs.
  • Have setup dashboards for tracking the effects
2 Likes
10

The POL is not exactly the DAO treasury, but DAO treasury’s funds (raised from previous rounds) are mostly in POL. Kinda confusing here, sry.

Will post my opinions on the proposal.

2 Likes
11

Thanks a lot for sharing the opinions everyone!

MUX contributors will continue to push for more protocol exposure and try bringing in organic trading volume.

And agreed setting up a formal treasury make governance process, protocol growth and related spendings more transparent. While most development resources are spent on feature improvements and integrations, the dev contributors will set up a formal MUX DAO treasury in the future as the protocol continues to grow.

Since most of the feedback is positive toward this proposal, the voting process will be opened. Vote will start on Feb 23rd, 0:00am UTC.
https://snapshot.org/#/muxvote.eth/proposal/0xd1f0d2557e772dfa5cb11cc5e51e9dc39ded6abc823b8db97f80f6b8126160d8

1 Like
12

[quote=“dumbird_MUX, post:9, topic:80”]

got it, thanks for clarifying - will ping in discord to make sure I’m understanding

1 Like
13

also this sounds great - can you share link to dashboard pls? or this the existing stats page?

1 Like
14

Yep, can use these two pages as references

https://stats.mux.network/public/dashboard/13f401da-31b4-4d35-8529-bb62ca408de8

1 Like
15

Since this proposal has passed, we withdraw $400,000 from MUX POL and MCDEX DAO by the following operations:

3 Likes