This is a follow-up proposal on a previously attempted proposal that was presented to the KFC members.
Back in June, we presented the KFC group with the following proposal: Minswap Growth Group - KFC feedback .
Concerns about the worth and ability of the various members to deliver upon the proposal were raised then and so, Minswap Labs decided to undertake the venture independent of the DAO and foot the bill themselves in the interim.
This proposal is a follow-up on the same proposal as above however, this time, we have data to present in support of the request of funds from the DAO for the same. The Scope of Change in this proposal in comparison to the previous one is as follows:
Scope of Change
If this proposal were to pass, the main outcomes as a result would be:
- A continuation of the current Ambassador Program for Minswap.
- A potential increase in the number of ambassadors within the Ambassador Program
- Greater spread and reach of the Minswap Brand to non-Cardano native audiences
- Disbursement of DAO Treasury Funds per budgets outlined as per Option 1 or Option 2 as listed below for a 6-month period.
Initial proposal
Summary
Since the Minswap DEX was launched, it’s been hard to retain market share as new protocols have emerged with fresh features and varying token incentives. To continue growing, a priority for Minswap has to expand the pie by driving the adoption of Cardano DeFi to non-Cardano users. Our focus should be on onboarding passive ADA holders, crypto natives from other chains, and newcomers to Cardano into the DeFi ecosystem.
To achieve this, we’re proposing the establishment of a Minswap Growth Group — who will work with content creators in an effort to educate and onboard users to Cardano DeFi and Minswap.
The earlier proposed elements of the Growth Group
- Ambassadors: Content creators with unique strengths and reliable outputs.
- Growth Committee: This team would manage the ambassadors and oversee the content strategy. It included:
- Ambassador Relations Manager & Content Manager
- Minswap Labs team member
- Budget: We had requested for a 6-month trial for the following purposes:
- Ambassador Budget: Allocated in ADA and MIN tokens.
- Growth Committee: Allocated in ADA and MIN tokens
- Total budget request for the initial 5 ambassadors came to $5,000/per month
At the end of the 6-month period, we were to evaluate the program’s success and decide whether to renew it. This is what this new proposal is for.
Earlier faced Problem & Solution
Challenges We Faced:
- Growing Market Share: Over the past year, MIN emissions were reduced while maintaining ~60% TVL market share and >75-80% volume share. This reflected the strength of the DEX, the soundness of Minomics v2, and the contributions of DAO members.
- Onboarding New Users: Attracting more users brought fresh inflows to both Minswap and the Cardano ecosystem, driving up volume and activity. To achieve this, it’s important to make educational content to onboard:
- Passive Cardano holders: Cardano DeFi, still in its early stages compared to Ethereum, had its top 50 tokens (excluding AGIX) worth just 5% of ADA’s market cap. The TVL-to-market cap ratio was also <2% versus 6% for Solana and 15% for Ethereum. Cardano’s low risk profile and lack of major hacks gave us an opportunity to educate users about the benefits of engaging with DeFi.
- Crypto natives from other chains: Cardano has remained isolated from other blockchains, with only ~25K daily active users compared to Ethereum’s and Solana’s millions. By collaborating with content creators, we bridged this gap and attracted users from other ecosystems.
The Solution:
We believed that education and marketing were the keys to growth. By leveraging content creators and ambassadors, we demonstrated why Cardano DeFi was unique and highlighted its lower risks. This approach helped us bring new users into the ecosystem, increased demand for Cardano tokens, and strengthened Minswap’s position in the market.
This initiative represented our plan to grow and thrive in a competitive DeFi environment by focusing on strategic onboarding and education.
Review of the current setup
In light of all the above, we now present you with a follow-up proposal on the same matter. From July 2024 until the end of December 2024, Minswap Labs has been paying the bill for what was the trial period of this ambassador program for Minswap. Below, we have detailed why Minswap DAO should continue funding this initiative along with the data that has been collected from this trial run.
What the trial run included
During the 6 months, Minswap Labs hired four ambassadors to create content in relation to specific topics & narratives that, by being spread on đť•Ź, aided Minswap in strengthening its brand. A recent demonstration of this is this poll. This inadvertently positioned Minswap better within the community amidst the strong competition in the Dex sector.
To share some more insight, posts that were made included:
- Minswap feature release news – V2 launch, IDO launchpad, LBE V2, Open batching
- Cardano DeFi news in relation to Minswap
- Partner news concerning Minswap – IDO launches, Catalyst proposals
As a part of this undertaking, we also had an ambassador rise up to host and plan Spaces for Minswap
đť•Ź posts were not the only form of content created and released in this period. YouTube content covering the same was also sponsored and published. This YouTube content aimed at not only raising awareness about the above topics and news events but, additionally, acted as a method to expand the reach of the news to audience members outside of đť•Ź.
Lastly, both creators from within and outside the Cardano community were approached and signed to join into this undertaking for this period. Especially with the cross-chain content creator, great interest was sighted as evidenced by both the metrics and the comments under the content creator’s post.
What the 6-month period achieved
Even with limited funding, a lot was already achieved! The data has been broken down and shared below.
Across a total of 33 posts, a sum of 276,737 views were generated coming to a cost of $0.075 per view. The total likes generated over these number of posts were a whopping 5821 likes with an average of 14.894% Active Discussion ratio (Comment/Likes) indicating overall interest in the discussions the ambassadors were starting about or on topics in relation to Minswap. The Spaces too proved to be quite a successful undertaking as, across 9 Spaces, an average of 890 listeners tuned in within a 24-hour window of the Spaces launching with an average of 400 live listeners per Space*.
To put all this data into a meaningful manner for the audience, below is a presentation of;
- The overall Ambassador Program results
- The individual Ambassador results based on their individual target KPI’s
Monthly Views from the Ambassador Program
Weekly Views from the Ambassador Program
Monthly Active Discussions from the Ambassador Program
Spaces 24-hour Listener count
Below will also cover what the various ambassadors were able to achieve in relation to the target KPI’s set out for them. Seeing this data now will aid in understanding the KPI’s being set out for the new proposal.
Below are the current ambassadors’ performance results and their agreed targets.
Ambassador A’s performance
Targets:
- A minimum of 50 likes per thread within 24 hours of posting
- A minimum of 4000 views per thread within 24 hours of posting
- A 15% Comment:Like ratio on ambassador-requested posts within 24 hours of posting.
Performance:
Ambassador B’s performance
Targets:
- Minimum of 50 Likes per piece of content within 24 hours of posting
- Minimum of 2000 views per post within 24 hours of posting
- A 15% Comments:Likes ratio on Minswap-related content within 24 hours
Performance:
Ambassador C’s performance
Targets:
- Minimum of 120 Likes per Minswap video on đť•Ź within 24 hours of posting
- Minimum of 8000 views per Minswap video on đť•Ź within a 24-hour window of posting
- Minimum of 16% Comment:Like ratio on Minswap videos within 24 hours of posting
Performance:
Ambassador D’s performance
Targets:
- Minimum of 7500 views on the Minswap thread within 24 hours after posting
- Minimum of 100 likes on the Minswap thread within 24 hours of posting
- Minimum of 15% Comment:Like ratio on the Minswap thread within 24 hours of posting
Performance:
Conclusion from these results
Although the ambassador names have been left out in the specific performance results above (to protect the ambassadors’ privacy), the targets were sourced straight from the agreement documents Minswap Labs drafted between Labs and the ambassadors at the start of the 6 month trial period together.
The above results show that the committee leading members of this ambassador program achieved most of the desired targets as set out at the start of this endeavour. This displays consistency from both the ambassadors and the management team in achieving these results.
In terms of the targets themselves, these targets were chosen as ambitious but achievable targets for the ambassadors at the time of signing given each of their individual accounts statuses as well as engagement metrics at the time.
The views and likes as metrics indicate the degree of passive engagement with the posts the ambassadors were making whereas the Comment:Like ratio is indicative of the Active Discussions that resulted on the Ambassadors’ posts. For Minswap Labs, this metric was a significant one to track and aim to achieve well with as, it is often as a result of active discussions with a topic that interest is sparked from where conversion into a business’s product suite can occur.
Although accurate user data was not tracked during the process of this ambassador program, a comparative user increase can be noticed in contrast to other DEXs in Cardano from the period when the ambassador program went live.
Granted, a large part of this is to be directly attributed to the amazing efforts over at Minswap Labs however, considerable interest in using Minswap as a launchpad after the LBE v2 launched was also noticed from projects that may have contributed to the additional surge influx.
The Ambassador program’s management team were able to achieve all the above results with a cohort of just 4 ambassadors – Decypher, Conan, Linda and Smurfy. Despite this, they were still able to amass the incredible results as shown above AND, were able to do so to achieve a cost per view of $0.075 with a cost per click of $3.60.
Some Highlights
Below are some highlights that came from the current Ambassadors’ posts:
- Decypher’s coverage of $MIN
- Conan’s exploration into Cardano via Minswap
- Linda’s coverage of the new LBE Launchbowl
- Smurfy’s coverage of dynamic fees
- “Does Cardano need USDC” Spaces
This is a snippet of some of the very well-performing posts and engagement that garnered great discussions and interest in Minswap at the time.
Purpose of this proposal
To continue with this program of working with content creators as ambassadors for Minswap to both expand and strengthen the brand on Minswap, Minswap Labs is requesting Minswap DAO to take over the financing of this venture.
The details of how this proposal wishes to receive and allocate funding have been detailed below.
Funding request breakdown
To ensure a fluid continuance of this program as has already been demonstrated, the following are the allocations for funding requests monthly to continue the current setup.
| Category | Funding per month |
|---|---|
| Current Ambassador costs (3 Ambassadors) | $3500 |
| Miscellaneous Costs | |
| (external temporary hires) | $500 |
| Total: | $4000 |
It is worth noting that “3 Ambassadors” is now excluding Smurfy as an ambassador as per discussions from the initial forum discussion on the matter.
Potential expansion of this program
As the current implementation has yielded such success with just four content creators, as Minswap Labs, we have also been looking to expand this program to onboard content creators from other ecosystems and chains to grow our reach.
If the DAO would like to expand the operations of this program in such a manner, the following cost estimates have been listed:
| Category | Funding per month | Quantity | Cost per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Additional management costs | $1000 | 1 | $1000 |
| Per small content creator hire | |||
| (1,000 - 3,000 followers) | $300 | 3 | $900 |
| Per medium content creator hire | |||
| (3,000 - 7,000 followers) | $500 | 2 | $1000 |
| Per large content creator hire | |||
| (7,000+ followers) | $1500 | 1 | $1500 |
| Total: | $4400 |
These costs are subject to the ability to onboard and hire the desired creators within each bracket. Should those deals prove unsuccessful, the DAO will be informed of it such that this additional cost is not debited from the DAO.
An exact breakdown of the potential options for the DAO to vote on and related costs have been provided below for simplicity.
Options for voting
As the above breakdowns started to overlap and coalesce in a manner that may make the budgetary requests unclear, below is a breakdown of the exact options of the potential outcomes and their associated costs. To keep the budget request clear and a one-time event, we are proposing the same 6-month period as the tenure of this proposal request.
Option 1: Continue with the Ambassador Program under the management of Minswap Labs
This option would yield for the current cohort of ambassadors in the ambassador program to be the same – the current 3 ambassadors are retained.
Cost breakdown for Option 1:
| Category | Funding per month |
|---|---|
| Cost of 3 ambassadors per month | $3500 |
| Miscellaneous Costs | |
| (external temporary hires) | $500 |
| Total: | $4000 per month |
| 6 month Total: | $24,000 |
Option 2: Continue with the ambassador program with the option(s) to hire more ambassadors.
Under this option, the current setup of the ambassador program will continue – the current 3 ambassadors are retained and, in addition to this, the DAO will also provide the funds for the cost projections for hiring more ambassadors during the same time period as a manner to expand this initiative to hire small-to-medium content creators from other ecosystems into this ambassador program. Any unused funds will be returned to the DAO treasury wallet.
Cost breakdown for Option 2:
| Category | Funding per month | Quantity | Cost per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost of 4 ambassadors per month | $4000 | - | $4000 |
| Management costs | $1000 | 1 | $1000 |
| Per small content creator hire | |||
| (1,000 - 3,000 followers) | $300 | 3 | $900 |
| Per medium content creator hire | |||
| (3,000 - 7,000 followers) | $500 | 2 | $1000 |
| Per large content creator hire | |||
| (7,000+ followers) | $1500 | 1 | $1500 |
| Total per month: | $8400 | ||
| 6 month Total: | $50,400 |
We hope this detailed breakdown helps explain what budget is being requested from the DAO. Should this proposal pass into the voting phase, these two options will be referred to as the choices from which the DAO can vote on which path they would like to pursue.
Fund distribution as well as tracking performance of ambassadors will be managed by Minswap Labs. The funds will be taken in ADA from the Batcher Fees allocation, currently worth $1.53mn. Option 1 would represent 2.16% of these funds and Option 2 would be 3.69%
Targeted Key Performance Indicators
All the above is of little value if there is no measurement to gauge what a successful outcome would be. To address this, we have already implemented a KPI system for the current ambassadors and wish to continue with the same should this proposal get funded. The current KPI’s are ambassador-specific based on the following parameters:
- Views per post after 24 hours of posting
- Likes per post after 24 hours of posting
- Comments:Likes ratio per post after 24 hours of posting
Going forward, to work towards realistically trackable and achievable metrics, we will be mirroring these parameters as the KPIs with the ambassadors on an individual basis. As already proven from the results shared earlier, the above metrics aid in pushing ambassadors toward creating content that is engaging but also, content that is bound to spread on the đť•Ź algorithm thus also achieving the goal of spreading the brand of Minswap.
Each ambassador will receive a set of targets based on their individual account’s status at the time of onboarding. These can be verified upon request by a group of DAO members should the DAO wish to implement such a step, however, for confidentiality with the ambassadors, pseudo-identity naming systems as demonstrated above will be used when reporting to the DAO publicly. Examples of exact KPI’s to be desired are parallel to what existing agreements are above.
Outcome from Ambassador Program’s continuance.
Should this proposal be approved to continue the ambassador program as it, the following outcome can be expected:
Further coverage of Minswap and Minswap’s developments from the existing 3 ambassadors.
The result of this is in an effort to:
- Promote participation in the DeFi opportunities at Minswap
- Increase interest in Minswap’s developments
- Increase brand awareness and solidify the positioning of Minswap’s brand within Cardano.
Should this proposal be approved to not only continue but also expand the ambassador program, the same outcome of further coverage of Minswap and Minswap’s developments can be expected however, the result of this effort would be further in that:
- It would aim to expand the reach of Minswap’s brand into the eyes of communities not within Cardano
- It would aim to onboard users into the Cardano ecosystem via Minswap
- It would increase the reach of Minswap into an untapped user base.
Closing
In closing, this proposal is being put forward to Minswap DAO from Minswap Labs as a request from the DAO to continue the funding of this program. When the proposal was initially presented to the KFC for approval before an official DAO vote, concerns surrounding capabilities, success, performance and worth came up. At the time, the launch of V2 was imminent and so, to prevent any such delays in undertaking what Minswap Labs always believed to be a worthwhile venture, Minswap Labs funded the program for the same 6 months for which funding was initially requested.
Now, coming to the end of the 6 month period, Minswap Labs has demonstrated to the DAO how this program can run, prove to be successful and, the worth therein. Thus, we hope the DAO would be interested in funding the continuance of the program that has strengthened and widened the brand of Minswap deeper into Cardano.
We have also presented the projected costs for an expansion of this program above should the DAO wish to continue and expand upon the program.
Ultimately, this proposal to the DAO is one whereby the value back to Minswap is both tangible and intangible. This proposal’s outcome would be a direct growth of the brand of Minswap.