- Author: WildFireDAO: Mgoes, Walshy, Jaris, b123
- Status: First Draft
- Type: Partnership
- Implementer: WildFireDAO
- Sponsor(s): discussed with John Crain (SuperRare Labs CEO)
- Created Date: 09/09/22
Summary
WildFireDAO is proposing a comprehensive partnership between WildFireDAO and SuperRare over the next three months, which will help boost the SuperRare brand, reach new audiences, increase community engagement, boost marketplace liquidity, and deliver product improvements.
Motivation
Over the past couple of years, SuperRare has managed to build an iconic brand and position itself as the most premium NFT marketplace - catering to the top end of the market, in terms of both artists and collectors, featuring iconic brands such as Xcopy, Gregory Crewdson, Madonna, Beeple, or Gucci.
Whilst SuperRare has been extremely successful in this regard, there are also challenges that need to be addressed in order to ensure sustainable operations and continued growth, going forward. The newly minted bear market is the perfect time to address these both in terms of capacity and urgency - with the current monthly revenues being lower than expenses, secondary sales being super rare, and engagement in the governance forum, discord, and twitter bening quite low.
Given the current bear market this is not alarming, however, WildFireDAO believes we can bring a lot of value to help address these challenges. In the last month, SuperRare has processed only 0.05% the volume of Opensea, thus we believe the opportunity for growth is enormous, even as SuperRare’s exclusive positioning is maintained.
Who is WildFireDAO? We have previously introduced ourselves on your forum here. We are an extension of FireEyesDAO, which was created by James Waugh, Coopahtroopa, 0xLucas, and gladstonecallum, all of whom have become household names in web3, over the last few years, and are well known to the SuperRare community, specifically.
Fire Eyes have pioneered the playbook for DAO collaboration and governance participation, demonstrating a vital role in the launches of ENS, Gitcoin, and SuperRare, and also play a consistently active role in a number of key projects across web3, such as being governance stewards for Aave, Balancer, and Rocket Pool.
The WildFireDAO Creator Economy Group (WFDCEG) consists of the four members listed as the creators of this proposal above - who collectively are experts in marketing, product, governance, tokenomics, the NFT landscape, and more. The WFDCEG also draws on the collective expertise of the wider WildFireDAO and FIre Eyes collectives.
We wish to establish a close partnership with SuperRare, to help you address the challenges mentioned above. We will do so by working closely with SuperRare Labs over the next three months, on the following initiative categories -
Specification
- Incentives to boost community participation
- WildFireDAO will create and help execute a detailed proposal towards the establishment and administration of a community participation reward pool, to incentivize participation in governance, discord, and social media. An active community is one of the biggest assets that a protocol can leverage to grow further, and we believe this is achievable via a smartly crafted token incentive program.
- Incentives to boost marketplace liquidity
- WildFireDAO will help execute a detailed proposal towards the establishment and administration of a marketplace liquidity rewards pool, to incentivize both the triggering of new auctions and secondary sales. This is key towards increasing revenues and we believe it’s achievable without spending token on wash trading, given the nature of the mostly 1/1 artworks on SuperRare.
- Product improvements
- WildFireDAO will liaise with SuperRare Labs to help roll out product improvements to further incentivize more activity - such as in-platform engagement between artists and sellers.
- Marketing initiatives to help increase reach and engagement
- WildFireDAO will detail and execute a suite of marketing initiatives for SuperRare, spanning the online and the offline realm. We will develop a growth plan which entails, amongst others: featuring SuperRare on AMA spaces - ie by BanklessDAO, improving keyword/hashtag usage on Twitter and Instagram, identifying the most active engagement times, NFT airdrops for specific web3 communities to attract crypto-natives to SuperRare, and to establish articles and interviews with major media outlets to promote the NYC Gallery and other pop-up events, as well as some other, more experimental initiatives.
- Other initiatives, as suitable
Please note, this is just an extremely brief outline of the five main initiative categories WildFireDAO believes we can deliver impact across. It does not include details of any of these initiatives, for the purposes of brevity, and in order to get a formal DAO approval on the establishment of the proposed partnership, before moving further digging into each category.
Any initiatives that involve the spending of RARE token (likely within category 1 and 2) will be presented as proposals separately and in detail for the DAO’s for approval, before execution. If you have a strong opinion about either one of these proposal categories, we encourage you to join a more detailed discussion which will follow, but would be out of scope here.
Any product improvements (group 3) will be carried out in close collaboration with SuperRare Labs, who currently have a mandate to oversee this, for the sake of efficiency and executability. Any marketing initiatives will also be carried out in close collaboration with SuperRare Labs, who likewise currently have a mandate to oversee these.
Please also note, this list of initiatives is not complete, and we will add to it, as and when new opportunities emerge. We will be working closely with the SuperRare Labs leadership team on a bi-weekly basis to help identify these, and any initiatives will be executed with their blessing and support. Any major initiative that requires the DAO’s approval will be put up for discussion and voting, here on the governance forum.
The partnership will last for an initial period of 3 months, with the aim to be renewed at the end of this period, upon mutual agreement. Over this initial period, WildFire DAO will focus on developing and implementing one of the listed initiatives in detail (subject to internal discussion which one). At the same time, initial groundwork may be carried out on the others as well, as needed. Should the partnership be renewed for another season, WildFireDAO will build on what’s been achieved already and continue implementing across the other initiative areas.
WildFireDAO will be compensated for its services over this period by the sum of 50.000 USDC (paid 60% in USDC and 40% in RARE token), allocated from the SuperRareDAO treasury. We believe the return on investment for SuperRareDAO will be positive, yielding both short and long-term material benefits, as specified below.
Benefits
SuperRareDAO will formally secure a suite of valuable and impactful contributions from a highly experienced collective of DAO builders and operators, some of whom have been involved with SuperRare from the very beginning. Even though the work will be carried out hand in hand with SuperRare Labs, this will set a precedent for SuperRare Labs not being the only official contributor inside the ecosystem. This is important for several reasons - to introduce a broader scope of perspectives into day-to-day execution, to increase the current team’s bandwidth, and to move one step further towards the decentralised future the SuperRare team and community have envisioned.
Drawbacks
This proposal incurs a cost for the DAO’s treasury. The treasury hasn’t been directly put to use yet, so this will be a test of being able to productively do so.
Outcomes
The outcomes these initiatives will aim to achieve are -
- More active and engaged community of artists, buyers, token holders, and the wider public
- Higher volume of primary and secondary transactions on the marketplace
- Establishment of a closer and more direct relationship between an artist and a buyer
- More exposure for SuperRare both online and offline, with new audiences
- Higher awareness and stronger brand image for SuperRare
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