View All Big Spender
Discussion#2441
Referendum#1130

WagMedia - Collective Content Creation for 52 Weeks

inBig Spender
a year ago
marketing
outreach
polkadot
education
ecosystem
Executed

About us:

WagMedia is a content creation and media hub that has been nurturing and incentivizing storytellers within the Polkadot ecosystem since 2021. We connect the dots, taking ecosystem ideas, products, and solutions from “So What?” to “Why Should People Care?” through supporting and nurturing content creators and ecosystem agents.

Image

Adaptation and Evolution:

WagMedia continuously adapts to the needs of the ecosystem and paradigm shifts of the general crypto landscape, refining its approach in each treasury request. Starting as a simple tipping mechanism for content and translations on Discord, WagMedia now focuses solely on quality and impact over quantity, nurturing content creators to become ecosystem agents and long time contributors to the ecosystem.

What We Delivered in 5 months:

Impact:

Many of the WAG creator’s content have had significant reach, with notable pieces receiving between 20,000 and 120,000 views. These have been leveraged by Polkadot and its founders, parachain teams and their official accounts.

Check out +30 written posts, among many, that stand as the main highlights from the past 5 months.

Our Hidden Contribution:

Many current ecosystem agents and initiative leaders began their journey with WagMedia, including:

  • Csaint: Once a Kusamarian and WAG member, now a member of the Polkadot Editorial Board (EB).
  • Jay and Pnin: Former WAG members, now Jay leading the Kusamarian and Pnin works for it.
  • Cris.pap: Formerly with WAG, now founder of OGTracker.
  • Jeeper: Former WAG contributor, now part of the DF-funded OpenGov.watch team.
  • John Rhodel: Formerly with WAG, now working on a Brazilian BD initiative funded through OpenGov.
  • Jimmy Tudeski: A Polkadot OG and validator who contributed to WAG for a while before taking a DV role.
  • Gbaci: Author of Polkadot Beginners, continues contributions through WAG.
  • Goku: Started as a content creator, now a team member of WAG and the Polkadot EB.
  • Pablo: Long-time WAG contributor and also contributor to Kusamarian.

And many more who have been either became ambassadors or team members of various ecosystem projects.

Our monthly audit reports for every expenditure:

WagMedia website provides detailed content evaluation and reward audits. On-chain reward distributions can be found here (Treasury: DOT - OpenGov 365, and USDT - OpenGov 365).

Our Goal:

We aim to continue serving as a content creator hub, nurturing ecosystem agents, and incentivizing them to organically tell the stories of Polkadot. Our value loop:

Image

Looking Forward:

We aspire to evolve into a media hub that curates content from Polkadot creators, inspiring agnostic audiences everywhere. Our content will remain:

  • Entertaining
  • Witty
  • Approachable
  • Factual
  • Data-based
  • Authenticated

We are committed to enlarging the options for creators and teams to access content and retroactive tips, as well as enabling teams to open their own bounties. We have built a simple and minimal website to narrow down the steps to access WagMedia and plan to make it even more user-friendly in the next phase.

One-Year Budget Request:

Image

Brief budget info here

For:

  • Continuation of all existing WagMedia services.
  • Upgrading the website to make it more accessible, becoming a one-click tip request hub for creators.
  • Sustaining growth on X, maintaining an educational and entertaining tone.

Was everything Pink?

Nope. Challenges: WagMedia is primarily about creators, and it’s deeply satisfying when a creator is nurtured well enough to step up and make their own impact beyond WAG within the ecosystem. This is the ideal scenario when there is a constant emergence of new creators. After all, our value grows when there is starfish-like growth. However, we’ve noticed a stagnation in the number of new creators approaching Polkadot over the past year. Not just Polkadot, but also due to the prolonged market conditions and general sentiment changes in the crypto landscape. Still we adapt and keep on focusing on rewarding the best content rather than recycled or low-impact content, with tips ranging from $450 to $0.50.

Despite these challenges, during this period we have incentivized and kept prominent figures to write about Polkadot. We believe that if you see engaging, impactful content within the ecosystem, it’s likely written by a WagMedia creator.

Image

You can read the full proposal here.

Questions and feedback are welcome, and we look forward to hearing those.

WagMedia Discord

WagMedia Twitter

Comments (23)

a year ago

Dear friends of Wag Media, could you kindly provide a report of the total requested in the last proposal, total spent on management, total paid to creators and any other incidental expenses? Thank you for your support and commitment

a year ago

@The_White_Rabbit 

Wag has always shared and transparent on the activities and payments on their website.

In particular you have the report of each transactions here:

https://report.wagmedia.xyz/

If it is still working you should be able to see all details there. Even the discord message.

In the audit you could match those activities above with who actually received them (discord userid if I recall it)

https://thewagmedia.com/audit

Current proposal treasuries are: DOT - OpenGov 365 (rewards and more) and USD OpenGov 365 (odd-jobs, internal activities I believe)

If you are interested in the overall total just hover your mouse on the graphs after filtering for the right treasury

a year ago

So, considering the monthly management and content expenses, management accounts for approximately 80% of the total expenses, assuming I haven't made any mistakes.

a year ago

Hello @Pieky 

TL;DR: Management is not 80%. As per our proposal it is set at 34%.

WagMedia takes transparency seriously, so we produce a monthly data report to provide a snapshot of our progress over a specific period. We are sorry if this has caused confusion with the skewed percentages.

Additionally, our website has an audit section that currently provides details of who received what rewards (this will be improved under our new proposal). For those who don’t want to join our discord, the website provides these details.

If you decide to go through all our available data reports, you may arrive at a figure of nearly 39% for management. This is due to misclassifying a portion of website development as management (i.e.: directing) and also not accounting for the excess funds remaining.

We recommend that you review our final data report, which covers our entire funding period and is expected to be ready in mid-September. As it stands, we anticipate the following deltas from our original proposal:

  1. We had a slight overspend on website/bot development, which can easily happen with development work.
  2. We decided to hire a treasury manager. This decision has effectively allowed us to soften the impact of the drop in DOT value since receiving the funds. As a result, we have not needed to ask for a top-up.

While management in relation to content is in question, we will also take the opportunity to clarify how some directors' roles can overlap with content. They may be considered content rather than management.

Our Content Program has currently conceptualized 48 bounties. Each bounty includes sufficient guidelines and source information (in some cases there’s a lot that is required upfront). Since WagMedia bounties have evolved to focus on key trends and narratives, one could consider that the directors' work is more about content production rather than management.

Similarly with our News Program, it has created 26 newsletters. Each newsletter is conceptualized and edited by our director. This clearly represents content production and not management.

Image

Image

Still if you have any questions, please go forward and ask us, the WagMedia team would be more than happy to answer every question.

Thanks,

IK

PleaseLogin to comment

Requested

USDC
451.40K USDC

Proposal Passed

Summary

0%

Aye

AyeNay

0%

Nay

Aye (64)0.0 DOT

Support0.0 DOT

Nay (66)0.0 DOT

    Polkassembly - Referendum #1130