**

Polkadot Advertising Campaign on Brave Browser - Top-Up Request 

We are submitting this top-up request to maintain the originally approved budget for our Polkadot Awareness Campaign on Brave passed as Treasury Proposal #746. Due to significant market fluctuations and the current spending pace, we seek additional funding to ensure the successful completion of our campaign as initially planned. We have shared latest reports on campaign progress here. 

Background 

• Original Proposal Approval Date: March 20, 2024 
• Original Budget: 58,902 DOT 
• Original DOT Price (EMA7): $9.762 
• Original USD Value: $575,000 

Current Situation 

• Current DOT Price (EMA7): $4.623 (as of August 14, 2024) 
• Current Value of Original DOT Allocation: 58,902 DOT * $4.623 = $272,302.95
• Campaign Start Date: July 16, 2024 
• Campaign End Date: October 15, 2024 
• Current Spend: $171,176 
• Remaining Budget at Current DOT Value: $101,126.95

Spend Analysis and Projection 

Based on the current spend of $171,176 over approximately 29 days (July 16 to August 14), the daily spend rate is about $5,902.62 per day. At this rate, the remaining budget of $101,126.95 would be exhausted in approximately 17.1 days, or around August 31, 2024.
This projection indicates that without additional funding, the campaign would fall short by about 45 days, or approximately 50% of the intended campaign duration.

Top-Up Request 

To maintain the originally approved budget of $575,000 and complete the full campaign as planned, we are requesting an additional top-up.

Calculation:

Remaining campaign cost: $575,000 - $171,176 = $403,824
Additional DOT needed: $403,824 / $4.623 = 87,351 DOT

We are therefore requesting a top-up of 87,351 DOT to ensure the full execution of our campaign.

Justification 

Market Volatility: The significant drop in DOT price (from $9.762 to $4.70) has substantially reduced the campaign's purchasing power. 

Maintaining Campaign Integrity: The additional funding is crucial to deliver the full scope and impact of the originally approved campaign. 

Honoring Commitments: This top-up will allow us to fulfill our commitments to Brave and execute the campaign as initially planned through October 15, 2024. 

Current Performance: Our campaign has already generated over 63 million impressions and 495,439 clicks, demonstrating strong engagement and effectiveness. You can view reports for our units here:

• Polkadot Notifications
• Polkadot Newsfeed
• dApps Notifications
• dApps Newsfeed
• NTTs (currently only for Polkadot, but more coming!)

Here are the NTTs we created.

Campaign Recap and Current Progress 

Our three-month advertising campaign on Brave's platform aims to: 

• Target Brave's crypto-native user base of 77.95 million monthly active users
• Generate over 150 million impressions and 1.0975 million clicks 
• Increase awareness, education, and engagement for Polkadot and its ecosystem
• Boost exposure for key projects within the Polkadot ecosystem.

Our current list of ecosystem projects includes a diverse mix which are currently live: 

1. Polkadot 
2. KILT - Identity 
3. Mythical Games - Gaming , NFT 
4. Hyperbridge - Cross Chain Bridge 
5. Nova Wallet - Wallet 
6. Talisman - Wallet 
7. Hydradx - DEX
8. Centrifuge - Biggest RWA project 
9. Energy WebX- RWA, Depin, Energy 
10. Frequency - Socialfi 
11. MeWe - DeSo 
12. OriginTrail & Phala - AI 

Current Progress (as of August 12, 2024): 

• Total Impressions: 63,253,249 
• Total Clicks: 495,439 
• Spend: $171,176

New Tab Takeovers the first month were focused on Polkadot.

Conclusion 

We kindly request the Polkadot community's support for this top-up to ensure the successful completion of our comprehensive advertising campaign. This additional funding will allow us to maintain the campaign's intended scale and effectiveness through its planned end date, ultimately benefiting the entire Polkadot ecosystem. 

A note regarding the previous comment regarding not requesting top-ups.* 

At the time the note regarding top-ups, it was to signal a sign of confidence Brave has in Polkadot and our dedication to the community on finding market fit. The price of DOT had gone from (EMA7): $9.762 at the time of the proposal to around $6. At $6, we could still deliver to the proposal with leaner delivery. In the time since that comment was made, the DOT price has gone from $6 to around $4.70, a 50% decrease in value from the value we based the original proposal.

While this 50% decrease in proposal value does impact our near-term revenue, the greater concern is that we forecasted the original budget to deliver enough visibility for the campaigns to reach as much of the addressable Brave audience as possible, with a frequency that ensures they get to see a healthy spectrum of the dApps, services and brand visibility for the Polkadot network as the original proposal intended. 

Given the impact on the demand from the DOT value decrease, we have two options. 1) we top up to ensure best chance of success against the objectives from the proposal or 2) we decrease the pacing of the campaigns we currently have deployed, lowering the daily spend levels and exposure by 50% to continue to deliver the remaining budget for the full duration of the campaign. We don't want to go back on our comment, as our conviction regarding the community, network and proposal remains unchanged. However, we have not invested the energy and effort to get the campaigns to where they are now to want to lose, when we can state that the obvious impact was more significant than anticipated at the time, and that we would like the option to execute fully as the original proposal intended.

We request the top-up as we strongly believe that given the recent impact beyond the initial decrease in value, we are most likely to have the greatest chance of success and opportunity for establishing early fit by giving the campaigns the room to run that we had originally forecasted when DOT was around $9 at the time of the submission for the proposal.

Thank you for your consideration and continued support.