This document provides an overview of Push DAO Council’s achievements, challenges, and future considerations as part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and effective governance.
Financial Expenditures
The budget approved by the Foundation was a sum of 1.4 million PUSH tokens, sent in increments to a multisig controlled by 3 members of the DAO Council and 2 members of the Push Foundation for added security. Below, we will illustrate the total amount of Push tokens we have received and how they have been distributed.
We have received to date 910,000 PUSH and we have executed 31 transactions until October 10 ‘24, which correspond to DAO Council Remuneration, Push Ambassadors, SubDAO Contributors, Grantees, DAO Contributors, Events, and Miscellaneous.
Partnerships & Integrations
Relevant KPIs
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Secure 3 partnerships for Push DAO.
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Drive 9 new potential integrations to Push Protocol.
Summary of Achievements
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Secured 23 partnerships.
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Driving 5 integrations.
Partnerships refer to our collaboration in different forms with other DAOs, protocols, and organizations in the space. We do this in different ways; X spaces, event sponsorships, other public ceremonies, and joint work. The essence is to establish our presence and leadership as a DAO, which in turn improves the perception and growth of our ecosystem. Integrations on the other hand refer to our efforts at directly getting more projects to build on Push. The Business Development SubDAO (or BD SubDAO) was primarily set up to help drive this latter objective.
Highlighted partnerships in the period June’24 - October’24 include collaborations with Hats Protocol and OnChain Den, where we participated in a community event on “DAO Tooling and Improving Operational Efficiency.” Additionally, we've teamed up with DAO Spring, collaborating in over two workshops where our DAO Council members shared insights on gathering feedback, becoming sustainable, and decentralized communications.
One of the most valuable partnerships has been with Charmverse and Hedgey Finance for launching our Push Grants Program v3. Our Grantees have become key partners in growing our developer community and inspiring more founders by participating in our Demo Thursday showcases.
Regarding quality integrations, we're pleased to mention Rarible DAO, where we demoed communication tools with Push and are currently drafting a DAO proposal for RARI DAO governance. We are also in discussions with TraderJoe (DEX) and Joepegs (NFT Marketplace), leading platforms on Avalanche, proposing an integration of Push Notifications.
Recommendations & Future Considerations
Based on our learnings from this initial stint, the DAO Council is making the following recommendations:
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The incentive structure of the BD SubDAO should be redesigned into a modular structure that rewards incremental contributions. The barrier to reward/entry is currently high and this limits participation.
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There should be closer liaison between the BD SubDAO and the Push Protocol BD team:
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The Push Protocol BD team should be involved in the redesign of the BD SubDAO. While the DAO ultimately takes the most responsibility, this is still expedient as it would ensure synergized efforts from both sides in a way that contributes to the growth of Push.
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They should also provide strategic alignment and inputs on a regular basis since they have more context on the topic of BD as it relates to Push. We experienced a significant boost in our activities and received a clearer sense of direction when the Push Protocol BD Lead came on board.
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Push Grants Program
Relevant KPIs (3 month)
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Launch Grants subDAO.
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Create and Publish New Grants Funnel.
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Achieve 15 or more grantees from 2 pilot programs.
Summary of Achievements
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Accepted 10 applications so far (33% acceptance rate).
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Developing 5-6 Flagship Push Apps, with soft commits.
Push Grants Program V3 was a 3-month Grant program (June 3rd, 2024, to September 31st, 2024) that was conducted and run by a community-elected Grants Council. PGPv3 focused on Mini and Growth Grants from $2,000 to $10,000 (in $PUSH).
The Push DAO community elected the Push Grants Council via a snapshot vote. The vote was to fill two roles, namely the Push Grants Lead, and a Push Grants Evaluator. With 5 applicants for roles in the Grants Council, 2 community members were selected, René and Brian Adam (Sixty). The Council served alongside the guidance of Push DAO Lead, Ian Leviness, who served as the Push Foundation seat and evaluator.
The Grants Program was run through the web3 platform Charmverse, allowing easy applications that can be used only on your wallet.
Push Grants evaluators rate applications with a numerical score for each element, against a pre-determined evaluation rubric: team, ROI, Milestone Assessment, Utilization of Push and Project Details, Experimentation, and Novelty.
In the Push Grants Program V3 was approved 8 Mini-Grants including: SI<3>, Dhive - Governance Data Hub, Mode Spray, Grant Ships, EkoLance, ChatterPay, Hallos NFT Ticketing platform, and Simplified Privacy. Additionally to 2 Growth Grants among which are: Loty - Loyalty platform and PrivyChat.
Recommendations & Future Considerations
We will run the next iteration of Push Grants in the coming year (Q1 2025), this time with more of a focus on flagship apps building on top of Push Protocol infrastructure, and continuing to support apps that drive growth to the Push ecosystem. We have already identified two such apps, Pistachio, and Privy Chat, and will continue to work closely with them to ensure their growth into flagship Push Apps.
Based on our learnings from PGPv3, the Grants Council is making the following recommendations:
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Continue to use Charmverse as the Grants Hub for the Push Grants Program, due to its ease of use, transparency, and web3-friendly nature.
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Cement requirements for check-in meetings and milestone updates on the forum, while grants are going.
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Increase our focus on Impact metrics such as users onboarded to Push Protocol, notifications sent, etc.
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Fold all event-based milestones (meetups, hackathons, etc..) into growth grants which can only be applied to those who have already done a mini-grant and cement the requirement that events have to be earned.
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Educational programs will be folded into growth grants for Push Apps.
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We’ll offer three kinds of grants: mini-grants for $2k, growth 1 for $10k and growth 2 for $20k+. No one will be able to skip the line. This helps everyone.
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Our overall budget will need to be 3-5x to allow for considerable scaling of grants.
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All grantees will have to extensively prove that they plan to use Push tech far beyond an initial integration over time. No more grants will be given for only Push channels or small integrations, alone.
Community & Ecosystem
Relevant KPIs
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Increase governance forum posts by 25% or more.
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Grow X following by 25% or more.
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Grow DAO Discord by 25% or more.
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Publish 2-3 DAO newsletter editions.
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Increase the average number of participants in governance calls by 25%.
Summary of Achievements
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Increased governance forum posts by 240%, compared to January to March 2024.
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Co-host 9 educational spaces with partners.
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Host 1 impactful side event with partners.
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Secure 6 speaking slots.
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Grow X following from 666 followers to 1190 followers (increase of 79%).
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Grow Discord members by 66% from June 2024 (19.3K in October’24).
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6 Weekly DAO op/eds by the DAO Lead (Weekly DAO Thoughts).
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3 issues of the DAO Newsletter published.
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Doubled the number of participants in governance calls (we went from an average of 7 participants in May ‘24 to an average of 20 participants in October’24)
With the establishment of Push DAO v2, one of our key objectives was the growth of the Push Protocol ecosystem by attracting more users and developers to build projects using our products. Ambassadors, existing contributors, published content, as well as virtual and IRL events have helped us to attract more builders, developers, and contributors to the DAO, which in turn has increased discussion on the Push forum, developers engaged with the ecosystem, and builders applying for Grants.
Marketing Strategy
We kicked off Push DAO v2 (which launched in May 2024) with a new marketing strategy. Our new strategy focused on having a better impact on developers and builders through a community-building funnel.
As a core part of our community-building funnel, we want to highlight some successful campaigns that brought us closer to our community by offering opportunities such as fixed positions within the DAO, like the role of Push DAO Designer. We also launched contests that have positively impressed us, with amazing content creators contributing to the DAO, such as the Push Cross Chain Request Contest. Additionally, discussions on our Grants program—including announcements of Grantees, showcases, and community events, such as the one we held on Decentralizing Grants with Ben West of Thrive Protocol.
We also host events as the Governance Call and Demo Thursday every week to engage our audience on Discord.
Educational Spaces
The DAO has made it a priority that, whether it’s a workshop, a hackathon, a full-scale conference, or something else entirely, we need to ensure alignment on which opportunities Push has a deep strategic fit. This includes prioritizing the areas where Push DAO and our ambassadors have a presence, namely LATAM, Africa, and India.
We have had 9 educational spaces in collaboration with projects like Open Web Academy, Push en Español, MKT Community and SI3.
Speaker Series (IRL Events)
The Push Protocol brand, including Push DAO, is a premier brand in the industry based on longevity, technology and innovation. We have ensured we are active in IRL events in our targeted areas of focus in North America, Latin America, and Africa, where we highlight our participation in ETH México, ETH Uruguay, and ETH Safari; to name just 3 of the 7 speaker series where our goal was to spread knowledge about Push and its products, and to onboard new developers and builders to integrate Push products.
While every event resulted in leads and further contributors, we’ll be slowing down event participation for 2025 and doubling down on podcasts and other forms of marketing, through June 2025.
Ambassadors Program
This quarter, we have added more ambassadors to the existing hubs in LATAM, Africa, and India, reaching 30 active ambassadors as of October 2024.
We highlight the incredible representation our ambassadors have had at events such as Ethereum Mexico and the Web3 Lagos Conference, as well as workshops with partners and universities, which are impacting the number of projects being built with the Push Protocol stack and applications to the Push Grant Program v3.
Since June there’s been a total of 30 Medium articles created by ambassadors, all of which are recorded in their monthly reports published in our governance forum. Also, the ambassadors have participated in Push Governance, and have been creating content within the ecosystem on platforms such as LinkedIn, Reddit, and Twitter.
As part of the values we promote within the ambassador program—flexibility, proactivity, and teamwork—ambassadors also have the freedom to build their own projects using Push tools or create open-source projects for the community to contribute to. They can then apply to the grants program to receive further support. This is how “Push Express” was born, a project developed by Wolfcito, a LATAM ambassador, aimed at simplifying the integration of Push Protocol components into web projects.
Recommendations & Future Considerations
The DAO is transitioning toward greater transparency and efficiency, which includes iterating towards better tools that most efficiently allow for the automation of certain processes and synergy between subDAOs.
Based on this, and to continue attracting more users and developers to build projects using our products, the DAO Council would recommend:
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As our initial 4 months of operations come to a close, we believe we should open a Warpcast account and channel (Farcaster), for a new line of comms with builders, devs, and web3 native people.
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We’re refining a bounty program on Zealy for new contributors.
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We’re restructuring our hubs in preparation for 2025 in more ways than one.
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We’ll further finalize paths to further growth for ambassadors, funneling them further into the DAO after their initial engagements, based on their experience and the performance of the tasks they complete.
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We’ll streamline content channels and campaigns as many are not getting the engagement we need.
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We’ll delegate PUSH to all participating ambassadors for voting after at least one month of full participation in 2025.
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We will continue with the good strategy of spaces to be able to connect and make strategic alliances with other protocols, dapps, and web3 solutions.
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We observed a great need for the X Pro account to improve our reach, engagement, and access to metrics.
Special Thanks to all our Contributors
All the growth, iterations, and achievements of this Q3 would not have been possible without our contributors and ambassadors, who daily believe in the DAO and journey with us towards a more transparent, efficient, and decentralized DAO. A special thank you to each of them.
About Push DAO
Push DAO is the community that governs drives and shapes the future of Push protocol through grants, community building and ecosystem development to expand the open communication layer that allows any crypto wallet/frontend to tap into the Push network and get any communication across.
The Push DAO Council addresses and executes the vision of the DAO, introducing multiple programs for contributors and builders to participate in paddling together toward greater progressive decentralization.