@LuukDAO you mentioned you had some feedback
If you post it here, I will work with the agencies listed in the proposal in order to address it
Hey all
Great to meet you! I’m Alexy Joven, founder of Modjo.me: https://www.modjo.me
I fully support @TheEther2077’s proposal—not just from a business perspective, but because the right blend of professionalism, community value (through products, offline events, etc.), and strategic “degen” marketing is what truly drives ecosystem growth. This approach keeps communities engaged, strengthens their foundation, and attracts new members while educating them.
At Modjo, we scale projects by combining web2 performance marketing (A/B testing, retargeting, measurement) with web3-native viral loops, leveraging KOLs, communities, and smart incentives. Thereafter, we create the right content and put it in front of the right person at the right moment. Our hands-on, iterative approach delivers high-impact results with lean budgets:
- Elixir Games– Raised $14M while optimizing KOL and ad spend to $140K instead of $400K.
*Lingo (RWA) – Acquired 8M users. - Kaisar (DePIN Protocol)– Reached 890K users with just $30K in KOL spend and achieved 1.5M downloads with only $600 in ads, generating $120K in lootbox sales.
*Diambra (AI Agent – Recently launched and got interest from Base, 0G Labs, VCs (investments signed), and 50+ KOLs & communities willing to support without spending cash money - on an $8K budget paid performance budget.
I am happy to have a call with you.
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Following up on yesterday’s governance call, I want to outline my viewpoint on this proposal. I also gave this feedback to @TheEther2077 and @corbinpage on various calls before the final proposal was published.
Let me start with some general remarks that are not proposal-specific, but should set the benchmark to assess it.
Funding outside of OBRA framework
This proposal falls outside of SafeDAO’s existing resource allocation frameworks. SafeDAO operates through OBRA, which implements structured strategies with KPIs, budgets, periodic DAO reviews (where funding can be halted) and milestone-driven progress. The latest iteration introduced two councils: the Grants Council and the Strategy Steering Committee.
As such, an ask to the DAO should come with an increased justification and heightened requirements, especially as the above mechanisms for guidance and quality control don’t directly apply. This proposal essentially combines three different funding asks which puts it slightly over the threshold of USD 100k for OBRA. This risks setting a precedent where initiatives are bundled or incrementally increased to exceed the threshold.
Regarding the proposal:
The proposal aims to foster a thriving community and increase awareness, which is absolutely the right goal. However, I have serious concerns about the strategic approach and especially the execution defined in this proposal.
I. Scope of proposal
The proposal covers three (3) different asks across two (2) distinct initiatives
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Standardization of metrics (25k USD)
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Building a Safe army by involving two marketing agencies with different focus (2x 50k USD)
Both initiatives are aimed at different outcomes and require separate evaluation. The Safe Army should focus on community engagement and contributions, such as content creation and events, while the standardization of metrics on platforms like Token Terminal and DefiLlama is about enhancing transparency for market participants. Given these differing goals and approaches, they should be voted on separately rather than bundled into a single proposal. Additionally, involving two different marketing agencies with limited overlap should constitute two separate funding asks.
II. Funding ask
The request for 125k USD over just two months is substantial. In comparison to historic funding, it constitutes 50% of the total awareness budget the DAO has defined for the previous OBRA budget. Moreover, this budget is unavailable to the new grants council, which could otherwise use it to support multiple initiatives and run iterative experiments in a more flexible manner.
III. General strategic approach
The proposal relies heavily on two marketing agencies but doesn’t outline how this really ties into grassroots community-building. Instead of fostering engagement, it proposes a top-down, agency-led content push that is both high-cost and short-term (2 months). I believe that a clear focus on community-driven content is far more effective than agency-produced material. Any sort of short-term activity that can be produced is likely to decline after the engagement of the marketing teams are over. The scope itself appears to be largely defined by the two agencies themselves, suggesting that the authors’ will contribute rather on a high-level, acting - as mentioned - more as liaisons (or potentially get involved) rather than deeply involved in community-building strategy/efforts themselves.
*Edit: In the meantime, I saw that the timeline for the agencies was doubled to 4 months after yesterday’s call. Especially as there is no information on deliverables (see below), it’s difficult to understand how this timeline is decided on. Generally, it’s very hard to keep track of this proposal and to which version the comments above are referring to as edits are made ad-hoc without raising them in the thread.
IV. Details of the proposal
- Scope
The proposal scope attempts to cover too many areas without prioritization. Rather than a focused strategy, it presents a long list of services without direction:
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Operating across 4 different channels: X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram + internal and external Telegram and Discord groups
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Media coverage: Coindesk, Decrypt, The Block and other publications, as well as sponsored and earned content
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Various content pieces: Memes, educational material, leadership articles, guest posts by Safe executives, video explainer series, leadership articles and guest posts of Safe executives
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Experiences: Twitter spaces, weekly AMA, guest influencers
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SEO and paid advertisement on search engines
With all of these items the deliverables are unclear. There is no information at all on the number of content pieces, articles, posts, AMAs, or articles the agencies will produce. The large surface area and involvement of two marketing agencies in parallel for this proposal without clear prioritization might explain why the funding ask is high.
- Lack of target KPIs
While the proposal mentions KPIs, they only suggest possible ways to measure success rather than establishing concrete targets, e.g. % increase in engagement, generating X number of views, conversion benchmarks from passive to active community members. There are also no milestones defined to the budget. Without concrete performance benchmarks, SafeDAO cannot determine how does success look like.
- Cost breakdown
The cost breakdown lacks important information on the use of funds. The goal isn’t to request upfront a granular breakdown of every anticipated expense but the strategy needs to clarify the basic cost categories: production, distribution, and community incentives. In other words: What do the agencies keep, what do they pay for distribution, how much is really going to the community? There is no prioritisation on what is most important to focus on.
- Team
It is unclear which team members from the agencies will be responsible for execution. How many people are involved? Who is directly accountable? Will the work be handled in-house by agency employees, or will it be outsourced to freelancers? The proposal does not specify who will be executing making it difficult to assess accountability and expertise.
Suggestion
Ultimately, it is up to Safe guardians and delegates to decide, but based on the concerns outlined above, I believe this proposal is not ready for a vote. Irrespective of the approach, I recommend splitting it into three separate initiatives, which can then be assessed and supported separately by the grants council:
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$25,000 for analytics and metrics standardization
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$50,000 for marketing to support with community-building
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$50,000 for PR/media
Beyond this, in my opinion, the general approach should be to refine this with smaller deliverables with specific budgets, a more targeted strategy, and a shift toward community-driven efforts, running smaller experiments rather than an overly broad execution plan.
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Thank you for your comments, Andre. The community members working hard on this proposal always appreciate the constructive feedback.
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Since all of these asks are tied to educational initiatives, we thought it was appropriate to put them all in one proposal. All of these initiatives support the community education around Safe.
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KPIs centering around growth are included in the proposal. We can further hone these KPIs. In terms of budget milestones, we can add that into the proposal now that Modjo and Coinbound are on the forum and have joined the conversation.
The proposal is a living and breathing document. All of the supporters are working hard to incorporate suggestions from leading Safe team and community members in order to build a strong consensus around this initative.
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I will work with the marketing agencies to further define a cost breakdown. Alexy’s post on the efficacy of his strategies at Modjo are defined. We can further work on line-iteming the cost of each individual tactic in the proposal. Additionally, that could also be defined after the agencies are hired, I defer to your leadership on this matter.
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Alexy from Modjo, the CEO and Founder, posted in the post above yours. He is the owner of the execution of Modjo’s part of this initiative. Additionally, I have been corresponding with Ty, the CEO and Founder of Coinbound. The top people of each organizatiion is incredibly excited about this proposal and working with Safe on the execution.
We believe that organizing comprehensive marketing data is indeed critical, and a community-driven “Safe Army” approach could be ideal for organic growth. However, given the nature of the Safe project, we remain skeptical about whether marketing methods of this kind would be effective, and we suggest more rigorous planning around user profiling, targeted behavior change, and the specific impact you aim to achieve.
Thanks for your response, Tane.
What marketing method are you skeptical of?
- Cost breakdown and Targeted Results
$40,000 devoted to contests/quests, content creation, NFT creation displaying community commitment - led by Modjo
$10,000 potential profit for Modjo if KPIs are hit.
Community KPIs:
- How many Safe community members change their avatars to created NFTs that show affiliation with Safe
Target: 100
- How many Safe community members post about Safe on a weekly basis
Target: 20
- How many Safe community members participate in quests
Target: 50
$40,000 devoted to targeted campaigns across X, featured content, and influencer education outreach - led by Coinbound
$10,000 potential profit for Coinbound if KPIs are hit
Distribution KPIs:
- Campaign engagement - how many people engage with the content distributed via social media and attend AMAs
Target: 100,000 engagements actions (hearts, likes, comments) across all content
- How many new users join Safe’s Discord
Target: 50,000 new Discord users
- How many new followers does the Safe X account garner
Target: 70,000 new followers
All organically
The core skepticism we have is whether this approach truly aligns with the target audience of Safe. As far as we understand, Safe {wallet} and {Core} are primarily designed for builders and teams, rather than individual users in general.
While we acknowledge that there could be some broader user segments, we are uncertain if strategies like influencer outreach or Telegram chats within DeFi communities will effectively contribute to Safe’s growth.
Intuitively, we sense a mismatch between the intended user base of Safe and those who are likely to be engaged by the proposed strategies.
Respectfully, I completely disagree.
Users are a key stakeholder group in the Safe ecosystem. Without users, Safe would have no revenue.
Safe’s mission is “to move the world’s GDP on chain.”
In order to do that, it must serve its users.