Incentives/grants Analysis proposal

Hello fellow badgers!
eBTC got me into badger after reading the purple paper way before the product was live. Then I read about your history, your goals and the current state of the DAO.

Now that I’ve been a badger for ~10 months but I’m still “new” so I think I can share my opinion as an outsider:

Background

BadgerDAO has no traction, no users, and no clear usecases:

  • 30 wallets using eBTC right now. (information from eBTC info)
  • Discussions in the forum have less than 3-4 responses. (Proof within this discussion lol) Even when it is about big allocations of money (Latest grant program)
  • eBTC promo video has 3.7k views. (kinda cringe at parts but is a funny promo in general) While the tweets have way more average views (Can someone confirm?)
  • There is no use for $BADGER or $eBTC, besides from providing liquidity to earn some (currently not so competitive) rewards.

However this is not the only thing about BadgerDAO, it also has positive things:

  • Solid products. eBTC had great security partners like Certora and Code4rena, the audit contest was an astounding success. This speaks a lot about the development team. Congrats guys!
  • Good ideas and core. BTC being the core of the Badger developments is great! The biggest crypto asset, just look at the fees that wBTC generates in many platforms. Even getting 1% of the pie would be great.
  • Crypto history. Pretty much every OG knows about Badger, this means you have something other protocols don’t: reputation. While there was a hack back then, everyone recognizes badger for its achievements. You can leverage this in order to reach a bigger audience.

With this in mind we gotta consider the efforts that are being done in order to grow the Badger community and ecosystem:

  • Currently there is a Grant Proposal (I think this is a GREAT idea)
  • There is a marketing proposal (twitter management) which is good too.

But let’s be honest, DAO money is not infinite, so you gotta check carefully whether this incentives are helping the DAO or not:

  • The DAO has spent 3.4k $BADGER ( ~$10.9k) in the eBTC-WBTC LP incentive program, half of the revenue generated by the eBTC protocol (~$21.4k) with no significant increase in liquidity providers. I gotta point out that the majority of the incentives were “farmed back” by the DAO, so the expenses are lower

  • The LIDO partnership is HUGE and haven’t gained traction. 30 wallets and ~$6.5M TVL is an average of ~$215k per wallet this means we got some big fish using the protocol and that’s it, no retail nor big whales. This has costed around double or triple the revenue generated by eBTC (Although this rewards were provided by Lido, so no expenses by the DAO)

What do I propose? To make a public team, from the council or volunteers that take care of making reports on the marketing efforts to grow the badger ecosystem. Please review the following analysis on the arbitrum ecosystem incentives by stablelabs: Analyzing STIP and LTIPP Incentive Programs at Arbitrum - StableLab

This kind of analysis needs to be done, in order to focus and allocate resources in specific areas with a higher probability of success. The BadgerDAO needs to test their ideas and receive feedback quickly, to push harder if it works or to step back if it doesn’t.

This is just a tool to focus on what works.

I volunteer, it also helps me on my analysis/copywriting
Feedback is appreciated.

3 Likes

Hey @Testerbot !

Thank you for your thoughtful proposal and the initiative to enhance our go-to-market strategy. We appreciate the insights and value your analysis.

Currently, significant efforts are being directed towards redefining our core mission, which will subsequently influence our go-to-market strategy (and its performance metrics, to your point). Once this foundation is established, we’ll evaluate the best approach for execution, potentially through a community-led team or a blend of experts and bodies.

In parallel, several product initiatives and integrations are underway, which we believe will drive higher traction and adoption. These were highlighted in our last budget request, with more updates coming soon. We’re also working on providing the community with more frequent and live updates on product developments and our roadmap.

To evaluate the performance of eBTC and associated initiatives, we have several tools and resources in place. The BlockAnalitica dashboard provides comprehensive analytics (https://ebtc.blockanalitica.com/). Additionally, BALCO (BlockAnalitica and Stakehouse) meets weekly with the Badger Treasury and association to discuss strategies for growth, scalability, and stability based on live events and user behavior. Summaries of these discussions are shared monthly by BlockAnalitica on Twitter, with the latest update posted yesterday: x.com. Furthermore, @Petrovska from the Treasury Council has created a Dune Dashboard (https://dune.com/petrovska/ebtcwbtcpool) to track the efficiency and performance of eBTC incentives programs, and we welcome feedback on this and other active initiatives.

Thank you again for your proposal and commitment to BadgerDAO’s growth.

2 Likes