Top Agenda: NFT Products, Fiat Onboarding, User Analytics.
Schedule
7/11 Monday: Palo Alto office
7/12 Tuesday: Palo Alto office
- 12PM: Top agenda and market-product-team fit
- 1PM: July deliverables review by guilds
- 4PM: Team exercise and 1-1s at the park
- 6PM: Sandwiches dinner and AMA on sprint initiatives
7/13 Wednesday
7/14 Thursday
7/15 Friday
7/16 Saturday (optional)
NFT: Market-Product-Team Fit ๐ฝ
In this Q3 and Q4 the team needs a single focus and going deep, rather than spreading thin. Potentially Sahil and Eric will closely collaborate with us on NFT; Richard and Sammy have vertical-specific partnership experience; Brian and Jack can drive all internal initiatives toward NFT-related campaigns and products.
Our Q3/Q4 Thesis on NFT:
- Market: We know from extensive research (essential reading) that the NFT market has traction with billions in value and potential for mass consumer appeal with hundreds of millions of fans and users. โFinding product market fit = focusing on the market firstโ โ meaning, 15% monthly growth rate.
- Product: We have a product (platform) that offers fast andย affordable minting, trading, and mass distribution of NFTs to millions of users. โThe only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.โ
- Team: Can we align our team efforts to build out a thriving ecosystem of NFT minting projects, social token launch platforms, trading marketplaces, collector DAOs, derivatives and avatars with high liquidity, volume, and users?
Potential Partners
- Coinbase Cloud, Dune Analytics, Nansen, Token Terminal
Attendees
All international fellows are invited; select contributors are invited every three months.
- Invite sent to:
- Confirmed: ๐ตBryant, ๐Devin, โ๏ธNita, ๐Bruce, ๐ฅคJeremy, ๐ฃPaola
- Unavailable: โ๏ธCathie, โตHakwan, ๐Diego, ๐ธJenya, โ๏ธGheis, ๐ฐ๏ธMax, โ๏ธKonstantin, ๐งโ๐ณVicta, ๐ฑTejassvi, โNick, ๐ซTahir
Eng Team
- โ๏ธย Konstantin Potapov ๐ก: Abstract blockchain implementation (convenience & performance), Launch epoch sync synchronization (cost reduction & performance), Solve consensus concurrency issues (stability x 2). 100/90/100%
- โ๏ธ Gheis Mohammadi ๐ก: Takeover block sync code, Research Erigon block sync, Implement Erigon block sync. 90/60/60%
- โ๏ธย Konstantin Potapov ๐ก: Abstract blockchain implementation (convenience & performance), Launch epoch sync synchronization (cost reduction & performance), Solve consensus concurrency issues (stability x 2). 100/90/100%
Q3 Budget
6๏ธโฃย June Budget
- Treasury ($171M total, as of 5/16) ๐ฝ: 2.61B total (1.70B unlocked + 0.92B locked) ONE tokens ($130M), $6.72M USDT + $2.93M USDC + $688K USD, $1.11M DeFi assets, $2.13M NFT assets, $1.22M on liquidity pools, 9.27M shares of GameFi assets ($26.0M), $6.04M exchange marketing budget (104M ONEs + 2.80K tokens).
- Our projected spending this month is >$1.58M; as of 5/16, our treasury holds $171M total with $10.5M cash.
- Expected by 7/1: $25M cash if more GameFi shares are liquidated ($12M otherwise), 1.50B unlocked tokens ($60M at $0.04 ONE price).
- Total Q3 Spending: $5M cash + $10M 6-month vesting tokens (unlocked by 2023 Jan 1st)
- 60% = $3M NFT Product & Partners (Giv): Games (3 $50k licenses), Launch campaigns (1MusicDAO, land sales at DeFira / Evoverse / โฆ)
- 20% = $1M Dev Ops & Services (Leo): Cloud cost, Data Partners (target: Coinbase, Dune, Nansen)
- 10% = $500K Bridges, Protocols, ZKProofs (Ganesha): Horizon campaigns (stETH ETH2 staking deposits), 1BTC (lending), zkU, ResearchDAO (Common Prefix, Stanford Blockchain Week Visit)
- 10% = $500K Dev & Community Growths (Jack): Communication, Content, Event (1Conf deposits), Blu3 (_ Hackathons)
Meetings on Wednesdays
- 11am: Dev Growth: Only Stephen, Ganesha, Jack
- 12pm: Admin: Only Stephen, Li, Giv
- 1pm: Eng Meeting (Conf Room) by Rongjian, Leo, Ganesha, Jack
- 1pm: Partners: Only Stephen, Giv, Brian/Richard
- 2pm: Biz Meeting (Conf Room) by Li, Giv, Jack, Brian
- 2pm: Hiring: Only Stephen, Rongjian/Leo, Tom
- 5pm: Two 15-minute Team Tech/Product Talks at TGI, organized by Tom, Li
- 5:30pm: Products: Only Stephen, Giv, Zi/Sahil
Guilds for Focus & Traction โ๏ธ
The only thing that matters in a Day ONE startup is getting to product/market fit.
As a team we must focus on market opportunities with traction now, build products with partners to serve that market, and focus our team efforts towards Market-Product-Team fit.
The proposed guilds below are the focus areas and deliverables with the goal to drive utility to Harmony now.
- Protocol:
- Dev Ops: Reduce cloud cost, Launch game shard, _.
- ETH Bridge: Launch Trustless ETH bridge, Design bridge incentives, _.
- BTC Bridge:
- Dev Growth:
- Ops:
- Game:
- Communication:
- Content:
- Event:
- NFT Products:
- NFT Partners:
- Q: What happens to DAOs, Grants, Events if thereโs no guild?
- A: The guilds are to focus on executing market opportunities with impact. Weโll designate specific individuals to support ongoing work on DAOs, Grants, and Events.
- Q: I donโt know enough about the vertical Iโve been assigned to. How can I contribute?
- A: Scroll to the bottom of the page and study the resources. This is a good opportunity to ramp up and work with each other to learn and help us succeed.
- Q: Did I get moved because I was underdelivering in my previous position?
- A: Absolutely not. As a startup, we have to constantly evaluate where individuals can have the biggest impact. The teamโs focus has been reconfigured to align with high-impact initiatives.
27.5 Technical
- 5 Protocol: ๐กRongjian, ๐ฐ๏ธMax, โ๏ธKonstantin, โ๏ธGheis | ๐Xiaopeng
- 7.5 Dev Ops: ๐Leo, โ๏ธSoph | ๐Diego, โ๏ธSocheat, ๐ซTahir โ โHaodi, โจ๏ธLutty
- 3.5 ETH Bridge: *๐Ganesha | ๐ปAaron, ๐Bruce, ๐Semar
- 4.5 BTC Bridge: *๐Ganesha, ๐ปYuriy | ๐๏ธHash, ๐Sergey, ๐ฑTejassvi
- 7 Dev Growth: ๐ธJenya, *๐Jack, โตHakwan | ๐งโ๐ณVicta, โ ๐Artem
36 Business
- 5.5 Ops: ๐Stephen, ๐ฝLi, *โ๏ธGiv, ๐ฏTom | โ ๐ธ๏ธAmanda, โ Rob
- 5 Game: ๐นPeter, ๐ฒSam, ๐คMatty, ๐๐ปEssa | ๐ณAl, ๐งโโ๏ธLeon
- 4.5 Content: *โ๏ธGiv, *๐ฅAdrian, *๐ฌDanny โ ๐ฟKelly, ๐Andrew, ๐งฉYi, ๐๏ธโ๐จ๏ธEilam
- 6 Communications: ๐ญDaniel | โฝ๏ธAbhi โ , ๐ฎMatthew, ๐ขJose
- 6 NFT Products: ๐ฆBrian, (๐Sahil) | ๐ฅคJeremy โ ๐Demetre, ๐Mikey, ๐ซTimothy, ๐ฉ๐ปโ๐Kayla
- 8 NFT Partners: *๐Jack โ ๐Rachel, ๐Devin | ๐นSammy, โNick, ๐ถRichard, ๐ช๐บJuan, ๐ต๏ธโโ๏ธCristiano, ๐ฅMiguel, โ๏ธGarrick
July Action Items
- Tokens for 1BTC, ETH Bridges
- Product onboarding: 1Wallet
- Spot bonus from /7 /8 /9 to replace /q3 peer and manager bonus.
Essential Reading
By now, it should be clear that inflationary mechanisms like play-to-earn are economically unsustainable.
Things get interesting when you consider novel mechanics that can only be accomplished by smart contracts.
The prospect of running a full client from within a wallet or dapp has huge implications, not only for the health of the network but also for decentralization and privacy as it reduces reliance on the centralized infrastructure that most wallets currently use to access Ethereum data.
Essentially, for the first time, the overall stablecoin supply fell across the month and is down 15%.
A healthy ecosystem following a price correction is characterized by leverage reductions, ample stablecoin liquidity, and active users.
Thus, the user base remained relatively healthy, despite the overall decrease in DeFi liquidity.
Cryptoeconomics not only combines cryptography and economics to produce new methods of communication, cooperation, and organization; but, the authors argue, it might also โbring the invisible hand to computationโ.
A free-to-play-to-earn (F2P2E) gaming model might suit crypto games better than the pay-to-play-to-earn (P2P2E) model.
Thought experiment 1: can the stablecoin, even in theory, safely "wind down" to zero users?
Thought experiment 2: what happens if you try to peg the stablecoin to an index that goes up 20% per year?
Instead, while we certainly should hope for growth, we should evaluate how safe systems are by looking at their steady state, and even the pessimistic state of how they would fare under extreme conditions and ultimately whether or not they can safely wind down.
โฆ such deep algebraic tools actually making it into practice,โ saidย Dan Boneh of Stanford University.
โBy adding interaction and using a lot of the same math that was ported over from PCP technology, you get practical stuff,โ saidย Eli Ben-Sasson, a computer scientist who left the Technion in Haifa, Israel, to start the company StarkWare.
The following analysis raises the possibility of โwrappingโ an entire DAO as a single UNA or โsiloingโ DAO activity between the treasury and the protocol, with the treasury being โwrappedโ in an UNA and the protocol remaining regimeless or โwrappedโ in a variety of possible entities, determined by the facts and circumstances of a particular DAO.2 This would bring all activities related to the treasury (e.g., grant programs, DAO funded development work, staking/liquidity mining programs, treasury diversification, etc.) under the treasury UNA, whereas the separate activity relating to the protocol (e.g., protocol smart contract modifications, decisions relating to protocol fees, etc.) would fall under the separate and distinct protocol structure. In either case, the proposed structures prioritize trustless and on-chain transactions, while mitigating the risks of regimeless and offshored structures.
Team Discussions
There are some platform (like iTokens) and tools (like Gomu) we can build, but to me itโs more sustainable to partner and do business development.
Letโs call it ecosystem development.
Story 1: OpenSea. They grinded for 2-3 years before seeing traction. So my bias is to find founders and back them. We can ship demos in house and open source them, but getting traction requires grinding it out over many months and years and that requires an external teamโnot just โexternal devsโ but startup founders with the mentality to build over decades.
Story 2: GSV and education technology. When GSV started in EdTech around 2010, they had about 80 people showing up at their annual event. Now thatโs 5,000 people paying $3000 tickets each to come - and those are all the top founders, investors, executives from the industry (and President Obama). Everything was aligned towards EdTech. One of the founders invested in 50 angel investments in EdTech before we could raise the first institutional fund.
Same as how a16z took over crypto - their hiring (Balaji), media (crypto canon), expertise, investment, advisors all aligned to crypto. When I think cleantech investing, I think John Doerr. Again, he wrote a book on the topic, did a TED talk, and been building his personal network and brand around it. This is what VCs doโthey build a full stack ecosystem for an industry around their firms.
The word we used was โfranchiseโ. GSV built a franchise in EdTech, and they will be able to invest in Coursera, Andela, all the best EdTech companies now and for years to come if they just keep that franchise going.
Venture capital is actually very similar to sales and business development. at peak, i was doing 5-8 meetings per day with founders, other vcs, industry partners and you build a pipeline of potential investments, co-investors, and companies that can acquire your portfolio companies.
With (Sahil) and Sammy, the guilds look better. For NFT partners, Sammy has the music industry connection. Jack, Matty, Devin, etc. know Web3 partners.ย Richard knows the sales process. We constructed these guilds, now we all need to understand the market, strategy and how to work in a coordinated way. At GSV, it was easy, every person in the EdTech fund knew what they were signed up for and the rest was just splitting up the tasks into investment team with sub industry coverage, media team, events team, etc.
Using my VC hat:
Step 1: pick a few sub categories to go after. Even in education technology, thereโs k-12, college prep, corporate learning sub categories. For us, is it music NFTs because both the market and because we have Brian, Sammy, Matty, Adrian, Giv, etc.? But that still feels a bit early. Social tokens? We would have to go out and talk to top 5-10 social token platforms like Rally, etc.
Step 2: Align our media, thought leadership, networking towards that sub category. If we look at Maria Shen or Li Jin, you clearly think of NFTs and creator economy when you think of them.
Brian with Sahil and Jeremy should write out NFT product segment and roadmap. Jack with Sammy and Richard write out list of NFT partners to target per sub category. That gets summarized to the content and communication guilds to do outbound media. We should have our own โmusic nft canonโ.
And then go deep with videos talking about our thoughts on this space, keynotes at events, our grants and investments aligned to the ecosystem, TGIs in Palo Alto, SF, Los Angeles around this topic. Essentially we need to saturate those ecosystem and be the protocol that people think of when they think โmusic NFTsโ (we are Harmony after all) or โsocial tokensโ.