EarthFund update | March 2023
Enhancing our usability, helping launch new DAOs, and preparing for a big push in Q2.
Our roadmap to steady the ship and establish EarthFund as the home of impact DAOs
👋 We’re EarthFund, the decentralized platform using blockchain, DAOs, and crypto to revolutionize the giving economy and give you more of a voice in the shape of tomorrow.
This is our March 2023 update reporting on everything from product progress to plans for the future.
Happy March, Earthlings 🌍
It seems like only yesterday we were writing our last update. February went fast.
In this month’s update, we want to take a bit of time to address some of the concerns that you’ve all had recently and reassure you that we’re still extremely bullish on EarthFund and 100% dedicated to seeing it succeed.
We know that on the surface (because we’re in the initial launch period and not the busy build period where new features are built every week) it doesn’t look like much is happening and that can be frustrating and concerning, especially to those of you that have been with us since the beginning and have high hopes for the project.
Just like you, we know that we’re building something really game-changing that won’t just change the space, but have real potential to change the world. As such, we share your disappointment that we didn’t have a meteoric rise immediately after launch.
This is mainly due to timing. We launched mid-crypto-winter after a year of doing almost everything right and — as a result — lost a little momentum.
The fact is, right now, a lot of people aren’t completely sold on launching a DAO. We’re in the midst of a period of uncertainty in the market thanks in no small part to the reputational damage of the FTX scandal and other high-profile news items, and that’s having an impact on the desire to start new projects in the space.
But we’re not worried. The entire team is still 100% convinced that we’re on the path to success. Why?
Here’s what we know to be true:
You can use EarthFund to launch an impact DAO today with its own token, community and all the features of the platform. âś…
The process of setting up a DAO is significantly easier and more user-friendly than any other DAO launchpad on the market. (And it’s not even close.) ✅
DAOs are the future and we’ve created a platform that makes them accessible, democratic and easy to set up, even if you’re new to the world of crypto. We want to be known as the go-to platform for impact DAOs. ✅
And yet, the question remains: why haven’t more DAOs launched?
This month, we’ve had another 35 DAOs sign up and start building their DAOs on our platform.
These new DAOs are built to help causes from tackling food poverty and reducing knife crime to saving the rhino and protecting bees.
That takes us to nearly 300 DAOs waiting to be launched on our platform.
But we know there’s a difference between DAOs ready to launch and DAOs that are live and making a difference
Our path out of these growing pains
We’ve said before that the first months of a project — especially a project that creates its own category as we have — are usually like this. People play around with the product, get a sense for it and then sleep on their decision for a while before paying the $40–50 of gas fees to get started.
But rather than waiting for our moment or for something to click, we’re using this time to improve the process and see why users are dropping off.
For example, we noticed that users dropped off when they needed to add photos to their DAO landing pages, so we created a page that makes these photos optional.
In testing with a DAO founder, we found that the grant-claiming process wasn’t as intuitive as we would have liked, so we’ve enhanced it.
We’ve also made lots of small UX and copy tweaks to the onboarding to make it even simpler.
On top of that, we’ve been learning from other bottlenecks (like the small issue with the CarbonCommons launch) to improve the KYC functionality and launch the custom Discord bot to allow you to create closed online communities of dedicated, verified change-makers. (And not scammers, FUD-ers or trolls.)
Now that these enhancements have been made, we’re going to be working closely with the DAO founders that have already got started on the platform to see if we can help them launch.
And in doing that, we’ll get even more valuable insights into where we can improve the platform, make enhancements and generally make it as user-friendly as possible.
Once that’s done, we’ll do a big marketing push on social media and wherever we think we can make an impact to start driving more sign-ups.
FAQ: Why haven’t we been marketing the platform aggressively already?
This is another question we know you’ve all been asking. And we get it. We’re not heavily promoting the platform at the moment.
And here’s why:
From the initial data, it was clear that something was causing a drop-off. Was it education? Was it the flow? Was it the UI? Was it a necessary growing pain with the freemium SaaS model we’re using?
In a bear market, it just didn’t make any sense to spend money to drive traffic and publicity to a flow that wasn’t converting.
Now we’ve investigated and implemented some enhancements, we’re going to do another round of user testing to get even more insights.
That way, when we drive lots of DAO founders to the site, we can be confident that they’ll follow through and launch their DAOs, rather than wasting momentum on DAO founders who drop off halfway through.
Looking forward to Q2 and getting ready to promote the platform
As anybody who has ever built a project or software will know, you can plan for everything and still hit a bump in the road.
For us, as John Maynard Keynes would say: “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”
We know we still have some work to do on simplifying some of blockchain’s more head-scratching complexities like bonding and claiming that we couldn’t fix for v.1. (We’re working on this right now. Those improvements will be live this month.)
On top of that, we’re going to start doing more personalized onboarding for DAOs setting up on our platform. That means more customer support, more assistance and more high-touch interactions with DAO founders to help them follow through and complete the launch process.
Of course, we’re also going to step up the volume of our marketing efforts and seriously promote the platform to DAO founders.
And there’s one more thing…
Introducing EarthFund grant awards, voted for by the EarthFund DAO🌍
At the end of March, we’ll be announcing details of an EarthFund sponsorship scheme where we’ll be giving 10 impact DAOs $500 towards their first world-changing grant.
This scheme will incentivize DAOs to get started on our platform, help us promote the impact our platform can make and give us a catchy marketing hook to drive awareness of our platform.
We’re still working out the details, but we’ll be calling on the EarthFund DAO to decide the recipients, so watch this space. We think it’s going to have a massive impact.
Changing the world doesn’t happen overnight but we’re making good progress 🌳
There’s no denying that things haven’t gone smoothly for the last few months, but internally, we’re all calm, confident, and 100% committed to the project.
We’re set up to weather this storm, grow the platform and then (when the time is right) seek investment with favorable terms that work for us.
And we just wanted to take a moment to thank you all for your support, your questions and even your concerns over the last few months. It’s been tough and we’ve all been head-down working on solutions, but we wouldn’t be here without your support.
If everything goes to plan, the next few months are going to be the start of something really special for the future of EarthFund.
See you there!
How can you help? Help us spread the word
- Leave a positive comment on KuCoin’s new comment functionality
- Follow us on Twitter and give our posts a like/retweet → this would be huge for us. Our Twitter profile is key to spreading the word beyond crypto and into the kind of spaces where future DAO members (and maybe even founders) hang out.
- Join our Telegram community (if you’re not a member already)
- Talk about EarthFund in EarthFund-adjacent spaces (maybe mental health communities or carbon/climate change communities on Twitter)
- Tweet about EarthFund or interact with us on social media (got to feed those social media algorithms!)
- Ask us questions — we’re always available to answer questions in Telegram. (And if our community team doesn’t have the answers, we’ll get them for you.)
- Leave a positive comment and bullish rating on CoinMarketCap
- Like 1Earth on CoinGecko
Until next week, a massive thanks for being part of this journey with us!
Let’s build a better tomorrow, together.
New to EarthFund? Here’s everything you need to know 👇
Start a world-changing DAO with its own token.
Join a community of like-minded people.
Donate crypto to change the world.
All from one place.
EarthFund takes the power of centralized organizations like governments and global charities and gives it to communities dedicated to causes.
It allows everyday people like you to affect change. And using crypto and the blockchain, it lets you have a voice in decisions and fund the causes you believe in.
Powering it all is the 1Earth token, an ERC-20 token that can be staked in exchange for governance tokens that give you a voice on the platform.
By buying the token and joining the EarthFund DAO, anybody in the world will have a vote on how the EarthFund treasury is used to fund planet-saving projects around the world.
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