EARTHFUND PLATFORM UPDATE 09/05

More work on building the most intuitive and user-friendly DAO dashboard in the space🚀

If you’ve ever read one of our posts, you’ll know we’ve waxed lyrically about the transformative power of DAOs.

We’ve talked about the value of decentralization, the revolutionary potential of people-powered decision-making, and the way that traditional charities and non-profits can build more trust with their audience through forming a DAO, not a conventional black-box organization…

Poonacha Machaiah, CEO of The Chopra Foundation, talked about this in our first Twitter Space:

“No longer is it basically you give a donation and it goes into a black box, you can now track it, almost in real-time… I believe this is going to be the future.”
Poonacha Machaiah

And yet, the fact remains that not many charities and organizations are moving into the Web3.0 space.

Despite a crisis of trust in non-profits, they’re still stuck in the old ways of doing things.

Despite a 1558% increase in crypto donations in the last year, they’re still stuck focussing on fiat donations.

And despite new models that allow nonprofits not just to accept donations from their audience but hear suggestions and have real input from their supporters, they’re still making decisions behind closed doors.

Why? Because crypto and Web3.0 has two problems that it needs to tackle before it can achieve mass adoption:

An image problem: by the mainstream, crypto is still seen as a scammy, Ponzi industry. Even among those that are somewhat crypto-savvy, the role of crypto in the non-profit space begins and ends with donations. But, as we know, it can offer so much more.
A usability problem: until the Web3.0 space addresses its usability problem, it’s never going to achieve mass adoption. New users don’t want to have to learn a whole tonne of new processes in order to enter a space (and, frankly, it’s arrogant and insular to expect them to do so). Instead, the Web3.0 space needs to adapt to the expected flows and UX that mainstream users expect, without compromising any of its core values.

So, that’s what we’re building.

We’re tackling the image problem by fighting the idea of crypto as nothing more than a Ponzi scheme by building a token with real utility, real value, and a real purpose. (With the ability to do real good.)

We’re using crypto to give people a real, meaningful voice. Not suggestions on a card, not a tweet that gets a “thanks for your suggestion” reply… but a vote that has a real impact on decisions.

And we’re fighting the usability issue by building a dashboard that simplifies Web3.0 to make it simple.

Remember in the days of the early internet when building a website was done through HTML and coding in your bedroom? Back then, if a company wanted a website, they hired “coders” to build it for them.

The result? Most companies either didn’t have websites or had untouched websites that collected dust while things were still done the old way.

Then came WordPress. Then Wix and SquareSpace.

These tools took complicated processes and made them simple. Sure, you couldn’t do incredibly complex things, but you could build a really solid website in a few hours.

The result? Every company, large and tiny, now has a great website.

👆 That’s what we want to do with DAOs.

“The trend of design toward simplicity and accessibility in software happened for a reason — simple sells, simple’s usable and simple scales.”
Rand Fishkin, Founder at Moz

We want to be the SquareSpace of DAOs, taking them from being a niche thing that a tiny minority of organizations use to something that everyone has because they see the value in decentralized, people-powered decision-making.

And building an intuitive, simple DAO dashboard is at the heart of making that a reality.

Take a look at the improvements we made last week 🚀

#1: Changing the onboarding flow

In our first iteration, anybody applying to launch a DAO (all DAOs are approved by a vote of all 1Earth stakers in the EarthFund DAO) would go through and set up their landing page and submit it for approval. After that, they would then set up their token, their ENS domain, etc…

But, when we took a step back, we realized that was a little like asking somebody to build a website without a business model or product to offer.

So now, to get started, all you need to do is choose a name for your cause.

After that, you can jump right into the nitty-gritty of building your cause.

Simpler. Cleaner. And much more intuitive.

#2: Adding custom tokenomics for each cause (AKA causenomics)

One of the most exciting things we’ve got planned for each of the causes that launch on the platform is the idea of causenomics.

Each cause can choose how to split every donation that comes into the platform.

5% of every donation will go to EarthFund to cover development costs, running costs and day-to-day management. (Like any software company or crowdfunding platform.)

The other 95% can be split however the cause founders choose between going to projects and rewarding members of the DAO.

On top of that, cause founders can also choose between auto-enrolling all users into the rewards pool OR giving members the choice whether to enter the rewards pool or not.

(This is all made possible by the innovative ideas and development of our in-house team and partners at Labrys.)

#3: Team members, assemble!

Having a team of dedicated people is part of the secret sauce of a successful DAO. That’s why we’ve made it super easy to add members to your team and assign them different roles and responsibilities depending on their involvement.

Cause founders: a public leader of the cause who can talk about the mission, vision, etc… in public as well as run the day-to-day operations. Think of these like the CEO, founder, etc… of a regular company.

Community leader: a team leader position that can help manage the community, coral votes, etc…

It’s important to consider everyone invited carefully, though, as everyone will be able to sign (AKA approve) transactions from the DAO’s multi-sig wallet.

#4: Moving the no-code cause editor

Rather than front-loading the effort and energy that goes into writing and building your cause landing page, we’ve now moved that to the backend, giving DAO founders the opportunity to spend time crafting the perfect landing page. (They can even save their proposal as a draft and return to it another time.)

This ensures that the platform is full of well-written, carefully-considered landing pages designed to attract donations and inspire people to join.

(💡 Our in-house copywriter has written copy campaigns that have raised over $25M for charities and non-profits, so we’ll be working on a “How to write a great DAO landing page” guide for all cause founders to refer to if they need a little help.)

Medium-esque in-line editor for super-simple landing page building

EARTHFUND IN FORBES! 👀

As an organization, our marketing strategy has always been “substance over hype”. And while the ascent of that strategy might be slower, the highs are more sustainable when you’ve done things right.

At the core of that strategy, we have the 3 Ps. Great product. Great partnerships. Great PR.

We’re building a truly innovative, game-changing product that will sell itself.

We’ve already secured great partnerships with Coinshift, Gnosis and The Chopra Foundation.

And last week, we achieved our BHAG PR goal: appearing in Forbes.

Now, granted, it’s not the feature we’re still working on securing.

But we got 150 words talking about our platform and a quote from our co-founder Adam Boalt in an article likely to be read by crypto-sceptics.

In Forbes.

The same publication was synonymous with success and great businesses.

The same publication that has over 150M readers every month.

The same publication that is very hard to even get a mention in.

And it’s not just Forbes that have spoken about us. In the last 6 months, look at some of the huge publications that have spoken about our project 👀

Forbes. CNBC. Associated Press. Business Insider… 🔥

Another Twitter Space with NeverAlone and the Patriotic Service Dog Foundation 👂

In the US, 22 veterans a day lose their life to suicide. Service dogs can help. That’s why the NeverAlone DAO’s next proposed fund will pair a veteran with a service dog trained to ease PTSD symptoms.

And last week, The Chopra Foundation and EarthFund co-hosted a Twitter Space with the Patriotic Service Dog Foundation to talk all things DAOs, dogs and decentralized philanthropy.

Missed it? You can listen back here.

Part of the NeverAlone community? You can vote to approve/reject the project here.

This week, our advisory council is taking the first calls with potential investors in EarthFund. (It’s worth noting that our advisory council has a long history in fundraising and investing, so we’re in safe hands.)

They’ll be presenting our new pitch deck (which you can check out here if you’re interested) and explaining why EarthFund has the potential to be THE next big Web3.0 project.

We’ll keep you updated with any updates as we get them 👀

What do you guys think we can expect in Q4?

Our plans for Q4 are three-fold.

To raise capital to continue the development of the platform without selling tokens.
To build a fully automated DAO-in-a-box platform that allows causes to launch autonomously.
To scale the platform with a number of new causes that can scale into Q1 2023. (We have over 3,000 causes on a waiting list.)

According to the tokenomics in 2023 all treasure coins will be sold. Where will the funding come from to develop the project further?

Great question. The funding will come from two places:

Outside investments. We’re speaking to investors and VCs to invest in EarthFund and fund the development of the platform without us having to sell any treasury tokens.
The platform fee. Once the platform has scaled and has lots of projects being funded and donations flowing in, we’ll have enough working capital to keep building, developing, and improving for the long haul.

(It’s a similar model to the Uniswap Fee Switch.)

What are you doing about the bear market?

Bear markets are tough for everyone. For the investors (you) and the projects (us).

So, first of all, we just want to say how grateful we are for your continued support and understanding.

In terms of planning, at the beginning of the bear market, we cut a lot of costs and reduced to a skeleton crew running the project. Our team is now working 24/5 plus weekends to continue building and shipping at the same pace as before. (There are several times a week where some team members have to call into team meetings at 3/4am so we can all sync up.)

We’re also gearing up for our investment round. We’re looking for an investment to continue developing the platform without having to sell any more treasury tokens.

On top of that, we’re doing things like securing placements in Forbes, scaling up our outreach with other Web3.0 projects for cross-project promotion, and looking for new partnerships to boost our visibility.

However, as we said before “substance over hype”. We’re not interested in short-term hyping to pump and dump the price of the token.

As Mark Cuban (who follows EarthFund on Twitter and Instagram) says the bear market will last until crypto apps are useful. So we’re focusing on building the most useful, most usable crypto app there is.

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.
CoinTelegraph

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