Project Close-out Report - Fund 10 Scope

This page summarizes the outcomes from the ECC activities performed between Oct 2023 and February 2024. We are very happy for our growing community and look forward to a great continuation in 2024.

Title: European Cardano Community Town Hall - Operation

Link: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/103737

Project ID: 1000082

Project Manager(s): Ricardo Burgos (10/23-02/24), Marcus Ubani (interim and closing)

Project start: 10/2023

Project Completion: 02/2024

This page summarizes the outcomes from the ECC activities performed between Oct 2023 and February 2024. We are very happy for our growing community and look forward to a great continuation in 2024.

Our closing report contains the following sections:

An update of KPI for the complete proposal
A report showing all inflows and outflows by category
An overview of all recorded YouTube events and X-Spaces (via the EU Town Hall Website)

Based on this closing report, the team will create a closing video which summarizes the main aspects of the closing report (approx. 5 min duration).

List of challenge KPIs

Grow the ADA economy and inform our future funding priorities.
It’s all about exploring the gaps where Catalyst innovation funding hasn’t reached yet.
Explain how your project will benefit the Cardano ecosystem

KPI: Grow the ADA economy and inform our future funding priorities. We connected new people to Cardano by reaching out beyond our ecosystem, including former SEC lawyers and other blockchain projects like Partisia, Matic, Meld, and Nervos. Our Target: Promote the idea of an open, sincere, and friendly Cardano ecosystem. Our Results: Projects joining our community trust that we are welcoming them while providing valuable conversations.

KPI: It’s all about exploring the gaps where Catalyst innovation funding hasn’t reached yet. We planted the seeds to build a Global Donation Framework, and added Cardano core influencers and members to a signing committee including Hoskytoken, Tobler, and most of the Cardano TownHalls. Our Target: Promote the idea to jointly create a framework for a safer and more transparent donation process. Our Results: Through our online event we kickstarted the framework. Results have been very low for now.

KPI: Explain how your project will benefit the Cardano ecosystem By now we are probably best known to foster communication amongst founders through our fortnightly fireside chats. Our Target: Provide a virtual communication Hub to share views and impacts from a European perspective. Our Results: We are growing into a founder-centric community that promotes inclusivity and opportunities to create connections and exchange founder-relevant information through conversations.

List of project KPIs

sign-ups via Discord invites or other measurable links
number of project profiles in the EuCardano Discord
Avg users attending our spaces / TH
retweets of recordings after a YT publication
activity on GitHub for research projects
number of endorsements of participants/companies

Adressing project's KPI

After

renaming the Townhall meetings to Fireside Chats to reflect the more casual style
changing the Townhall format to a more founder-centric conversational approach

We followed the concept of a simple Marketing Flywheel:

a project channel in our Discord aims to reflect the growth of Europe-connected projects
in this channel projects can talk about their projects to connect and expand their community
fortnightly Fireside Chats provide founders a platform to present and connect
YouTube recordings of these Fireside Chats manifest the spirit of an inclusive founder hub
Twitter/X Spaces help to spread the message of our endeavour to different (language) clusters
Reposts of recordings in YT and Twitter/X endorse what we do and onboard new users to Discord

Key achievements (in particular around collaboration and engagement)

Achievements Collaboration

Through collaboration with projects who have participated in our fireside chats we were able to create a NFT X-mas calendar giveaway series.

Outreach to members of IOG, Cardano Foundation and EMURGO is generally easy and does help especially for orientation and support within the ecosystem. For example did we receive support during our German Twitter Spaces from members of the Foundation as individuals with views of their own. We are very thankful for this personal engagement.

We collaborated with now-established projects like Gamechanger and Xerberus, supporting them in laying foundational work during pivotal or early-stage phases. This included discussing UX, marketing, and regulatory affairs like MiCA.

Outreaching to key influencers in of Cardano led to the initiation of the #CardanoGives Campaign; the attempt to create a global donation framework through Cardano.

We created Twitter/X spaces to promote small Stakepools, from which a monthly disussion around SPO related things derived "Intentionally Random". Two of these pools have grown by now to respectable and profitable sizes of 10-20mio ADA. We assume our collaboration contributed/s to their growth.

Achievments Engagement

The following table shows the tracking of our KPI for the Fund 10 proposal timeframe.

Given the difficult market conditions, the growth of the community is noticeable and is reflected in the KPI. We highlighted those values in "green" (column "Goal") which were met according to the planning when submitting the proposal.

In the case of the number of participants in the Zoom calls, we didn't quite reach the target value. The team is continuously evaluating ideas in order to increase the interest of the community and their participation in our online events. However, the feedback we receive from our guests is positive and assessing our meetings as founder-valuable.

Main area of focus going forward is the usage of Discord and the engagement there. As reflected in the numbers, we did not reach the desired level of activity there.

Collaborations between founders and people wanting to learn about the different projects will be key to continue developing our community in upcoming months.

Key learnings

Projects who visited our Fireside chats are very open to support us with their NFTs so we can use them as giveaways for the community. This increases the visibilty of the projects, enables community members to engage with new topics and increases our following..

Reaching out to Community Managers of IOG and Cardano Foundation works usually well. Especially the more experienced staff is working as transparent as legal allows and is ready to assist Cardano oriented projects.

Influencers have proven to be less reliable partners when it comes to keeping promises or invitations. The opportunistic selection is very obvious here. Obviously this doesn't apply to all influencers, but when it comes to inluencer bookings we see a 50:50 chance of uncommented no-show, while projects/founders almost always show up.

The broader community is best engaged with lighthearted content and giveaways in a TL;DR format. European-related founders seem to enjoy and immerse themselves in the conversation even if it takes longer, while US founders tend to have tighter schedules and withdraw themselves from the conversation once their topic has been discussed. Small Stakepool Operators are open to collaboration for increasing delegators and stake, yet remain averse to direct marketing activities apart from project-related outreaches like ISPOs or providing support as batcher nodes.

We also observed shifts in priorities within our team, with some members using the name of the European Cardano Community as a shell to promote their own endeavors while decreasing their contributions to our collective work.

Next steps for the product or service developed

We're now setting our sights on making in-person events, and the European Cardano Community a buzzing place of connection and founder knowledge.

We will be working on fly-by and sustainable collaborations to reflect the merge of two paradigms -Web2 and Web3 - both with their own set of rules yet being more intertwined than many want to believe.

Moving forward we will use the insights from our financial tracking and all those digital get-togethers as our guiding stars for the journey ahead.

Final thoughts

We have created a spot where founders meet and talk casually about their projects and what moves them. It leaves us proudly humbled having gathered as the team we are today and being part of the whole movement around blockchain, especially within Cardano. It's the coming together, the sharing of dreams and knowledge, that truly sparks joy in our hearts.

Huge thanks to our Cardano family! Even though the market has been like a rollercoaster, your spirit and support have really shined, helping our community blossom. We stumbled a bit to meet our Zoom and Discord goals to the fullest, but seeing so many of you jump into our YouTube events and X-Spaces always feels like a warm homecoming.

So, here's a big shout out to you, our Cardano community, for being such an incredible force. Thanks a million for riding this wave with us. Let's keep this spirit alive and kick some goals together!

The Admin Team of @EUCardano