I personally think this proposal hasn’t passed the temperature check. The costs seem a bit too much given there won’t be a simulation environment involved like with Into the block’s and shippooor’s proposals, so I think the author should revise the price or change the proposal.
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Regarding cost, if you think about hiring a full-time IR person/team to create these reports and distributing to a wide audience it would cost a good amount more. Looking at comparable functions at other DAOs this is often a much larger expenditure but there are economies of scale having done these quarterlies for 35 projects enabling us to do them for less.
I’ll also add that there are no other providers that can get enterprise-grade research to over 1 million users in the tradfi world getting on 3 of the largest research platforms in the world (Bloomberg, S&P, Refinitiv).
That said, we understand market conditions tightening budgets and we’re still eager to contribute to the Euler DAO. We suggest cutting the proposal in half to bi-annual reports (we recently did this with Goldfinch). This would bring the total spend to $50,000
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I think twice yearly will deliver value to the protocol. I tend to agree with the points raised in the Goldfinch discussion:
"t’s important to note here that the cost is not solely for generating the reports, it’s primarily for their distribution.
Reports will be free on the Messari site and send to all 250k newsletter subscribers, so there is no pitch for Messari Pro
Reports will be distributed via all of Messari’s distribution partners, including being posted with S&P and on Bloomberg Terminal, gaining Goldfinch extremely valuable tradfi exposure.
Compared to the cost of PR services ($35k-$100k/month for good ones in this space) this kind of media exposure will likely have a valuable ROI for Goldfinch."
The value here is in the distribution, from my eyes.
I think Euler will gain similar value from these reports. For more discussion, see Goldfinch’s discussion post: GIP-20: Financial reporting through Messari's Protocol Services - #11 by mans9841 - Proposals - Goldfinch Governance Forum
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Hey @JackPurdy_Messari thanks for the proposal.
Are you able to share the average open rate + click-through rates for the newsletter in which the report would be sent to over 250k crypto professionals?
This would help to discern the marketing value, as I have seen newsletters in the past where there are, for example, 250k subscribers that it is sent to, but only 25k opening on average.
Cheers!
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250k subscribers? How many actually read it?
Without actual data, it’s impossible to vote for this proposal because there is no factual proof presented, and on the internet, anyone can write anything.
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I think the trial period of 1 year with two reports is interesting and would be a great way to get a better understanding of the actual impact of these reports.
I agree with the comments above that $25K per report is on the expensive side, although the quality, distribution, and reach that Messari offers is undeniable. I think the two report offer is reasonable. After the trial year, the DAO will be able to revisit the proposal and make a more informed decision.
As an aside, I think the Euler DAO should create an official grant program with a few members from the core team and maybe 1 or 2 part-time contributors that would review and follow up on proposals like this. The way the DAO currently handles grants seems a bit unorganized. The grant program committee could submit a funding proposal to the DAO every 3-6 months and handle the grant-related operations.
Good points @0xGB and @Vitali - the average open rate is ~28% so around 70k views from the newsletter. There’s also ~12min average read time which shows they really are being digested by professionals not just skimmed over.
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Any chance for the official document where this information is available with all metrics, again anyone can write anything on the message board. if I had actual data I could calculate if what you ask is reasonable or not.
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The proposal is interesting, I’m on board with the idea. As ive expressed I think there is a lot of value here as a marketing proposal (I suppose you can call it “informative marketing”). As discussed with Jack privately, I think the pricing structure could be more in line with the actual deliverables of the work (so more upfront cost but reduced follow on cost).
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Teo from Uniswap Labs Ventures here. We are investors in Euler.
Due to the valuable nature of Messari’s distribution, I’d be in favour of starting out with bi-annual reports and then evaluating from there.
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Agree, believe Messari’s creating value.
I know protocols using Messari’s service. Current price is not very high. considering the discount.
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Thanks for the proposal and debate on this everyone. Looks like this has reached temperature check and we’re ready to go to a vote!
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I voted yes on this proposal. Messari’s reporting for Compound has been quite useful in the decision-making over there for me and other community members too.
While Euler has a great Dune Analytics dashboard by ShippooorDAO, these reports have additional benefits. Standardized financial statements make it easy to reliably compare periods within Euler as well as to compare Euler to other DAOs, protocols, and companies. They really benefit people who regularly read financial statements.
In addition to the benefits of standardization, Messari’s distribution is valuable. Not only are their reports distributed to their readers, but they’re also distributed to tradfi databases to be seen by investors who may not be in crypto. This certainly adds to the legitimacy of crypto.
These reports are worth the cost in my opinion.
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While most of my EUL is in the protocol, limiting my voting power, I support this proposal.
Not only has Messari proven they do good work through the other partnerships they have (@TylerEther mentions Compound, which is a great example), the investor database/distribution, which feels slightly overlooked, is valuable.
We know TradFi has entered the space. I expect this trend to continue (slower in the short term, faster as the market picks up again in the future). Messari is basically becoming our coverage analyst, and their distribution will help get Euler’s name out there better than other (if any) current solutions in the market (or us doing it ourselves). Their institutional-focused audience continues to grow, and I’ve been impressed with the number and quality of the partnerships they continue to sign on that side. Their audience receiving future Euler reports should only grow.
I voted against it because its unsustainable spending which is primarily marketing budget and goes to set up an unsustainable service which will cease running as soon as payments stop.
The pitch includes near 0 information on how effective that marketing budget actually has been, and no case studies on the impact of the 150 current clients.
The reporting is sent in a newsletter, but no real information about how many actually read the newsletter and no information about any additional avenues of engaging your clients on behalf of Euler.
To argue this is not marketing but investor relations is to simply rebrand marketing in such a way that you can justify avoiding the discussion on the reports real user impact.
If institutions want that information, they are already paying Messari for services, and they should feel free to fund or request the information they want delivered.
Information published quarterly (now semi annually) is ridiculous slowpaced when competing info services are kept constantly up to date, and any development costs associated with curating information is lost as soon as payments are stopped.
These funds would be better spent establishing data reporting flows which are available in real time and which once built can run sustainably.
So while I’m supportive (as stated), I don’t disagree with some of what you said. What’s a rough estimate on how much it would cost to “establish data reporting flows” and the associated maintenance/upgrades that come with that? I’m also curious to get your take on how we’d market this data once available.
Data
The contracts themselves don’t really change. Some settings are configurable and subject to gov action, but not significant maintenance necessary particularly for the type of stats shown in compound macro overview above.
The above proposal does not mention if new products would be covered, such as if EulerSwap were to launch, would this 50k cover it. I run off the assumption it wont be covered by this arrangement but its not clear.
No doubt producing quarterly reports is the cheapest aspect of this arrangement which is why I think it should be viewed as a marketing initiative moreso than a data one. This is purchasing distribution.
Marketing
As for ideal approach to marketing such info, I do think this is a good question which should be explored.
I have no insight to the cost of getting content displayed on Bloomberg terminal. Of the 1m bloomberg terminal subscribers I have no insight on the size of the subset which participates in DeFi meaningfully.
In my limited experience many institutional type shops use information like this to speculate on token price rather than to participate in onchain activities, often preferring CEX offerings. I question if such efforts benefit TLV and use of the protocol. While acquiring broadly distributed token ownership is important, I do not think EUL speculation should be a focus of marketing efforts at this stage.
Rather than focus on quarterly reporting to be marketed generally to institutions, i’d focus on creating useful real time data to be marketed towards active token communities and DeFi power users. Getting representation on podcasts, and at small personable meetups.
If this is to be viewed as investor relations is a quarterly report as hands on as we’d like that relationship to be? Is there more service not covered above offered for engaging in that relationship management? Could these relations be more transparent if governed through something like coordinape (for example: perpvangelist )? I personally do feel that there are more accountable ways to fund investor relations than this proposal.
In Closing
I think Tyler sums up the benefits of their distribution well.
Of these benefits, I do not see targeting those who do not use crypto, and general market education strongly benefiting the usage of Euler’s products.
I believe we can produce reports within public standards more affordably, while targeting marketing efforts towards an audience more likely to use Euler.
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These are great questions, to provide more details here:
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On the newsletter, we get ~30% open rate from the newsletter of 250k (so ballpark 80k reads) and onsite views get ~12min read time.
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Regarding the investor relations vs. marketing distinction, when a company puts together a 10q its IR - this feels pretty similar to that type of service for DAOs where the core function is informing stakeholders not just with quantitative data (that yes you can mostly find on a live dashboard) but with contextual analysis on why it actually matters (most people don’t have time to scrape data and piece together a narrative to stay informed). Sure there’s a marketing component to it since what good is financial reporting if no one actually consumes it so we try to get as wide of a distribution as possible.
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If new products are launched, they will absolutely be covered by the report
The report will delve into major governance developments, upgrades, and key roadmap initiatives on a recurring basis
- From our experience with the institutional shops that consume most of their research on Bloomberg/S&P, they are most definitely not looking to just speculate on token price (that’s mostly just crypto native funds). These guys have committed the time and resources necessary to get up to speed in this industry and are looking for how can they meaningfully participate on-chain in ways that are complementary to their business or investment thesis. There is often an inherent skepticism when looking at the space as a whole but having professional grade reporting alongside the sell-side reports they read on a day-to-day basis goes a long way getting them aware of the magnitude of economic activity in the protocols to get them comfortable with taking the next step.
- In terms of full-service investor relations, we hope to grow this outside just the recurring reports. We’re already standardizing subgraphs and would love to use this engagement as a first step in providing more live data analytics and risk management tools in the future!
As I understand it, Messari’s newsletter extends far beyond quarterly reports. With 150 clients of your quarterly reporting that’s 600 quarterly reports produced a year (assuming all are full service). As someone not subscribed to your newsletter, I have to imagine you include multiple quarterly reports in the same newsletter in addition to other content which has me wondering how much time is spent on reading other content vs these reports. Does any individual quarterly report get read all that much? Do you have numbers on QR readership isolated from other content? Do some QRs get drowned out from the volume?
Its really surprising to me given the scale and reputation of Messari that so little information is known about the impact of these reports given so many onboarded clients and the associated revenue that’s produced.
I agree contextualized analysis has value. If the purpose is to communicate with existing stakeholders who already meaningfully utilize or invest in Euler, then shouldn’t the Euler website effectively handle distribution to these entities?
this seems to confirm that actually getting this information out there is not the priority here. The priority is communicating standardized information with existing investors with distribution channels as a bonus.
What’s interesting to me is so many who have commented they support this, specifically reference distribution as the core reason. While I agree Messari has great distribution, is that all that valueable for things like quarterly reports meant for existing stakeholders?
This is good to hear. Thank you for clarifying.
Perhaps some misunderstanding here (likely my fault). I meant to imply that quarterly reports are used for the purposes of price speculation on equity assets moreso than generalize that folks who read bloomberg or messari do not have complex thesis.
Do you find that quarterly reports are key components of your customer base trying new protocols or scaling up exposure in using protocols?
Given ~600+ quarterly reports are expected to be produced annually and should be published up to date around similar time periods, do you feel that your team is able to make them all truly professional grade with useful contextual analysis moreso than the organization itself?
I would be really keen to read a case study on an organization that viewed the space as a whole with skepticism, and changed their mind due to quarterly reports which then resulted in them using a protocol significantly. Its hard for me to believe that skepticism waits for the end of the quarter to confront the magnitude of economic activity occurring,.
This is great and something I’d be interested in hearing more about. How does investing in investor relations w/ Messari impact standardized subgraph work produced by y’all, given it appears its produced regardless?
Does Messari maintain the right to paywall quarterly reports in the future? (I see some reports are paywalled in the Quarterly Reports section)
If so would Euler have the right to publish purchased quarterly reports without paywall in such an event?
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I’d like to propose another offer from DefiLlama: we would be willing to provide these reports for the significantly lower price of 30k
And on top of that we’ll opensource all the data, dashboards and tools we use to create these reports, which I believe will be of great value since it will allow everyone to check exactly how data is obtained (imo extremely important for transparency) while allowing people to build their own reports.
Furthermore this will go towards funding defillama, which is completely opensource and offers all our information for free.
Regarding distribution, defillama is very well established in the space and we’ve been quoted by parties such as the US treasury, so I believe that we provide a god platform for that.
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