Boyang - Penn → Engineer and TL @ Dropbox, Square, early engineer at 2 startups (series D + series A) Twitter: kumquatexpress
David - Penn → TL/EM @ LinkedIn, Meta, series C startup Twitter: wobsobby
We’ve been friends for 11 years (met in undergrad) and have led teams building products for 100s of millions of users. Got our start in web3 through ETHGlobal hackathons in 2021, winning 3/3 and diving into the problem of ecosystem growth.
Project TL:DR
Kontour is an ecosystem growth network that helps protocols run grants and grow their developer communities. Through our platform developers gain soulbound evolving badges to build their reputation and track their contributions to different web3 protocols.
Proposal Category
Tooling
Kontour helps protocols run grants through our CRM to create and manage applications. The platform also helps developers find opportunities by matching them to incentive programs that web3 protocols are running. Our network consists of evolving NFT badges that developers accumulate as they build projects on Kontour, and they can use these badges as reputation in our talent network.
Project Overview
Parts that are complete
The grants workflow for Kontour is almost complete, including a form builder, application process, and review management system. Users can apply for grants by creating projects, and we aggregate data from social media as well as on-chain sources to track project progress and make it easier for protocols to follow up.
Additionally, grant recipients can mint soulbound badges that show their reputation. The protocol can use its grants management tooling to evolve these badges with more metadata as the project meets milestones. Using our grants search engine, developers can look for opportunities across the web3 ecosystem and apply to them. Our contracts for these features are deployed on mainnet and live with pilot protocols Lens Protocol and NEAR Protocol.
EPNS-specific utility
We’d like to use EPNS as our notifications layer:
When new opportunities come on the platform, we’ll notify developers to take a look/apply
As grants move through their milestones, we plan to notify protocols when action needs to be taken on different projects
We’ll have a sharing mechanism where community members can subscribe to notifications within their protocols and receive notifications when grants are launched, new proposals submitted, and projects are selected/completed.
Value Proposition to EPNS
Visibility
We believe that developers looking for web3 incentives will have their first interaction with EPNS when subscribing to our grants channel, and that this will incentivize more of them to use the product.
Community Engagement
EPNS can use our platform to aid its grants management and build community engagement with grant recipients. The current forum structure is very text-based and difficult to maneuver, and it’s difficult to see the projects currently being worked on.
Funding Requested
$10K PUSH
Milestones
Notifications for new web3 opportunities that developers can subscribe to through Kontour - to be completed Q3 2022
Notifications in the existing grants workflow to notify protocols <-> projects of milestones and status changes - to be completed Q3 2022
Sharing mechanism for a protocol’s community, allowing for subscriptions to new grants, proposals, and recipient project updates - to be completed Q4 2022
Having met you both in person at ETH NYC and after seeing the demo - I really think its an awesome well thought tool that will bring opportunities to everyone in a very direct fashion.
I’d be interested to learn more about your user adoption strategy.
I.e.
How will you approach DAOs and Projects to list their grants in the platform
How will you make it attractive to whoever is interested in a grant to join your platform and get these notifications.
Also, as a part of our Grants Program we try to get more specific deliverables for each stage, so that we can break the installments accordingly. It will be very helpful to have a more detailed breakdown.
Finally, I hope adding EPNS Grants to the platform is the cherry on top
We approach protocols/DAOs to ask about their current workflow with grants and bounties, then go through a normal sales pipeline where we try to integrate our solution with theirs. Depending on how integrated we can be, they can use the full end-to-end grants CRM on Kontour, or we can plug and play with their grants by awarding developers badges and tracking projects through our platform.
At the same time, we have Discover web3 grants and a referral system where builders can come to our platform, discover opportunities, and apply directly. This way, we direct inbound traffic to existing grants and make it easier to approach them with our solution. As more builders onboard on Kontour with their projects, we can build up demand for protocols to join in order to be discovered and grow their presence.
The builders that come to our platform can subscribe to notifications in order to access more opportunities, and they’ll also subscribe as part of the application process for a grant. This makes it so that they can get notified of any changes/comments on their proposals.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown of milestones:
Notifications for new web3 opportunities that developers can subscribe to through Kontour - to be completed Q3 2022
When builders come to Kontour either through the grants discovery page or through an application, they’ll be prompted on our notification bell (top right) to subscribe to notifications for new opportunities and status updates on their projects.
Notifications in the existing grants workflow to notify protocols <-> projects of milestones and status changes - to be completed Q3 2022
Currently, we have an email system that notifies protocols when a new grant application is submitted, and vice versa for the project creators. During the application process we’ll prompt the user to subscribe to EPNS if they haven’t already, and we’ll start sending notifications on the Kontour<->wallet channel to update users whenever an application’s status changes or the protocol needs to reach out to ask for information (or check in on a milestone).
Sharing mechanism for a protocol’s community, allowing for subscriptions to new grants, proposals, and recipient project updates - to be completed Q4 2022
On a community’s page (see something like Community: Lens Protocol Builder Community) we showcase all of the projects that are building on a protocol for the public to see. The goal here is to allow any user coming to Kontour to “follow” and subscribe to notifications about that community. For example, if a new grant is launched, or a new project created, new updates from a project that went live on mainnet, or interesting trends that we can surface (this project grew unique users 400% in the last week, etc.) - users that follow will be able to receive notifications about all the goings-on in the communities they’re interested in.
Thank you for the detailed response @kumquatexpress . Got a few more questions
Right now you are in an early stage and yet you already have grants listed and users. Can you share some actual metrics of your platform? i.e.
how many DAOs/Projects are already in the platform & how many are from organic growth?
how many users and views in avg (on a timeframe that makes sense based on your current stage)
Views Vs Application rate. This one is especially interesting, as receiving notifications when new grants are posted is 1 notification, but a more interactive communication flow starts after applying to a Grant. So I’d be interested in this “conversion rate” from visitor to applicant.
Last but not least, would be great to have you join one of our Office hours (Mon & Thu at 4.30PM UTC) so our community can join and make questions, and even see a demo (if possible).
Protocols on the platform: Lens and NEAR are our pilot customers right now, with smaller projects like HyperDapp using us to give out developer rewards and showcase their community (EPNS could do this today too)
Projects on the platform: we have about 60 projects & developers on the platform. These are projects whose data is on Kontour and which we help track (social media, on-chain contracts) - most of these are organic and 30% are from existing grant recipients of protocols.
Users and views: we launched the original showcase back in late April, and have gotten roughly 500 users signed up and views trending upward, about 250 a day.
Grant application rate: since launching /grants 2 weeks ago we’ve seen over 9000 views, with 220 clickthroughs to the applications. This could be better, so definitely thinking of ways to improve the reputation reward system & integrate closer with protocols.
