Praise: the Standard for Community Recognition

Public Good Projects Discussion
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  • Project Name:

    • Praise: the Standard for Community Recognition

  • Project Description and why it’s classified as a Public Good:

    • Praise is a platform designed to amplify community engagement by emphasizing gratitude, decentralized insights, and generating reliable user-centric data. By enabling members to “praise” each other’s contributions, it fosters a culture of appreciation and collective alignment, thereby strengthening community cohesion. The platform’s innovations, such as the global Praise explorer, provide transparent insights into its utilization across organizations.

    • Classified as a public good, Praise prioritizes collective well-being over profit. Our focus is on organic growth, ensuring that each community receives tailored attention for seamless integration and cultural build-up. By championing trustworthiness, mutual appreciation, and a reputation-based contribution system, Praise serves as a cornerstone for fostering gratitude and trust in decentralized communities. Our funding, predominantly sourced from grants and altruistic entities like General Magic, further underscores our commitment to the larger community good.

    • What We’ve Built:

      • Praise Explorer: We’ve crafted the Praise explorer, a tool that offers transparent insights into the global usage of praise across various communities.
      • Community Onboarding: Successfully onboarded 21 active communities, including notable names like Optimism, Giveth, Dappnode, Commonstack, developerDAO, BanklessDAO, Gnosis, and several others.
      • On-Chain Praise Representation: Leveraging the Ethereum attestation service tech stack, we’ve developed on-chain praise representations in the form of attestations. Initially launched on Optimism, we’re now in the process of extending this feature to the broader range of praise-integrated communities.
      • Community Analytics Tools: Our commitment to deep community engagement has driven us to create various analytics tools. These tools provide in-depth insights into community interactions, participation, and dynamics.
      • UX and Integration: Recognizing the importance of user experience, we’ve invested considerably in UX improvements and the seamless integration of the praise bot, ensuring that communities can effortlessly adopt and adapt to our platform.

  • Main Project Funding Sources:

    • Public Grants: Praise primarily sustains itself through grants that support public goods. Notably, we’ve participated in several rounds of Gitcoin grants which have been instrumental in fueling our project’s growth and development.
    • Specific Grants: We’ve received recognition and financial support from esteemed organizations such as ENS (small grant) and Optimism through their retroPGF, underlining our project’s potential and relevance in the evolving web3 ecosystem.
    • Support from General Magic: Beyond direct financial sources, we’ve been backed by General Magic, a leading design and development agency that champions public good projects in the ecosystem. Their provision of resources and services has significantly bolstered our capabilities and progress.

  • Seeking project-specific funding or funding for general operations:

    • General Operations

  • Project Roadmap and Milestones (only for project-specific funding):

  • Funding Request and Budget (only for project-specific funding):

  • Team Information, including backgrounds and roles:

    • Kristofer Lund 4: Serving as our lead developer and technical co-founder of Praise, he is an experienced entrepreneur and developer with comprehensive expertise in end-to-end development across various industries. In addition to working with Praise, some of his latest engagements include work for Commons Stack, Token Engineering Commons and Holochain. GitHub 1
    • Justina Svitraite 1: As our Organization Designer, Justina brings to the table an impressive background in UX, user research, and community building. Having led a web3 design agency, she has contributed to the development of over 40 web3 products, including notable platforms such as Maker DAO and Arbitrum.

  • Social Credibility (development progress, awards, notable GitHub commits, referrals):

  • Discord contact:

    • parrachia

Eligibility Criteria:
(Yes to all!)

  • Do you have a commitment to open-source (i.e. every open-source license accepted by the Open-Source Initiative) technology and sharing results publicly?
  • Have you provided transparency about how exactly funding will be used?
  • Are you advancing values of freedom and privacy (no surveillance and handling of personal data)?
  • Are you supporting decentralization in various fields (for example building Web3 projects)?
  • Have you provided social media channels to the extent that we can confirm social proof of your project?
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Gm! :sunny:

As we step into December, we’re excited to share our latest updates and plans, focusing on enhancing our support for communities and introducing new developments.

Community Support:

  • Overwatch: Our ongoing support extends to vibrant communities such as Giveth, TEC, General Magic, ETH Colombia, DappNode, Optimism, Shapeshift, RefiDAO, RnDAO, GnosisDAO, Commons Stack, Bright Id, Metagame, DeveloperDAO, BanklessDAO.
  • Focused Assistance: Particularly with Optimism, we’re deeply involved in managing bi-weekly quantifications, a testament to our commitment to tailored community support.

New Developments:

  • Disabling Discord Notifications: Responding to community feedback, we’re rolling out an option for communities to disable Discord notifications for received praise, providing a more streamlined experience.
  • Direct Praise Impact Scoring: Streamlining the praise process, we’re introducing the ability for the praise giver to assign an impact score directly, making the process more immediate and intuitive.

Attestations:

  • Ethereum Attestation Service Integration: Following our successful integration with Optimism, we’re now planning to expand Praise Attestations to more communities. This enables on-chain representation of Praise data, opening possibilities for applications in access control and voting eligibility.
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Fundraising

  • Praise was part of both GR19 and RPGF3, specifics are still pending.
  • We have also just applied for ENS small and large grants.
  • No other source of funding or revenue

Roadmap

After we finish delivering the new developments listed above, our plan is to pursuit

  • Expanded community support: including feedback sessions and introduction to our new features. We want to spread the word about the power of Praise attestations!
  • R&D: study integration with other tools like Karma, Discourse and more. And of course, to remain open to new ideas and suggestions from our users.
  • Better Impact reports: streamline the process of reporting quantitative and qualitative impact over specific periods of time. We want granters and other stakeholders to better understand the project over time!
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Gm! :sunny:
This is our report for participating in the Epoch 3. With a few timeline adjustments along the way, the Praise team is as committed as ever to nurturing a culture of appreciation and collective memory among decentralized communities.

Achievements Since Last Octant Epoch:

  • Leadership Transition: Welcomed Dani as the new Praise Lead, poised to spearhead our growth, starting with the Optimism network. Her focus will be on driving user growth and enhancing our platform’s presence through targeted community activities and social media strategy.
  • Community Engagement: Maintained explorers and admin panels for 21 communities, launched a call-to-action tutorial aimed at increasing high-quality participation, and more.
  • On-Chain Expansion: Made progress in expanding on-chain praise representations through attestations, enhancing transparency and compositional acknowledgment mechanisms.

Upcoming Milestones on Project Roadmap:

  • Bounty Program Rollout: Launch bounties to expand Praise users engagement and improve brand recognition. This program aims to encourage community contributions with rewards and exclusive NFTs for top submissions.
  • Impact Reporting: Implement enhanced impact reporting tools for better qualitative and quantitative project insights by Q2 2024.
  • R&D Initiatives: Continue research and development for integration with complementary platforms like Karma and Discourse throughout 2024.

Financial Utilization and Future Plans:

  • Previous Epoch Funds: Funds were primarily allocated to content creation, hiring efforts and strategic planning, paving the way for the next steps, including the on-chain expansion and user experience improvements.
  • Plans for Epoch Funds: Our intention is to fund operational expenses and our R&D initiatives, including refining impact reporting mechanisms.
  • Grant funding received since the last Epoch: no changes there since our last report.
  • Other non-grant funding sources: zero.
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Thanks for the update @parrachia
Around the Bounty Program Rollout, can you dive more into that? The source for this project will come from Octant funding or other funding?

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GM!
As part of the Praise team, the Bounty Program currently targets the Optimism community. We would love to conduct one in the future for the Octant community.

More information about that program can be found here:
https://x.com/givepraise/status/1770504315368530156

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gm

This is probably more suited for something with the Community Fund in Octant. We’re actively trying to discourage projects giving away funds coming from Octant itself.

Best,

Mattias

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gm

This is probably more suited for something around the Community Fund in Octant. We’re actively trying to discourage projects from giving away funds coming from Octant itself.

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Thanks for sharing this @parrachia . If I understand correctly, folks would praise others in the Octant community and get rewards for these? How does the winner selection work?

@james might be interesting for us to consider, reminding me of the FC gamification experiments we’re running for Octant! What do you think?

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I thought about this idea a while back but this is a close setup to what is happening on farcaster and its getting spammed really bad. Not sure there is a solution at the moment for the negatives that come with this type of game, but I’m chatting with some folks on FC around ideas they have.

Also want to make sure your question is what @parrachia was suggesting?

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1st of all, @mat7ias we’d like to clarify that our OP bounties are fully OP funded. And secondly to introduce myself as Praise Growth Lead, working with @parrachia in particular for our fundraising. Now, about Bounties and the risk of spam. @mashal thanks for considering it! Here’s an overview of how Praise functions to prevent spam and ensure fair recognition and rewards:

  1. Praises are usually compiled monthly.
  2. At each month’s end, quantifiers (community members knowledgeable about Praise and the community) authenticate and score each praise, ensuring it reflects contributions beyond basic responsibilities.
  3. In communities like Giveth, where praise leads to rewards, a percentage of tokens is distributed to the praise recipient, the giver, and the quantifiers, promoting active and meaningful participation.
  4. Bounty Programs target individuals aiming for influential roles or grants, enhancing fairness in internal processes.
  5. Our ongoing program on Optimism demonstrates how modest incentives can draw community collaboration and engagement. Participants must submit their work and praise links on Deform for tracking. The Praise team conducts weekly evaluations to verify the correctness and appeal of submissions.
  6. Each week, the top three submissions that meet all criteria receive rewards, strengthening a spam-resistant culture of recognition through Praise.
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I’m not sure what this comment is in response to? I think @mat7ias was mentioning that your idea around incentivizing the community through Praise might be a better idea suited for the community fund.

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GM @james !
We appreciate your feedback, this type of guidance helps us to be more accurate with our applications.

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Sure thing! We just released RFPs for the first round of the community fund:

Not sure if it makes sense, but wanted to pass the information along nevertheless.

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This is our report for participating in the Epoch 4. The Praise team maintains its strong commitment to cultivating a culture of appreciation and collective remembrance within decentralized communities.

Achievements Since Last Update:

Community Engagement: We’ve managed explorer and admin panels for 21 communities, translated tutorials, actively engaged with numerous communities to foster higher-quality participation, and innovated various content formats, including blogs, tweets, tutorials, and more.

Growth: Progress has been achieved in broadening on-chain praise representations through attestations, thereby improving transparency and acknowledgment mechanisms within the system.

Upcoming Milestones on Project Roadmap:

Farcaster Implementation: Utilization of praise through farcaster frames.

Enhanced Impact Assessment: By the q3 of 2024, implement advanced assessment methods to provide deeper qualitative and quantitative insights into project outcomes.

Financial Utilization and Future Plans:

Previous Epoch Funds: Funds were primarily allocated to content creation, hiring efforts and strategic planning, paving the way for the next steps, including the on-chain expansion and user experience improvements.

Plans for Epoch Funds: we’re dedicated to funding both our operational needs and ongoing R&D efforts, including the enhancement of impact reporting mechanisms. Additionally, part of our plan involves hiring individuals with technical backgrounds to further bolster our capabilities in these areas.

Grant funding received since the last Epoch: Gitcoin G20.
Other non-grant funding sources: zero.

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Gm! :sunny:
This is our updated report for participating in the Epoch 5!

Total Funds Received from Octant so far: $68,543 / 27.491588 ETH

  • Epoch 4 - $44,704 / 16.0907 ETH (USD value based on current price)
  • Epoch 2 - $12,899 / 5.434418 ETH
  • Epoch 1 - $10,940 / 5.96647 ETH
  • Funds Spent: $23,839

Detailed Utilization:

Epoch 1:

  • Funds were primarily used to support core community efforts.

  • Engaged active communities such as Giveth, TEC, General Magic, and Optimism.

  • Provided tailored assistance, including bi-weekly quantifications for Optimism.

  • Introduced features like disabling Discord notifications for received praise.

  • Implemented direct Praise Impact Scoring to streamline the feedback process.

Epoch 2:

  • Funding advanced the Praise platform and facilitated a leadership transition.

  • Welcomed Dani as the new Praise Lead, focusing on growth within the Optimism network.

  • Expanded on-chain capabilities with further integration of Praise Attestations.

  • Enhanced transparency and compositional acknowledgment across supported communities.

  • Maintained and improved admin panels for 24 communities.

  • Launched new tutorials to encourage meaningful participation and broader community involvement.

Epoch 3

  • We did not receive any funds from this epoch.

Epoch 4

  • The funds received in this Epoch were recently claimed and are yet to be utilized; they are scheduled to be deployed by the end of the month to support the upcoming objectives as detailed in our plan.

Milestones and Deliverables

Milestone 1:

  • Description: Onboarding Communities onto Praise with dashboard and Praise explorer
  • Immediate Outcome: Created a dashboard tool to onboard communities for free, to give them access to analytics and metric on Praise usage within their community.
  • Funding Used: $70,000

Milestone 2:

  • Description: Ethereum Attestation Service Integration

  • Immediate Outcome: Community users can now receive minted attestation containing useful information like the score, their rank in their community, etc. from their community multisig, which represents their community.
    Optimism Attestation Explorer

  • Funding Used: $19,000

Milestone 3:

  • Description: Expanded community outreach & future specs

  • Immediate Outcome: For this phase, we maintained and improved admin panels for 21 communities, integrated further with attestations, and started planning the next phase of Praise integration with Farcaster

  • Funding Used: $20,000

  • Karma GAP: Karma GAP - Praise

Previous Challenges:

  • Scaling Hurdles: We had some challenges with scaling the on-chain praise representations and making sure everything stayed transparent.
  • Spam Risk: There was a concern about spam in our bounty programs, which could have hurt the system’s credibility.
  • User adoption: Although we have a core group of loyal users, we wanted to expand Praise’s use outside of Discord.

Updates:

  • On-Chain Expansion: We’ve made good progress with expanding on-chain praise using attestations, which has helped improve transparency.
  • Spam Prevention: We put in place stricter submission rules and started doing weekly checks to keep spam in the bounty programs under control.
  • User platforms: Create integrations with public social media for further Praise visibility, starting with Farcaster

Resolution:

  • Process Improvements: We fine-tuned our attestation and quantification processes, getting community members involved in the verification to ensure their legitimacy.
  • Submission Control: We added clear criteria for submissions and set up regular reviews to make sure only the real, meaningful contributions get recognized.

Lessons Learned:

  • Transparency Matters: We learned how crucial it is to keep processes transparent to maintain trust in a decentralized environment.
  • Community Input: Regular feedback from the community is key to keeping things running smoothly and avoiding issues like spam.
  • R&D is Essential: Continuous research and development are necessary to keep up with new tools and adapt to our users’ needs as we grow.

Outputs and Outcomes

Outputs (Last Epoch):

  • Output 1: Community Engagement: We have successfully managed explorer and admin panels for 24 communities. Our efforts to enhance participation and bot usage have been effective, and we have organized X spaces. Additionally, we have introduced various new content formats, including casts, tweets, and tutorials. We also launched a Bounty Program in Farcaster as a precursor to our upcoming integration on the platform.

Praise is now supporting 24 communities with its Discord bot. Since the last epoch, these communities have used the bot over 3,000 times. This is done by over 1300 users across communities. https://explorer.givepraise.xyz/

  • Output 2: More than 300 unique attestations have been minted on Optimism network through Praise platform.
    Optimism Attestation Explorer

  • Output 3: Helped to distribute over $2,000 in rewards (via the GIV token and other communities), to reward users who have received Praise since the last epoch.

Short-term Outcomes:

  • Outcome 1: Improved On-Chain Reputation Systems

The integration of on-chain attestations has not only enhanced transparency but also laid the foundation for a composable, verifiable reputation system that can be utilized across multiple decentralized applications and governance processes.

  • Outcome 2: Created an educational funnel and onboarding experience to encourage long term adoption of Praise within communities.

Long-term Outcomes:

  • Outcome 1: Created long term positive vibes within several communities, with some community managers telling us how valuable it has been as part of community culture. For example, one community manager quoted us, “Praise is the highlight of our weekly meetings, and really helps with morale and a feeling of belonging”.

  • Outcome 2: Sustainable On-Chain Reputation and Governance Tools

Praise is establishing itself as a critical tool for on-chain reputation, enabling communities to maintain transparent, reliable records of contributions that can be seamlessly integrated into governance frameworks and other decentralized systems.

  • Outcome 3: Enduring Community Cohesion and Engagement

The consistent use of Praise within communities has contributed to long-term cultural cohesion, with users reporting a deeper sense of belonging and increased motivation to contribute, driven by the recognition and rewards facilitated through the platform.

Metrics for Outcomes:

  1. User Engagement:That translates to 3,000 instance of the praise bot being triggered since the last epoch which ended in late July. More than 1300 users have used Praise since.

  1. Adoption and Usage: Over 1300 users across communities with 23 currently active communities.

  2. Community Impact: 24 active communities including Giveth, Optimism, and Gnosis DAO. New communities like Hand Protocol and VDAO are in process of being onboarded.

  3. Financial Metrics: No revenue generated until now, it’s a free service public good.

  4. User Satisfaction: A couple of testimonials from community members that use Praise, “New contributors find Praise hugely impressive, cool, inclusive, community-building. It hooks you into the community!” - Danibelle Giveth contributor & “Praise is essential. I don’t think anyone in the community could imagine not having it.” - Dr. Suga at Giveth

  5. Innovation and Development: Launched attestations, working on Farcaster integration to be launched within Q3.

  6. On-Chain Activity: Number of Attestations: Over 300 unique attestations minted, creating a robust on-chain record of contributions that can be leveraged for governance, reputation building, and access control.

Plans for Potential Funds Raised in the Next Octant Allocation Window

Goal 1: Farcaster Integration

  • Description: We aim to integrate Praise with Farcaster, allowing users to mint attestations directly within the Farcaster feed. This integration will seamlessly connect on-chain acknowledgments with the existing social graph on Farcaster, enhancing user interaction and community engagement. With more unique users minting attestations for others with a context define, Praise bot can contribute ever more to account uniqueness and building reputation on them.
  • Expected Outcome: Users will be able to mint attestations within the Farcaster feed, increasing the reach and utility of on-chain acknowledgments and contributing to account uniqueness and reputation-based systems.
  • Funding Needed: $ 70,000

Goal 2: Expanding On-Chain Attestations Using Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS)

  • Description: We plan to expand the use of on-chain attestations through the Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS), extending Praise’s capabilities to a broader range of decentralized communities. This will make the Praise platform more versatile and increase its applicability across various sectors.
  • Expected Outcome: The scope of on-chain attestations will be broadened, enhancing the platform’s versatility and enabling a wider range of decentralized organizations to utilize Praise for transparent and trusted recognition.
  • Funding Needed: $20,000

Goal 3: Marketing and Community Building

  • Description: We plan to amplify our marketing efforts and strengthen community building by enhancing our social media presence and launching targeted campaigns. This will involve creating content, hosting community events, and engaging with more bounties to increase visibility and attract new users to the Praise platform. X spaces programs are in plans with other EAS projects to educate the user base and raise community awareness. Several bounty programs on both X and Farcaster are also in place to promote content creation and increase learning enthusiasm of users about account uniqueness and reputation in general and Praise products specifically.
  • Expected Outcome: Increased brand awareness, a larger and more active user base, and stronger community engagement across supported platforms, leading to higher retention and adoption rates.
  • Funding Needed: $15,000

Other Funding

  • Grant Funding Received Since the Last Epoch: No significant additional liquid grants have been received since the previous epoch. However, we did secure the following funding and donations:

  • Gitcoin Grants 20 Matching Fund - $1,213 USD

Other Non-Grant Funding Sources: N/A

Future Plans for Financial Sustainability

Our financial sustainability plan revolves around multiple strategies:

  1. Revenue Generation: Introducing a small fee for users minting attestations within the Farcaster feed, providing a steady revenue stream for the Praise ecosystem.
  2. Strategic Partnerships: Deepening partnerships with Optimism (OP) and other superchains to expand our user base and integrate more communities into the Praise platform.
  3. Premium Features: Developing future premium AI-driven features, such as community subscriptions, to offer enhanced services for a fee, thereby diversifying our income sources.
  4. R&D and New Features: Continuing research and development to launch new features and tools that meet the evolving needs of decentralized communities, ensuring the platform remains relevant and valuable.

We’ve been focused on fostering the Praise community up until now. However, starting from Q3 of 2024, our focus has been on innovating and expading the impact of Praise. We’re in the process of creating a Farcaster bot to enable users to mint attestations for others within the Farcaster Frame Feed without having to be redirected outside. This bot could charge each user to pay a small amount of fee as a revenue for Praise ecosystem.

We’ll also be planning on requesting funding from Retro funding round 6 as well as other grants once the Farcaster bot is launched.

We may also charge an onboarding fee for new communities to integrate with Praise if they would like advanced features, such as AI profiles, or paying out rewards for Praise.

Praise currently supports +24 communities with its Discord bot.

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@incakolitazero Thanks for the update but is it possible to get it updated to more closely reflect the new reporting requirements (along with the long-term update): Project Submission Process | Octant Docs

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Just updated our entry. Thank you for the reminder! @mat7ias

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Thanks for the update. Are you able to share in total the funds that you are still seeking relative to what you need and have already been granted? I’m confused if some of the funds you mentioned here are considered for the milestones and costs you outlined…

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Gm! Stepping up here for a faster reply due to timezones.

The total of the funding needed we mentioned under goals is $105,000 Estimated USD value for the ETH received from Epoch 4 that we will utilize is $42,000 Funding needed (net): $63,000