Introducing the Terra Bounties Expansion Plans

Terra’s LUNAtic community is thriving.

Hailing from globally diverse backgrounds, the LUNAtics maintain regular lives outside of the Terra ecosystem. Those assorted experiences sharpen specific talents in fields that are in many ways relevant to future opportunities that will arise on Terra and net beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole.

As ecosystem-enablers, TFL’s prerogative is to expand the sources and magnitude of demand for Terra’s flagship product — the TerraUSD (UST) algorithmic stablecoin. More demand for UST is value-accretive to the Terra ecosystem at large. Augmenting ecosystem resources is a premier avenue for expanding UST demand.

Strategies for augmenting UST demand vary significantly, ranging from liquidity incentives on DeFi protocols like AMMs to cross-chain bridge developments, strategic partnerships, hackathons, and applications for the masses that ease the burden of wielding the power of DeFi.

Accordingly, it’s TFL’s duty to seed the foundations of scalable and dynamic projects that help grow the ecosystem’s prowess of talent, products, content, and other useful information mediums to attract newcomers. Demand for UST and the prowess of the Terra community follow suit.

TFL relies heavily on the community for input, feedback, and the execution of initiatives to organically grow and evolve the ecosystem. The community is more powerful than TFL could ever be. Implementing the right foundations for the LUNAtics to succeed is essential. It’s time to accelerate the Terra community’s momentum.

Terra Bounties is one of several ongoing initiates to catalyze the opportunities laden in our community. And, in the spirit of progressive decentralization, we’d like to outline the ongoing plans to expand Terra Bounties — establishing the base for the LUNAtics to grow the program into a vibrant, self-sustaining pillar of the Terra community.

The Plan

In collaboration with Loop Finance, TerraBites, Pylon Protocol, and many others, TFL will deploy resources in effective amounts and in strategic areas to expand Terra Bounties beyond its current iteration.

The goal is to hand over Terra Bounties to the community and let them take the reins on the direction of the program moving forward.

The primary steps include:

1. Establish a Pylon deposit contract and individual Pylon pools for ecosystem projects to fund Terra Bounties.
2. Expansion of bounty coverage to Loop’s content platform.
3. Set up a community committee to oversee Terra Bounties.
4. Create categorized Terra Bounty comms channels to amplify collaboration.

Pylon Deposit Contract + Loop Content Platform (1 & 2)

TFL is currently working with Pylon Protocol to set up a deposit contract that will serve as the primary capital-allocation hub for Terra Bounties moving forward. The deposit contract is principal-protected, with yield from Anchor Protocol diverted to funding bounties on a monthly basis.

The deposit contract will be denominated in UST with additional token incentives offered by ecosystem projects willing to help fund bounties complementary to their goals available in separate Pylon pools (more details in the next section).

As the size of the primary pool grows, so does the monthly bounty budget, enabling creative issuance of new bounties drawn from both the minds of the community and ecosystem projects. Content and videos were the beginning of Terra Bounties and may serve as the pillars of the program. However, we eventually envision Terra Bounties being amply funded to support bounty issuance for endeavors like one-off front-end interface contracts, data tooling, diverse educational material, and much more.

The Pylon contract will initially be seeded by TFL to bootstrap the program, with the exact amount still to be determined. Three strategies will be deployed to bolster and incentivize the Terra Bounty capital expansion beyond TFL’s original deposit and even extended to separate Pylon pools.

1. Provide a robust framework for Terra ecosystem projects to contribute UST to the primary pool, with bounty issuance split pro-rata based on the size of their contributions proportional to the pool’s size.
2. Terra ecosystem projects will also be offered the opportunity to run bounties of their own or collaborate in bounties, incentivized with their native tokens in separate Pylon pools.
3. Establish appealing community LP incentives via a combination of liquidity incentives, NFTs, exclusive perks/tiered access, and other mechanisms that bounties or projects being funded can set for themselves.

Ecosystem Project Framework

Both Loop and TFL have been gauging interest from ecosystem projects over the past several weeks about participating in the new Terra Bounties concept. Currently, we’re compiling a formal list of projects willing to join the initiative with their suggestions, expected capital allocations, and bounty preferences once the new program is up and running.

The goal is for projects to initially commit fixed amounts of UST, which will expand the size of the deposit contract, and subsequently, the yield generated and diverted to the monthly bounty budget. Projects are free to adjust their commitments from there based on demand and goals for magnifying exposure and resources for their platforms and communities.

Once we elicit sufficient feedback from confirmed partner projects, a framework for deposit size details and initial bounties + separate pools to launch with the platform will be ossified and shared publicly.

Loop is also currently working on a new interface on their content platform for Terra Bounties that will include a horizontally scrollable list of in-progress bounties attached to specific projects.

This will be accompanied by an indexed entry list automatically updated to reflect each bounty’s top submissions as rated by Loop’s internal incentive and community voting mechanism. The model will convert the current, labor-intensive review process for bounties performed by TFL and Terra Bites into a decentralized community voting system.

Additionally, we’re working with Pylon to deploy a Pylon Widget into the Loop Terra Bounty interface that will contain:

• The deposit contract’s real-time pool size and monthly yield funding for the whole program.
• A list of ecosystem projects contributing to the pool, including the size + details of their contribution and how many bounties they’re currently hosting.
• Rewards per bounty denominated in UST and special tier unlocks such as NFTs up for grabs for winning submissions.

Initially, we expect ecosystem projects participating to issue simpler bounties like “how-to” guides and other walkthroughs that are beneficial to educating and onboarding new users as they bootstrap their communities and platforms. This provides a separate, efficient, and scalable arm for projects to catalyze valuable content for their projects and help amplify their brand exposure — including information dissemination without cumbersome coordination overhead.

Eventually, however, as the pool’s size expands, monthly bounty yield may be sufficient to fund larger endeavors like contracts for building developer tooling, front-end interfaces, design specs, and other aspects critical to the long-term success of a project.

Contributions to the Terra Bounties pool is not restricted explicitly to Terra projects either. The opportunity extends to cross-chain protocols interested in wielding the power of both Pylon and the LUNAtics’ prowess to introduce themselves to the Terra community and synergize their own growth.

The LUNAtics are a powerful resource.

If you’re a Terra-based or non-Terra project interested in participating in Terra Bounties, please fill out the Google Form below and we will contact you soon.

https://forms.gle/gVun1VY7to1s1YcX8

Ecosystem Project Native Token Incentives

Ecosystem projects will also be presented with the opportunity to fund bounties with rewards subsidized in their native tokens via separate Pylon pools than the primary pool.

For example, if Loop would like to run their own content bounties with rewards subsidized in LOOP tokens they could create a separate Pylon pool with UST deposits from community LPs subject to short-term lock-ups (e.g., 3 months) and LOOP token incentives distributed to LPs over 2 weeks.

In this way, projects can fund bounties from their token treasuries separate from the primary pool seeded by TFL. The yield from the UST deposits in the Loop Pylon pool could then go towards the pool used to pay bounty winners specific to Loop, along with the yield from the main pool.

The precise mechanics for ecosystem project pool commitments and community LP incentives (below) will be released in the coming weeks.

Community LP Incentives

This is where Terra Bounties can become really fun. While ecosystem project commitments may be sufficient to help expand Terra Bounties in the long run, Pylon’s unique design unlocks some interesting creative design spaces for the community.

LP incentives in DeFi are pivotal to aggregating liquidity. It’s why providing an avenue for the community to contribute UST to the Terra Bounty pool and earn rewards is so promising. We can primarily achieve this in 3 ways to begin, but ultimately, it is at the discretion of the LUNAtic community moving forward.

1. Divert a portion/percentage of the Terra Bounties pool yield or native project tokens in separate Pylon pools to rewards for LPs generated pro-rata on the size of their contribution relative to the pool’s size.
2. Work with the deluge of NFT projects launching on Terra to subsidize rewards for LPs in NFT unlocks based on tiered thresholds of UST deposits from community members to the pool or “lottery pools” based on UST lock-ups that initiate a chance to win NFTs. This helps provide exposure to NFT projects and catalyze the opportunity for independent artists and graphic designers to release NFTs to the Terra community with a certain percentage of the proceeds of future sales in that NFT allocated to the artist or NFT project.
3. Exclusive airdrop premiums, private farming (e.g., Orion, ApolloDAO), and membership access to early Beta’s or other features of ecosystem projects utilizing Terra Bounties that wish to bolster participation and quality of their bounty submissions.

On point 2, Loop is already in discussions with a couple of NFT projects on Terra, and we openly welcome other NFT projects to participate in Terra Bounties if interested.

Again, these are just the current ideas under exploration but are ultimately only bounded by the creative design space that Pylon deposit contracts unlock by swapping payments-in-principal with payments-in-cashflow.

We love to hear feedback from the community, so if you’re a community member, graphic designer, artist, or someone else interested in Terra Bounties please fill out the Google Form below.

https://forms.gle/kCviQYinh1T3x1qx8

Both ecosystem projects and community LPs are free to withdraw their deposits at any time as they are principal-protected — a characteristic feature of Pylon’s yield-based design.

Eventually, the goal is for the dual combination of ecosystem project commitments and community LP incentives to induce a self-sustainable, and perhaps even lucrative avenue for bounty issuance and submissions for the broader Terra economy — manifested via an abundant, principal-protected Pylon deposit contract pool.

Establish a Terra Bounties Committee

Effective social coordination with pure decentralization as the starting point is often a challenging obstacle to overcome in the pressure-cooker market that is crypto. In many ways, the idea of “progressive decentralization,” where you start from a more centralized point and gradually offload processes, structures, and tasks in a more decentralized way is the optimal path towards success in the crucible of Internet-native environments.

As a result, Terra Bounties will launch with a community-led committee — the Terra Bounty Committee. The committee will oversee, manage, and administer the creation, issuance, and reward allocation of bounties for the program.

Initially, the committee will comprise 11 members and can be expanded based on how the program develops and its contribution requirements from the committee increase.

We can define the committee’s core mandates in 4 ways:

1. Aggregate and curate pending bounty topics issued by ecosystem projects to reduce the overhead required for teams to participate in Terra Bounties — serving as a filter for ecosystem projects in the program. A Discord channel will be created to conduct communication between the committee and participating ecosystem projects.
2. Create and issue the corresponding bounties on Loop’s content platform, monitoring submissions and answering relevant questions from the prospective users submitting to those bounties.
3. Review, announce and distribute rewards to the winning submissions for each bounty once they expire.
4. Render decisions and arbitrate disputes in cases where there are ties or issues with a particular bounty or final vote tally.

The results via Loop’s community vote and rating system will be arbitrated and enforced by the Terra Bounty Committee.

If you’re interested in serving on the Terra Bounties Committee, please fill out the Google Form below.

https://forms.gle/U4zh5mtzkFibh35t9

Create Categorized Terra Bounties Comms Channels to Fuel Collaboration

Communication is an extremely important facet of life and applies distinctly to the social coordination of Internet-native, decentralized communities. Not only do robust communication channels elicit more effective asynchronous coordination between globally distributed parties, but they also provide avenues for fueling collaboration.

Both are critical for helping Terra Bounties maximize its potential.

As a result, Terra Bounties will be accompanied by several initial comms channels to help participants of all varieties collaborate on joint bounty submissions, ideation, and other aspects that can help collate talented groups of individuals into a shared sense of community and working groups.

Comms channels will be launched on Telegram, and the initial list includes:

1. Terra Writer’s Room
2. Terra Video Content Room
3. Terra Designer Room
4. Terra NFT Room
5. Terra Product Ideation Room

Multiple channels for coordinating on bounties should help accelerate the solidarity of communities within online associations characteristic of crypto networks but on a smaller, more agile scale.

Participants can elicit feedback on bounties waiting to be submitted, collaborate with multiple community members on several bounties, ideate new types of NFT concepts to be issued as community LP incentives (sharing in the percentage of profits generated from sales), and much more.

Currently, there are numerous smaller community channels on Terra ranging from technical and research discussions to product feedback and general ideation — all of which organically arose from the initiative of a handful of community members. Terra Bounty comms channels will follow a similar model, stoking constructive conversations relative to Terra Bounties and the Terra ecosystem at large.

The comms channels are not explicitly limited to Terra Bounties either. They can evolve into vibrant working groups of artists, writers, videographers, and more working on initiatives outside of Terra Bounties.

The comms channels will need an initial set of moderators, which we will begin sourcing in the coming weeks as we aggregate and finalize details for the launch of the new Terra Bounties.

Moving Forward

Overall, we envision Terra Bounties becoming a valuable resource for ecosystem projects’ community members, and professional talent looking to get their feet wet in the wonderful world of online communities. Underscored by an ethos of progressive decentralization, Terra Bounties marks a scalable foundation for the LUNAtics to wield their talents, ambition, and interests into a net-productive and self-sustaining tool for the broader Terra economy.

Maximizing Terra’s growth and value capture means enveloping a productive economy around UST via avenues that scale, diversify, and grow Terra’s ecosystem. The LUNAtics are at the heart of the Terra ecosystem. Terra Bounties will soon be theirs to mold and compound Terra’s accelerating growth trajectory.

Please stay tuned for more updates on Terra Bounties. We plan to provide further details as the many moving parts coalesce into a lively community-led initiative in the coming weeks.