The Zapper community is thriving! During this growth, many talented and helpful people have joined in on the fun. As the community grows, we are starting to see them add value to our community in creative ways. In the last month alone, we have seen contributors organize an emoji contest and relief efforts for Typhoon Rai (1)(2). It feels good to support one another as we do good things, and as more community members join we know they will want the opportunity to showcase their skills, organize events, and learn together.
We understand the opportunity we have before us, and we want to make sure that we are investing in our growing community, just as they are investing in us. For this reason, we are launching the Zapper Community Fund, which will enable us to recognize, empower, and reward the core contributors who make the Zapper community the special place it is.
What is the Zapper Community Fund?
We have focused on building a strong foundation to allow for our community to explore and take action on their creative ideas. Some examples of these foundational tools are explained in the recent Zapper Learn article Exploring the Web3 Tipping Economy. The Zapper Community Fund is a dedicated community budget that will allow us to enhance these tools, to further grow and support our community, and to reward contributors who are helping to cultivate a welcoming and helpful environment in our Discord and beyond.
Empowering and Sponsoring the Community
We have already taken steps to acknowledge efforts by community members. We started with awarding exceptionally active and helpful members with the Myrmidon and Hoplite role in Discord, and eventually these community members received their very own character in the Zapperverse, Zaphaestus, along with a corresponding NFT. Additionally, the Zapper mobile team was proud to donate 1000 DAI to the Typhoon Rai Relief effort that was organized by a group of Zapper community members.
Our dedicated Community Fund will reward and recognize even more community members, and contribute to creative projects and initiatives taken by our community. A dedicated monthly budget enshrines these actions as a long-term priority in our roadmap.
What will the Community Fund Look Like?
In the early stages, 4 categories will receive funding.
- Coordinape Circles
- Zapper Learn Content Production
- Tips (read Exploring the Web3 Tipping Economy)
- Events
Coordinape
Currently, Coordinape circles are hosted for community members who have earned the Myrmidons and Hoplite roles in the Zapper Discord. At the start of each epoch (a set time period for allocating points) everyone is given 100 points. When someone sees another person doing something deserving of a reward, they allocate some of their points to that person. At the end of each epoch, we receive a breakdown of how everyone’s points were allocated, and we distribute rewards accordingly. With the Community Fund, these rewards can now be a small monetary reward.
Coordinape is currently in a beta-testing phase as a tool for recognition in our community. We are tracking how it works for our most active and helpful community members, Myrmidons and Hoplites, reporting on our learnings, and actively considering how it might be expanded in the future. Putting a budget allocation behind our Coordinape Circles is a second, and important stage in this beta-testing process.
Zapper Learn
Zapper Learn is also growing, and we are ready to enhance our content production with help from our talented community.
In partnership with the web3-native bounty platform Layer3, we are seeking submissions for Zapper Learn from intrepid writers in our community. New Zapper Learn bounties will be posted to Layer3 periodically, and writers who get their work published on Zapper Learn will be compensated at a rate of $0.50 USDC per word.
We are opening a dedicated Zapper Learn Contributors channel in our Discord, which will be the best place to ask questions about this process, and find out how to increase the chances your submission is chosen for publication. Interested writers can request the “Scribe” role in our server, which will give you access to the Contributors channel.
Tipping
Tipping is a broad category of rewards that allow us to immediately recognize people for thoughtful and helpful contributions. There are many actions that could earn you a tip. Imagine you spend some time in our Discord server answering questions about a dashboard update; you might spend a dedicated chunk of time helping a community member learn how to submit a ticket to request support from our devs; maybe you share a tweet thread explaining how to use our “Save” feature. We want to be able to express our appreciation for actions like this. If you are active in our Discord server and we can connect your thoughtful act back to you, we will do our best to recognize you with a small tip.
Tips can take many shapes and sizes, and will be performed using tools such as Tipbots that live natively in our Discord server. As we get started with more tipping activity in the Zapper Community, Community Managers and Myrmidons will be given small amounts of tokens they are able to tip out to the community.
Events
Events are an exciting opportunity for the community fund to be leveraged in fun and engaging ways. This category of funding will be used as prize rewards and small gifts to community members who host events, to thank them for their efforts.
Do you want to host an event for our community? You should complete the Event Grant Application, and make sure you include all the information on the following checklist. This information must be clearly communicated in order for the community fund to sponsor your event.
Event Grant Application Checklist:
- Who is working with you?
- Do you have Myrmidon and/or Hoplite support?
- Event Title
- Event Description
- Goal of the Event, and how will you measure its success? (ie: # of participants)
- Target audience (ie: Is this an event for a particular international community? Does it target people who are celebrating a milestone or calendar event?)
- Clear Start & End times
- Where the event will take place (ie: what platform, Twitter, Discord, etc. For events like the Typhoon Rai Hurricane Relief, this can also be a physical location).
- Rules and Fairness Protection (How is this event going to be accessible for as much of the target audience as possible? If prizes are being distributed, how will they be distributed equitably?)
- Event Announcement and Promo (This should be a link to an article draft to be used as the announcement, and shared on Myrmedia)
- Event Budget (Clearly state the amount requested, how it will be used, and how/when it will be distributed)
Once the checklist is complete, have the Myrmidon or Hoplite who is supporting you complete the Zapper Community Initiative Funding Application (they’ll know where to find it!) and the Community Managers will coordinate the best way to plan your specific event with them.
Long Term Plans for the Community Fund
The first phase of the Community Fund will allow us to gauge community interest, give us insight into what events and activities our community is most interested in, and test various funding and tipping tools to see what works.
As we put more effort into recognizing and supporting our community-led initiatives, we hope to see more and more people step up to participate so they too can be acknowledged and earn rewards. We are excited to launch this fund, and we will be keeping you all informed of our progress, learnings, and how our community grows and changes as we start this fun experiment together!
