Proposal: SocialConnector Developer Grant

Gary · August 4, 2021, 10:10pm

Proposal for developer grant for $GARY

The foundation behind a creator coin is the community of supporters. Without multiple channels to build relationships and community with our supporters, we will never reach our full potential as a creator. Rally currently has a coin holder dashboard and a discord coin bot. This doesn’t provide adequate communication for creators and is greatly limiting the overall platform growth.

As an innovator and creator at Rally, I quickly identified this gap and have started to build use cases to overcome this current limitation using smart technology with the integration of the Rally API.

Primarily connecting coin supporters to social audio and CRM tools.

Currently Functioning MVP’s

Apple Pass:

We built an apple pass that connects to RLY with your wallet so your coin holders can have their balance in their wallets. We also have a built-in notification engine to send notifications to Apple devices.

Clubhouse Coin Bot:

We built and launched a Clubhouse coin bot that gates stage access. We can limit access to the stage based on $GARY coin holdings. This is done automatically through our SocialConnector oAuth. When a user raises their hand it automatically sends them a message to instruct them to authorize the connection and purchase the appropriate amount of coin to gain access to the stage.

Clubhouse Coin Balance Stats:

We have the balance of $GARY coin listed under each member in our audience that’s enabled our oAuth. This allows for instant shout outs and access points in the clubhouse live social audio app.

Hubspot CRM Integration:

With our integrations and authorizations, we are updating the current coin balances of all coin holders in our Hubspot CRM.

2021 Roadmap

Build our MVP’s into creator tools allowing for unique coin bots on Clubhouse, Integrations into multiple CRM’s, Gated Content, and social audio displays for all RLY creators

Future Goals

As a creator at Rally, I want to help the community grow. My intention is to continue to extend the functionality, integrations, and use cases to empower creators to build long-lasting relationships with their supporters through their owned CRM and Social Audio Channels.

This grant would help fund the innovation, testing, and quick rollout of our suite of SocialConnector tools prior to the end of 2021.

Rally Creator Access

As the functionality is tested and rolled out the services will be open to other creators through our SocialConnector tool.

The Ask

Based on the guidance of this forum post and recently, this proposal discussion, we are requesting a single grant of 500,000 RLY to fund the evolution of the above-mentioned tools to full creator utilization. The project will be complete prior to 12/31/2021.

davey · August 4, 2021, 10:26pm

Woot! Let’s go with the community tools! Can you give some more detail as to what the Apple Pass functionality will include at launch?

Gary · August 4, 2021, 10:32pm

Great question. The current use case is a balance of $GARY in your wallet with the current USD price. We also have the ability to “push” a notification using the apple pass notification engine to everyone that is holding the pass. Basically, all coin supporters using this feature. Here’s some more info on what functionality is available to us for this use case - Wallet Developer Guide: Updating a Pass

davey · August 4, 2021, 10:51pm

I’ve seen that (and have it still!) So will there be a UI where can send a message (and have users optin for it?)

Gary · August 4, 2021, 11:14pm

Yes we will have that built out and fully functional for creators to self-manage.

sixmofo · August 4, 2021, 11:38pm

Can we get a break down of a budget for this proposal. I would like to know the man hours, price per hour, etc…

Gary · August 4, 2021, 11:51pm

We have invested heavily personally to build functional MVP’s for this project. Our proposal isn’t based on a certain quantity of “man-hours” but rather a clear set of deliverables for creators to use.

voicebot · August 5, 2021, 12:05am

I am supportive of this idea. Gary has built some really interesting tools and I’d like to see more creators (including me) have direct access to production ready versions with a team to provide ongoing support and product maintenance. These are the types of tools that can support growth. Just a point of clarification, you mention that Rally Creator Access will make the Social Connector tool available to all creators. Will there be any fees or coin holding requirements for Rally Coin Creators to access these features or is the grant designed to cover those costs for creators so they have free access?

Gary · August 5, 2021, 12:11am

Thank you for your support. The idea is a hold of $GARY to offset the usage. Current $GARY hold is 25 coins.

Camille · August 5, 2021, 12:30am

I support this grant and initiative. As an owner of multiple creator coins, I want to be able to have quick access to rich data and communication tools that help me grow my own community as well as my stake in the creator economies. I’ve have beta tested an early iteration of this tool and find the output useful.

RussellEubanks · August 5, 2021, 1:06am

I own several creator coins and enjoy the benefits they provide. As a creator, I believe this proposal will help every creator gain deep insight into their community like never before. By showing data in real-time, the creator can recognize the superfans and intentionally contact those whose engagement is starting to want. I am certain that once this capability is in place, we will wonder how we lived without it!

Jensue · August 5, 2021, 1:08am

I am supportive of this grant. With the increase in popularity of creator coins and social audio, the MVP’s in this grant will greatly increase the value to coin creators as they will be able to use these tools to identify who holds their coin and will give them the ability to engage with their coin holders in multiple ways. I have seen some of these tools in action and they have been very helpful to the user and to their community. Gary is very forward thinking and can bring his knowledge and expertise to build the Rally community for coin creators and coin holders.

sixmofo · August 5, 2021, 2:35am

Am I reading this right, you built something then come to ask for money? Every deck or business plan I have ever read breaks down the costs in a rough form which can be broken down further if asked by investors.
In any case you need to justify the ask with real numbers.

jerodmorris · August 5, 2021, 3:19am

All of these tools look interesting and would benefit the Rally ecosystem. No issue there.

I have two questions, which have been asked above, but I want to reiterate:

Why is this worth 500,000 $RLY? That seems like an awfully high amount.
If an amount like 500,000 $RLY is going to be granted, why would creators then need to also hold $GARY to use the tools? It would seem that the community should have free or deeply discounted access to them. (That calculus would change if the initial grant were less, and merely covered costs.)

I’m new around here and still learning how everything works. So perhaps the request is more in line with how these things usually go. Those two items just gave me pause.

DaddyFatSax · August 5, 2021, 4:12am

This looks really cool to me. I’d be very supportive of the grant.

To the folks asking for cost breakdowns – we can value things based on their inputs or their potential impact. I don’t know how many person hours went into this MVP or how many additional person hours would be required to commercialize it in the way described. But similar to the discord bot, I can see it being a platform native use case for any creator who joins Rally and uses clubhouse. In which case I’d be more inclined to estimate the impact based on its user acquisition and retention potential than its person hours. Perhaps instead of person hours we should assess whether we see this as something that could, on a risk adjusted basis, attract and retain 500K RLY / cost of acquiring and retaining a platform user new users to our platform. Or with some very coarse assumptions, could this set of tools attract and retain more than 2k platform users?

That’s an easy yes for me.

bmanflyersfn · August 5, 2021, 5:03am

Hello I think that this is a fascinating idea however I have a few concerns about this product. Most of these are related to your integrations and their approvals/permissions.

How will you guarantee functionality of the clubhouse bot, when you are hacking into the clubhouse api through unauthorized means which is against clubhouse TOS?
Clubhouse could be monitoring your bot, but do you have explicit permission from Clubhouse to use the bot for this purpose?
API access can be revoked at any time which would render this product worthless

Lastly, I am concerned that the usage of this bot for clubhouse creators could result in a ban which would put yourself, other creators, and Rally in bad light at the least and legal consequences at the worst.

I apologize if my concerns seem harsh I just want to make sure that the if the community moves forward with this we are assured that everything done is above board because breaching TOS of another platform would reflect poorly on Rally as well as its community.

Gary · August 5, 2021, 9:28am

Great question! There is a massive future to RLY that will evolve into thousands and thousands of creators and will require a strain on all resources as the platform grows.

As we’ve seen with RLY lately stability is crucial to creator trust. Our intention is to build a stable platform in the most affordable way.

Sustainability will require ongoing fees to maintain the platform and ensure uptime. Holding of $GARY, while not free or maybe even the most ideal does offset that while we are growing in a fashion that doesn’t cost creators recurring income.

Gary · August 5, 2021, 9:34am

Great questions and you aren’t entirely wrong.

I am basing my proposal heavily on remarks from this comment

We are poised to be another success story from the RLY ecosystem. I hope this grant helps accelerate that.

So far we have built MVP’s that I am happy to demo. We do a Coffee & Conversations room every morning. If you send the message /verify to Ade Sal - Clubhouse you can go through the oAuth in a use case we have built.

Raise your hand in the room and get an auto-invite.

You can also type “donate coffee” and send me $3 USD in $GARY via email confirmation.

These were all built as MVP’s to prove our concepts. They are all fully functional but need to be evolved and stabilized to allow more creators to use the platform.

Gary · August 5, 2021, 9:38am

Great questions. I’ll address them 1:1.

We are in communication with Clubhouse. We can’t guarantee the functionality of this bot but as of right now they are in communication with our development and happy with our progress. Most of our use cases won’t require integration with the Clubhouse Bot.
We do not. You are only using the stage gating for the bot. All other items (including display of coin holders in Clubhouse Rooms) is not dependant on the bot. It’s through a public API we are using and our own internal data displays we have rebuilt.
You are right. All API access could be revoked. Which is why we are building our most relevant component of this tool without access.

An oAuth CRM Integration

We have built use cases to allow this to work within Clubhouse and as a stand-alone process. We want to evolve and build a template for this for other creators. This will allow all RLY creators that choose to participate with direct integrations into major CRM’s such as Hubspot, Infusionsoft, MailChimp and many others.

Gary · August 5, 2021, 11:37am

I will also note that it’s very common practice for “Auxiliary” accounts on Clubhouse.

The last message I got from Clubhouse about our technology was:

“Lots going on at this point, excited to keep iterating on DMs”

This was after they tested our functionality.