RLY Network Growth Challenge!

Tech/Network Upgrades
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Based on the discussion originally kicked off by @Masongos regarding the balance of circulating RLY supply between team/investors and the community, we are happy to report that we’ve obtained commitments from a majority of investors and early employees who are committing to lock-up their RLY tokens for an additional 6 months due to everyone’s commitment to the long term growth of the RLY network. During this period it is imperative that we explore other ways to productively grow the community and unlock additional RLY network holders faster.

Today we’re proposing a network growth program, to be approved and administered by the Association, that we’re calling the “RLY Network Growth Challenge”. We think that this program represents a straightforward way to grow the RLY community quickly and efficiently. The pilot program consists of a 100 day user growth challenge where Rally.io, Unite, SuperLayer, and other approved 3rd parties building on RLY, can work with the Association to distribute a max pool of 100M RLY through programs designed to rapidly acquire new users with a reach goal of 1M new users, from November 29th until March 9th, 2022. Unused tokens would expire and revert to the Association.

Details

Parameters for funds:

  • Maximum of 100 RLY spent for acquiring each verified user.
  • All funds from the challenge must be pushed down to individual users and not used for app level programs or ad campaigns - these would be funded by existing operating budgets.
  • The 100 RLY can be split across the acquired user and other user archetypes involved with bringing them on board (e.g., referrer, creator, affiliate, etc.).
  • At least 50% (ideally more) of the distributed RLY has to be locked in and redeemed through the application itself (vs. distributed to main-net wallets).

Operational details:

  • Apps have autonomy to design growth programs according to their needs and target the appropriate users for their apps.
  • Tooling to facilitate programs (e.g., referral systems, KYC systems) can be built in house or brought in through third party providers.
  • Apps to review initial designs with RLY Network Association to confirm compatibility and agree on distribution mechanics.
  • Apps should self report growth data publicly along with instructions on how the RLY Network Association can verify these data. Upon data verification, the RLY Network Association should transfer RLY earned through these growth programs to applications for subsequent distribution to the appropriate users
  • Dates of challenge: November 29th 2021 - March 9th 2022.

FAQ:

  • What qualifies as a verified user?

    • The network will not be conducting user verification at this stage, but will work with the apps to find users that bring long term value and put in appropriate controls to prevent sybil attacks.
    • Ideally, apps should reward increasing RLY for higher levels of verification. The following levels of KYC are recommended:
      • Bronze (minimum): Social media verification or similar
      • Silver (ideal): Phone verification
      • Gold: Basic KYC with ID + Address

  • What happens if a user signs up for multiple RLY ecosystem apps?

    • As there’s no central user verification, this case is allowed in the current challenge.

  • What does the ‘locked in RLY’ condition entail?

    • If all distributed RLY left the apps and was converted to other assets it would not be beneficial to the network ecosystem.
    • Therefore programs should be designed to keep at least 50% of RLY within the app ecosystem.
    • The RLY Network Association can advise on whether appropriate controls are in place during the initial design review.

  • What are examples of growth programs that can be used?

    • Invite systems: “Sign up for app and get 100 RLY”
    • Referral rewards systems: “Earn 50 RLY for every user you refer - your referral also gets 50 RLY”
    • Influencer rewards systems: “Distribute up to 2M RLY to your fans. Each fan can claim up to 100 RLY by joining the app”
    • Creator incentives: “Create a video/blog post/podcast to promote RLY through your channel - you’ll get 30 RLY for any user that signs up through your custom link, they get 70 RLY each for signing up.”
    • Community rewards: “SuperLayer is giving 75 RLY to every NYU alum over the next 3 months!”
    • Other: Be creative, if you’re not sure whether a program will qualify you can confirm with the RLY network.

  • What tooling can I use to deploy these programs?

    • You can use your choice of off the shelf systems or build in house ones.
    • Operating costs should be covered by existing app budgets.

  • What happens at the end of the challenge?

    • Any unused RLY goes back into the RLY Network pool.
    • If deemed successful, RLY network will look to expand the program and distribute up to 700M additional RLY to acquire the next 7M users. Success will be measured as follows:
      • Each application will be measured by the number of new verified user accounts + RLY collateral. Success definition is 1M new verified user accounts + 50% of the program locked into the application’s ecosystem. For example, if Rally.io distributed 10M RLY to 100K accounts, and 9M RLY leave the sidechain this would not be considered successful.
    • As soon as possible, the program will be opened up to the broader RLY Ecosystem and additional third party developers in more and more open methods as we evolve the program and defend against sybil attacks

Call to 3rd party Developers:

Aside from Rally.io, Unite and SuperLayer, the 100M RLY Network Growth Challenge should be open to 3rd party developers as well. As of 10/1/2021, it is possible for application developers to build on top of Rally Network as peers to Rally.io and Unite.io. While application approval is still not fully self-serve, developers should be able seek authorization from the RLY Network Association to begin building and participate in the challenge. Interested developers could complete the association grant request form with a summary of their plan and The Association can consider these on a case by case basis and award up to 500k RLY per 3rd party dev or dev team.

Closing thoughts:

Crypto-networks are still being valued primarily by the number of users / wallet holders in the network (Metcalfe’s law). We view this pilot program as the most direct way to onboard new users into the RLY network and drive social application usage, and it will also serve to increase community ownership of the circulating RLY supply to be closer to the original goal of 70%. If this initial program is successful then we can look to expand the program to an additional 700M RLY and also expand the program to the broader RLY ecosystem and additional 3rd party developers and partners.

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Thanks for raising this opportunity, Mahesh!

At Rally.io, we’re excited about the RLY Network Growth Challenge because we believe it can be an accelerant to our existing growth channels as well as an opportunity for us to experiment with new growth ideas and marketing tactics. Over the past few days, the Rally.io team has been brainstorming various ways to use $RLY to grow our platform in alignment with our objectives of empowering the Creator Economy and delivering deep engagement, utility, and value within our Creators’ communities. Our core focus is partnering with the creator community to grow the number of productive users on the network!

Below we have outlined some of the high-level ideas that we plan to explore and implement as part of this growth challenge. We’re not yet ready to formally commit to any of these ideas, however, we hope to use them as a starting point for discussion and initial experimentation. From there we can iterate and adjust as we move forward.

The Rally.io goals for this challenge are:

  1. To get more high-quality Creators who can build engaging communities
  2. To get more users engaging meaningfully in Creator communities
  3. To get more users holding RLY & Creator Coins over the long term

How we plan to achieve our goals and take action on this challenge:

We have identified a number of growth initiatives that can help us onboard more Creators and Users while staying true to our community’s mission and goals. We have prioritized those initiatives and shared some of them below which we believe are both low effort to implement, which allows us to get to market quicker, as well as high impact, which will deliver the most value to our Creators and Users. Over time, we expect to also deploy more complex and productized initiatives that may take more effort to build upfront, but that may make a much larger impact over a longer time horizon.

In addition to the initiatives listed below, we plan to launch an open request or application form that will allow our entire community to engage in this growth challenge. We have seen firsthand through RLY weekly rewards, Creator Launch experiences, and Developer ecosystem grants, how engaged and committed our community can be when we ask them for help. As such, we are excited to see in what new ways they will help us grow the Rally.io platform and the RLY network.

Our top priority growth initiatives:

1/ Onboard more Creators: this is a high-quality growth lever for Creator fans and community members. We know that creators bring on new users when they launch and convert their community! By onboarding more Creators who are a fit for social token and NFT communities, we can grow new accounts most efficiently while increasing the value and public awareness of the overall Rally.io platform.

Top initiatives:

  • Creator Referral Program: we will offer referral rewards in RLY to existing Creators and external partners who refer their friends, families, and colleagues that they believe will be ideal Creators for Rally.io. The beauty of referrals is that the referrer (person who sends an invite to their friend) will also ease the burden of educating new Creators on how to be successful and provide important social proof to convince them to sign up
  • Vertical-specific acquisition: we will prioritize acquisition within certain verticals where we have found success in the past (eg. Twitch streamers/gamers) so that we can deliver more value more quickly by building templates around successful launch strategies and coin/NFT utility.
  • Creator Marketing: we will experiment with many unique marketing campaigns to try and drive Rally.io awareness and the acquisition of new Creators (eg. Giveaways, contests, public call to action, partnerships, events, and more). This initiative will be highly iterative and we will deploy as many experiments as possible to observe user behavior, draw insights, and re-launch more informed experiments.

2/ Onboard more accounts per Creator: this is another high-quality growth lever for Creator fans and community members. We know that most of our Creators have only activated a very small subset of their overall audiences (some creators are well below even 1% activation of their total audiences) and believe that supporting Creators with their own community growth will drive meaningful value to Creators and increase overall user account volume.

Top Initiatives:

  • Creator co-marketing: we will work with our Creators to offer co-marketing opportunities, such as giveaways, airdrops, social advertising, partnerships, and more, in an effort to help them activate more of their fans. We will also partner with agencies, influencers, and other individuals/groups that can help us drive awareness on behalf of our Creators.
  • Creator incentives & bounties: we will offer additional RLY incentives for Creators who reach certain important milestones (eg. signup, total users, weekly growth rates, etc) to help push them to continue growing their economies and innovating for their communities. We also believe these incentives will help resurrect dormant Creators who are still interested in delivering value to their communities.
  • Creator Activation & Onboarding: in addition to the above initiatives, we plan to offer support to the Rally.io Creator Success & Partnerships team in order to help optimize the Creator onboarding experience and improve the new community member experience so that our co-marketing and incentive-based investments are more effective at acquiring new fans for our Creators.

3/ Acquire more users: this is an effective way for us to grow our entire user base, both community members and crypto-native Creator Economy supporters. We will learn from their interactions on Rally.io and invest further in the initiatives that drive high-quality user acquisition.

Top Initiatives

  • User referrals: we will offer a RLY referral program for all users on the Rally.io platform (ie. “Refer a friend and when they sign up or back a Creator you both get 50 RLY”) to refer friends or family who might be interested in supporting the Creator Economy or learning about Social Tokens.
  • $R Coin Organic Growth: we want to make the $R economy the largest and most engaging on the Rally.io platform because we believe it can be an effective source of inspiration for our Creators and we want to grow our community of members committed to improving the Creator economy. We will offer giveaways, gated content, NFT collabs, and other high value / high utility content for our growing community.
  • Direct user sign-up incentives: we will explore offering a RLY sign up bonus for new users to help pre-fund their account so that they can spend the $RLY within creator economies.

In addition to these high priority initiatives, we plan to begin scoping and building other ambitious solutions that have the potential to deliver more impact to our growth and platform but that may require additional resources and time to launch.

  • Education incentives for new Users & Creators: we will focus on partnerships with Coinbase and Rabbithole.gg to acquire new crypto-curious users, but we aim to build a native experience that can reward users for learning about social tokens and sharing their new knowledge

We plan to begin measuring the success of our growth initiatives with these key metrics, but we will be flexible about adding or removing metrics as needed:

  • Volume of new high-quality creators
  • Total RLY/CC holders
  • Creator Audience Activation Rate (% of total audience holding CC and engaging in community)
  • Creator economy engagement (community engagement + economic activity)

As we move quickly to launch new programs and try to drive growth during this RLY challenge period, there are some risks and considerations to take into account and make sure we mitigate in order to protect user experience and platform security.

  • We must make changes to how we secure new accounts before moving forward with any incentive, bounty, or referral based growth efforts to help protect against multi-accounting and fraud
  • We must consider these new initiatives in the context of other programs we are running (eg. Weekly rewards, Innovative Use Rewards, Partnerships team-led acquisition, Creator Success onboarding, CAC née Creator reviews) and be sure we build together for our users, not at odds with one another

Next Steps

  • Collect feedback from the community
  • Start scoping out our top priority initiatives
  • Launch, collect feedback, and iterate
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Welp, time to wheel out the BIG CANNONS then :slight_smile:

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I really like the idea but the jump from 100M to 700M is in my opinion to high. I would calculate the next unlock based on how many high-quality Creators we can onboard or in general value was created by creators. If there are not enough incentive to use this tokens in the creator economy I would anticipate a inflational effect on the price that can potentiality hurt our current creators.

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Absolutely @lomo, the 700M is an upper bound. The unlock will be based on the results of this initial program and how successful it is

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Let’s do this, if specific actions for the creators can be shared with the us, we can start to activate our communities.

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Some feedback here as the starting line is approaching…
From an attribution perspective, are we going to go with a creator name, some kind of generated ID, etc which can be passed through to the account creation and end up in the DB? Or will Rally setup a special landing page or give us a param to add? How will the unlocked RLY be distributed and when?

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Love this concept and I want to help contribute in as many ways as possible. I have lots of thoughts on different sections and I’ll do my best to break them down here:

Initial Questions:

  • Where the RLY for the growth fund coming from?
  • Will this in any way take away from CAR?

Parameters:

  • Is 100 RLY max set in stone?

  • I’m not the biggest fan of referral programs that have multiple referral types with conflicting interest between parties. If we have two programs, for instance:

    1. 100 RLY for new user
    2. 75 for New user and 25 for Referrer

Then, there is always a loser. If someone refers a user to path 2 and they later find out about path 1, they will feel as though the referrer took value from them. If they find out about path 1 from someone else, the referrer gets nothing. I believe the better way to build this is to have a max cap on individual sign up, and a max cap on referral as two separate buckets of rewards. Then there will be no reason for someone to NOT name a referrer, and referrers won’t feel the need to knowingly hide path 1 when talking about the program.

  • I think 100% of the RLY distributed from this program should be sent through the sidechain rather than mainnet, but perhaps this is just referring to the success metrics outlined later in the post, in which case 50% staying on chain makes sense.

Operational details:

  • When you mention that tooling can be built in house, what are you imagining as the process for this? Will tools be broadcast for public use, API use, or something similar so apps we build ourselves can leverage the tools? Or is this more of a, we can make feature requests to the in-house dev team, and if so, what would that process look like?
  • Will Rally publish a framework for reporting growth data, or should we use our best guess for this?

Qualified users:

  • Will Rally give access to KYC information in any way? IE, not the contents but some binary information such as, yes this user has passed KYC?
  • Same with social and phone verification, is this information made available to developers?
  • Could we get bonuses for enhanced KYC beyond the above? Such as confirming someone is a twitch subscriber to a coin they hold. We could likely build something like this, but it might be hard to convince people to connect everything without additional incentive. If same incentive, there would be little reason to request users perform extra actions past what other apps are required to do.

Multiple apps:

  • I don’t love the idea of users being able to get bonuses through multiple apps. I think it would be better for Rally to provide a central framework that prevents multiple signups with some sort of central verification. Even if this is something simple like a specific Rally ID has already received rewards from another growth challenge app so they are disqualified.

The following are questions based on Bremners follow up post.

Onboarding more creators:

  • Is the creator referral program a replacement for the current ambassador agreements, a replacement, or more of the same? would love some additional clarity on the specifics of this and how people can participate.
  • Twitch streamers and gamers is my groups specialty. We are already going through the effort of trying to educate as many creators as possible as to the benefits of the Rally platform with many examples of creators who are currently flourishing. That said, there is still trepidation shown by many creators as to the long term legitimacy of Rally. Are there any discussions happening internally as to how we can better acquire new talent? We would be willing to share our knowledge over dozens of conversations to help mutually find the best way to approach this vertical.
  • Again, tons of interest in the creator marketing side of this. Any additional details and calls to action for US would be amazing. We are ready to be activated on this front.

Onboarding more accounts per creator:

  • We work with many creators in the gaming vertical and would love to help put creator co-marketing into action. We have our own plans for this but would love to brainstorm with Rally if there is a more effective way of doing things and also share our findings with the greater Rally community as to what we think has worked well.
  • Love the idea of incentives and bounties, also willing to help here
  • Creator onboarding is something we have also been trying to perfect. There are a ton of tool integration and education required of a creator when they first join. That in combination with the first few weeks being some of the best time for their core audience to onboard leads to an awkward dynamic. Shilling the coin too hard without live use cases makes it look like a cash grab, waiting to shill until use cases are live means your audience will be buying after the Rally community has piled in. Things we try to do currently:
    • Fan FAQ for education
    • Examples of creators talking about their coin
    • Bonfire account setup for initial use case
    • Discord setup with roles and channels before launch

We have many more things in the works but development takes time.

Acquire more users:

I think the growth challenge as is incentivizes referrals fairly well already. I would caution against too many competing referral programs. Going back to onboarding more accounts per creator, I think referrals through creators is really the best way to get more of their audience to join and also create revenue opportunities for creators at the same time. I think we should try and narrow down referral program options once they are aired to the community and focus on only the best versions so the ecosystem isn’t fighting within itself to be the one who onboards. Would love some community thoughts and feedback on this!

Education incentives sound amazing, looking forward to hearing more.

These are my initial thoughts, feedback, and questions. In the spirit of iteration, I hope this keeps the conversation moving and we can establish some guidelines for what these programs should look like, and how the community can best apply to participate.

Best,

Mason

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Well if PLAY token ends up in the wallet, we know right away.

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Mason- answering some of your questions below (up until the Rally.io questions).

Where is the RLY for the growth fund coming from?
It’s coming from the Association RLY treasury.

Will this in any way take away from CAR?
No.

Is 100 RLY max set in stone?
This is the proposal for this program, but it’s not set in stone for future programs. We thought 100 RLY was a good starting point.

I’m not the biggest fan of referral programs that have multiple referral types with conflicting interest between parties.
This is a great point and ultimately up to each individual group (Rally.io, Unite, SuperLayer, 3rd parties) to structure what they think will work best. I’ll be posting about how SuperLayer is thinking about distributing the 100 RLY shortly.

Distributing RLY via sidechain
Yes this is how distributions will happen. Some SuperLayer projects will be launching on Solana (through the Rally Network) and so we can distribute SPL RLY directly on mainnet with very low fees.

When you mention that tooling can be built in house, what are you imagining as the process for this? Will tools be broadcast for public use, API use, or something similar so apps we build ourselves can leverage the tools? Or is this more of a, we can make feature requests to the in-house dev team, and if so, what would that process look like?
All the groups (Rally.io, SuperLayer, Unite and eligible 3rd parties) will have their own approach in terms of how they want to run their distribution programs, and whether they want to administer manually vs light automation vs full app. For Rally.io specifically it’s worth chatting with them directly about it.

Will Rally publish a framework for reporting growth data, or should we use our best guess for this?
All groups will be reporting growth data to the Association. The Association will provide consolidated reporting and be responsible for gauging overall effectiveness of the program.

Will Rally give access to KYC information in any way? IE, not the contents but some binary information such as, yes this user has passed KYC?
Individual apps are responsible for conducting KYC. Currently this data is not shared across apps.

Same with social and phone verification, is this information made available to developers?
User level data is kept within the apps, in accordance with the privacy policies of these apps.

Could we get bonuses for enhanced KYC beyond the above? Such as confirming someone is a twitch subscriber to a coin they hold. We could likely build something like this, but it might be hard to convince people to connect everything without additional incentive. If same incentive, there would be little reason to request users perform extra actions past what other apps are required to do.
Twitch verification could be a valid form of social verification.

I don’t love the idea of users being able to get bonuses through multiple apps. I think it would be better for Rally to provide a central framework that prevents multiple signups with some sort of central verification. Even if this is something simple like a specific Rally ID has already received rewards from another growth challenge app so they are disqualified.
This is a great idea for the longer term and will increase user growth across the RLY Ecosystem. For the initial challenge, we’re not implementing this in the interest of moving quickly.

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Superlayer is excited to participate in this challenge!

SuperLayer is building new products on top of the RLY Network and will be applying to onboard users, capital providers, and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. These users can claim RLY to join the SuperLayer community which will allow them to discover SuperLayer products which they can sign up for to receive more RLY along with app-level token rewards.

Superlayer’s goal for this challenge are to:

  • Incentivize new user growth for products being built on top of RLY (that will lock up RLY in sub-tokens)
  • Grow the Superlayer community and increase awareness of the RLY Network

How we plan to achieve our goals and take action on this challenge:

We have two primary goals for the RLY Network Growth challenge. For our first goal, Superlayer is looking for ways to support the launch of new products that are built on top of the RLY Network. This may involve finding early user testers, incentivizing growth and sharing of new projects, and educating users about in-app behaviors as well as web3 behaviors like setting up their first non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets. For our second goal, we are looking to grow the overall Superlayer community and we have included a couple of growth initiatives that will help that we’ve listed below.

1/ Incentivize new user growth for products being built on top of RLY (that will lock up RLY in sub-tokens): By building new applications that utilize the RLY Network to create sub-tokens that lock up RLY, we will be able to expand the utility of the RLY token and create new opportunities for people to get involved in the RLY ecosystem. New Superlayer products will be designing sub-tokens that are bonded to RLY and they will use RLY as a value-in and value-out mechanism.

Superlayer Community: Superlayer will be funding the development of the Superlayer Community and will be creating a way for verified users to get early access to newly released Superlayer products for testing. Users can connect their Ethereum and Solana wallet addresses to be eligible for distribution of RLY and new sub-token rewards. They will also be able to connect their social media accounts to gain additional rewards and to verify that they are real users. We will be using the allocated RLY to incentivize real user verification.

2/ Grow the Superlayer Community and increase awareness of the RLY Network: We will be growing a community of verified users who will be using the RLY Network. We expect there to be significant cross-pollination between existing RLY holders participating in SuperLayer products, as well as brand new users from these products that discover the broader RLY ecosystem.

Top Growth Initiatives:

Superlayer App Growth: We will be integrating with new Superlayer applications that are released so that users from these new applications can join the wider Superlayer community.

  • Web3 Community Acquisition: We will be whitelisting existing Web3 communities.
    • We want to introduce more web3 users to the RLY ecosystem, that’s another reason why we will be enabling sign-ons to the Superlayer Community App with Ethereum and Solana wallet addresses. This allows us to whitelist specific communities and invite them to join the Superlayer community to claim airdrops and become early adopters of our new applications.
  • Referral Program: We will be implementing referral rewards to sustain the growth of the ecosystem.

RLY Token Allocation: How will we allocate the 100 RLY per user budget? [This is our initial hypothesis, actual budgets might vary based on further research]

  • 10 RLY / referral budget
  • 20 RLY signup
  • 20 RLY verification completion
  • 50 RLY to be claimed in apps (e.g., in single app or across multiple ones)
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Thank you @KevinChou , @mvellank , @BremnerMorris and the rest of the Rally team of creators and developers.

After reading over this at least 5 times online and 4 times on paper, like my grandpa… I’m very excited about this ecosystem, what creators & superlayer projects can do within it.

As Bremner requested a list of priorities, I thought I would suggest a few that apply for both Rally.io, Unite and Superlayer.

Priorities

Verify human user activity across platforms with multiple lines of defense.

  1. Bot detection at the website & api level. This probably needs to be a platform that the rally association is able to monitor across the RLY ecosystem.
  2. Programmatic KYC, less than a day turn around if possible
  3. Human KYC review as backup to programmatic kyc with less than 3 business days turn around

Tie all RLY rewards programs to KYC participation. I fully recognize that this is a huge ask but I would suggest that it could be the right one.

  1. Protects the authenticity of the whole RLY ecosystem. You could make the case that this mechanism brings more truth about the actual number of HOLDers than the mainnet, as there is no mechanism on the mainnet to identify a single individual with 100 Web3 wallets.
  2. Protects the RLY ecosystem against future multi-country crypto regulation change.

Create a clear path for how Creators can participate in the RLY growth challenge that includes the specifics of how attribution (credit) will be given for the various roles outlined.

Thank you for considering.
j

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Hi folks, the RLY Network Association board members have reviewed this proposal and all of the great feedback provided by the community. It seems like the general sentiment is positive and supportive of experimentation with appropriate reservations around the quality and integrity of new user sign ups. Additionally, we recognize that the desire to move quickly with experimentation suggests getting something started that might not be perfect is preferable to holding things up in order to build robust tooling and reporting at the network level prior to beginning any of these initiatives.

With this in mind, the association board has approved the allocation of the first 100MM RLY of this ask. For operational purposes:

  • RLY associated with this growth challenge will be distributed from the association to applications; applications will be responsible for allocation and distribution to users
  • Applications will be responsible for self reporting growth numbers along with instructions for independent verification by the association
  • The association will review and verify these self reported numbers no more than weekly and distribute RLY accordingly
  • In verifying these self reported numbers, the association will approve up to 100 RLY per verified user. Without a consistent, network level identity system, the association will reserve discretion these per user amounts in keeping with the spirit of several concerns noted regarding validity of users, kyc, etc…
  • Applications wanting to participate should note their plans as Super Layer and Rally.io have done here and coordinate with the association on reporting, verification, and delivery of RLY
  • While applications will be responsible for RLY delivery to users, the association will verify that RLY distributed to application wallets as part of this program is subsequently delivered to user wallets

For any applications that would like to participate, contact the association via these forums or discord and I’m looking forward to the creative ways applications and creators will put this allocation to work to grow our community.

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Hi everyone, my name is Alec Goldstein, I am supporting Rally on Product & Growth initiatives. Moving forward I will be the DRI for Rally’s Growth Challenge initiatives. I am looking forward to collaborating with the entire community on this exciting opportunity. Please feel free to connect with me on this effort (Email: agoldstein, Discord: jagold#4454).

Thank you all for your feedback and support of the Rally growth proposal. In this follow-up post, we will address a few outstanding questions from @jonschroeder and @Masongos and then provide our plan for moving forward with this Growth Challenge.

1. Response to @jonschroeder :
Thank you for bringing up these topics, these are all excellent suggestions that are top of mind for the Rally team.

  • As you correctly point out, the work on KYC and user authentication is complicated and time-consuming because we want to make sure we maintain the highest level of security while not compromising our users’ experience. Our payments/fraud teams are continuously working on improvements here.
  • Because of the ongoing work to continue to enhance security and KYC at a system-wide level, we will not be making specific changes for this Growth Challenge. That being said, as you will see in all of our future growth initiative plans, one of our key metrics for success is ensuring we’re bringing on high-quality, verified users.
  • User authentication and fraud prevention are top priorities for Rally and we want to make it abundantly clear that we are working hard to improve these every day. We will continue moving forward with our planned growth experiments but would like to keep this conversation going between the community and the appropriate internal teams.

2. Response to @Masongos:
Thank you for these great questions Mason, these are exactly the types of questions we want to engage with the community about to ensure we are approaching our growth strategy in the right way.

  • The referral program is intended to be a supplement to all existing efforts to acquire Creators. Our plan is to figure out how we can integrate RLY rewards into the programs that are already working (eg. ambassador acquisition efforts) and to support new acquisition efforts (eg. creator <> creator referrals).
  • We are planning to set up a growth-specific meeting for our ambassadors & community members to ensure we are sharing learnings and best practices on a more frequent basis from these initiatives. We will also be sure to discuss our ideas for Creator co-marketing and Creator onboarding in those meetings.
  • We agree that we do not want to have too many competing referral programs and as you will see in our future initiative plans, we are purposefully prioritizing creator-led before community-led referral efforts.

3. Next steps for the RLY Network Growth Challenge
As we move forward with this Growth Challenge, we wanted to share our approach for launching new initiatives as well as our planned process for providing feedback, results, and insights to the community.

  • First, we would like to share a shortlist of high-priority planned initiatives that we have chosen based on the expected impact and speed of deployment (see below)
  • For each new initiative that we plan to launch, we will post a one page proposal to the community in order to collect your feedback and suggestions
  • Our goal is to launch a new initiative or new iteration of an existing initiative each week
  • After the initiative is launched, we will spend between 1-4 weeks collecting and analyzing data from that experiment which we will then share back with the community for feedback
  • For experiments/initiatives that are driving clear value to the Rally system, we will continue iterating to try and drive more high-quality volume through them, and for the initiatives that aren’t performing well, we will make adjustments or move on
  • We will be creating a dedicated Discord channel and recurring public meeting to ensure we can engage with the community on all of these planned initiatives

Shortlist of planned initiatives

  • Creator referral program - [proposal in progress] offer a referral bonus in RLY for every new Creator who is referred, launches a coin, and meets a new user engagement requirement
  • Existing creator co-marketing & giveaways - [proposal in progress] work directly with existing Creators to co-market a RLY/CC giveaway or NFT drop to acquire more community members
  • Create an $R coin backed Creator application voting process - launch a new application process where $R holders can vote on which Creators should be able to launch coins on Rally
  • Expand upon existing Creator-led #cryptosunday social campaign with Rally brand support - launch a branded social media campaign to drive Creator and social token awareness (eg. “#socialtokensaturdays”)
  • Support community ambassadors with RLY rewards - partner with our ambassadors to find ways to increase throughput and efficiency of existing acquisition efforts
  • Community member referral campaign - allow any existing Rally user to refer another user to the Rally platform, we will trigger rewards based on some engagement action
4 Likes
15

Hi everyone, here is the first growth initiative proposal for Rally Creator referrals:

Summary:
We plan to offer rewards in RLY for each new Creator that is referred to the platform. We will actively try to engage existing Creators and ambassadors for this first iteration.

Problem:
See RLY Network Growth Challenge details above.

Hypothesis:
If we offer a compelling reward for existing Creators, then we will increase the volume of new high-quality Creators we acquire.

Goal(s):

  1. Understand if RLY-based referral incentives are an effective way to acquire new Creators
  2. Understand if those Creators are high-quality

How we will measure success:

[Acquisition / Cost]

  • Total # of new Creators
  • Total # of new community members
  • Community members / Creator
  • RLY cost per Creator
  • RLY cost per Community member

[Engagement / Quality]

  • Economic activity rate per new Creator ecosystem

[Negative metrics]

  • % of Creators who are low-quality (eg. will not engage on Rally at all)
  • % of new users who are fraudulent (eg. Fake identities, multiple accounts, etc.)
  • Total cost in fraud $

Suggested Solution:

  • Criteria of referral reward
    • Signup requirement: New Creators must sign up, launch their coin, and onboard 100 net new Creator Coin (CC) holders (users who have not already signed up for Rally) in order to be eligible to receive the RLY referral reward
    • One-tier bonus structure delivered after the requirement is met:
      • Referrer: 5,000 RLY
      • Referee: 5,000 RLY
      • [10,000/100 = 100 RLY per new user]
    • New CC holder must be a verified user:
      • Required: Email verification
      • Suggested but not required: Multi-Factor Authentication
    • Eligible referrers
      • Existing Creators & Ambassadors
      • Not fans or general public
  • Tracking plan / Signup flow
    • The Referring Creator will be asked to submit this Google Form with the details of the Creator they want to refer
    • We will perform a quick approval to make sure we are not already in process with that Creator via our partnerships team or previous outreach
    • After being approved via email confirmation, the Creator will be free to invite their referral to sign up via the Organic funnel (the new Creator will be subject to our existing CAC approval process)
    • They should make it clear to the referral, that they will need to input the referring Creators phone number in the “How did you hear about Rally” > “Rally Creator” field in their application so that we can track it and match it properly
    • Once the new referred Creator is approved, launched, and reaches 100 coin holders, we will issue payment to both the referring Creator and the new referral
  • Awareness & marketing
    • An email announcing the program to Creators & Ambassadors
  • Legal / Compliance
    • We will use the existing Terms & Conditions for this campaign as they already cover Rally’s right to take action/ban a user for suspected fraud, or for any actions relating to faking accounts, holding multiple accounts or circumventing the Terms & Conditions
  • Support
    • Support team is up to date on our efforts and will engage with Creators if they have any specific questions about this campaign
    • New wiki page detailing the rules and requirements for these campaigns can be found here (WIP)
  • Payouts
    • Payouts will be handled by the Rally operating budget and will be reimbursed by the RLY network when possible
    • Payouts will be handled manually or through the bulk admin tool

FAQs

If I have a potential referral who already has an account on Rally, are we eligible for the RLY reward?
No, the referred Creator must be brand new to Rally and cannot have already opened an account, even if they haven’t launched a coin yet

When do I receive my RLY reward?
You will receive your award when we can validate that the new Creator has launched a creator coin on Rallyio and has at least 100 unique holders of their creator coin.

Can I refer any Creator?
While technically you can refer any Creator, we strongly encourage you to only refer Creators you have a direct relationship with. If that creator has already been reached out to by our team, we may ask you not to send another note to them depending on how our conversation with them went.

Why do I need to have my referral approved by Rally?
We are instituting an approval process for this first referral campaign so that we can avoid sending too many messages to the same Creators. We want to be sure that the Creator you would like to refer hasn’t already been in conversations with our team.

What if some of the 100 users already have Rally accounts?
To count towards the referral reward, all 100 users must be net new to the Rally platform, they cannot have signed up previously and they cannot have held any Creator Coin previously.

3 Likes
17

This looks like a great start to recruit and onboard some high quality Creators! I am in favor of the strategy outlined.

18

I am not a fan of the restrictions and requirements.

Specifically

" If I have a potential referral who already has an account on Rally, are we eligible for the RLY reward?
No, the referred Creator must be brand new to Rally and cannot have already opened an account, even if they haven’t launched a coin yet"

This will have a major negative effect on growth.

In one ideal scenario, we would want a potential creator to explore the rally ecosystem, get engaged in the project, and then launch a coin.

The above proposal eliminates that onboarding flow. Can we please re-evaluate?

This specifically negatively effects my community as I help creators my path is definitely get engaged first and then get involved.

19

Seconding this one.
I like the idea of referrals/vouches for creatives but the current flow asks people to not make an account before starting the referral process. Speaking for myself, I can’t refer new creatives for rally this way without making it super complicated or making it feel like some onboarding scheme. launching a coin is a big deal, not something to rush.

I’d redesign this referral system to a simpler format. have referral links, track which new users joined rally through these links and then do retrospective rewards when new users go through the artist selection protocol. Theres a lot of people who I think would be a good fit for rally, but they all need some time on the platform before they’d take that step.

1 Like
20

Thank you @Colin & @Gary for the feedback. I agree this is a valid point and I will work with the team to make adjustments to the referral rules to support this path of referring new Creators.

FYI to the community, we are having discussions about the referral project and other growth initiatives in more real-time in the Discord channel #growth-initiatives. I will be sure to post any updates to the proposals here, but if you would like to follow along to the conversations, please join us in Discord.

21

Hi everyone,

I wanted to provide an update on the Creator Referral Program:

  • Great news, it is live, as of today (12/14/21)!
  • You should have received an email this morning with instructions on how to refer as well as the rules of the program, however, all of the important details are also available on our wiki
  • Please feel free to join the conversation in our Rally Discord #growth-initiatives channel
  • I will share analysis & insights in a few weeks once we have gathered enough preliminary data
3 Likes