Now that the marketing site and stats page upgrade is complete, we’d like to request 55,000 bnUSD to cover 5 months of front-end, design, and content work for Balanced.
This grant will unlock a number of improvements, including:
Enhanced UI design style
Comprehensive wallet section for the Home page
Useful signed-out state for the Home page
Option to repay debt with locked collateral
Price chart support for all pairs on the Trade page
Ability to save/load TradingView drawings
Trade link support (i.e app.balanced.network/trade#sicxbnusd)
Specific LP fee APRs for your liquidity
New Bridge page design for cross-chain interactions*
Code refactoring in preparation for cross-chain
Token price & liquidity charts for the Stats page
Open-sourced documentation
It will also allow us to continue providing general support for the app and Stats page, and maintain a social media presence.
The work will be carried out by the PARROT9 team for a monthly cost of $11,000:
Front-end development: $4,000/month
Product & marketing design: $4,000/month
Content & product management: $3,000/month
*DFP6 is only partially focused on cross-chain. The Balanced contributors plan to apply for interoperability grants to support this work.
We’d like to keep the momentum going, so let us know if you have any feedback before we submit the proposal on-chain next week.
Could you include in your development a connection with one of the leading crypto tax software companies? If we want to really grow we need to spend a lot more time making past transactions more accessible like other leading DEFI projects. A community member in this forum asked for this in April and no one was able to answer his question, because we are not connected to leading tax software.
Also, what is the word on the ICON cross chain grants? It would be useful to utilize these grants for cross chain development:)
Also, I see 8k a month fair, I believe the social media marketing should be covered by your Balance workers tokens. If you want to apply for 11k a month I would suggest using the final 3k a month to fund development for a tax software integration:)
Firstly, balanced.network came out great! In my years in this space I haven’t seen a team that cranks out such consistently good UI/UX and content.
Overall I only have one small bit of feedback.
Ideally I’d like to see more of the budget reserved specifically for the cross-chain efforts, as I think that the time is getting closer when blockers will be fully removed (possibly as soon as August).
With that said, I’d like to suggest cutting a few items (will suggest a few below, but open to suggestions) and replacing with a commitment to cross-chain FE integrations. We can caveat it with something like “*assuming ICON completes their work within the expected timeframe, we’ll do…” because there is still that potential blocker on the table.
@BALNSupporter I’m glad to see you support the general direction of the proposal, but as for your suggestions to have PARROT9 work on getting a tax software integration, that’s not something that properly utilizes their skillset. It would make much more sense to discuss this separately.
You seem passionate about getting an integration there, so as a cleaner way to discuss this I’d recommend you reach out to the service provider you’d like to work with, get a quote from them, then make a separate DFP proposal. Then the DAO can review the proposal and vote on releasing the payment.
I am totally impressed with Parrots work so, yeah, I support them with ongoing efforts if we can also attain more usability within their creativity.
How about instead of a connection with one leading crypto tax service as those can change, we fund support for a team to create a spreadsheet exporter tool where one’s transactions would be exported and could be readable by the leading crypto tax companies software. This would be a big marketing piece and now, imo, is the time to prioritize this for Balanced over the 3k a month in social media advertising Parrott was proposing.
If Parrott can’t do this type of integration is there other connected ICON developers we can support, to make this happen?
Just trying to utilize our DAO for meaningful, long lasting growth, I like your idea to have them focus efforts on cross chain as well:)
First of all, I want to congratulate @PARROT9 on the awesome job so far. I am a huge fan of your work. Also, I think your rates are more than competitive…
I see one small problem though… Judging by the last 2 months, balanced only makes about 6k a month, so spending 11k a month for development doesn’t appear sustainable (yet).
All in all, I’m on the fence which way my vote would fall for the proposal as is…
I would very much prefer to break it up in categories (maybe even drop the timeframe).
ie:
Cross chain: (20k)
New Bridge page design for cross-chain interactions
Refactoring
Features:
Enhanced UI design style 2k
Comprehensive wallet section for the Home page 2k
etc
maybe even pool the cross chain part together with the back end team, and try for icon cross chain funding.
—** Edit 1 **—
After careful consideration… I would reject this proposal.
As far as I’m concerned, balanced is Feature complete, except for the cross chain integration part.
And while all the proposed features and improvements are nice to have. None of them would significantly raise revenue imo.
Cross chain is a huge wildcard here… but assuming Icon Btp / Xcall actually get delivered, and manage to gain meaningful traction this actually has the potential to 10x revenues.
We wanted to solve this with the ICON Dashboard product we submitted through the CPS, but it was rejected so work has slowed to a crawl. We do have the basics of the transaction history & export working, though:
To be clear, the social media aspect is only a minor piece of the content budget. It will be used to promote all product updates, governance proposals, and anything else worth highlighting, and allow us to continue releasing quarterly roadmap updates. It will not provide extensive marketing coverage, which we plan to ramp up as Balanced nears its cross-chain debut. Improved documentation, microcopy, UX, and project management work is also included under the Content umbrella.
And regarding the worker tokens: our team holds 24.86 BALW, which currently earns 128 BALN ($12.40) per day (or 3,840 BALN ($372) per month). Half of that covers the hosting costs.
Balanced’s monthly income is low (and I appreciate that you considered this), so I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t a sustainable approach long-term. We do need to have a discussion about how ongoing work should be funded, but as we’re about to go cross-chain, this is the best time to double down and invest more time on the product, not less.
I don’t think you could consider Balanced feature complete with holes like these still present in the app:
These product improvements may appear trivial in isolation, but when combined, they significantly enhance the user experience and increase the stickiness of the app. Most people are content to settle for good enough, but we’re of the opinion that good is not good enough. It’s this mentality that has pushed Balanced to where it is today, and what will ultimately allow it to stand out in the competitive environment we’re about to enter.
We were initially light on the cross-chain focus of this proposal, as discussions had not yet evolved to a point where we could get involved. As of this morning it appears that’s about to change, so I’ve refocused the proposal to spend more time on cross-chain deliverables instead. @uglyrage curious to hear your thoughts on this, as well.
DFP7: Prepare the Balanced cross-chain UI
In preparation for Balanced’s cross-chain debut, we (PARROT9) would like to request funding to cover front-end, design, and content work for the app over a period of 5 months.
Cross-chain work: 40,000 bnUSD
New Bridge page design
Cross-chain UX
Keplr &/or ArchX wallet integrations
Code refactoring
The full scope of work will only become clear after we begin, and it relies on ICON completing BTP/xCall within the expected timeframe. We plan to leverage interoperability grants for any work not covered by this grant, and will focus on shipping product improvements during any down times.
Product improvements: 15,000 bnUSD
Enhanced UI design style (to bring it inline with the new website)
Comprehensive wallet section for the Home page
Useful signed-out state for the Home page
Option to repay debt with locked collateral
Price chart support for all pairs on the Trade page
Trade link support (i.e app.balanced.network/trade#sicxbnusd)
