Engage communities and builders with gold and hype: Establishing the Small Council

BLIP - Research and Discussion
1

Authors:

Proposal:

Blast has a narrative issue. During season 1, the ecosystem embraced degen, and the community was engaged, discussing which jackpot would be next, which dApp, and how to farm it. Simply put, the ecosystem was alive with excitement for the new “thing”.

Post-Blast TGE has had little excitement and nothing to talk about. The ominous mobile update is not keeping people engaged in the ecosystem, and just like the end of season one, it is a singular event that will not carry the chain for long.

The price of Blast incentives gold, but are gold farmers really the end goal of the ecosystem? I believe that the incentive to bring in people to get gold is nice, but I think that the hype around gold allocation is a tool that Blast could utilize to improve the overall ecosystem. We have seen communities come, even thrive, to be cut out until the “culture” sector was elected. But this section is underutilized and frankly difficult to be recognized in. We have so many builders, that create and for months without recognition.

I do not know at what moment it was decided that gold should be hoarded, but I think I have a better idea:

I believe we should elect a “Small Council”, or “Degen Council” if you prefer. This group could be elected for a three-month term. During this term, the Small Council would be allocated 100,000 Blast gold, each month, to determine how to allocate.

The mission of the Small Council will be to find and promote budding project and communities, by highlighting them and allocating them an amount of gold with a suggested upper limit of 15k per project/community per month. The council would be able to add and remove at their discretion, but all of the gold must be allocated each month. A report of spreadsheet can be released independently of the Blast gold allocation for the Small Council allocation.

There are several advantages to having this controlled by an independent council from Blast or Progress:

  1. Short-term limits, meaning if you do not like the council, then vote for a new council member.
  2. This eliminates the core council’s need to “stay in the trenches”. Although I believe this is where the heart of the community and a lot of knowledge can be gained from engaging, this can be time-consuming and these councils can focus on their core directives.
  3. The Small Council further decentralizes the Blast ecosystem and the gold distribution, creating a more fair environment more suited for all users.
  4. This council’s smaller gold allocation and mission will allow it to be more nimble while allocating gold and less concerned with all the red tape, allowing a more fun allocation and, most importantly, quicker recognition of communities and builders that really do deserve it.

The motivation behind this council is to start the Blast flywheel from where the foundation is, the builders and communities. I believe this will drive stronger community engagement and growth and make the excitement around gold more interesting again! It will incentivize bringing more communities and builders on blast without a bunch of hoops to jump through and time to get rewarded for making our ecosystem better! The more they succeed, the projects graduate onto the main Blast gold allocation

I would initially suggest the members of the Small Council be myself, Omi or ThrusterTitan, a known backer of the little projects on blast and member of the Thruster Titans DAO, as well as, GoldenBlasted a long-time Blast enthusiast and member of the Titans. I welcome more suggestions for members on the initial council members, there is no compensation, just the ability to help make Blast even better. I suggest the initial council consists of less than 10 members and would like their telegram/X/discord/Blast forum information shared/doxxed so they can be contacted and engaged with.

At worst, it is a bad experiment for 3 months, we allocate 300,000 gold poorly, and the chain moves on. The upside is communities and builders of medium to small size start becoming excited to build on blast. What do you think? I would love to discuss how this can be improved and implemented.

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Thanks for bringing up this issue. Gold should be an incentive for builders, but it’s been kind of disappointing lately.

Your proposal sounds like a good solution. As you mentioned, the worst-case scenario is “wasting” 300k gold. If someone has a better solution, they should put it forward, but either way, something definitely needs to be done.

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I really don’t support the current blast’s gold distribution system.

The culture gold is more like a psyop and not working exactly as it should be.

We definitely need better distribution and having a smol council elected by the community sounds like the most reasonable thing to me.

One needs to be deep in the trenches to understand the environment and the energy in there. You should be talking to the new projects, their builders and community members to know what is actually going on. Blast team obviously can’t do it, this is where smol council comes into play.

A council from the trenches for the trenches.

100k allocated to the smol council will be used in further smaller allocations for smaller communities and projects to boost their growth and overall activity on the chain.

This sounds like a real game changing Blip.

We need incentives for smaller teams and builders, smol council can make it happen.

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I like the idea, but not a fan of the small council being monopolized by the small Thruster council members. That could be better expanded to include people that arent locked in highly similar mindsets. 1 or 2 is ok, but need 2 or 3 that are somewhat outside the normal CT echo chamber/influence.

To the idea, a great example that I’m sure most here have seen me talk about is how BLASTR is helping Duckie Race, and lesser extent Wolves (since they get their own gold) with their little mini games Race and Hunt. 100% helps and contributes to their growth. Ducks in particular as an active project that gets no small dev love from Blast.

So def in favor of the idea.

What you speak of at first isnt necessarily the problem. The problem is that mainnet launched beginning of this year when airdrops were the sizzle to a lackluster bear market steak. Degens were playing the points game everywhere cause a basic ass 4% yield sucked.

Now that we’re in a better market, its easy asf to make 20%+ yield in almost any LP you toss a dart at. So, now those who remain on Blast farming the Gold have to speculate on Gold conversion prices vs pulling yield and making immediate returns.

The combination of that dynamic and how Drop 1 distribution happened - is where we stand now on user/tvl chart decline.

I suspect many “regular” users like myself have some TVL here and are supporting the dapps they enjoy - but otherwise have shifted a portion (likely larger) elsewhere to farm better returns.

But as always, just like the last proposal I didnt really agree with - something is better than nothing.

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