DAO

TestingCatalog DAO Whitepaper

This whitepaper is a proposal for future contributors and stakeholders of the TestingCatalog community. I have plans to form a DAO behind the TestingCatalog publication in order to let it grow further. Here you will find what will happen to TestingCatalog within the next year and how you can benefit from this.

Please be aware that this document is still in a draft state and won't cover all the details. The purpose of this draft is to highlight and envision future opportunities for TestingCatalog media that will be opened by the DAO approach. There are a lot of things that this whitepaper isn’t covering yet but this is also something that we can form together. Read below! 👇

Overview

TestingCatalog was born in 2015 as a community of beta testers exploring new Android apps. Being a simple database at the beginning, the project grew into a media publication by 2020. With ups and downs, being a “side project”, TestingCatalog had some consistent growth allowing its readers to be on top of the latest news and updates.

The core mission of TestingCatalog was always to explore and share new users' experiences in a simple manner. In 2021 it became clear that web3.0 is already here and all the most exciting projects will be built on blockchains from now on. This area is one of the growth opportunities that fit into TestingCatalog’s scope very well.

Not only from a content point of view but web 3.0 also offers loads of opportunities for media businesses to benefit from that shift. Such concepts as NFTs and DAOs allow community members to be owners of the project and take an active part in its development. Sharing a common goal of growing the publication, community members and contributors can help the project to grow much faster and also benefit from this growth.

DAO

DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that can be operated via smart contracts where all decisions are made through proposals created by its contributors. Each proposal will have to be approved by DAO token holders in order to be executed. In other words, DAOs are a form of organization that can run businesses in an autonomous manner.

There are several aspects that come along with this approach:

  • DAO treasury - a crypto wallet that is attached to a DAO and holds different assets such as crypto tokens or NFTs. These assets are growing based on the DAO business model and are being distributed to DAO members according to their contributions.
  • DAO tokens and token distribution - DAOs are used to distribute their own tokens among stakeholders that can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies. These tokens are used by DAO members to vote on new proposals and to receive their dividends.
  • Smart contracts and on-chain voting - depending on the maturity of the DAO, almost any aspect of the business can be operated by smart contracts. These contracts allow ensuring that the will of a majority is taken into count as well as its transparency and execution.

Not all of these items have to be in place from day one. For example, that won't make sense to invest in DAO smart contracts until the publication has a certain product-market fit. In that case, governance can be achieved via off-chain voting for NFT holders on top of the centralized treasury.

Documenting the process of forming a DAO is also a good opportunity for content creators that can become beneficial for the future. TesingCatalog DAO will start off-chain and will keep introducing on-chain components as we go. There are several tools that can be used by DAOs at their early stages in order to establish initial on-chain experience.

  • DAO Community - Discord
  • DAO Tokens - Opensea
  • DAO Voting - Snapshot
  • DAO access management - Guild
  • DAO treasury - Safe

Product

The product section explains existing and future assets that can be governed by the DAO. At first, it's a news media publication with an automated publishing workflow and its own audience.

Jan 2022 stats:

  • The average number of monthly visitors - 20k+
  • The average number of followers on social platforms - 2k+
  • Average monthly income via AdSense - 50$+
  • Active Google News integration +
  • Domain Authority - 30+
  • A number of newsletter subscribers - 1500+
  • Total running costs per month - 50$

One of the goals for TestingCatalog in web3 is to get early access to the most interesting and promising DAPPs via partnerships (media coverage, testing). In web3, all projects are bound to finances as they are built on one of the available blockchains. As an outcome, TestingCatlog will be able to grow its treasury by purchasing potentially underpriced assets from early access programs that would grow in value over time.

There are various potential revenue streams that can be implemented in the future such as advertisement partnerships, locked content for token holders, and many more. What is more important at this stage, is that it's a long-term investment in the collectively owned SEO content, social media influence, and crypto treasury.

In addition, TestingCatalog DAO will apply for crypto grants for different chains like ETH and SOL in order to fund crypto writers and popularise the web3 ecosystem.

Stakeholders

There are several types of stakeholders who can benefit from this product:

  • Web3 early adopters, degens, and publication readers
  • Crypto writers & DAO members
  • Advertisers

Value proposition

For each stakeholder group, there is a separate value proposition that comes along with a DAO membership.

For early adopters:

  • Voting rights on TestingCatalog DAO proposals.
  • * Exclusive access to new products that come from future partnerships with web 3.0 projects.
  • * Full access to the locked TestingCatalog content.
  • * Access to the multi-sig wallet with early access NFT keys.
  • * NFT drops, POAPs, and other swag.
  • * Future metaverse integrations, whitelist support, and test-2-earn activities.

For web3 writers:

  • Access to TestingCatalog publishing infrastructure and marketing machine. Allowing bloggers to place their ads and referral links to earn extra income.
  • * Funding from crypto grants.
  • All the above benefits for Early Adopters.

For Advertisers:

  • Media coverage.
  • Access to the exclusive early access groups.
  • A possibility to run promo campaigns for early access and whitelist links via NFTs as an advertiser.
  • All the above benefits for Early Adopters.

* Starred items are not yet refined and will be implemented in the future.

NFT

TestingCatalog will issue a limited supply of 100 NFTs for its early supporters. Some contributors and community members will be able to receive them for free (not more than 10 assets out of 100) while the rest of the collection will be sold through Opensea.

The NFT collection has a preliminary name EAQRC - “Early Access QR Codes” and comes in a form of 100 QR codes on the Polygon blockchain. Every QR code will point to the shortened URL that might be redirected to the page with updated content.

Later at the time, when a new Early Access link will come up, you will be able to use your QR codes to access those links. This is also the way for an NFT owner to be whitelisted so you will get exclusive access to new products that TestingCatalog will partner with.

These NFTs will have the first priority among all further collections when it comes to whitelisting and giveaways. The same NFTs will be used initially as DAO tokens and will be eligible for further token distributions.

All Polygon that will come out of this sale will be moved to the treasury to form its initial fund. This fund will be used for purchasing early access tokens and NFTs from other web3 projects and other activities. Every NFT holder automatically becomes a co-owner of this treasury holding a certain part for each asset.

Governance

Each NFT asset will provide voting rights on TC DAO proposals. Additional NFTs won't provide additional voting power for now but they will make you eligible for extra tokens during the token distribution.

Initial voting will be done off-chain via a private Discord channel among NFT holders and will be moved to Snapshot at a later point.

Topics that potentially can be governed through the DAO:

  • Treasury management, assets allocation, and distribution.
  • Editorial strategy and content publishing.
  • Org structure, role and group assignments, payouts.
  • General strategy, business development, and planning.

A complete DAO proposal will be a subject of future discussions. The speed of the execution will purely depend on individual contributions and the current process will come as a default. Gathering more people interested in this project is a top priority at this moment and it will be a core part of the next milestone.

Roadmap

  • Forming Discord server and the first focus group
  • Finalizing white paper
  • Promo camping for whitelist spots
  • Issuing free NFTs
  • Whitelist sale
  • Public sale & Sell out
  • Governance testing
  • Roadmap v2
  • Treasury allocation
  • First exclusive early access drops and whitelists
  • Community events and giveaways, beta testing Spaces on Twitter
  • A road to 100k monthly readers!

TestingCatalog is a slow and long-term project. The main target is to get into a certain number of monthly readers and build a sustainable income stream that can guarantee stable income for content creators and testers. This implies its treasury is locked for outgoing payments until these goals are met. The initial target is to have 400k monthly readers and a team of 3-5 people constantly working on the project.

Treasury

The main goal of the DAO treasury is to ensure the sustainable growth of the project during phase one. The allocation of the fund itself will be a subject of governance.

A target for the initial fund is to gather 4 ETH in total. These 4 ETH are planned to be used during the next half a year to establish a community treasury, grow the publication, and prepare a v2 collection.

Some of the allocation categories:

  • 0.5 ETH - Strategic and long-term investments - NFTs in certain projects that are expected to have significant growth in the mid/long term. Besides being a pure investment, these assets should have a certain utility value behind them (community airdrops, whitelists, staking, etc)
  • 0.5 ETH - Short-term investment into utility-based projects to get access to new features and products and projects with whitelist access for flipping
  • 1 ETH - Marketing activities, advertisement, and giveaways for growing reader base and social following
  • 0.75 ETH - Payouts to content writers on TestingCatalog and other working groups on TestingCatalog DAO
  • 1 ETH - Strategic reserve
  • 0.25 ETH - V2 NFT collection development

Team

Alexey - currently working as a Software Engineering Manager, ex Samsung, with 10+ years of experience in software dev, testing, and infra. Beta tester and maker of TestingCatalog publication. Has been preparing for this moment for the past 6 years by learning about building news media businesses while building TestingCatalog.

We had many contributors during the past years, both paid and not. The Android app was built by Elbez Hammouda most of our brand pics were created by Adrien Zier. Eray Rafet was helping with content creation from 2018 to 2019 and wrote over 200+ posts for TestingCatalog. Zan from the Zheano blog wrote an amazing guest post about beta testing and loads of community members support the project with their tips, comments, and likes. At the same time, I am keeping it alive as a solo team member and I was willing to change that from the beginning. Now, with a help of DAO, I can finally move this project behind something bigger that is owned and maintained by the community.

Feel free to drop your comments on the whitepaper draft if you are willing to contribute.