WagMedia 2024 Data Report Volume 2: March 25 - April 24, 2024
WagMedia’s funding of content production concluded its second 4-week cycle! Thanks to all the viewers, creators, and affiliates for participating in WagMedia!
This report is the second volume of WagMedia’s data report, covering content production and payouts from March 25 through April 24, 2024, the state of the WagMedia treasury and, and X / Twitter stats. It also provides a selected list of top content for this second cycle and links to those content.
For an overview of WagMedia and its role in the Polkadot Ecosystem (including a brief overview on the economics of platforms and game theory associated with it), see Section I of Data Report Volume 1:
For this report, we jump straight into the data.
Summary
For this 4-week period, WagMedia generated the production of 31 original content, 4 newsletters, 17 non-anglo original content, and 3 translations. The total payout for these content, including payouts for editors and reviewers, was 844 DOT.
WagMedia also made progress on the development for its proprietary website, which posts all content and the payouts associated with each content. The website is:
https://thewagmedia.com/
WagMedia posts a subset of the produced content, as well as other news, articles, and data on the Polkadot ecosystem, on X (@thatMediaWag). In April 2024, WagMedia made 84 posts and generated over 48,000 views and over 2,700 engagements on X. WagMedia also posts on Grill and Substack:
https://grillapp.net/12332?ref=9866
https://substack.com/@wagmediaweekly
More details on WagMedia’s production and payouts, along with links to top content, are described below.
Creator Production and Payouts
The data on content production and payouts are based on a native spreadsheet for WagMedia’s treasury, reported publicly on
https://report.wagmedia.xyz/
Content payouts are sent out “retroactively,” after the work is submitted / published. The USD values of content payouts made in DOT are approximated based on the DOT:USD exchange rate (the closing price) as of the date of transaction (i.e., when the payout is sent). These USD values are approximate in that the closing price for the day is assumed to be the exchange rate for all transactions that took place within that day. Therefore, while these USD values account for the volatility of crypto markets across different days, they do not account for the volatility within the same day.
The data and calculations reported in this article are not fully audited, and certain numbers are approximate and subject to different interpretations and potential errors. Please let me know (@vampsyfear) if you see any errors.
Original Content
For the 4-week period from March 25 through April 24, 2024, 9 creators produced a total of 31 original content (in English) for WagMedia. The total payouts for these content were 435.5 DOT (USD value of $3,848), of which 25 bounty content accounted for 320 DOT (USD value of $2,804), 5 general content accounted for 56.5 DOT (USD value of $511), and 1 commissioned content accounted for 59 DOT (USD value of $534). The average payout per content was 14.05 DOT (USD value of $124).
For bounty content, creators submit content on a topic set by the director of the unit (Goku), with a pre-set prize pool and deadlines to incentivize the timely production of content covering a topic of interest in the Polkadot ecosystem. Creators who submit the best content are awarded a payout according to the prize pool.
During this 4-week period, there were three bounty submissions that received a payout of more than $200 in USD value ($209 - $229). These top 3 content were produced by: @EmilKietzman, @__open_minded, and @Tur1ngM4ch1n3. The links to their articles are below.
https://x.com/EmilKietzman/status/1767532237501632589
https://x.com/__open_minded/status/1768668920695644305
https://x.com/Tur1ngM4ch1n3/status/1777471175657947553
For general content, creators submit content covering a topic of their choice for evaluation to WagMedia. Creators are awarded a payout for content that covers the Polkadot ecosystem and sufficiently meets WagMedia’s directive and quality standards.
Among the 5 general content for this period, one content received a payout of more than $200 in USD value ($222). This top content was produced by @EmilKietzman, and the link to the article is below.
https://x.com/EmilKietzman/status/1768950641714434246
For this 4-week period, Oyster (@OnlyDeFiGuy) was commissioned by WagMedia to write about DeFi in the Polkadot ecosystem. For commissioned content, a WagMedia Director invites a creator with a specialized knowledge to apply their expertise to write about topics that could be useful for the Polkadot community. For commissioned content, the Director(s) provide guidance and revision requests, and upon successful completion of the requested revisions, the content is published by WagMedia (e.g., in X, Substack, and webpage). Payouts for commissioned content are agreed to in advance and paid after successful completion of the work.
Oyster’s commissioned content was awarded a payout of 59 DOT (USD value of $534), and published on WagMedia’s Grill website:
https://grillapp.net/12332/polkadot-blockchain-s-shopping-mall-107382
News
For this 4-week period, the Finder’s Program collected 121 news content and 32 events watch content. The News unit also produced 4 newsletters. The average cost to produce each newsletter was 68.07 DOT (USD value of $544) and the average payout for each find was 0.14 DOT (USD value of $1). In total, the News unit paid 292.98 DOT (USD value of $2,346) during this period.
The newsletter is edited by Dodow and covers all types of news and events related to Polkadot via the news program, and a selection of stories, including Top Story of the Week. Various creators contribute to writing the newsletter. Each week, Dodow selects a few notable contributors from the news program to write parts of the newsletter. The four newsletters published during this period were produced by six people: Dodow, Sanchez, yay.oi, Gigs, aemonk, and TuringM4chine.
The links to the newsletters are:
“Airdot the Meme!” (March 26, 2024): https://grillapp.net/6111/airdot-the-meme-march-17th-to-march-23rd-106197?ref=9866
“Dot is ded Egghilarating!” (April 2, 2024): https://grillapp.net/6111/dot-is-ded-eggshilarating-march-24th-to-march-30th-113134?ref=9866
“Mythical Spending!” (April 9, 2024): https://grillapp.net/6111/mythical-spending-march-31st-to-april-6th-119482?ref=9866
“Cross DOT Bridge!” (April 16, 2024): https://grillapp.net/6111/cross-dot-bridge-april-7th-to-april-13th-128846?ref=9866
Non-Anglo Content
For this 4-week period, 7 creators produced a total of 17 non-anglo original content and @Tur1ngM4ch1n3 translated 3 content.
For the 17 non-anglo original content, the total payout to creators was 57.0 DOT (USD value of $539), which amounts to a per-content average of 4.38 DOT (USD value of $41). Total payout for the 3 translations was 10.0 DOT (USD value of $83), which amounts to an average of 3.33 DOT (USD value of $31) per translation.
The unit also awarded payouts to reviewers who evaluated the non-anglo content. In total, the reviewers were paid 8.3 DOT (USD value of $71), which amounts to an average of 0.33 DOT (USD value of $3) per review.
During this 4-week period, there was one non-anglo original content that received a payout exceeding $100 in USD value. That content was a video produced by @PolkasamaLand, providing a tutorial on OG Tracker in Spanish, and received a payout of 12 DOT (USD value of $110):
The second highest paid non-anglo original content in USD value was an article produced by @PolkadotMexico_ in Spanish (13 DOT, USD value of $97):
https://x.com/polkadotmexico_/status/1776028989527638082
Director Payouts and Production Costs
The Directors conduct a variety of work themselves, including operating WagMedia, directing the various units within WagMedia, business development, and drafting articles and reports (like this one) as well as editing, evaluating, and paying for content and services. The Directors also communicate with each other on a near-daily basis to discuss any issues that come up and any significant decisions to be made, and to set the future direction of WagMedia.
In addition, as described above, WagMedia’s Directors vet and procure services from multiple people and vendors to perform various tasks, such as the development of websites and payout tools, and running social media, and managing the treasury as well as paying for certain types of costs.
Development work done through WagMedia is open source for all to use and available on GitHub: https://github.com/Wag-Media.
The table below reports the payouts to Directors, Affiliates, Developers and for other costs from March 25 through April 24, 2024. The payouts were made in USDT, and these payouts amounted to a total of $10,087 for this 4-week period, as reported below.
Treasury
WagMedia received funding of 26,058 DOT from OpenGov on January 12,2024. Based on an exchange rate (closing price) of $7.57 USD per DOT on January 12, 2024, the approximate USD value of the funding as of that date was $197,259.
Through April 24, 2024, WagMedia has paid out 1,809 in DOT and 44,110 in USDT, which amounts to a total USD value of approximately $56,739.
WagMedia’s assets are held in multiple wallets. A portion of the initial funding from OpenGov was converted to stablecoins, including USDT and USDC. The remaining funds are kept in DOT, HDX, and BNC. WagMedia stakes a portion of its DOT, which generates additional DOT for the treasury. WagMedia also received an airdrop of DED.
blink_n (@blink_nDoesDeFi) manages manages the WagMedia treasury and records its holdings on a near-daily basis. As of April 24, 2024, the WagMedia treasury held the following coins.
X Stats
For this 4-week period, WagMedia’s X / Twitter account was managed by aemonk (@aemonk1).
From January through April 2024, WagMedia made 259 posts and generated over 100,000 impressions and over 6,000 engagements.
For the month of April 2024, @thatMediaWag made 84 posts and generated over 48,000 impressions and over 2,700 engagements. The top 5 posts (in terms of impressions*) collectively generated over 30,000 impressions on X. The X data for each of these top posts and links are reported below. (*See the appendix below for a cautionary note on the interpretation of social media data).
Links:
https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1781774727276884030
https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1772743371468976412
https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1782848017248448527
https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1777787298287075464
https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1783566606527824382
Appendix on Interpretation of X Data
While the X / Twitter stats reported above are easy to access and provide some guidance on the value of a post, because not all impressions and engagements have equal value, the true value of each post generally cannot simply be ranked based on the number of impressions or engagements. Ultimately, what determines the true value is the post’s incremental contribution in generating an action from the viewer and the benefits associated with that action. For example, if the goal of a post is to get people to buy DOT, a post that gets a view from a person that buys 10,000 DOT is more valuable than a post that gets a lot more views but only generates a total purchase of 1,000 DOT. That is, the value of views and engagements depends on the audience captured by the creator and content. Measuring actions and estimating the value of those actions requires the use of advanced tracking technologies and analyses.
When analyzing and interpreting data, it is also important to keep in mind what you can see in the data versus what you cannot see. In analogy, if you hire two fishermen and receive data that one caught 1,000 fish and the other caught 10 fish, that data is not sufficient to assess which fisherman did better, or how much to pay them, because it does not tell you the type of fish they caught. If you were to set up a reward mechanism that pays the fishermen based only on the number of fish they catch, they would be incentivized to go after fish that are easiest to catch. In that case, your fishermen would come back with a lot of sardines, for example, and they would not find it worthwhile to go after higher value fish, such as bluefin tuna.
In the analogy above, “views” are more like how many fish saw your bait. This statistic may be a good indicator of how well you are doing when fishing in a small pond with only one type of fish (and the fish have a similar propensity to bite), but it is a very imperfect proxy when there are lots of different fishes in the ocean.
This example highlights the importance of designing a reward mechanism that can incentivize optimal behavior. If content payouts are rigidly based only on views and other stats that are readily available, this could sub-optimally incentivize creators to focus mostly on producing things that are popular versus balancing popularity and other factors that generate value, such as targeting a certain audience, depth of content, etc. In light of imperfect data, a better mechanism would consider various factors and proxies that could get at the overall value-added of the content. This is in large part the reason for WagMedia to reward content based both on impressions and engagement metrics as well as the quality and potential impact of the content as determined by the directors and reviewers.