WagMedia 2024 Data Report Volume 4: May 25 - June 24, 2024
WagMedia’s funding of content production concluded its fourth cycle, and with it, the first two-thirds of the funding period. We now have 8 weeks remaining. Thanks to all the viewers, creators, and affiliates for participating in WagMedia!
This report covers data for the period, May 25 through June 24, 2024. For the first three cycles, see my prior reports: Data Report 1, Data Report 2, and Data Report 3.
Summary
For this period, WagMedia generated the production of 60 original content, 5 newsletters, 171 news finds, and 2 non-anglo content. The total payout for these content was 971 DOT.
WagMedia posts a subset of the produced content, as well as other news, articles, and data on the Polkadot ecosystem, on X (@thatMediaWag). In June 2024, @thatMediaWag made 290 posts and generated over 100,000 views and over 5,000 engagements on X.
WagMedia also posts on its website, as well as on Grill and Substack:
https://thewagmedia.com/
https://grillapp.net/12332?ref=9866
https://substack.com/@wagmediaweekly
In partnership with Polimec (@PolimecProtocol), WagMedia’s creators produced 6 original content covering Polimec with a payout of 650 PLMC during this 4-week period.
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 May 25 through June 24, 2024, 16 creators produced a total of 60 original content (in English) for WagMedia.
The total payouts for these content was 569 DOT (USD value of $3,716), of which 53 bounty content accounted for 471 DOT (USD value of $3,070), 5 general content accounted for 80 DOT (USD value of $521), and 2 reporting content accounted for 18 DOT (USD value of $126). The average payout per content was 9.5 DOT (USD value of $62).
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.
For general content (retroactive), creators submit content covering a topic of their choice for evaluation to WagMedia after some period of time (e.g., after publicizing their work, generating engagement and viewership). Creators are awarded a payout for content that sufficiently meets WagMedia’s directive, adds value, and/or generates significant engagement and viewership. By only rewarding well-engaged and well-written pieces, this structure incentivizes creators to focus heavily on quality over quantity as well as mitigating content spamming and farming.
During this 4-week period, the payouts for bounty and general content ranged from a low of 0.3 DOT (USD value of $2) to a high of 25.8 DOT (USD value of $157).
The two highest-paid bounty content (25.0 and 25.8 DOT, USD value of $152 and $157) were articles on the partnership between Mythical Games and Pudgy Penguins, written by @EmilKietzman and @gbaciX:
https://x.com/EmilKietzman/status/1796517491188937110
https://x.com/gbaciX/status/1799415192368959809
The highest paid general content (retroactive) (50 DOT, USD value of $325) was “The Gavliator” video by @Tur1ngM4ch1n3:
https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1793644584322371841
These three content collectively generated over 40,000 impressions on X.
For reporting content, WagMedia invites several of its established creators to collect, summarize, and present data relevant to Polkadot’s ecosystem. For this period, cryptmosh (@CryptMosh) and yay.oi produced one article each on OpenGov, generating over 5,000 views combined on X. The creators received a payout of 10 and 8 DOT (USD value of $70 and $56).
https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1787734911551779282
https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1786882350334545963
News
For this period, the Finder’s Program collected 38 events watch and 133 news content, including those covering DeFi, governance, memes, and NFTs in the Polkadot ecosystem. The News unit also produced 5 newsletters. The average cost to produce each newsletter was approximately 74 DOT (USD value of $483) and the average payout for each find was 0.15 DOT (USD value of $1). In total, the News unit paid approximately 391 DOT (USD value of $2,550) 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 newsletters published during this period were produced by three people: Dodow, Sanchez, and yay.oi. Each section is attributed to the corresponding author.
The newsletters can be accessed through WagMedia’s website:
“Wag’s Behind da Code” (May 21, 2024): https://thewagmedia.com/post/wags-behind-da-code-1716387101615
“DOT’s ETF-ectively on the way?!” (May 27, 2024): https://thewagmedia.com/post/dots-etf-ectively-on-the-way-1716850613205
“Events DOT bring us together” (June 4, 2024): https://thewagmedia.com/post/events-dot-bring-us-together-1717526261660
“Define DOT and make Changes” (June 11, 2024): https://thewagmedia.com/post/define-dot-and-make-changes-1718136162581
“Bring on DOT Liquidity!” (June 18, 2024):
https://thewagmedia.com/post/bring-on-dot-liquidity-1718732892138
The News Unit turns selected stories in the newsletters into X articles published on @thatMediaWag in order to make the articles more accessible to the public and enable the creator to reach a wider audience. These X articles include:
“The Moonbeam way!” by Dodow (@fashionistawong)
https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1795461146633175497
“Time for Hydration!” by Sanchez (@sanchzeph): https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1803327193277247624
Non-Anglo Content
For this 4-week period, the non-anglo unit produced 1 original content and 1 translation.
Original Content by @th3hodlfather: https://x.com/th3hodlfather/status/1793185855147847966
Translation by @Tur1ngM4ch1n3: https://x.com/Tur1ngM4ch1n3/status/1791603437626335434
The total payout was 10.5 DOT (USD value of $73), as shown below.
Polimec
WagMedia has partnered with Polimec (@PolimecProtocol) to run bounties paid with PLMC to generate content covering Polimec. These content, as well as the PLMC payouts, are funded by Polimec (not by Polkadot’s treasury / OpenGov).
During this period, 6 creators produced 6 original content covering Polimec. The payouts ranged from a low of 20 PLMC to a high of 150 PLMC, and the total payout for these 6 articles was 650 PLMC.
https://x.com/Maxverleye8/status/1793746751838671038
https://x.com/Daureeen/status/1794162193573023757
https://x.com/CryptMosh/status/1791903756923048439
https://x.com/__open_minded/status/1794104513655165336
https://x.com/amedkarym/status/1791884448117506112
Director Payouts and Operation 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 May 25 through June 24, 2024. Total payout was $14,585 in USDT for this 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 June 24, 2024, WagMedia has paid out 3,753 in DOT and 77,705 in USDT.
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 the WagMedia treasury and records its holdings on a near-daily basis. As of June 24, 2024, the WagMedia treasury held the following coins
X / Twitter Stats
WagMedia’s X / Twitter account is managed by @Tur1ngM4ch1n3.
From January through June 2024, WagMedia made over 950 posts and generated over 0.4 million impressions and over 20,000 engagements as of June 30, 2024.
For the month of June 2024, @thatMediaWag made 290 posts and generated over 100,000 impressions and over 5,000 engagements. For example, WagMedia’s newsletter covering Hydration generated over 4,000 impressions and a report on the Polkadot treasury generated over 3,500 impressions (links are below).
[Newsletter] https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1803327193277247624
[Polkadot Treasury] https://x.com/thatMediaWag/status/1799067178563736051
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.