1. The ApeCoin DAO has posted a few resources on navigating the AIP process, including a series of Discourse posts; based on your experience, are these resources and the website helpful for drafting an AIP?
Yes, although a snappy infographic that summarizes the major actions/purpose of each step would be a really sleek addition.
2. Have there been any delays or changes to the original timeline?
Our main goals were as follows:
Growing the Alumni Circle: This is probably the most challenging of them all. Over the last 9 months since the passing of the AIP, we’ve cut our classes down considerably. Finding talent and pushing the boulder up-hill of scouring web3 for potentially interested parties when community engagement is down across the board is challenging. Despite the recent uptick in web3 activity, we still struggle to recruit students. We’ve only seen 400 new Alumni this year, and last year we had twice that amount in the same time period.
Service Existing Community: We have implemented a (mostly) monthly spaces. We’ve had a handful of Show and Tells with partners such as Open Campus, ZenGo, Ledger, and more on the way. We’ve also created a Solana class for our community, which is full each month for the last several months! Given the overall downturn in web3 activity, I’d say we’ve kept monthly announcements jam packed with goodies, giveaways, and updates!
Scale Operations with experiences: We’ve pivoted HARD to this. As much as we want to keep alive the Discord, live classes, and small-community feel, we’ve taken a moonshot attempt at creating a 2D RPG game. Although we haven’t shared much details publicly, I think this short 15 minute experience (funded in part by OpenCampus) will be a living/breathing constantly updated experience (if resources allow) so long as we can get it some traction. YouTube Channel Launch
We have also launched the Boring Security YouTube Channel, where we are actively creating and sharing video content. This initiative will expand as our channel grows.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmgNu5XZKYCobb5veGHuC4A
3. Do you have any updates regarding the budget?
When ApeCoin dropped below $1 we opted to stake the remainder hoping that an ApeChain launch would help recover, and we’d go back to our LP strategy. Our funds were around $375,000 at the beginning of the year, and that has since dropped to $200,000 with the depreciation of ApeCoin, and our staking rewards only covering about 20% of operating costs, compared to close to 100% or better when we were LPing. Although we’ve gotten a small $40k Ledger contract, and a $50k OpenCampus grant to help cover costs for the year, we’ll likely come back to the DAO for a (much smaller) grant request for 2025 to continue our perpetual funding dream, and help provide some liquidity to ApeCoin on-chain.
4. How can the community support your initiative?
When the game goes live, it would mean a lot to get some extra support from the DAO to push it forward.
5. Do you have anything you would like to tell the community?
If you haven’t taken the time to get into one of our classes, now is the time! Most of our classes are much smaller, and much more intimate these days, and it becomes conversational and casual. Students really get a lot out of small class sizes!
6. Do you provide consent to share these questions with the community in this forum?
Yes
