Content Gateway Monetization Strategy

Background

Content Gateway was born as a solution for an internal problem, not as a commercial product.

It serves the purpose of getting Bankless DAO content collected across the internet and blockchain, aggregating it and letting anyone use it in a resource-efficient way.

The idea came up when designing Bankless Mobile App in the beginning of Season 2, since plenty of the content to display in the app would have to be sourced from the many different servers and storages anyway.

By extracting most of this data sourcing scope into a separate proposal and making it reusable by any other application in the future we hoped to multiply the value added for the organization.

Opportunity

Despite our belief that the technology can spark new applications that would drive revenue generation and thus be an indirect instrument for capital efficiency in the DAO, we quickly realized that if we don't find a more explicit way to generate revenue — we will be percieved as a cost center, and eventually fall out of alignment with the recently adopted DAO policy of doubling down on revenue generation.

A month ago, we started developing a market strategy based on the needs of the emerging DAO niche and our potential value propositions.  We had identified an opportunity to leverage the proven results achieved in Bankless DAO and offer other organizations a similar technology that would let them organize their content, and then deliver it to their own consumer platforms.

Challenge

Following down this path, there are several possible monetization models for the technology.

Of course, gating the technology itself behind paywall isn't very Web3. Our code is free to use, it is not a product by itself.

The most elegant, Web3, (3,3) and future-proof way we can think of is to build a decentalized network of Content Gateways where organizations pay each other with native crypto token. We absolutely love the concept and it's something that has been done successfully before.

Unfortunately, after some analysis we've concluded that this scope is absolutely unrealistic to complete in the span of one season (maybe even two). Investing in the development of this beautiful network of the future certainly won't bring any quick results.

We need a business model that:

Leverages as much of our existing technology as possible;

Is simple enough to test quickly and leave some room for a possible pivot;

Attracts paying customers that could otherwise use the technology for free;

Solution

After some brainstorming we realized: why don't we take the convenience of our existing free technology and take it on another level that would be the premium tier?

This is a common business model with community-built software:

🆓 Want to set everything up yourself? Here's the free version.

💎 Want to start with a boost? Please support us!

This solution meets the guidelines we've defined previously for this season, and it fits the early Web3 environment nicely — we can have the membership exist as an NFT!

The Integration Wizard would let premium users aggregate all their content scattered across networks and chains with just a couple of clicks instead of having to write custom code.

Plus, our entire catalog of integration templates will be available to use, such as:

A YouTube channel;

A Discord channel;

An ERC-20 token;

Etc.

Conclusion

This season we're facing the challenge of convincing other organizations that our technology has value for their growth. In addition to that, we have no other option but to be mindful of the time and resource restrictions. With that, we have identified a possible route to sustainability, and are going to execute on our new strategy to find out if WAGMI.

Content Gateway Monetization Strategy

Background

Content Gateway was born as a solution for an internal problem, not as a commercial product.

It serves the purpose of getting Bankless DAO content collected across the internet and blockchain, aggregating it and letting anyone use it in a resource-efficient way.

The idea came up when designing Bankless Mobile App in the beginning of Season 2, since plenty of the content to display in the app would have to be sourced from the many different servers and storages anyway.

By extracting most of this data sourcing scope into a separate proposal and making it reusable by any other application in the future we hoped to multiply the value added for the organization.

Opportunity

Despite our belief that the technology can spark new applications that would drive revenue generation and thus be an indirect instrument for capital efficiency in the DAO, we quickly realized that if we don't find a more explicit way to generate revenue — we will be percieved as a cost center, and eventually fall out of alignment with the recently adopted DAO policy of doubling down on revenue generation.

A month ago, we started developing a market strategy based on the needs of the emerging DAO niche and our potential value propositions.  We had identified an opportunity to leverage the proven results achieved in Bankless DAO and offer other organizations a similar technology that would let them organize their content, and then deliver it to their own consumer platforms.

Challenge

Following down this path, there are several possible monetization models for the technology.

Of course, gating the technology itself behind paywall isn't very Web3. Our code is free to use, it is not a product by itself.

The most elegant, Web3, (3,3) and future-proof way we can think of is to build a decentalized network of Content Gateways where organizations pay each other with native crypto token. We absolutely love the concept and it's something that has been done successfully before.

Unfortunately, after some analysis we've concluded that this scope is absolutely unrealistic to complete in the span of one season (maybe even two). Investing in the development of this beautiful network of the future certainly won't bring any quick results.

We need a business model that:

Leverages as much of our existing technology as possible;

Is simple enough to test quickly and leave some room for a possible pivot;

Attracts paying customers that could otherwise use the technology for free;

Solution

After some brainstorming we realized: why don't we take the convenience of our existing free technology and take it on another level that would be the premium tier?

This is a common business model with community-built software:

🆓 Want to set everything up yourself? Here's the free version.

💎 Want to start with a boost? Please support us!

This solution meets the guidelines we've defined previously for this season, and it fits the early Web3 environment nicely — we can have the membership exist as an NFT!

The Integration Wizard would let premium users aggregate all their content scattered across networks and chains with just a couple of clicks instead of having to write custom code.

Plus, our entire catalog of integration templates will be available to use, such as:

A YouTube channel;

A Discord channel;

An ERC-20 token;

Etc.

Conclusion

This season we're facing the challenge of convincing other organizations that our technology has value for their growth. In addition to that, we have no other option but to be mindful of the time and resource restrictions. With that, we have identified a possible route to sustainability, and are going to execute on our new strategy to find out if WAGMI.