It’s been more than two years since we launched our alpha and today we are very proud to announce the campaign for Nuance to become a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO).
This post is for the community to discuss the Nuance SNS and ask the founding team any questions.
Nuance is the world’s first publishing platform built entirely on-chain. In the same way DeFi has taken the middleman out of finance Nuance does the same for the written word.
Nuance Product
Nuance is an entirely on-chain publishing platform. It applies the benefits of Web 3: Anonymity, self-sovereignty, censorship resistance, community governance & tokenization to a Medium-style content hosting platform.
Nuance is a consumer-facing dApp with no access to sensitive user data. All aspects of Nuance DAO will be open-sourced and publicly viewable.
Funding Target
We are targeting to raise 250,000 to 300,000 ICP. If the SNS swap succeeds, an allocation of 30% (30MM of the 100MM tokens) will be swapped raising approximately 1 to 1.2 MM USD. This provides us with ~18 months runway with our target burn rate. We have successfully delivered four (4) 25K Dfinity Developer grants which demonstrate we can deliver effectively on funds raised.
We are seeking 100,000 ICP from the Community Fund.
We are excited to launch our SNS and what lies ahead for Nuance and the IC!
Some highlights from the white paper SNS configuration for TLDR which we hope will get the discussion going:
Min. of 50 ICP participation in swap
Min. neuron size of 999 SNS tokens (ensure participants in the swap can participate in governance)
6000 SNS tokens reject cost (high because we want excellent quality proposals that already have community support prior to being proposed)
30% token allocation to the founding team and seed investors
30% token allocation to the swap
40% token allocation to the treasury
250K to 300K ICP min/max to provide 18 months runway (we dont want to take more because this would be speculative - we want genuine governance participants. We want Nuance to be the product, not the token)
Treasury will airdrop tokens to readers to subsidise writers
Should be mandatory to post the name and roles of the whole team. You are asking for a valuation of 1Million$, a thorough due diligence should be provided.
here is the team https://twitter.com/nuancedapp/following - Me aka nosaac (product management), Paul (engineer/architect), Mitch (engineer), Baran (engineer), Eelco (design from Okapion) and Rhiannon (marketing). There is a little more about the team in the SNS deck.
I see a common problem in the crypto world and it is that projects do not adhere to the same rules or disciplines when raising capital.
Here the projects are usually limited to the ecosystem where they are born, when in the real world startups aspire to lead a global market.
For example, would you be able to give us details of what you are going to do with the funds you raise?
What’s you growth strategy?
How much are you going to allocate to marketing and on what platforms?
Are you going to use Google Ads? Meta? Are you going to allocate money to email marketing?
Are you going to look for synergies like other crypto projects from other ecosystems?
How long is your runway with the capital raised according to the business plan?
How many users do you expect to have after X amount of time?
What are you going to do if you don’t achieve the goal?
In summary, I can think of 1000 questions that any start-up could answer if they aspire to raise thousands$ (not millions!!) and yet here the projects are limited to presenting a simple white paper to raise millions.
it does not make any sense.
This applies to every SNS until today, not just Nuance!!
Min. neuron size of 50 ICP (ensure participants in the swap can participate in governance)
50 ICP reject cost (high because we want excellent quality proposals that already have community support prior to being proposed)
these are referring to SNS neurons, right? If so, these values would usually be given in the unit of the new SNS token. Do you mean here 50 SNS tokens or would this then translate to something else?
I also wanted to find the name and symbol of the new SNS token that will be created and didn’t immediately find it. Maybe it would make sense to give a bit a high level summary of these most important settings here? They seem currently a bit hard to find among several posts.
It might also help to share the initialisation file that you will need to submit the NNS proposal here as this will contain all the settings that the SNS will be set up with (see the recommendation here).
Hi Nuance team, Many thanks for sharing the details of your planned SNS launch!
I had a quick look at the tokenomics sheet and noticed the following:
The parameter neuron_basket_interval, which determines the interval of dissolve delays within an SNS neuron basket, is currently set to 0. I assume this is not intended (as this would create neuron baskets with zero voting power). I would advise setting this to a positive number (e.g., 6 months).
The parameter neuron_basket_count, which determines the number of neurons within the SNS neuron basket, is currently set to 2. This implies that 50% of the neuron basket would have a stake of 0 and thus no voting power.
As an example to illustrate: If you increase the neuron_basket_interval to 6 months and the neuron_basket_count to 5, the voting power of the swap participants would be 56%, thereby decentralizing the DAO."
Can I assume you mean www.nuance.com ? The AI healthcare company recently acquired by Microsoft? Our legal team have not raised this potential trademark infringement with us but I will get this double-checked. Thanks for your suggestion
In this part of the white paper Internet Computer Loading I outline that the Aikin team (founding team) will make proposals in the order of 70% for product development, 20% for marketing and 10% for legal. I realise this is high level, but as a DAO the community will decide this split. In that part of the white paper (and in the original post above) I specify this will provide as ~18 months runway.
Regarding the 70% of product development, I have outlined the product roadmap in this part of the white paper Internet Computer Loading.
Regarding the 20% on marketing - we do not have a detailed plan yet (as we have been focusing primarily on getting to product market fit before we spend on marketing) but we will have two social media managers working linkedin, twitter, dscvr and distrikt. We also plan 5K per month on twitter/google search promotions.
For growth, we intend to use traditional growth hacking techniques to grow the user base. For example, we seem to have a handful of sci-fi writers using the platform so it would make sense to double down on this niche. At the moment one of our biggest challenges is SEO which will bring organic growth. We have invested a lot in SEO already and will continue to do so.
Thanks Lara for the advice - We have followed the checklist but seems not well enough
Indeed the 50ICP min neuron size and reject cost should be in the SNS token unit (as it is in the SNS configuration sheet ) which will be 5999 and 6000 SNS token units respectively. I will update the main post above.
I will add the name and symbol. Its not currently included in the documentation. Again my oversight.
I have included a link to our SNS configuration file in the original post and will add a link to the initialisation file also.
I think the community is being drained a bit with these SNS proposals, I never really comment on them but for the sake of the community checking this out I want to raise concerns I have for the first time.
You guys want to raise 1.2 million for 18 months runway correct? thats a burn rate of nearly 67k usd a month, which to me, is crazy for a small niche web3 dApp like nuance. So far you say you guys have had 4 dfinity grants (25k each) and that’s over 2 years? I presume no or negligent seed investment, so my estimate, your burn rate so far has been 5k usd a month?
The numbers here don’t make sense how can your burn rate increase 13x post SNS when you say 70% of the funds is going for product development?
I’m thinking most of the SNS launches have just been a way to raise significant funds for the founding team and to use the community as exit liquidity, which I know is an extreme statement, but it’s hard to see these things any other way.
Everyone needs to DYOR a little bit more and follow the money.
P.S. I think nuance is a cool product and have nothing against nuance or the team, just in general I am noticing a pattern.
Perception is reality.
My hope with these SNS raises is that ICP is locked in 8-year neurons and the maturity is used to prop-up their SNS partners. The way I look at it is this is not the right time for Nuance to have an SNS… wait for ModClub (whom I believe does the Nuance dapp moderation) to stake their ICP from their raise and let it accumulate to help fund their SNS partner Nuance. Complete synergy.
Idk… this is a favorite project of mine… I hope it succeeds but if you’re expecting 18 month runway from the SNS - don’t stake the ICP in a neuron (goes against everything I stand for) and just try to sell all the ICP at the top of the bull cycle and get a longer runway.
Edit: Maybe I missed the plans for the ICP in the whitepaper, what is the plans for raised ICP?
@nicko Congratulations on the work, I did not realize you had already delivered four $25K Developer Grants, that proves your track record, and explains the level of work that is evident in your app.
The SNS Route is logical, and I am almost certain you will be successful.
DAOs should always follow this route, build, show value, then when users and community know you, go for a fund raising DAO for expansion.
Hey Jesse! We have also raised 205K from seed investors and done about 50K worth of development work for 3rd parties in that time. I should also point out that myself and my co-founder have not taken anything out. Not one cent have we paid ourselves over the previous three years. I say ~18 months but with our target burn rate, it will be more like 21 months. Here is the breakdown I am thinking which will mean a 47K per month burn rate (please keep in mind these are rough numbers):
22 400 - engineering - two full-time developers (or equivalent) @ 70USD per hour x 320hrs per month
2 000 - design @ 100USD per hour x 20hrs per month
2 600 - community management @ 40USD per hour for senior and 25USD per hour for junior x 40hrs each per month
5 000 - ads/promotions per month (google and twitter)
5 600 - product management @ 70USD per hour x 80hrs per month
5 600 - architect / tech lead @ 70USD per hour x 80hrs per month
1 600 - rent office per month
400 - software e.g. slack, gitbook per month
2000 - legal per month
Total - 47 200 monthly burn
We want to have 18 months runway. That leaves us 3 months (or ~140K) for inevitable unplanned expenses - or just more runway.
Please see my response to Jesse - which outlines a little detail on the plans for the raised ICP. If you have any additional questions please reach out (of course).
It’s important to mention that it will be up to the community, of which we are a part, to decide what the team will actually be spending their time upon.
) which will be 5999 and 6000 SNS token units respectively. I will update the main post above.