RFC: Use CFG token and NFT to build and grow the Centrifuge Chinese Community

[DrCAO]

Background:

Centrifuge Chain is the gateway for real-world assets to the Blockchain Multiverse. As the parachain project that wins the number 8 slot, Centrifuge raised 5,435,161 DOT during the crowdloan. Centrifuge bridges assets like invoices, real estate, and royalties to DeFi. For example, the Tinlake, a smart-contract based marketplace of asset pools bringing together Asset Originators and Investors who seek to utilize the full potential of DeFi, has more than 84 million TVL until today.

The market of Centrifuge would be global and should include the Chinese community. However, it is not easy, there is a lessening focus on the Chinese Community due to various reasons ( e.g, the language barriers). Now is the right time for active Chinese community members to organize themselves to help achieve the Centrifuge Mission. It used to be an active community for Centrifuge but now it is not very active. There is a Chinese Telegram with more than 1,550 people and several wechat groups with several hundred people in each group. In addition, we also have a few ambassadors who are still interested to be part of the Centrifuge Chinese Community and helping with growing the community.

The goal of this proposal is to request funds and grow the Centrifuge Chinese Community and bring more users to the Centrifuge ecosystem globally.

Detailed budget and events for the fund

Here is the table with the details for using the budget:

Category	Event	Goal	Budget
Chinese ambassadors	1. Be active in our TG, Wechat group, take care of the questions from the community 2. Build connections with other influencers in China and get involved in the events like live streaming AMA, in-person events, etc. 3. Weekly meeting to report any questions and suggestions from the community	Build an active ambassador team to grow the Chinese community.	Total: 12,000 CFG. Rational: Each ambassador would get 500-1500 CFG per quarter, let’s take an average of 1000 per quarter, and 6 ambassadors for 2 quarters would be 2 * 6 * 1000 = 12,000
Living stream AMA event	1. Invite Chinese influencers to join and share their opinion on CFG 2. Ambassadors share their understanding of CFG 3. Questions and sharing from audiences	Around one event per month	Total: 1,800 CFG. Rational: 300 CFG per event x 6 months = 1800 CFG
Educational content	Make educational videos or articles related to Centrifuge, like explaining the team and details of each pool, showing how to invest in the pool, how to use the CFG, how to buy CFG, how to mint NFT on Altair NFT market place, etc.	Help the Chinese community better understand Centrifuge.	Total: 4000 CFG Rational: Like each month 600 CFG, and give it to others based on the ranking or give a reward to each contributor.
NFT on Altair marketplace	For Chinese community AMA participants, we will give the NFT on our own Altair marketplace (or Singular)	Promote Altair marketplace, and build NFT to promote CFG	Total: 3,600 CFG Rational: Give CFG to the NFT holders monthly. 600 X 6 month = 3600 CFG
Special contest and competition	When there is an important holiday, we want to organize some special contests and competitions related to Centrifuge. For example, on gleam or on twitter, or even discord/telegram, users will answer questions correctly and win CFG	Build a good environment and attract new users	Total: 1,000 CFG Rational: maybe around two events and each would use 500 CFG.
Translations	Translate the important announcement into Chinese so that the Chinese community would be aware of the important news or articles.	Chinese community would know the latest update from Centrifuge without any language barrier.	Total: 1,600 CFG. Rational: Some of the work can be done by ambassadors, but the members of the Chinese community can also participate and we will award them CFG if they can translate the news before our ambassadors.

Total fund requested is: 12000 + 1800 + 4000 + 3600 + 1000 + 1600 = 24,000 CFG
The above can be an estimate, so there might be small adjustments as needed, but by the end of 6 months, if we don’t use all 24,000 CFG, we can keep it for the next round, and another option is to share the rest of CFG to the NFT holders (we can discuss it in the community in the future).

The timeline for this proposal would be 6 months, after it is approved, so it could be between November this year and May 2023.

If you have any ideas or feedback to improve the proposal, I would really appreciate it if you can add your comment!

[Tjure07]

Hi DrCao!

I like and support the idea to grow the chinese community because it is a big market for the Centrifuge ecosystem.

Who will be in charge of the distribution of the budget to the different categories?
Where will the live streams, educational content and translations be available (e.g. YouTube)?

[DrCAO]

Thank you Tjure07!
I would volunteer to be in charge of the distribution if needed, or someone from the team can do that.
And for those contents, I am wondering if the centrifuge youtube can create a Chinese channel to host them, if it is too much work, I can be in charge of creating a channel to host everything on Youtube and other social media

[Rhano]

Thank you for this proposal @DrCAO. I agree that it is important to educate our community about Centrifuge, Tinlake our governance process etc. and also translate announcements and other important information as the language can be a barrier for many people.

I have a couple of thoughts and questions.

1. Governance is a crucial part of Centrifuge (and any other project) so are there any plans on educating the Chinese community in how our governance works? I would personally welcome and encourage an initiative to teach them about how to participate. I know that the language barrier might prevent them from some aspects (e.g. the discussion here on the Forum) - but helping them understand how to vote in a snapshot vote and on an on-chain referendum could help towards the efforts of making Centrifuge more decentralised. Of course, the proposals would need to be translated, so they can make a sound decision before voting.

2. I am personally not a big fan of incentivising users with tokens for participation or doing certain tasks - but that is just my personal opinion. Furthermore, this is an initiative on Altair (NFT Playground) so this should probably be made as a Treasury proposal on Altair, instead of CFG.

@DrCAO

Total: 3,600 CFG
Rational:
Give CFG to the NFT holders monthly. 600 X 6 month = 3600 CFG

3. This is more a note to your request for funding. Currently there are not enough funds in the Treasury to cover this proposal so it won’t make much sense to create a Treasury proposal until the Treasury has be replenished. You can check the on-chain Treasury here.

Otherwise, I like and support the idea of the rest of the initiatives like live AMA streams, educational content, translation etc.

[Tjure07]

I don’t see the necessity to give the “ownership” of the group to someone from the team. Especially with the language barrier
You should be the perfect person to take care of the process because you are the one who initiated it and you know the key persons from the community.

YouTube for sure is a great place and definitely we can share the social media content in Discord (although I know not many Chinese use it)

[DrCAO]

Thank you @Rhano for all of this great comments and insightful thoughts!

1. Governance is a crucial part of Centrifuge (and any other project) so are there any plans on educating the Chinese community in how our governance works??

Yes, the governance should be one part for the proposal. For example, we will translate the proposal, and also organize events to go over the proposal or demo how to participate in the governance vote. In addition, there might be small and easy quiz for the snapshot voting to make sure users understand what they are voting for.

2. I am personally not a big fan of incentivising users with tokens for participation or doing certain tasks - but that is just my personal opinion. Furthermore, this is an initiative on Altair (NFT Playground) so this should probably be made as a Treasury proposal on Altair, instead of CFG.

I am thinking about other ways to incentivise users for doing some tasks, I haven’t figure out a good way instead of tokens or NFT now, but if you have any better idea, I am open to the other options!
For the playground yes, it is on Altair, I agree it might be better to reward them Altair so they can use the token to mint more NFTs and use the playground more in the future!

3. This is more a note to your request for funding. Currently there are not enough funds in the Treasury to cover this proposal so it won’t make much sense to create a Treasury proposal until the Treasury has be replenished. You can check the on-chain Treasury here

Thank you very much for sharing the important notes, yes, the proposal may not go through the treasury, I will explore other options!

[DrCAO]

Sure, thank you @Tjure07 for your trust, I would be happy to be in charge of the work!

Great, we can share content in discord, tg and other social media, and we will have the video ready so someone from the team can upload it to the Youtube channel!

[karson]

During Sammi’s tenure, we have done a lot to launch Centrifuge and Tinlake, and will continue to do so.We‘ll support you, DrCao.

[DrCAO]

Wonderful! Thank you Karson, it’s so nice that we have a great team and community!

[devin]

Hi @DrCAO, thank you for putting this together! I agree that we should continue to pay attention to and grow the Chinese community. My thoughts below:

1. Could you share links to the Chinese Telegram group and the WeChat groups? I’d love to have a look (even if there’s a language barrier!) to see what kind of activity there is today — and what level of activity we’ve had in the past.

2. I think having a solid team of ambassadors is the most important part here. They are vital in making the next two categories — events and educational content — a reality. They are the seeds to the (eventual) forest!

3. I disagree with the NFT category and I would suggest to remove it from this proposal. community. It feels without purpose (NFTs for the sake of NFTs), doesn’t encourage any engagement besides joining an AMA long enough to learn how to get the NFT, and would require more logistics than I think it’s worth. If we want to get some activity on Altair with NFTs, we can be craftier and inspire people to create NFTs as part of a competition, for example! I think these funds are better suited to all of the other categories.

4. We should upload event videos to the main Centrifuge YouTube account rather than a separate China-focused account to avoid fragmentation. We can give them a separate playlist for linking purposes, like we already do for community / governance calls, DeFi Drip, etc! Plus I think it’d be cool to have multiple languages represented on our YouTube channel

5. Big agree to @Rhano on making sure governance education and participation is a priority here. Decentralization == people from all over the world participating in the protocol’s future on-chain.

Overall an approval from me with that one objection about the NFTs! Most important part is building the sense of community and camaraderie that we have in our English-speaking community so far — and extending it worldwide.

[ctcunning]

Thanks for this proposal.

One the pieces I’d like to see considered in the line items is a focus on institutional capital providers. As we continue to navigate these very uncertain times, finding pockets of smart-money off-chain that understands private credit, the vision of Centrifuge, and is already participating in crypto is a hard trio of attributes to find.

However, that’s critical to the long-term success of Centrifuge as not only the infrastructure for securitizing the world’s RWAs, but also being known as a financing platform of depth, with investors across the capital markets, both on and off chain, that are seeking to hold private debt (RWAs) within their portfolio.

Should this proposal move forward and gain meaningful traction, ensuring that focus above will be important to me.

Thank you again for such a thoughtful approach!

[DrCAO]

Hi @devin, thank you so much for all of the great comments!

1. Could you share links to the Chinese Telegram group and the WeChat groups? I’d love to have a look (even if there’s a language barrier!) to see what kind of activity there is today — and what level of activity we’ve had in the past.
Response:
Yes, we do have the Telegram group link: Telegram: Contact @centrifuge_chatCN, but for the WeChat group, I don’t think I have the link, if you have Wechat, I can add you to each of the groups so that you can check, moreover, I don’t think we can see the history chats now on WeChat, I can send you screenshot if you want.
2. I think having a solid team of ambassadors is the most important part here. They are vital in making the next two categories — events and educational content — a reality. They are the seeds to the (eventual) forest!
Response:
Thank you very much! I am totally agree with you!

3. I disagree with the NFT category and I would suggest to remove it from this proposal. community. It feels without purpose (NFTs for the sake of NFTs), doesn’t encourage any engagement besides joining an AMA long enough to learn how to get the NFT, and would require more logistics than I think it’s worth. If we want to get some activity on Altair with NFTs, we can be craftier and inspire people to create NFTs as part of a competition, for example! I think these funds are better suited to all of the other categories.
Response:
I talked to the Chinese community, and I think you are mostly right, we should make a separate proposal to promote the marketplace with NFT competitions or something like that. However, we still feel that we want to make NFT collection as recognition of the ambassadors and contributors even though we don’t have the funding support here.

4. We should upload event videos to the main Centrifuge YouTube account rather than a separate China-focused account to avoid fragmentation. We can give them a separate playlist for linking purposes, like we already do for community / governance calls, DeFi Drip, etc! Plus I think it’d be cool to have multiple languages represented on our YouTube channel
Response:
Yes, that would be great, I like that idea!

5. Big agree to @Rhano on making sure governance education and participation is a priority here. Decentralization == people from all over the world participating in the protocol’s future on-chain.
Response:
Yes, I totally agree with you and @Rhano on this part, and we want to organize Chinese version of the governance at a different time (possibly before the governance meeting, and I can be the one to report the opinion from Chinese community in the governance meeting).

[DrCAO]

Hi @ctcunning,
Thank you so much for your feedback! I totally agree with you on the importance of the long-term success of Centrifuge, if you have any more detailed metric to evaluate the successful of the proposal I would be glad to hear, and you are always welcome to keep track of the progress and provide any feedback in the future！