11th January 2023 / 09:00-11:00AM (UTC-5) 

ATTENDEES

Council: Elation Studios, Ryan, Song Sjun, Infi, Sash, Strawberry Council, Phantz, DR, M&N, PG Bao

Secretariat: Cassie, Greg

ABSENTEES

Jingyu, Rebecca Zhu

AGENDA

  1. Update on LLC
  2. The Secretariat Work plan proposal
  3. CR Herald Proposal

REPORTS

1) Update on LLC (Fakhul)

  • K&L are pushing back regarding the subpoena
  • They are confident they can make it go away
  • Some documents might need to be submitted
  • Initial retainer of 7.5k USD
    • 25k requested as experience with LLC setup was 25k requested and 40k final cost!

2) The Secretariat Work plan proposal (Cassie)

  • New suggestion has been posted: https://www.cyberrepublic.org/suggestion/63bc571dcfe36200788a1079
  • Scope remains the same
  • There was a plan to expand the scope that has been paused considering the budgetary constraints linked to market conditions
  • Budget has been changed to a more flexible arrangement, linked to ELA price
    1. <40% of original budget
    2. If ELA<1 USD then Sec Gen will work for free
  • It’s best to keep the CR sites and social accounts active forElastos’ public image

Comments

MButcho – Full support from M&N. Seems fair compromise given market and circumstances.

3) CR Herald Proposal (Chenghao)

Comments

Nenchy – Where is the community engagement happening on the China channels?

Cheng – 40 WeChat groups. All updates are all shared to those groups. Third party media promotion also occurs.

DR – How active is the Chinese community?

Chenghao – Plenty are still quite active.

Sash – Is there actually a Chinese community? A concern has been had for a while is that there isn’t that much of a CN community anymore. It’s hard to really tell unless the council members join them to see for themselves.

MButcho –

  1. Why so many channels?
  2. What is the budget in ELA per month?
  3. What is point four about? We have Elavation handling BD now. How often does Huobi contact Cheng, in the last year?

Cassie – 3k USD per month budget, from non-CR sources (explained later in the discussion – ed.).

Chenghao – WeChat has channel size limits.

The cost is set in USDT in the suggestion and will be adjusted to ELA in the proposal. There is already a big compromise in terms of cost, only 3k USD is already a big change.

Huobi has a direct relationship with me. Strong connection with Huobi for the ELA listings on the exchange. It’s a habitual relationship. Emails arrive quite often – once or twice a month.

MButcho – liquidity is terrible on Huobi anyway. Do we really want a close relationship there now? We have a MM for Kucoin (Kairon) so do we need Herald managing the Huobi partnership as well?

Question to Fakhul – do we need this managed by Herald or should CR/Elavation be managing this?

Fakhul –

  1. Is the ask for CRC to fund herald or will it be like DIgerati and have private donors?
  2. Are there any Weibo channels?

3 – Elevation doesn’t cover China as agreed. We thought Elaphant was BD, not Herald. China has banned crypto. Elation has no direct contact with Kucoin or Huobi. Only with Coinbase and Gate. We will manage the rest of Asia though.

Does Kucoin run a Supernode? Is that part of the relationship? Huobi and Elastos had a close relationship in the past – is that still the case? Maybe this is where the relationship started and continues?

Sash – Check with Austrader as he monitors pool sizes quite closely. Kucoin had significantly large quantities of EL (maybe 1m ELA at one point), Huobi also held a huge amount. It has been noticed that these holdings have been reducing dramatically over time. It’s like a sword hanging over the project.

MButcho – Neither Kucoin or Huobi run supernodes for ELA mainchain.

Chenghao – The management of the Herald duties has already made a large compromise for the compensation stated. It should be much higher than the 3k USD.

MButcho – We should see the structure of these 40 channels and whether they are really needed. Fakhul said he doesn’t care about the China side of the business management. How much work is really being done by the Herald team for BD, especially since we now have a BD team (sic; we have a Growth Team – ed.)

Can the elements of the compensation be separated between community and business relationship duties?

Fakhul – I absolutely didn’t say I didn’t care about the Kucoin/Huobi relationships, just that these aren’t part of my/our responsibilities.

MButcho – II think the best and strongest part of Elastos is the merge-mining and it’s managed by CR Herald? Is that really the case? I need to know what they are really doing regarding the partner management along with the community management. Mining pools and those relationships are crucial – are these being managed?

Fakhul – There was an understanding that the Chinese BD team would be handling China-centric relationships for the foreseeable future.

Herald is a combination of Guardians and Secretariat efforts but wholly for the CN audience. It seems to be a solid and admirable job done by the Herald team.  The content is decent and there’s some value in it. Branding needs to be updated, but it could be worth sharing.

Sunny made the majority of these connections and then he historically passed it off to other people/teams to manage. Who these others are I just don’t know.

Main question: Will the funding be private or CRC? The amount requested is exactly the same amount as that which Digerati requested for managing the Chinese channels.

Cassie – 10k from EF for Digerati. 3k USD is reserved for the Chinese channels but we aren’t ready to do it. If CR Herald can do this then that’s complementary. The 3k is a donation from the EF and no budget from CRC – but acceptance of the suggestion is needed from CRC.

MButcho – If it’s not CR funds then I have no problem with it. They just want the CR vote to agree to spend EF funds then it’s fine.

Chenghao – Can’t reduce the number of channels because:

  • Early investors created the channels and therefore Herald doesn’t actually own them.
  • Max members per group is 500. If it exceeds 200 then a stricter policy is applied so new groups are created to make it easier for new members to join the community
  • Software is in place to manage the 40 channels that won’t increase cost but allows for efficient management

Herald were involved from the very beginning and has connections to ensure that the nodes are all upgraded properly and in a timely fashion. ELA rewards are 

MButcho – It’s good that the mining pools and exchanges that Herald manages are in close contact with Huobi. Problem solving by utilizing these connections is a big positive. Thanks for the explanation of the channel structure. It’s fine to make it into a proposal. It might be useful to know how the CN community is actually structured though, and to share reports from CN to EN. More symbiosis would be beneficial for streamlining.

It might be worth checking out the content and using it cross-nationally. Can someone from Digerati just do the translation?

Chenghao – Hiring a professional translator would be outside of budget constraints.

Fakhul – Great is probably a strong description but there is some value in it. The branding is all outdated but apart from that it’s decent. Emailed comms.

MButcho – There needs to be a specification that the EF is funding the proposal.

Fakhul – EF is gifting these PR funds to the CR and it’s for the Council to agree where these “PR gifts” are distributed through the DAO mechanism.

There is an Elastos runway aspect that needs to be considered. If the output is not up to standard then other community teams can apply to handle these aspects better than previously done so.

MButcho – There will be a core funding issue once EF vanishes and CR has to pay for Elastos’ future. But when these things don’t cost the council anything while EF are paying then I don’t care about that EF spending.

AOB

  • Minutes review from previous meetings.

ACTION ITEMS

  1.  n/a