On behalf of Polkadot Hungary DAO:
We appreciate the effort and initiative behind Apillion’s proposal. However, after careful consideration, we have decided to vote Abstain on this request. While the proposal showcases engagement metrics, these appear to primarily reflect participation from engagement campaigns. Unfortunately, such metrics do not demonstrate long-term retention or meaningful contributions to the ecosystem.
We encourage the team to refine their approach and propose a smaller-scale initiative with clear, measurable objectives that can effectively demonstrate how your product is driving more users for the ecosystem. Showing evidence of user retention and genuine ecosystem participation would strengthen the case for future funding.
Thank you for your work, and we look forward to seeing an updated proposal.
Hi @Matjaz
Thank you for your response and for sharing your feedback. We really appreciate the effort you put into addressing our points.
After an internal discussion, we've decided to maintain our Abstain vote. This decision stems from how our voting process is structured—when there are differing opinions within the team, the default approach is to abstain to reflect that diversity of thought.
We’d like to encourage the Apillon team to share more regular updates in the Polkadot forum or other public channels. This would provide great opportunities to engage with the community, share progress updates, outline your plans, and gather feedback for upcoming proposals. In the long term, this could also help address many of the questions raised by us and other commenters.
Additionally, it would be fantastic to see your users represented in forum discussions and proposals. Since your project is built for their benefit, their insights and feedback are incredibly valuable and would further strengthen your case for support.
We believe in the value and potential of your project, but greater transparency and consistent communication would help us feel more confident in casting an Aye vote in the future.
Thank you again for your efforts and engaging with us!
On behalf of Polkadot Hungary DAO:
We appreciate the effort and initiative behind Apillion’s proposal. However, after careful consideration, we have decided to vote Abstain on this request. While the proposal showcases engagement metrics, these appear to primarily reflect participation from engagement campaigns. Unfortunately, such metrics do not demonstrate long-term retention or meaningful contributions to the ecosystem.
We encourage the team to refine their approach and propose a smaller-scale initiative with clear, measurable objectives that can effectively demonstrate how your product is driving more users for the ecosystem. Showing evidence of user retention and genuine ecosystem participation would strengthen the case for future funding.
Thank you for your work, and we look forward to seeing an updated proposal.
First of all, thank you for our initiative appreciation and for going over our proposal.
Before going into details, the Milestone 3 is generally a technical proposal with specific technical deliverables, and not a marketing /growth proposal; so it should also be judged from this specific point of view.
Now that the incentivisation campaigns are unpacked with facts, lets look at the rest of deliverables (non milestone related or opengov funded):
The text above isn't here to convince you that all our services have long term user engagement, they don't, but it is also certainly not true we do not have users with long term engagement, in fact, our transactions show we have quite a lot of long term engaged users, specifically in one service where PMF is proven.
Now, we do respect an opinion of asking for smaller amounts of money from opengov in several tranches, but there are several open questions on our end for this specific idea:
Now, because you are a DAO of experienced people from Polkadot and we respect your opinion. Given the facts just presented, does this affect your opinion in any way?
At the end of the day, the question is: Does your team believe the stack, people and all resources we have can bring benefit to Polkadot in the long term.
Köszönöm szépen!
On behalf of Polkadot Hungary DAO:
We appreciate the effort and initiative behind Apillion’s proposal. However, after careful consideration, we have decided to vote Abstain on this request. While the proposal showcases engagement metrics, these appear to primarily reflect participation from engagement campaigns. Unfortunately, such metrics do not demonstrate long-term retention or meaningful contributions to the ecosystem.
We encourage the team to refine their approach and propose a smaller-scale initiative with clear, measurable objectives that can effectively demonstrate how your product is driving more users for the ecosystem. Showing evidence of user retention and genuine ecosystem participation would strengthen the case for future funding.
Thank you for your work, and we look forward to seeing an updated proposal.
Apillion team has been shipping well and meeting their committed timelines and completing milestones. We support this proposal.
Dear @Matjaz ⧓,
Thank you for your proposal, and joining us on a call to discuss your proposal. Permanence DAO supports the Apillon team and commends its efforts, however our vote is NAY for this proposal. As we commented under your discussion post, we suggest the following for the Apillon team:
These suggestions were formed after a thorough review and discussion of the proposal in light of the information shared on the call. Some members also expressed concerns about the proposal’s focus.
Kind regards, Permanence DAO
Hi @1haHsRuCUCkbkPRmSrnfP8ps6cTaR2b5JCU5uNPUbxsVPbf
*Long post warning*
Here are some objective facts which are true for the Apillon case that not everyone is aware of (we have been building in the ecosystem for the past 2.5 years, and not every proposal can start with the historic breakdown due to the current length sentiment on the opengov).
I have included a link to the screenshots of proof to the abovementioned statements: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n4uWJEDgH5l9GSJRpjizHftCgs2HVgL1/view?usp=sharing
Now, lets look at these facts from the standpoint of “What is polkadot getting out of it”
Lastly, your idea about the airdrop is not only good, but we already executed it. So instead of just airdropping our token to random wallets, we have generated an incentivisation campaign back in march which resulted in over 130.000 registered users which created projects, where over 40.000 projects generated at least one transaction on Polkadot. Now, keep in mind that, we do have a clear growth funnel and user emails, so we are keeping the users engaged as new features are popping out.
The post is getting really long, due to the fact that the team of 15 people delivered a lot in the past 2 years, there is more to be said of what we are delivering for Polkadot ecosystem, but the main point remains: we have removed all conflicts of interests between apillon and Polkadot community and we can essentially say that if Apillon succeeds in the future, so will Polkadot.
A quick summary of what is currently on Apillon:
Other notable Apillon features:
Hello! I have some questions and comments:
What are the projected maintenance costs once these improvements are implemented, and how do you plan to cover them in the future?
Are there long-term plans to reduce reliance on the Polkadot Treasury and achieve financial self-sufficiency? If so, what strategies are you considering implementing (e.g., transaction fees, subscription models)?
How do you plan to measure and improve user experience and adoption among developers? Have you conducted user studies or community surveys to identify necessary improvements?
Are you not going to include a marketing plan for Apillon? I think it's essential to attract new users, with plenty of tutorial videos and a greater presence on social media. I once read that "the most well-known wins over the best," and it's very true, so please keep that in mind.
@Matjaz
AYE Sir!
It appears that your team has already raised 171,450 DOT ($900,113) for milestone 1 + 91,663 DOT ($481,230) for milestone 2, totaling 263,113 DOT raised thus far (~$1,381,343 USD at the current DOT price of $5.25), is this accurate?
And now you are asking for an additional $809,600 USDT?
When will these requests end?
More importantly, what is Polkadot getting back from these investments, specifically in terms of equity stake, for funding your company will millions of dollars? Traditionally this level of investment would require you give back equity to the investors who are taking on such risk, which in this case, is the Polkadot community.
An airdrop to active participants in the Polkadot community would make a lot of sense in this instance imho, especially given the large amount of funding you are seeking (after already raising a relatively large amount).
Apillon is making strong progress and is on track to become indispensable in the ecosystem.
I read the proposal docs, but couldn't find any metrics/KPIs how it is adding value to the Polkadot ecosystem? Can you please clarify?
Nice to read from you again :)
Thanks for checking out the proposal docs!
Since our last proposal, we’ve added close to 40,000 new builders who are diving into Polkadot’s tech, largely because of how easy we’ve made it to get started. Below are some key metrics showing the activity that’s running through Apillon onto the various parachains.
Now that Coretime is live, this activity means parachains need to buy Coretime to run on the relay chain, creating real value for the ecosystem. Hope this gives a clearer picture of how we’re contributing to Polkadot’s growth! Let us know if you have any more questions.
Thanks!
Hello! I have some questions and comments:
What are the projected maintenance costs once these improvements are implemented, and how do you plan to cover them in the future?
Are there long-term plans to reduce reliance on the Polkadot Treasury and achieve financial self-sufficiency? If so, what strategies are you considering implementing (e.g., transaction fees, subscription models)?
How do you plan to measure and improve user experience and adoption among developers? Have you conducted user studies or community surveys to identify necessary improvements?
Are you not going to include a marketing plan for Apillon? I think it's essential to attract new users, with plenty of tutorial videos and a greater presence on social media. I once read that "the most well-known wins over the best," and it's very true, so please keep that in mind.
Happy to answer your questions :)
Maintenance Costs and Treasury Reliance:
Apillon is committed to building an open-source SaaS platform, and while we currently rely partially on the Treasury to support our generous freemium model, this is essential to attract developers to the Polkadot ecosystem with competitive rates compared to providers like Thirdweb, Moralis, and Alchemy. As we convert enough freemium users into paid users, our goal is to sustain the freemium option independently of Treasury support.
Path to Self-sufficiency:
Our plan is to achieve self-sufficiency within 1-2 years through subscription-based revenue. As our user base grows, we’ll refine our pricing plans to remain competitive and financially sustainable.
User Experience and Adoption:
We’re dedicated to improving UX and adoption through continuous monitoring, including tracking user sessions via Hotjar to understand drop-offs and improve the experience. We also engage our community through Q&As and our governance portal, where developers can suggest features and guide future updates.
Marketing Strategy:
We have a robust marketing pipeline, though it falls outside the scope of this proposal and will be funded via a marketing bounty. We’re continually enhancing our SEO, running ads on Google and X, and attending major events like WebSummit in Lisbon, where we’ll have a booth and keynote. Additionally, we produce and share tutorial videos on social media to inspire new projects on Apillon.
Hope this clarifies things! Happy to provide more details if needed :)
Hello! I have some questions and comments:
What are the projected maintenance costs once these improvements are implemented, and how do you plan to cover them in the future?
Are there long-term plans to reduce reliance on the Polkadot Treasury and achieve financial self-sufficiency? If so, what strategies are you considering implementing (e.g., transaction fees, subscription models)?
How do you plan to measure and improve user experience and adoption among developers? Have you conducted user studies or community surveys to identify necessary improvements?
Are you not going to include a marketing plan for Apillon? I think it's essential to attract new users, with plenty of tutorial videos and a greater presence on social media. I once read that "the most well-known wins over the best," and it's very true, so please keep that in mind.
I read the proposal docs, but couldn't find any metrics/KPIs how it is adding value to the Polkadot ecosystem? Can you please clarify?
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