The-Monero-Moon-CCS-Proposal-August2022-John-Foss

The Monero Moon Newsletter CCS proposal - August 2022 to January 2023

WHAT:

The Monero Moon is an independent free weekly news publication created in 2018 in an effort to keep the Monero community up to date on all the latest news and developments related to Monero. I aim to achieve this by aggregating all the relevant information into one convenient location in an easy-to-digest format. I sift through the noise so you don’t have to. I also endeavour to cross promote other Monero initiatives as much as possible, while also encouraging others to participate in or support the Monero project.

The Monero Moon newsletter covers Monero related:

• Development, Releases, and Technology
• General News
• Events
• Exchanges and Merchants
• Community Crowdfunding
• Trading and Speculation
• Performance
• Entertainment

WHY:

Given the nature of fast-paced news cycles, I strongly believe in the importance of regularly publishing Monero marketing content to help keep it publicly relevant. While the having the best tech and community is important, we need to also make sure the world knows what's going on, and a lot can happen in a week in Monero. As Monero continues its journey, I believe it is extremely important for everyone (community members and outsiders looking in) to be able to closely follow along with all the latest news and developments surrounding Monero, and the Monero Moon can help the future growth of Monero as the newsletter will continue to help spread awareness.

WHO:

I am John Foss. Like many of you, I am a firm believer and supporter of the Monero Project. I have previously written Monero articles on Medium, a couple of how to buy Monero guides for the Monero.how website, and wrote Your Guide to Monero, and Why It Has Great Potential back in 2018 which I posted to r/cryptocurrency and had over 25k views and received 1.5k upvotes.

I have also put together a few of Twitter threads this year which have had a fair number of impressions (50k+ views each)

• A Short History Of Monero Network Upgrades - https://twitter.com/johnfoss69/status/1552268149466480640
• How Monero is Eating Bitcoin's Lunch – And Ten Other Things You Didn’t Know About Monero - https://twitter.com/johnfoss69/status/1542868844141678593
• Financial Privacy Is Not a Crime: Bitcoin, Zcash and Monero - https://twitter.com/johnfoss69/status/1505728977025245186
• Bitcoin, Monero, Crypto, & Financial Privacy in 2022 - Where We Are Today - https://twitter.com/johnfoss69/status/1500782383758737409

Being able to piece together these tweet threads is largely be due to the fact that writing the Monero Moon helps provide me with a broad unbiased view of Monero development and progress.

Besides that, I have been following Monero for a fair while now, generally hanging out on Twitter these days, and I also occasionally venture over to the IRC channels or r/xmrtrader.

I was also fortunate enough to attend Monerokon 2022 (I possibly travelled the farthest to get there – 26hrs!) and got to meet lots of the cool friendly people from all over the world supportive of Monero.

ABOUT THE MONERO MOON:

I have so far published 52 issues, with the first issues published in 2018 on Medium. As of March 2022, the newsletter is now published on Substack via a self-hosted custom domain – www.themoneromoon.com. This is primarily for my own ease of use (I’m not technical), and because of the familiarity it provides to new potential readers who may be interested in Monero.

• View Issues 34 - 52 here – www.themoneromoon.com
• View Issues 1 – 33 here – www.medium.com/themoneromoon

Weekly publication links to The Monero Moon are published weekly on:

• Twitter
• Reddit (r/monero, r/xmrtrader, r/cryptocurrency, r/cryptomarkets)
• The two Monero focused Bitcointalk threads
• 4chan biz - Monero General
• Telegram chat channels - various
• Occasionally in the Monero IRC channels

Since moving to Substack, subscriber growth has continuously trended upwards without any signs of slowing own. Approximately 80+ subscribers have joined each month since switching to Substack in early March 2022. Over the past month of July more than 110+ people have subscribed. At the time of writing there are over 441 subscribers to The Monero Moon newsletter. Check out this chart here. The subscribe feature is handy for readers to get the publication straight to their inbox on a weekly basis, without even having to visit the website.

The number of views over the years has appeared to be correlated to the price of XMR, meaning the higher the price or the more upwards trajectory the price showed correlated to view count. The most views a single issue has received was approximately 2.5k views (Issues #22 (closed) & #27 (closed)) during the 2021 bull market.

Substack Issues have had an average of 1k readers each issue. I expect this to continue increasing as the subscriber count continues trending upwards.

DO WE NEED THE MONERO MOON WHEN OTHER NEWSLETTERS EXIST?

The Monero Observer is a great comprehensive source of Monero information and I love it, however its format and style is different. The Monero Moon provides a weekly round-up of news in one easy to digest newsletter without having to click around a lot. It also attempts to be more conversational and provide analysis, and I will regularly urge to readers to run their own node and support the Monero economy. The other two notable newsletters are great (Revuo Monero and the newer The Monero Standard) and I support and read them each week. They are of a similar format to the Monero Moon, however I would argue The Monero Moon is more comprehensive and likely draws in more readers.

WHY IS THE MONERO MOON HOSTED ON SUBSTACK, AND NOT ON A PRIVACY FOCUSED PLATFORM?

Some people have highlighted problems with it being posted on Substack. Some people have asked my why it isn’t posted on Ghost or on a more privacy preserving platform. Essentially, I want the Monero Moon to be accessible to all, even more so for those new to privacy or Monero. After talking to in real life friends and other non-crypto people online, they said they would be less likely to open links from platforms such as Nitter, Invidious, etc, and when they do the formatting is weird and unfamiliar. I don't want to scare people off. Learning about a private money is one thing, but learning about a whole stack of privacy tools all at once can be a bit overwhelming. In my opinion those who want to add on the privacy can easily do so themselves, and probably already do. That seems an easier solution than forcing readers to use unfamiliar websites or apps.

THE PROPOSAL AND MILESTONES:

As Monero ebbs grows in popularity, it can sometimes take a fair bit of time to put together an issue from start to finish. It currently takes me about 10 hours of work per issue. This involves me researching and collating the information, writing it up, then publishing and promoting it via social media platforms.

I am proposing to publish The Monero Moon for 2 XMR per issue from 4th of August 2022 until approximately the 5th of January 2023, or whenever the CCS is complete.

At the current exchange rate of approximately $145USD per XMR based on the SMA 20 day moving average, that comes out to ~$290 per issue. For example, 1000 readers is equivalent to ~0.29c per read. The milestones are straightforward, for every 6 issues I publish, payment is released. This comes out to 3 milestones in total.

• Milestone 1: Publish issues #53 (closed) through #58 (closed) (August 2022 to Oct 2022) - 12 XMR
• Milestone 2: Publish issues #59 through #64 (closed) (Oct 2022 to Nov 2022) - 12 XMR
• Milestone 3: Publish issues #65 (closed) through #70 (closed) (Nov 2022 to Jan 2023) - 12 XMR

I’ve been able to consistently publish issues throughout this year which has been great. In September 2022 I will be going on a vacation with my partner so I will take a four week break until early October 2022. I will publish Issue #57 (closed) on the 1st of September 2022, and then resume Issue #58 (closed) on the 6th of October 2022. There may also be periods where I miss a week due to life commitments, however I will endeavour to cover all the recent news in one big bumper newsletter issues, and this will still just count as one issue. Additionally, at the end of this period of 18 issues published I will re-evaluate whether I shall continue the newsletter.

Please take the time to comment here regarding your thoughts or opinion of my proposal.

Cheers,

John Foss