Authors: @sixtykeys @Jimmy
Feedback: @mringz
What Is Telegram and Why Does It Matter
Telegram is a cross-platform messaging service with enhanced encryption and privacy features. Today, every solid blockchain project is expected to host its community on Telegram; it has become one of the leading platforms for group communications and discussions in the CeFi and DeFi ecosystem. No other application has gained as much attention as Telegram has from the crypto community. This may be because of the features, security and customer service that telegram has on offer.
Telegram is used by blockchain projects for a number of different reasons. Most projects use it mainly for answering questions about their projects, some use it for communicating to their ICO participants, and some choose Telegram for technical discussions between their team and open-source developers. Telegram is the “go-to” communication tool for projects in the crypto space.
Here at Index Coop, we already have a sprawling Discord community, featuring close to 6,000 members as of this writing. But there is still untapped potential for reaching even more users due to Telegram’s large user base. Telegram has a reported base of “about 500 million active users” as of January 2021 with an aim to get to 1 billion users by 2022; whereas Discord only reports about 150 million active users as of December 2020. Therefore, Telegram presents a huge opportunity to achieve even more engagement with the crypto community at large.
Advantages of Telegram
Community building
Telegram channels are a tool for broadcasting public messages to an unlimited audience. They offer a unique opportunity to reach people directly, sending a notification to their phones with each new post. They are great for one-way communication, announcements, blogging, news, etc. Notice that members cannot post, reply, or send anything in channels, keeping the timeline tidy and free of unnecessary content.
In contrast, Telegram groups are a powerful tool for building communities, with an allowance of up to 200,000 members, which allows for a streamlined channel for information and discussions. Groups allow followers to chat amongst themselves and with community leaders freely.
Furthermore, all the major players, developers, engineers, and influencers in DeFi are already on Telegram, so the target audience is already there. This will also help with onboarding of possible developer and engineering resources, as a large number of them host their discussions on Telegram.
Greater awareness of Coop news
A telegram channel would allow for even greater awareness of the multiple proposals, initiatives, news and official announcements by Index Coop. This will be especially helpful when it comes to IIPs, as some currently struggle to reach quorum. Liquidity providers will also be able to know exactly whenever new pools are launched, and also when those pools are incentivized by liquidity mining rewards.
Comprehensive statistics
Advanced statistics are available for channels with more than 500 subscribers. You can view beautifully-detailed graphs about the growth and the performance of a channel’s posts. Each channel owner can track Telegram metrics: growth rate, engagement rate, muted and unmuted notifications, views by source, source of new followers, the language of members, and much more. This allows us to see how popular the channel is, the growth over time, and whether it might be a good idea to support it with ads.
Core Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
One of the major goals of the implementation of a Telegram channel and group, is to spread further awareness of Index Coop products, incentivize more people to purchase and hold our products and to further build our community. These goals are in line with our Core KPIs, that is to increase unit supply, total unique holders and protocol revenue.
Other miscellaneous features
These include but are not limited to, view counters, polls and quizzes; scheduled, silent and pinned messages, hashtags etc.
Implementation Proposal
- Choose; by voting, community consensus or volunteering, for members of the Coop to become channel and group administrators. I personally volunteer to be a part of this team.
- Start Index Coop’s official Telegram announcement channel, main group discussion room and admin room. Generate a fixed invite link to the main room (TheIndexCoop, hasn’t been claimed yet) .
- Setup rules by which the community will go by. It’s important to do so, so as to base group moderation on them. The rules will be pinned to the top of the main group for everyone to see.
- On the announcement channel give an introduction to Index Coop and its products, explaining how we work, add website links, social media links etc.
- Setup of bots (BotFather, Webhook etc.) by admins for whatever functions they deem necessary for the community and for moderation.
- As discussion starts and questions about the project are asked, participate as much as possible to answer and explain anything the community members ask. It’s absolutely crucial to be transparent and as informative and supportive as possible.
- Tying together all the social media accounts in order to save time and effort and allow messages to get out easily across all of our platforms.
- Involve the community in promotion of the Telegram on other social media and other platforms in order to bring attention to the channel.
- Once active contributors and participants start to emerge, offer them an admin/moderator role. It’s all about sharing and mutual backup that consolidates the group once it grows bigger.
Telegram will therefore allow us to have an additional platform for Index Coop announcements, discussions and possibly a new way to onboard contributors and high value community members.
Requirements
Implementation of a Telegram channel and group would require minimal resources, and almost no engineering and or developer support. I propose an initial team of 2 to 3 admins, including at least 1 Gold or SIlver owl, and the rest of the admins group can be composed of anyone else who might be interested in the role, ideally a member of the APAC group too, to cover all time zones.
Unofficial channels
These are channels which use the Index Coop name in one way or another on Telegram, but do not have any actual official association with the DAO.
Final Thoughts
Telegram will allow us to have an additional platform for Index Coop announcements, discussions and possibly a new way to onboard contributors and high value community members. Over time, we should expect to see more and more people showing interest, purchasing, holding and actively inquiring about our products. More people will also be joining the community, looking to contribute and help where they can. Index Coop will also see benefit as Telegram is one of the most important social media platforms for community building and discussions of any DAO or cryptocurrency project.
Looking forward to hearing the community’s thoughts and opinions.
Update on Implementation
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So far, we are going to have two administrators for the Telegram; Brian (@sixtykeys) and Jimmy (@Jimmy)
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We have already started the official Telegram announcement channel, Telegram: Contact @indexcoop, and we encourage all community members to join. A discussion group has also been made, but has been set to private, until a later date.
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The administrators have set up the following rules for the channel and the group, these rules are based on the guiding principles of the Index Coop, as well as rules from other community channels.
- Maintain Decorum - Feel free to talk about all things Index Coop in the main discussion group. Limit discussion to crypto, financial markets/products, and projects affiliated with the Index Coop - but keep all messages civil.
- Golden Rule - No discrimination, no profanity, no harmful language, no shaming or insulting others. Treat everyone with respect and an open mind.
- No Inappropriate Behavior - This includes, but is not limited to: personal attacks, threats of violence, gossip, slurs of any kind, posting people’s private information. Lead by example and treat others as you’d like yourself to be treated.
- No Spamming, Trolling, Shilling, or Scamming - Light self-promotion is fine but please do not spam the channel with self-serving messages, shills, or low effort content. No shilling, no FUD, no misleading information.
- Inappropriate posts - No pornography, discussion of politics, self-promotion, referral links, pump and dump “signals”, impersonation, tax evasion, or other illegal activity.
- Strikes & Bans - Anyone found to be directly in violation of the above rules will be issued a warning. If this behavior continues, this will result in immediate suspension/ban at the discretion of the moderators.
- Introduction to the Telegram channel has already been made, and Coop announcements will go live starting today.