THE MONERO MOON NEWSLETTER - Funding

WHAT: The Monero Moon is a 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 is independently published by myself on Medium. I have already published 32 issues. View previous issues 1-32 here. I am in the middle of trialling different newsletter platforms such as Ghost and Substack, however am yet to make the switch to a different platform.

Weekly readership has been varied, and it has appeared that readership increases the more social media promotion gains traction.

Issues from 2018 regularly had on avg 1.5k views per issue, and issues #12 to #32 have averaged 1.2k views per issue. The number of views 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 & #27)

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

WHY: 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, whether it's the latest community update from the developers, or if Monero was featured in a large media publication. And I believe The Monero Moon will help bridge that gap. I believe that the Monero Moon will be extremely beneficial for the growth and adoption of Monero as the newsletter will continue to help spread awareness.

THE PROPOSAL AND MILESTONES: As stated in my previous CCS, as Monero grows in popularity, it takes more and more 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 16th of March until late July 2022, or whenever the CCS is complete. At the current exchange rate of approximately $163USD per XMR based on the 20 day moving average, that comes out to ~$346 per issue which I believe is fair compensation. For example, 1000 readers is equivalent to ~0.34c 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 #34 through #39 - 12 XMR Milestone 2: Publish issues #40 through #45 - 12 XMR Milestone 3: Publish issues #46 through #51 - 12 XMR

There may 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. The newsletter issues will carry on from previous publications. Additionally, at the end of this period of 18 issues published I will re-evaluate whether I shall continue the newsletter.

Cheers, John Foss