Three short posts, every number sourced. Written 25 September 2026.
These are the sample posts. Each one is a deliverable in the same shape a client receives: a
claim, the number behind it, and the source you can check. Nothing here is an estimate. If you
use any of these figures, check the source — that is the point of writing them down.
Post 1 of 3 · budget side
A DAO marketing budget is $858,863, and 563,943 of it is USDC
SSV Network reported its 2025 actuals against a 4-year DAO budget: marketing target
$1,000,000, actual spend $858,863.18, of which 563,943 USDC and
31,241.51 SSV. It is paid in stablecoin and it is public.
Gitcoin DAO asked for $1,182,814 for the second 2026 tranche, and its published
team structure includes a full-time Marketing Lead. Current treasury
$6,897,677 as of 23 July 2026.
Intersect publishes 99 treasury proposals for 2026. The ones categorised
“Marketing & Brand” run from $1,486,662 (Cardano Activation Program)
to $2,247,472 (Cardano 2030). One of them is literally a content consortium:
“Cardano Content Creator Consortium (C4)”, $365,492.
What a buyer should take from this: the budget is real, the rail is crypto, and
the procurement is public. It is not a market you have to guess the size of.
Sources: forum.ssv.network, MoC Report — Update on the 4-year DAO Budget
(10 Aug 2026). gov.gitcoin.co, 2026 Budget Request Second Tranche (17 Aug 2026).
cardano-drep-dashboard.learncardano.io, 2026 Treasury Proposals.
Post 2 of 3 · price side
The other end of the same market pays $23.34, and the whole board is $708 a month
owockibot publishes its own aggregates: ~182 bounties completed, ~$4,248 USDC paid,
20 unique builders, over 6 months. One of its recurring bounties is to write an X thread
of 4+ tweets for a crypto-native audience. Individual payouts visible on the board: 10, 15 and
35 USDC.
Do that arithmetic yourself:
Figure
Calculation
Value
Average per bounty
4,248 / 182
$23.34
Per builder, 6 months
4,248 / 20
$212
Per builder, per month
4,248 / 20 / 6
$35.40
Entire board, per month
4,248 / 6
$708
What a buyer should take from this: the bottom of the crypto-native content
market pays about the price of a coffee, and a builder working that market earns about $35 a
month. If a quote lands near that number, it is not a discount, it is the market.
Source: owockibot.xyz/bounty, board's own published aggregates. Second-hand
figures claiming an average bounty of $3,400 circulate on content-marketing sites; they do not
survive this arithmetic, so they are not used here.
Post 3 of 3 · the part that decides your vendor
Why the budget goes to vendors with a name, and what to do if you have none
Look at how the money in Post 1 actually lands. Gitcoin's tranche funds a full-time Marketing
Lead. ENS compensates independent directors at 40,000 USDC per year. Arbitrum's delegate
programme pays 300–700 USD per proposal against a quarterly budget of 5,000–15,000,
and the recipients are named organisations such as L2BEAT and Uniswap Delegation, not
unattached vendors. Uniswap's delegate programme pays around 930–1,136 a month.
Every one of those budgets is real and every one of them is captured by something with a track
record. That is not corruption, it is procurement. A buyer spending $858,863 a year cannot
evaluate a supplier from a landing page.
So the honest conclusion, which is not flattering: in this market, being good
is not the binding constraint. Being checkable is. If you are buying, ask for the links:
published work with a date and a source. If you are selling, the work you publish before the
first invoice is the only credential that counts — and a sample with no numbers in it is not
a sample, it is a promise.
Sources: gov.gitcoin.co (team structure). discuss.ens.domains, Next Era of ENS
DAO (30 Jul 2026). forum.arbitrum.foundation, Rewarding Active Delegates — April 2026 Results.
gov.uniswap.org, Uniswap-Arbitrum Delegate Program thread.