Operations · Budget
Cutting community spend by 80% while doing more
Cut monthly community costs from $50K to $10K while keeping events, prizes and payouts running, and built a tool to make payouts faster.
- −80%
- Monthly spend
- $50K → $10K
- Per month
- 1
- Internal payout tool built
Context
Community costs had grown alongside the community. Moderators, prizes, events and conference trips all drew on the same budget, and the market had turned.
The challenge
Bring spend under control without members noticing a drop in quality.
What I did
I took direct ownership of the community budget, including the crypto transactions and payouts for events and prizes. Owning every line made it clear where money was working and where it wasn't.
Manual payouts were slow and easy to get wrong, so I built a multisender: a payout tool used only by the community team. It made rewards faster to send and easier to track.
Conferences such as Permissionless and Token2049 were planned as projects with clear goals, so every trip had to justify its cost.
Results
Monthly community spend fell from $50K to $10K. Events and prizes kept running, and payouts became faster and more reliable for members.
Cost-cutting doesn't have to mean cutting corners. Often the best savings come from better tooling.
- Budget
- Ops
- Tooling