[DAO:3e07e00] Sugar Club operation costs 2023

[dao]

by 0x474543b99438a978b39d39d8983723eb5ff9196b (SugarClub)

Should the following Tier 4: up to $60,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Content Creator category be approved?

Abstract

Sugar Club is asking for your vote and support to help fund its current and future operation for 2023.

Sugar Club is one of the very first clubs deployed in Decentraland (since beta in 2019) that started exploring the possibilities of live entertainment, art, and fashion.

In 3 year of operations we greatly contributed to the growth of DCL , worked with International artist from the NFT community as well as musicians/DJs . Notably acclaimed artists Coldie3D, RobnessV2, Bootsy Collins, GraffitiKings , Panther Modern, Connie Digital and more.

With this grant Sugar Club will be able to operate more efficiently while making sure that the quality of our events and designs remain high and engaging as well as having room for expansion.

Grant size

59,840 USD

Beneficiary address

0xf8d8e8dCA72D41abA3E24518194E9eaF03fdDa86

Email address

sugarclub@protonmail.com

Description

Here is our total budget requirements for 2023

2023	operation costs
Audio / video servers	3000
Software	2860
Hardware	3980
Event management	24000
SDK game dev	12000
Artist onboarding budget	12000
Miscellaneous	2000
TOTAL 2023	59840 USD

summary of the operation costs followed by more info:

Audio broadcasting (Icecast) and video streaming hosting + servers

Software subscriptions and paid digital creation tools

Hardware (DJ controller / mixer for live events, 2nd laptop during events separate from main desktop )

Event creation and management ( designing Art posters, POAP delivery, promotion , hosting artists, live music mixing)

Wearable and emote production (mocap suit , paid software)

Upgrading and maintaining Sugar Club models and SDK code

Budget for paid gigs with DJs

Online broadcasting music licensing fee

Event creation and management:

I am the sole creator and manager of events at SugarClub at the moment.

That includes creating the theme, designing the posters, updating the club to the relevant theme with animations and art, hosting the event, promoting on social, organizing the airdrops and giveaways on twitter.

I plan on creating 2 branded events per month with paid dj gigs / and NFT artists featured at our gallery ( included renown artists from the early NFT scene )

With a bigger budget I can start looking for a community manager that could take a load off my shoulders while I focus on the main content creation.

Metaverse Electronic Music Event aka MEME

I have a plan to create and organize an inclusive Metaverse Electronic Music Event (MEME) with some popular venues in Decentraland, fostering exchange and collaboration for the clubbing scene in Decentraland.

Part of the Event creation budget would go towards leading the initiative and organizing the first event in 2023…

Artist / DJs onboarding

I would like to have a budget going forward that allows me to pay artists a fair price in exchange for great DJ sets. Sugar Club is welcoming existing DJs from our web3 network ( Bufalo , Greencross, Gucci Toe, Alien DJ , Panther Modern, Mighty33, Superflat , AmbieNFT , Mumbai Science , GraffitKings, EzzyLand , Eclectic Method , DJ Laroc, DJ LethalSkillz, Bootsy Collins etc.) .

I also want to explore onboarding other DJs and electronic producers by leveraging some of my existing contacts internationally. I have contacts in Europe, notably France, Belgium, Austria, the UK , Mexico/ South America, as well as South Korea.

Game dev

Last year updates have included a new video screen projection code from the SDK repository, upgrading the main stage, optimizing textures, colliders, creating a new UI system to interact with, cleaning up all the modules of the code so they are better organized for debugging, and finally overhauling the VIP gate code to include Polygon as well as Ethereum contracts (an essential part of using NFT ticket access on Polygon)

I would love to have a proper budget for game development, to maintain and debug code when necessary but also to be able to hire on demand for specific features such as a gamified experience at the club .

Retroactive costs

I would like to use this grant to fund early hardware such as my mocap suit for emote creation and the 2nd laptop i use to log into DCL

Specification

Budget specification

Servers and streaming

Servers and streaming	operation costs
Audio / video servers	3000
TOTAL	3000 USD

Software

Software	operation costs
Photoshop (graphic tool)	180
Substance Painter texturing (3d model texturing)	212
Blender 3D add-ons (3d modeling tool)	300
Marvelous Designer (digital garment creation)	280
Zrbush sculpting (3d modeling tool)	390
DJ software	99
VJ software	99
Audio library (paid tracks and samples) During Dj sets	1000
Graphic AI generation tools for visuals (graphic tool)	300
TOTAL	2860 USD

more info on software costs

Making 3d content via blender is free, however professional paid tools are essential to help with workflow and quality of delivery.

One example is wearable production. The professional workflow of designing a wearable with very detailed realistic textures is as follow:

Create High Poly model > retopology to low poly model > bake high level details onto low poly > finish texturing on low poly > dcl builder testing

This workflow requires multiple paid software such as:

Zbrush and Marvelous Designer for high resolution garments creation

Retopology add-ons for creating the low poly model

Substance Painter for texturing the garments and baking the details

These Tools are industry standards in 3d creation and are essential for digital fashion creation of high-quality garments.

Other essential paid add-ons for blender include Motion capture retargeting tools for emote creation, Hard surface modeling tools, UV mapping tools etc…

All those subscriptions combined become a workflow that helps content creation tremendously and are essential to operate on a professional level as a digital artist.

Hardware

Hardware	operation costs
Separate Laptop for DCL events (retroactive)	1000
Mocap suit for emote creation (retroactive)	2000
Pro DJ mixer / controller / audio interface	900
Headset	80
TOTAL	3980 USD yearly

We use a main desktop station for our broadcasting, and a smaller laptop to tune into Decentraland during events.

We also need to upgrade to a DJ controller/mixer for live DJ sets and live streaming. Up until now we have only been using a digital DJ interface for our shows.

Event management

Event management	operation costs
Event creation +management + marketing	1500 per month	18000
Community management (to hire)	500 per month	6000
TOTAL		24000 USD yearly

Game dev/ SDK

game dev	operation costs
SDK game dev (part time to hire)	1000 per month	12000
TOTAL		12000 USD yearly

Artist

Artist onboarding	operation costs
Artists/DJ budget	1000 per month	12000
TOTAL		12000 USD yearly

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous	operation costs
Adviser / legal fees	1700
Music license for radio broadcasting	300
TOTAL	2000 USD yearly

GRAND TOTAL 59840 USD year 2023

Personnel

Sugar Club founder (Kay)

Twitter

Linktree

discord: @sugarclub.eth#9693

Creative director of sugar club and NFT artist. In charge of content creation, event management , curation, marketing , Dj.

Hprivakos : developer

discord: @HPrivakos#4268

In charge of server upgrade, code base, technical advisor. Well known coder of Decentraland projects. Active since the early DCL beta. Hprivakos has been helping SugarClub since the early days.

JessieJess : assistant- advisor

discord: @Jess | NonFungible.com#0165

Jess Ford is has been participating in blockchain projects since 2013 and NFTs since 2017. During the past five years she has been deep in some of the most notable NFT projects namely Decentraland, the first blockchain metaverse owned by its users and NonFungible.com the worlds biggest and oldest NFT data resource. Meebits DAO Founder and Palm DAO Committee Member - PUNK#6079

Staff to hire part time: Community manager, Game dev.

Roadmap and milestones

Bi-monthly event schedule for the duration of 2023 (or an output of 24 branded events annually +smaller meet up events throughout the year )

Organizing 1 annual community led Electronic music festival in conjunction with other popular venues of DCL (separate from the MVMF event called MEME )

Onboarding new DJs into the metaverse and Decentraland, alongside continuing support for the existing DCL DJs community

Increase the traffic to Sugar Club and create a buzz around the electronic music and clubbing scene in Decentraland in general.

periodic report on the grant status and delivery of the project

For those that don’t know us, i invite you to come to our rave event next week 9th November right before the MVMF festival to discover who we are.

SugarClub EVOLVE techno series w/ Greencross | Decentraland Events

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

[Tudamoon]

I accidently edited this post from my phone rather than replying, so I did my best to restore it to the original. Below is originally what was said:

@dao

Sugar Club is one of the very first clubs deployed in Decentraland (since beta in 2019) that started exploring the possibilities of live entertainment, art, and fashion.

In 3 year of operations we greatly contributed to the growth of DCL , worked with International artist from the NFT community as well as musicians/DJs

Haven’t seen Sugar Club around much this past year. All of a sudden, the last few months you are back around. Can you share the list of events, as well as the dates for all of the events you had this year?

Can you share your plan in detail on how you plan to become sustainable? Will this be a 1-time grant proposal?

@dao

With this grant Sugar Club will be able to operate more efficiently while making sure that the quality of our events and designs remain high and engaging as well as having room for expansion.

Can you share your plan in detail on how you plan to become sustainable? Will this be a 1-time grant proposal?

@dao

|Hardware|operation costs|

|Separate Laptop for DCL events (retroactive)|1000|
|Mocap suit for emote creation (retroactive)|2000|

Will you provide the receipts for these?

@dao

periodic report on the grant status and delivery of the project

In this periodic report, Will you commit to sharing all invoices and receipts?

[Eibriel]

Voting yes, Sugar Club is an important element of the community!

[deidre]

Agree! I am more familiar with Sugar Club for their awesome OG ETH wearables vs. club events. Must preserve the provenance!

[AaronLeupp]

easy YES from me. Sugar club has been throwing epic events for a very long time and look forward to all the rest they do!

[gtrfrost]

Just voted Yes. Good luck

[Tudamoon]

You didn’t answer these questions above. Instead you decided to add attacks against me, a community member of this DAO. Will you please answer these:

@Tudamoon

Can you share your plan in detail on how you plan to become sustainable? Will this be a 1-time grant proposal?

@dao

|Separate Laptop for DCL events (retroactive)|1000|
|Mocap suit for emote creation (retroactive)|

Will you provide the receipts for these?

@dao

periodic report on the grant status and delivery of the project

In this periodic report, Will you commit to sharing all invoices and receipts?

[Tudamoon]

Hey fellow community members,

First off, this is not about me, this is about this grant. I am all about supporting those in the community who bring positive value. Contrary what others will say or believe, I am a person who cares about this community and I have been here since February 2021. I am newer to the DAO, however the last months have been discouraging to see these money grabs without any transparency to them.

I actually was a paid supporter of Sugar Club so I do believe my story should be heard and I do believe the lash outs at me for asking simple questions is uncalled for. Before I go into further details of the story, please review these:

@SugarClub

@Tudamoon this is the last answer you will get from me

So are you refusing to answer more questions from a community member?

@SugarClub

Furthermore i have blocked you on all my socials for these reasons:

Your defamatory claims that i am a scam

First off, can any members of the community share why this should be flagged and censored? I provided hard evidence in that discord discussion proving otherwise. So this was more to silence the evidence, because like 8 of my posted happened to get flagged and hidden. Kind of convenient, right?

@SugarClub

Your attempt at ridiculing me in your Dao troll post by referencing directly original key aspects of my original proposal (Internet costs, Hardware and education ) https://forum.decentraland.org/t/dao-d979d15-education-high-speed-internet-hardware-for-marketing-campaign/16344/18*

If you go check this out, there was a ton of narcissistic style claims made that the grant was about them. You will find no proof of that in the proposal.

@SugarClub

And finally your threats of legal action against some of my long time collaborators Metazone.

No threats were made. They will not provide a Registered Agent Address. They claim no wrongdoing, however, then why as a business are they afraid to give their Registered Agent Address information out?

---

---

Back to the story above. I have around 10k VP in both of my wallets. I am just a small community member asking questions of transparency to improve our system. To me when someone overlooks a community member’s questions, it shows a lack of transparency. I am just someone who enjoys the communities of Decentraland and being a user of it.

I understand where I stand. I cant force any grant proposer to answer my questions, nor can I force any member of the community to vote any way. However, all I do ask from my fellow community members is that they consider my questions as valuable, just as I do theirs, whether I agree with their opinions or not.

Here is the story of why I no longer support sugarclub, due to the feeling of being rugged by them:
As for @SugarClub and my previous support of them. In April or May of 2021, I purchased a floating billboard from Sugarclub for 500 MANA (probably around $325) with the promise that the “Sugar Ad Network” would provide Advertising on my land parcels automatically based on the amount of foot-traffic I provide. However, when I confronted Sugar Club, they mentioned that it was up to me to find advertisers. That is NOT what was advertised.

Sugar Club claims that I bought a Billboard Meta for 500 MANA that I have to find my own advertisers for, however, I have no ability to control the billboards or what goes on them because they are in a centralized deployment agency called Metazone. They get authorized to deploy it on your land and you do NOT have a way to manipulate it or choose what ads go on it. You only have the ability to change the placement of it on your land parcel.

Anyways, while I have been rugged in the past, I took this as a rug and considered it a loss. The problem now arises that these people are now asking for money from the grant after basically rugging me. I asked for a refund to see if Sugarclub would do me right and was told I need to talk to Metazone. I contacted Metazone and asked for a refund and they pointed back to Sugarclub. Meanwhile, I noticed that Metazone did not have a Terms and Conditions listed on their site or a means of contacting them besides Discord and such. But no legal way to contact them. So I asked them for their Registered Agent address, since they claim to have done nothing wrong, but they won’t provide it. So to me, that shows guilt. If they were an honest business, they would provide that even after asking 3-4 times to them directly, while they ignored the question.

Look like I said, this is NOT about me getting my money back or making a bad decision, this is about Sugarclub not being transparent and their ability to show the lack of responsibilty for a misleading or scam product in their past. I am just a small fish in Decentraland, I hope you as a community member considers this in your decision.

[Tudamoon]

@SugarClub

Actually i did, multiple times over the course of the last 4 days.

If you did, why can’t you share your answer?

@SugarClub

You are actually taking a lot of space here with your comments as well as in my pre-proposal.

You are asking for grant money. I am allowed to be here.

@SugarClub

You have a history of proposing troll grants for " Fun " . However you are indirectly damaging the credibility of other serious grants by doing so. I am not the first person to tell you to stop doing that.

For fun? I am simply showcasing poor uses of grant requests. I guess it was pretty successful since you took out unnecessary parts in yours. And who told me to stop @HPrivakos who you mention here? This is web3. I know you believe in censorship as you have done with my previous truthful comments.

@SugarClub

This is not related to this grant so please stop spamming this thread with it.

This is clearly related, you have sold misleading products in the past. Your reputation is absolutely part of this.

[Tudamoon]

@Tudamoon

@dao

|Separate Laptop for DCL events (retroactive)|1000|
|Mocap suit for emote creation (retroactive)|

Will you provide the receipts for these?

@Tudamoon

@dao

periodic report on the grant status and delivery of the project

In this periodic report, Will you commit to sharing all invoices and receipts?

I am not sure why you cant answer these 2 simple questions with a simple answer of “Yes” or “No.” Instead you avoid a clear answer twice now. If you are transparent answer them.

[Tudamoon]

Done:

Should every grant update require invoices, receipts or explanations of where...

[kingmizomadeit]

I am voting yes. Thats all

[Klockmann]

Voting yes - great and detailed proposal

[YouMack]

This is the easiest YES vote!

[Doug-NFTWorld]

Huge thumbs up. Much love and respect for all that you do for DCL @SugarClub. Here’s to keeping it going for next year and more to come.

[GucciToe]

@SugarClub has proven its value to the community throughout the life of DCL. This is an easy yes from me.

[Tudamoon]

@GucciToe Conflict of interest? Are you going to be one of the DJs? Does your principles matter to you?

[GucciToe]

Calm down, fella. There are currently no plans for me to play a paid show at SugarClub. As a DJ that has played for more than a year of free shows in the space in an effort to help build the community, I am all for performers getting paid for the work they do. What have you done for the community, aside from being the self-appointed DAO gatekeeper. No need to answer.

Also, it’s “do your principles matter to you?”

[AaronLeupp]

hahah @GucciToe has been playing like prob 100+ shows now for free for years in Decentrland. If any operation costs should go to him on this proposal or any other it should be encouraged. His “principles” or whatever, have gone well beyond proven.

[Tudamoon]

@GucciToe

What have you done for the community, aside from being the self-appointed DAO gatekeeper. No need to answer.

Well the problem you have child is you are only thinking in the now. You would be stupid to burn a bridge with me. I myself am not trying to burn bridges except trying to do what is right. The question is will you fall in the ‘right side of history’ or will your past come to haunt you?

If Decentraland moves in the right direction, I will own way more than you will ever imagine. However, right now I am the Top investor of the Holy Ones and am part of the MultiNFT team. Both in Decentraland. I am also a top 100 investor in My Pet Hooligans (if you dont know them yet, you will). I win.

As for my own business, I am in the Web2 Skill gaming industry where people risk money to earn monetary prizes. I also have something I am working on behind the scenes coming soon for the Web3 industry. Just wait and see. If my opinion doesn’t matter as an end user of Decentraland, because I haven’t created anything besides wearables, then maybe you are the problem.

Maybe public policy isnt your thing and that’s ok, but you do need fresh minds with different backgrounds to contribute. If you want everyone to think the same, you are going to see Decentraland stay the same.