[DAO:5f9e020] Retroactive Grant: Morph

Governance
1

by 0x8b257b97c0e07e527b073b6513ba8ea659279b61 (Morph)

Should the following $4,800 grant in the Social Media Content category be approved?

Abstract

Hello!

I am proposing a retroactive grant for the Decentraland research/marketing/livestreaming/evangelism that I have participated in over the last 2 years.

While I plan to continue my work well into the future, this grant is purely for retroactive purposes to recover a portion of the cost incurred in both time and funding.

Grant size

4,800 USD in DAI

Project duration

1 month

Beneficiary address

0x8B257B97C0e07E527B073b6513ba8Ea659279b61

Email address

morphbot2000@gmail.com

Description

I hope to ask for an amount that is smaller than the value I have personally brought to Decentraland, here are a list of contributions I believe should be considered.

Twitter marketing - twitter.com/morph_bot

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Decentraland post reaching over 100K impressions and over 2 years of metaverse coverage, this content is positive and often acts as a counterpoint to misinformation.

Avatar Interop research

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After investigating VRM in 2021, I was able to successfully modify the DCL avatar into VRM format, this research proved invaluable in testing the viability of DCL-VRM and was my main motivation for gathering community sentiment for implementation:

I continue this work by providing technical implementation concepts for shapekeys/jigglebones for increased avatar expressions and upcoming VR social requirements.

DCL standards propagation

One of my core initiatives has been to step outside Decentraland and attempt to build bridges with other metaverse standards groups:

  • Voicing DCL standards and implementations at M3Org (https://twitter.com/m3org)
  • Giving technical presentations on avatar composability to groups such as MSF (https://metaverse-standards.org/) and OMI(https://omigroup.org/)
  • Covering events such as Metaverse Fashion week to external parties within metaverse orgs, containing members from MSFT/Meta etc.
  • Marketing DCL avatars via interoperability and attempting to build understanding with previously hostile groups such as VRChat

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Consistent Live Stream

MorphBotTV has been a consistent stream promoting DCL every Thursday for coming up two years. This show is now one of the longest running DCL livestreams and serves as a valuable marketing resource for both DCL avatars & the platform itself, here are some rough stats:

Weekly top-3 event, 2 years running

I founded Diamond Hands Thursdays as a way to livestream Decentraland and foster a community event, after several months of organizing this event I was able to legitimize it via DG where they upgraded it with a verified schedule and music acts/prizes - it continues as the staple of my livestream as I host a table every Thursday and is often found in the Top 3 most active scenes.

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DCL Avatars in the mainstream

MorphBot will be appearing for non-profit in a mainstream triple-A game alongside SpongeBob and other major IP characters thanks to DCL’s unique IP system, he is a boss character in the story mode that must be beaten multiple times.

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Roadmap and milestones

As this grant is retroactive, I hope the milestones and work above speaks for itself. I believe my presence evangelizing DCL in external metaverse groups has had a positive impact on how Decentraland is viewed in the larger metaverse community, as well as propagating our standards and concepts beyond the platform itself.

As I am a smaller streamer, I have proposed the grant with this in mind and attempted to keep the value to a fair market rate. I do believe I have brought consistent value as mentioned above, and that it has been a successful marketing endeavor, albeit at a smaller scale than many influencer level initiatives.

Finally, I believe having a DCL avatar in a mainstream video game (Over 1,000,000 races during Beta wave 1) will be a significant presence in yet another non-metaverse community, potentially leading to further excitement around DCL’s wearables engine and VRM avatars.

Whether this grant is successful or not, I will always continue to stream and attempt to improve Decentraland’s avatar system. I hope that I can continue to bring value to this space and others, as it has done much for me as well.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like
2

Abstaining as it is my own grant.

3

This retroactive grant is truly deserved. Morph has consistently and effectively raised awareness about Decentraland through high-quality, engaging, and easily understandable content. The requested amount is also very reasonable.

Additionally, I just want to add that his contributions to the Decentraland ecosystem extend beyond the scope of the grant request. He has proven to be an invaluable member of the community, consistently displaying professionalism and dedication when providing feedback and contributing to discussions on Financials, Platform, and Strategic Planning. For me, it’s more than evident that he possesses a deep understanding of the platform and all these topics and adds significant value to the DAO and Decentraland as a whole.

2 Likes
4

If only Fehz voted on Grants :smiling_face_with_tear:

but anyone who doesn’t think Morph has contributed more value to the dao and dcl then he is asking for simply hasn’t been paying attention.

1 Like
5

I respect Morph alot and I believe the amount he is reqeusting is a bit low considering how much he has done for dcl already, but yeah thats up to him <3

1 Like
6

I am a big supporter of Morph. He is extremely intelligent and dedicated to this platform. I do not want to vote No - and so I simply won’t vote.

I don’t think that Social Media content is appropriate for retroactive payments and I think this would set a bad precedent to what is acceptable in the DAO. If it were a useable piece of software that delivers undeniable benefits to users, then by all means; retroactive payments. But requesting payment for delivering traffic via social media should not qualify.

Instead, I think this should be used as a track record in asking for additional funding moving forward. I would gladly vote yes to employ Morph as a Social Media Content Creator.

I can see that this proposal is likely to pass and I’m okay with that - but as per the reasoning above I will not be in direct support.

7

While you are perfectly in the right to have this opinion, as creators trying to do what is best by the DAO and honor what others have suggested in the past, the bi-polar nature of trying to please a DAO voting populace is so frustrating.

Some people: Go out and prove your worth and if it is valid, we will pay you then

Some other people: retro grants are bad and I won’t support them.

So brutal.

Not calling you or anyone else “bi-polar”

but as people trying to ask for funding to help the platform, it seems genuinely impossible to please the voters.

and I just want to call this out, since the voting population is so easily influenced, I’m sure many will read your comment and forget that 6 months ago they probably agreed that retro grants were a better option then gambling someone can follow through on quality content.

1 Like
8

Retro grants are a better option than gambling with software development. I’m not sure that discussion was ever pushed for social media influenc0rs.

Even you yourself created a grant for future writing endeavors - not retroactively. I remember because I voted yes and I think it’s the proper way to go about Social Media content.

1 Like
9

Cheers for input!

I mostly agree with what has been written here, and for what it’s worth, I feel that the social media aspect of this proposal is probably it’s weakest aspect and is a large reason why I have only priced that portion at $850 for ~24 months of marketing.

Overall, I don’t think tweet impressions have a massive impact, but I do believe that proving a minimum reach of 6-figures has merit when combined with the other initiatives I have taken.

I do ask you consider that the $850 marketing budgeted also includes multiple presentations given to interop groups such as MSF/OMI, as well as on-campus presentations at large companies (such as Microsoft/Meta) - although I’m unable to share these due to doxing restrictions so I can understand not considering these.

1 Like
10

Thank you @Morph - and I’ll reiterate that it’s not that you are not worth it, because to me you 100% are.

My major take-away point is that Social Media should not support retroactive payments. Not for you, me, nor anyone else.

1 Like
11

Perfectly reasonable, as always.

Just feels like any work should be eligible for retroactive payment, if the work is effective.

If anything, I think voting to support Morph’s retroactive payment is setting a pretty high bar for anyone trying to get any grant in social media going forward, especially retro active ones.

2 Likes
12

56 subscribers on youtube

13

Abstained for the reasons mentioned by @DOCTORdripp. This can set a bad precedent of everyone requesting social media retroactive funds for all their efforts.

1 Like
14

To be honest I get the points, but considering that morph has done already done so much unpaid work for dcl aside from just this grant makes me vote yes personally.

And I believe 100% that after this grant he will continue to do so.

15

Damnn this is pro gamer move, fair play

16

I think this opens the door for many of us that have been creating content around decentraland to get retroactive grants. In the same way, I am not in favor of purchasing equipment for grantees to create content (laptops, cameras, microphones, etc). Unless we are going to create a system to award all creators and develop a criteria for who and how much to award, I prefer to not give out retroactive grants for work where there was never an initial agreement for payment in the first place.

1 Like
17

Morph has moved mountains for this platform. His content is engaging and backed by a strong understanding of the financial system. When he speaks, I listen. I’m voting abstain for now, because I’m weary of grants that ask for back-pay. I think it’s a valuable conversation for the community to begin having though. Morph deserves it, but like Cheddar and others said above, this is a slippery slope that we might be stepping foot on.

18

Hi all!

Thank you for the feedback, to be honest I was a little surprised as I had always thought of retroactive grants to be the best way to evaluate a users impact, and whether they were deserving of a grant.

Firstly, yes, I understand and agree, we do not want to be handing out grants to users because they had a single twitter post pop off, but do we really not want to entertain the idea of retroactively rewarding people who have put in thousands of hours of work for free because of a precedence?

I held off submitting this proposal for a long time, mostly because I was completely new at game & avatar development two years ago, and did not feel I had the skillset to do Decentraland justice, so I squirrelled away and continued building what I could as I learned.

Recently, I have had some incredibly solid feedback from people both in metaverse groups, and in professional settings, that made me realize that finally, the work I am doing has had a substantially positive impact, and added value not just to Decentraland, but to many other connected verticals (VTuber streaming, interoperability, and building bridges with ‘Web 2’ groups).

Finally, I feel confident asking for this grant as I am certain the value I have brought far exceeds the portion of funds I am asking for, and as far as I can tell, most of the abstainers feel the same way.

Truthfully, the DAO is already leaking funds for what often amounts to zero impact projects, I believe this grant can be a north star for comparisons of retroactively funding people who put in consistent work and persevered through the less glamourous times in web3 - if someone were to ask for a grant for streaming - I’ve funded that at what I believe to be a fair comparison - show me another Decentraland streamer who has streamed weekly for two years to over 20 concurrent viewers, hosting an event in the top 3 most active scenes every time - all whilst never asking for a grant, and I will happily vote for them to receive a similar amount.

19

I’m glad you brought this up!

The youtube is simply for long term storage of VODs and single-use marketing content, I definitely don’t expect to be getting a grant based on youtube subs.

However, I think this highlights another issue - the viewing audience for Decentraland is extremely small - it is nearly impossible to achieve triple digit viewers, because we don’t have 100 people who are interesting in watching a Decentraland stream, this is a constant effort to grow this vertical and increase that number, but it is an uphill battle.

For context, my ‘events’ streams, such as one year anniversary and birthday, hit over 70 concurrent viewers each, this showcased that there is a larger audience out there that can be converted to Decentraland content viewer, and a slow upwards grind in concurrent viewers over this year reinforces that.

Finally, simply as an example of how difficult consistently streaming in Decentraland is - I have done streams for two other games - both of these streams hit 50 concurrent viewers with nearly zero marketing or effort - these viewers were directly exposed to Decentraland & Decentraland avatars, but it goes to show just how difficult growing an audience in this niche is that I can immediately double my audience by streaming something else - however, someone has to stream Decentraland, or the overall stream base will never grow for anyone, if we want to see the types of audience numbers that other larger verticals have, we need to grow it over time and cultivate it, it will not just appear suddenly.

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I believe this, on top of the research performed to get to that level, has had a solid impact on the Decentraland ecosystem and how the larger metaverse views us, and is why I am asking for a grant.

20

I do want to entertain the idea of rewarding people who put in many hours of work for Decentraland… but not by giving out individual grants with arbitrary amounts, no financial reporting, time sheets, or quantified data. There should be established a framework to award all creators based on a criteria.