and this ladies and gentlemen is why we can’t have nice things here at DCL
dude this is the first proposal you’ve ever commented on 
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We appreciate the feedback @dax The magic of a DAO is everyone can have their voice heard
The downfall is that this also means overall growth of a platform like DCL will be much slower than other approaches as everyone has different risk tolerances and overall experience, which is fine.
Setting up principles first like to support builders to add value long-term is a key pillar to growth of any virtual world. Anyone who holds land, especially in a virtual world should put creators at the top of the list of importance as that drives THE value of their assets.
No builders of experiences = no content = no users = no value.
I’d like to add a little bit more here. I can totally understand some reservations around a larger sum for new ppl here. Especially for not having run any contests in the space. But when we look at the DAO funds ask here compared to the pool of money that the DAO has to pass around, this amount is mere drops in the bucket.
I do believe some of the risks taken with a project like this and the time frame will be a test to how we can and should vote on proposals of the this size and capacity. And I will def make sure to go to the town halls to keep up on the project over the timeframe myself personally, and I suggest all do the same too.
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There are a lot of nice things in DCL and also a great Community. Maybe you should take some time to explore & discover.
Everybody has the same possibilities. Blender is a free and open 3D Creation Software. So if you are able to create great things, there is a good chance to make money out of it.
There are also some ppl here how are willing to let you use their Land for your Content / Buildings / Games - but for this you have to be active in the DCL Community and take time for Networking.
From nothing comes nothing
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$120,000 grant to be approved to fund Builder Competitions for DCL creators.
This proposal is now in status: PASSED.
Voting Results:
- Yes 87% 6,678,850 VP (34 votes)
- No 13% 1,072,714 VP (7 votes)
$120,000 grant to be approved to fund Builder Competitions for DCL creators.
This proposal has been ENACTED by a DAO Committee Member (0xfe91c0c482e09600f2d1dbca10fd705bc6de60bc)
Vesting Contract Address: 0x025593BdD1FA70806F68A2Fbff11a070D30cF3Eb
View Transaction
Really excited about this however it is asking everyone to submit all there personal info like passport or diverse license to enter. anyway builders can enter this contest without submitting this? since i have been hacked before and all my life savings stolen and have not given out this info before lol. so giving this away is making everyone even more prone to hacking. if not all good thanks is worth the ask.
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DCL DAO - Grant Update #1 (Date: 08.20.2022)
This post will not only serve as an update regarding the DAO grant, but also as a general clarification of SandStorm’s mission and how we are approaching the Decentraland community. Very exciting update and launch of the first contest!
I. DCL DAO Grant Update
a. Successful launch of the first DCL competition
As previously announced in the DCL DAO discord as well as in our call with Zino from the DCL Grant support squad, we launched the first Sandstorm DCL Contest on the 15th of August:
https://twitter.com/sandstormmeetup/status/1559251128025587712
b. Minor adjustments to prize pool distribution
We made some minor adjustments regarding the prize pool distribution.
PRIZEPOOL update:
TOTAL: 5000 $USDC+ TOP 3 get their assets included on our future DCL SandStorm hub
1st place: 2500 $USDC
2nd place: 1250 $USDC
3rd place: 750 $USDC
4th place: 350 $USDC
5th place: 150 $USDC
With the past structure (initial proposal), only the top 2 people would be rewarded, the third, compensated, and the rest wouldn’t get anything. This is not an optimal model to funnel growth within the ecosystem. If you want to grow the builder community, you need to reward people who decide to spend time on the tools / learn the inner workings of DCL - essentially compensating newcomers for their time while offering juicy incentives for OGs.
Feedback + clarification
Security: our platform went through multiple security audits by Certik where we scored high on their security scoring system. SandStorm is listed on Certik’s 24/7 security monitoring system Skynet that can be followed here: SandStorm - CertiK Security Leaderboard
Verification: We saw there were questions about our 2 level verification process. To clarify for everyone, on our platform there’s two levels builders can opt-in to receive. Level 1 verification allows builders to verify they’re a creator in a couple steps to mint assets on their profile. In order to submit bids on all build proposals and enter builder contest that involved payouts, we require builders to go through a level 2 verification process. Its simple to complete and the vast majority of builders are excited to go through the 10 minute process given the opportunity. However, we understand there will always be users that need more clarification and will want to remain on level 1 verification.
Countries: We work with builders all over the world and like all other projects and businesses, in order to operate we follow international sanction laws. With 30+ sanctioned countries currently, and having thousands of new builders on the platform, we’ve teamed up with the same 3rd party partner that The Sandbox and Animoca Brands uses for all their gaming experiences, Blockpass. For those interested, here is the list of sanctioned countries Blockpass keeps updated What are Sanctions Lists?
II. SandStorm’s expansion to Decentraland has begun!
On top of the DCL grant program, we have made major steps toward the DCL community which we think will be greatly beneficial to the entire ecosystem. Here’s a rundown of everything we did over the past few weeks.
a. Hiring a DCL native expert to help us in house
With the addition of DCLcurations to the SandStorm team, we have increased our roster of education focused streamers.
DCLcurations will host weekly educational streams about Decentraland onboarding, blender and be a co-host for the Builder contest result streams alongside Oscom.
With close to 50 viewers on his first stream, DCLcurations has had a good start and we’re planing to progressively increase production over the next 12 months.
DCLcurations has also been very helpful to the team by introducing us to key different actors in the ecosystem and deepening our understanding of Decentraland.
b. The launch of our first DCL build proposals
2 weeks ago, SandStorm had the biggest launch ever with the introduction of the build proposal system. This allows brands to directly submit build proposals to the marketplace where DCL builders can bid on the work. Builders are actively submitting bids to proposals now and getting hired for builds on the platform every week.
Here is a video thread going over the proposal system in detail:
https://twitter.com/sandstormmeetup/status/1559632553396633600
This build proposal system will greatly facilitate metaverse onboarding for brands and we’re very excited about the first few DCL specific builds. There are 20+ lined up proposals coming into DCL over the next few months that we’re excited to share with everyone.
c. Future plans
Over the past few weeks, we were very active within the Decentraland community:
We participated in multiple events, reached out to many different creators in order to introduce ourselves and get to know each other, had great discussions with different key actors such as Agustin pagano who’s working on the verified partners registry and reached out to multiple blender communities in order to push Web2 onboarding in the metaverse.
We are also planning to host monthly events in Decentraland in order to create more hype for the ecosystem - essentially combining the Builders contest results announcements with an awesome, fast paced stream. Ideally, we would want to highlight key builders within the ecosystem and give them short interviews + the opportunity to introduce their mission to the wider metaverse community.
We are very excited about the collaboration with the DCL DAO over the next few months and are looking forward to your feedback in the comments.
Feel free to reach out to us: bryan@sandstorm.co , oscom@sandstorm.co
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Hey aaron, feel free to check our reply above to get more information on that topic 
thanks, appreciate the explanation however still will not be submitting this information nor will I recommend anyone to do so as you guys asked me to in DM, since it still leaves everyone that does open to attacks or hacks. Wish you guys the best, and hope it all works out. Also look forward to all your continued success. I just obviously can’t be apart of it unless there is an alternative method used here to verify your contestants. Thanks again.
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and i still maintain that it should have been mentioned in the original vote - obviously @sandstorm knew about this detail but chose to leave it out
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Thanks for the DMs and feedback @AaronLeupp & @dax. As mentioned in our update the majority of builders haven’t had an issue with level 1 and level 2 as they see the long-term opportunity here, but we understand verification to receive funds on exchanges or marketplaces isn’t for everyone.
That said, similar to other venture-backed projects we’re going to abide by international sanctions and AML laws when sending out prizes. If an anything changes we’ll be sure to let you both know
I started creating my submission fo the 2nd Decentraland builder contest, but I am horrified by your privacy policy - “We may share some or all of your Personal Data with our affiliates”. So you are going to share this information about me to who knows what companies?
Given/Other Name(s)
Family Name
Selfie
Date of birth
Address
Email
Ethereum address
Polygon (Matic) address
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I would suggest that this is a good candidate for grant revocation
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I did the KYC, but after that I got another suprise - I had to mint my asset on their website that I wanted to submit for the contest which required approving two transactions.
Overall this contest is a great opportunity and motiviation for someone like me who has just started learning Blender, but I do wish it was without KYC and asset minting.
KYC has not been a requirement in any other DCL contest I have participated like Video contest and Game Jam. These things should have been mentioned in the proposal.
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Thanks for the comments @Shiny
Glad you see the overall long-term opportunity that these builder contests provide to the entire community. Our team is always open to answering any questions you have on our Discord. Happy to help.
We’ve had extremely positive feedback from builders to the point where we’re seeing dozens of new builders come from multiple other virtual worlds to learn how to create in DCL just to join these contests.
Curious about your concerns about minting assets on the platform to submit them for the contest voting, streams, and judging, what is the concern there?
Hi Steve, @Oscom
Thank your for the last call, it was very helpful and was a pleasure to share honest arguments among each other.
I will start with the context, then our recommendation to the DAO Committee and last but not least, our commitment:
- Your team has requested a Grant, Tier 5 up to 120.000 USD, for “holding builder competitions to engage DCL creators and are looking to secure a grant to distribute to the winners of these competitions. 100% of the grant money will go to builder competition contestants.”
- Your roadmap to accomplish this: 24 contests in 12 months. 2 contests per month and you will distribute 5k per contest.
- The community has believed in this project and voted for yes.
- Your Grant started last July 12th and your Vesting Contract was enacted the same day.
- You have released 42.478k (wallet in DAI)
After one month, you published your first update, and to have more information about the contests and the uses of the funds, I contacted your team and they gave me detailed information, with the transactions tx payments of the winners of the first contest and a roadmap with dates of the next ones. Last, they told me that the 40k were claimed to transfer to USDC.
I saw your first competition on youtube and your Team explained that all the assets were built in Blender and for the following challenges the team will ask “them to deploy the build within Decentraland as well in the conditions to make sure it works in there to”
My conclusion with the inputs mentioned was:
- Your grant is alive, has passed two (2) months and we only have 1 contest of creators that have been built in blender but you didn’t show how this can work on Decentraland. Your team worked on this and for that reason, you will start to request the contestants to deploy the build within Decentraland. This is great.
- You have a twelve (12) months project but your vesting contract is for six (6) months. So, we need to extend this period to see more contests results, because in two months of your grant we only have one contest finished that rewarded the winners
- After this first approach, your team and our squad arrived at the agreement to have a video call meeting. In the middle, your team made the third update (because the second was missed).
In this video call, you proposed to increase the payments of the prize and make twelve (12) contests according to the period of the vesting contract. However, today the concern still goes on. The Grants Support Squad needs to see the contest’s results.
The Grant Support Squad is alive because the community voted too, as well as it did with your Grant. And our mission is to “follow up with grant beneficiaries and support their progress. The goal of the project is to guarantee the effectiveness of the Grants Program, holding grantees accountable for their projects, and signaling to the DAO if a vesting contract needs to be revoked.“
So, our recommendation is that until you show progress with the contests promised, we are suggesting the DAO Committee stop the contract from vesting as a preventive action.
- What is the tool that the DAO Committee has to do this today? A precautionary revocation.
- We are aware of the negative connotation of the word “revocation”. For that reason, we sent you an email with two alternative ways out to discuss in the video call. Then, as I mentioned, you proposed another one.
- However we didn´t arrive at an agreement so the recommendations remain the same.
- But, from our side we want to be clear that these concerns only will be solved with time. Time for the contests to be done and for the results to be shown.
For that reason, we still recommend the DAO Committee stop vesting the contract assigned until your team can show the results of the next eight (8) contests (January 2023). Using this mechanism, the funds vested will be dropped directly to the beneficiary wallet and the team will be able to pay the prize promised.
This email will be posted on your proposal with the recommendation to the DAO Committee (@yemel @HPrivakos )
Regards.
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The vesting contract has been revoked, releasing to the beneficiary a total of 56,620 DAI (47% of the total funds requested).
This is a preventive measure, the DAO committee is willing to re-create the vesting contract when the beneficiary of the grant shows progress near to the 47% of the promised roadmap.
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Thank you for the time yesterday @Zino
I understand your technical limitations of 6-month vesting with 12-month grants and the difficult position you’re in to pause funds for DCL builders.
Based on our call with the support squad team, our team, and the large land owners who supported this grant we learned a few things:
-
The large land owners that supported this are alarmed by this decision to pause/revoke any efforts to incentivize builders creating in DCL. This should be the last component to de-incentivize for DCL
-
That it’s still believed we’ve only completed contest #1 but we’re on contest #4 with over 50 builder submissions so far. Here is the DAO promoting contest #4 alongside us
(DAO’s tweet from September for Contest #4 https://twitter.com/DecentralandDAO/status/1574908041371144193) -
No answer was provided to land owners or our team on the question of how hundreds of builders’ work will be qualified at the end of 6 months other than "the team will ask builders to deploy the build within Decentraland as well in the conditions to make sure it works in there to.”
-
A noticed no flexibility and choosing to revoke funds from builders is a big statement to all land owners in the community. It’s unfortunate to see the DAOs credibility with land owners, companies, and builders risked for merely 60k DAI as prizes for builder contests.
-
Based on our conversations and hearing this convo was similar/identical to other community-approved grants being “revoked” there is a strong probability across the board all “precautionary revocations” will just become revocations after a centralized arbitrary review.
With all these learnings, despite 50+ builders submitting their incredible work for the first 3 contests and no clear and concise way of judging their success based on our call, this came across as the DCL DAO treasury is in trouble. When 50+ builders create incredible-themed assets for DCL in such a short period of time, this should have been an exciting move in the right direction for the DAO but it’s clear there isn’t a measurement of what successful “results” means once again.
As discussed,100% of these grant funds go to DCL builders and our company agreed to incur all the costs to create the graphics, promotions, builder submission management, weekly streams, management of distributions, hiring experts, all the admin, and much much more that goes into each contest that is at no expense to the DAO. So, an adjustment in the community-approved funding roadmap logically requires an adjustment in our management/expenses of these contests.
With this abrupt change in the community-approved funding roadmap we’ve designed for 12 months, today we will be updating the contest roadmap to 1 contest per month at a prize pool of 18,873k DAI (released funds / 3 contests) instead of the previous operationally heavy 4 contests per month (5k DAI per contest) . Our decision to update the roadmap based on the DAO committee’s decision aligns well and will both improve the 6-month arbitrary “results review” in January 2023 and we’ll engage with the wider Blender community to drive more adoption.
Art by these incredible builders is subjective. We need to assume any arbitrary judgment of these builders’ hard work in January 2023 means the grant will remain paused/revoked for builders. The majority of supporters of this grant have agreed our operations and management expenses here need to adjust to this new roadmap.
All that being said, after discussing with multiple supporters of these wildly successful builder contests already to create content in Decentraland, WE ARE STILL EXCITED to continue these contests at a higher prize pool for builders each month to support the adoption of DCL through to January 2023.
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