[DAO:d12cd46] Update #7 for proposal "Creativity & Growth - Sandstorm Creator platform"

Governance
1

Author: 0x8958bdbeeeeb1a0e3eeec3306e7fc07ca3edd7d8
Update Status: On Time
Project Health: :green_circle: On Track

Introduction

Hey all! Merging both February 2024 & March 2024 updates into one.

Overview:

  • Project Round #2 Completion (Github, Marketing assets, Payouts)
  • Project Round #3 Completion (Github, Marketing assets, Payouts)
  • Project Rounds #4 & #5 preparations
  • Outreach to the community about open sourced files

Highlights

In February & March 2024, our team has done signifant efforts in order to (1) get back on track with the deliverables, (2) prepare the next production rounds and (3) initiate outreach in order to plan marketing activations with creators, developers and event producers in the space.

(1) Update on project Rounds:

The Round #2 projects (Celestial symphony) have been finalized and collected in our repo, you can find them here:

Here the brief descriptions of the projects built:

By Ale_R3ds: relaxing environment To listen to music
By Virtual_Dope: lounging palace for concerts, dj sets and jam sessions, which can be programmed and held in the place.
By Vvcryptos: The house of house, A building with the theme of a music house covered with light and color that will move and interact with sound
By Lapsus Next: Cosmos Build with Instrumental planets
By Rhoo: 30 dancing / singing / Musical emotes
By Biagi: Psychedelic parc for music enjoyers
By Zcayel: Greek musical altar for original performances
By OVA.Design: Resonant Chamber: Rigid Origami Acoustic Transformation
By GeekGoddess: giant record player and a vinyl record in the middle - on top of that lives a small party town filled with musical creatures

The Round #3 projects (Mythical Realm) have been finalized and collected in our repo, you can find them here:

Here the brief descriptions of the projects built:

Dr. DCL: Lok Dastanain – a journey into the rich tapestry of Punjabi folklore and morality tales.
Juek: quest game with 4 different Environment And 5 Mega Quests
Albinkeer: Enchanting Mermaid Lagoon - A Mythical Oasis in Decentraland
Antonio Azzolino: Minotaur maze from Greek mythology, with moving walls, pitfalls and a Minotaur statue in the middle
Ale_R3ds: Atlantis
Rhoo: Himalayan forest
GeekGoddess: legendary Sarimanok that originates from the near forgotten colorful precolonial culture of the Maranao, Philippines
Rizk: Palace of a Thousand and One Nights
Biagi: Subterranea Haven in Decentraland - Dwarves City

(2) Preparation of the next production rounds

Since the Rounds #4 & #5 have not been launched yet (see blockers), we have anticipated and prepared for a dual launch of rounds #4 & #5 at the same time. This will ensure an approximate production time of 1 month to deliver on both rounds simultaneously.

Here what we have prepared:

  • For Round #4: With the goal of onboarding new creators, we have invited a total of 30 creators & developers to participate in the next round who have never participated in a C&G growth round yet. We are expecting a fully new lineup for Round #4 upon launch, which will also transfer over to round 5 (for the ones not selected).
  • For Round #5: We will proceed with standard procedures and expect not selected applications from round #4 to transfer to round #5 since they will be launched simulatenously.

(3) Event planing outreach

We have initiated discussions with many decentraland creators, developers and event producers in order to highlight creators in the space throughout many events! More to come.

As a final note, we were very excited to meet the Decentraland team at GDC and are looking forward to the many planed platform updates and exciting events!!

Blockers

(1) On production:

  • No blockers on the production front
  • No blockers on collecting productions on Github (please let us know if there are problems with assets or projects, we will look into it - Contact: oscom@sandstorm.co)

We have improved our management system and are able to deliver on a full round within 3-4 weeks (start to finish). No more blockers on the production front.

(2) On Timeline & Communication:

  • I apologize on behalf of my team for the delay in public communications (Oscom - program coordinator), I was heavily sick throughout march which led to my hospitalization. I was unable to access the relevant wallet throughout the time to push the public update, which would have enabled the project to progress on the second half of march (all deliverables and timelines were met).
  • Because of the inability to produce a public update, GSS (rightfully so) kept the contract paused. Unfortunately, it is in our company policy that we have to have the budget upfront before launching on our marketplace for the security of our contractors. That created a “deadlock” over the past 2 weeks. I will discuss options in the next steps section.

Next steps

We are fully committed to deliver on the roadmap on time. As I hinted to above in the Highlights section, as soon as we get the green light we will proceed with launching both Round #4 & #5 simulatenously. We will be able to deliver on both rounds (start to finish) within 1 month.

Once that is done, we will be fully back on track with the initial roadmap and complete Round #6 on time, if not ahead of schedule.

In that sense, next steps would be:

  • Unpause contract (GSS)
  • We initiate Rounds #4 & #5 (Immediately after unpause)
  • Launch Round #6 (End of April)
  • Complete Rounds #4 & #5 + payout (End of April)
  • Complete Round #6 (Mid-End of May)
  • Organise final event to celebrate full completion with all creators involved (End of May / June)

We are very excited to work on the remaining rounds! Let’s build!

Additional notes and links

Important note: The financial report will be updated in the following days (waiting for updated CSV to be completed to report additional payouts)

View this update on the Governance dApp

2

About this project: the contract was paused 2 months ago, and we have been working with the grantees to help them clearly define the next steps and duration.

The grantee faced some personal difficulties which caused a longer than expected delay in reporting progress, and has finally provided their public update here.

Based on this, we have been reviewing the information and now we need to ask the DAO Committee to create the new contract.
We would need to have clear dates on when the team will resume work so they can start, finish, and report rounds #4, #5, and #6.

This will help us define the new contract and its duration. @Oscom and team, can you assist with this?

Thank you!

3

I forgot to mention: we also need to see proof of the execution of the payments for round #3.
Thanks!

4

Hey Pablo!

Thank you for getting back to us after we provided the update! We are happy to hear that we can work together on unpausing the project and completing the remaining rounds.

Note: I will overwrite the update including Round #3 payouts asap once I hear back from my operations team on the topic :+1: I have yet to receive the updated sheet from them.

Plan on resuming work - Conditions & prerequisites:

  1. We are fully operational and ready to start whenever the project gets unpaused

  2. Based on our current and future project load with other clients, we will complete the full project within 3 months maximum, the new contract therefore should not exceed 3 months.

  3. Each round aims to redistribute 18,000$ to creators & developers, and needs to be provided upfront so it can be launched by our team on the marketplace

  4. We require 2,000$ per month of operational costs to finish managing all the grant projects, which will also need to be provided upfront.

  5. Realigning with a fix 20,000$ budget per month in order to readjust to our initial proposal before the first contract change the GSS suggested would therefore help ease operational misalignment in the roadmap timeline.

Suggested plan

  1. From an operational perspective, it would be ideal to issue Rounds #4 & #5 simultaneously. This only works if (1) we get the 40,000$ upfront or if (2) we have a public commitment that there won’t be modifications on the fund issuance until the end of Round #5. In an alternative scenario, we would put our contractors at risk of not getting compensated for their work.

  2. In that case, the timeline would look as follows:

Month 1:

  • Round #4 & #5 Launch
  • Round #4 & #5 Completion (at week 4)
  • Round #4 & #5 Collection (week 4 & week 1 of Month 2)
  • Round #4 & #5 Ongoing marketing
  • Round #4 & #5 payouts

Month 2:

  • Rounds #6 Launch
  • Round #6 Completion (at week 4)
  • Round #4 & #5 remaining asset collection (for delayed artist file submissions)
  • Round #4 & #5 remaining payouts for late submitters

Month 3:

  • Round #6 Asset collection
  • Round #6 Payouts
  • Organisation (no added cost) of final event highlighting all creations & creators

If the proposed timeline works for all parties involved, we would be happy to move forward on the project and start working towards getting this done!

5

Thank you, @Oscom!

We are analyzing the issue. First and foremost, we need to close all the matters for which the contract was paused. Please send us the transaction details for the payments made for round #3 so we can plan the next steps.

This should be done before next Monday, April 22, the date on which the 3-month period during which the GSS can act autonomously on this matter expires, according to this approved governance proposal.

Otherwise, the matter will be escalated to the Revocations Committee, which has the authority to review the contract with you.

Regards!

6

Of course! That’s not a problem.

Based on my current information I will have everything you need before this friday! You should be able to see the updated Payment details by tomorrow!

Have a great rest of your day! Please start reviewing the proposal I made so we can quickly resume work once that is cleared by my operations team.

7

"Great @Oscom!

We’ve been reviewing the Github folders for Round #3 and found a couple of issues that need your attention by Monday:

  1. Juek FOLDER
  • Warning: Contains SDK6 code, though it appears unused.
  • Error: Issues loading models/Game.glb.
  • Note: The scene is not loading successfully.
  1. Rhoo FOLDER
  • Issue: The folder is empty.

Please take a moment to review and address these concerns. Otherwise, we will need to proceed through the RC pathway.
Thanks!

8

Hey @palewin!

I just reviewed what you requested with my team.

1. Juek FOLDER

The SDK 6 Build theme had been reported to the builder back in the day and he proided a newer version with the SDK 7 scene.

My guess of what happened here is that the submitted file on github is either (1) including both versions or (2) the project file has not been properly cleaned up before the Builder submitted it on github.

We have contacted the builder to solve this, and issue a new pull request with correctly loading files

In the meantime:
a. The SDK 7 project works and loads successfully, we have tested it again today using the gdrive shared files (we recorded a proof video)
b. You will find the working files in the link below while we are resolving the github specific issue

Folder w/ Video of loading the scene + files:
SDK7_Scene - Google Drive

image
image894Ă—255 21.8 KB

2. Rhoo Folder

I have already notified you on this topic + have added a note in the github.

This project is a bit special because the creator produced 30 unique emotes around the theme. The goal was to use those assets as incentive assets for builders in the space to give out for free - which we will start doing in an event next month. Due to the risk of other creators monetizing the emotes on the marketplace and claiming as their IP, that’s why we didn’t share on github.

Happy to get your feedback on this topic, we have the files we could open source them but it’s a decision that would not be aligned with the project.

See you soon for another update today.

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Update:

I couldn’t overwrite the current update so I created a new one, detailing what we worked on this month + reporting the remaining payouts.

Thank you for your patience on this and we’re now looking forward to proceed with the new contract plan next week + plan new rounds.

Keep me updated on the questions & issues with the project folders. It’s the first time we received feedback on them since the start of the grant so happy to improve the structure or fix files if some aren’t working!

Update #8: https://decentraland.org/governance/update/?id=fa934c56-5733-11ee-9d11-698f2d12cd46

Have a great rest of your day!

10

Hello @Oscom and team, we hope you are doing very well!

According to our governance processes, the Grant Support Squad will request the creation of a new vesting contract with the funds unreleased.

I will make a brief recap of the process up to today to move forward:

  1. The grant was originally requested with a 6-month contract. Following the roadmap and deliverables review, we determined with the grantee that the most correct way to make the contract was with a duration of 8 months.
  2. From that moment the team began to work. The pre-production and first round were a bit longer than expected, and thanks to those learnings, the team committed to catching up with the roadmap in the following rounds.
  3. Then there were a series of delays and irregularities for which it was defined to pause the vesting contract (3 months ago).
  4. During these 3 months, there were repeated instances of missed deliveries, updates, and commitments to dates that the grantee promised, and also some unforeseen circumstances. The GSS always tried to support and help keep the project on track.
  5. Currently, the project has practically completed 50% of execution: rounds #1, #2, and #3, with some minor details to resolve, which would not be a blocker to moving forward. And the contract, before the pause, is 50% vested.
  6. The project to be finished needs to start and complete rounds #4 #5 and #6 (this includes the public repository of all involved projects + payments to each creator).

For these reasons, we will request a new vesting contract with 3-month duration, starting on may 1st, matching the releasing stage with the end of each left’s contest round.

While we understand the grantee’s request to have the funds in advance, we should follow the spirit of the Grants Program’s New Vesting Contract (quote: “…the beneficiary is paid in arrears; they are paid for a working period AFTER the work is done”). We consider that given the history of this grant and the way the DAO funds projects (payment is made after deliveries), this is the best solution, which considers the care of the DAO’s treasury as well as the guarantee of project execution for the beneficiaries.

We then await the confirmation of the proposal from the grantee so we move to the formal request for the new contract to the DAO Committee. Otherwise, the grantee can request that the case be handled by the Revocations Committee given that we are at the limit of the date when the GSS can act autonomously.

Thank you and regards!

1 Like
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Hey @palewin!

Thank you very much for your update.
These are conditions I can definitely agree with.

Just to clarify: The new grant contract would therefore be 20,000 DAI / Month starting May 1st (no cliff) for the next 3 months?

I will make sure to (1) send a weekly update on status and (2) double send those in our public discord forum (DCL DAO channel) so everything goes smoothly this time.

Once that is confirmed, I will get to work with my team and we’ll publish the new rounds :+1:

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Given the rules of the Grants Program explained above, the suggested contract will be activated on May 1st, with a one-month cliff, and payments will be released monthly as you submit the deliverables for each round. If any round is not completed, the contract will be paused and the funds will be released when the deliverables are presented.
I’m confident that with this scheme everything will be clearer for the DAO and for you,
Thank you @Oscom !

13

Understood! I think we are on the same page.

We will proceed with your suggestion.

Just as an additional clarification:

This means that in the process we should initiate the payments to creators at the start of the following month, is that correct? (i.e. Round #4: Early June payments, Round #5: Early July payments, Round #6: Early August payments).

Therefore next month (Update 9), there will be no transactions on our end.

I will still launch both Rounds #4 & 5 at the same time so we ensure everything is completed on time, some creators from Round #5 will have to wait but I will communicate the exact timeline to them ahead of the project in regards to when they can expect payouts

14

Ideally, you should make the payments and show the entire round completed, including the payments, in the updates.

If this is not possible, the schedule should be as follows:

  • Round #4 (Payment 1): You must show all the deliverables for round #4 in the open source repository for the first month’s funds ($20k) to be released.

  • Round #5 (Payment 2): You must show all the deliverables for round #5 in the open source repository plus the payments from Round #4 for the second month’s funds ($20k) to be released.

  • Round #6 (Payment 3): You must show all the deliverables for round #6 in the open source repository plus the payments from Round #5 for the third month’s funds ($20k) to be released.

15

Yes 100%,

Just wanted to make clear that we will not be able to show payments in the cliff period of the new vesting contract. and therefore the next update will show 0$ in transactions! (May update)

We’re on the same page, great :+1:

Thank you very much Pablo,
Looking forward to the next rounds!

16

Hi @Oscom !
Here is the New Vesting Contract Requirement.
Thanks!

1 Like