[DAO: Qmf56op] Create a new grant tier to fund the development of play-to-earn games

Governance
1

by 0x9982b469910c2ee2ea566dcfcc250cdd34056397 (MrEric)

SUMMARY

An addendum to the Proposal for a Community Grants Framework whereby a new grant tier is added, providing $30k/mo for three months for teams making play-to-earn games.

ABSTRACT

The community grant framework funds small projects resulting in decent user-generated content. However, the initial tiers are insufficient for larger scope projects. Meanwhile, projects like Decentral Games were born out of a larger grant that gave them the resources to create an MVP attracting angel and institutional capital.

This new tier would use the DAO to fund pre-existing teams building play-to-earn games in Decentraland. Many such teams exist, but it’s up to the DAO and the community to attract them to the platform through funding, support, and guidance.

MOTIVATION

The most engaging scenes are mid-sized games. Without a clear path for small teams to finance and launch an MVP of their project on Decentraland, the talent will flock to other metaverses.

Due to the success of Axie Infinity, many teams want to build play-to-earn games. Decentraland is well-equipped to host these, with a fully-fledged SDK, a vibrant community, and an integration with Polygon enabling low-cost, near-instant transfers of digital assets.

With a small investment, the Decentraland community could give rise to numerous games of the caliber of WonderMine, Decentral Games, and Ethermon.

SPECIFICATION

The new grant category would consist of:

  • $30k USD (in MANA) / month, for 3 months

What are play-to-earn games?

This new tier may only play-to-earn games. The MVPs must:

  1. Be an interactive game
  2. Feature on-chain assets (fungible and/or non-fungible tokens)
  3. Give users the ability to earn on-chain assets by playing the game

After 1.5 months, recipients should provide an MVP: an interactive scene with a functional play-to-earn mechanic. The DAO will review these MVPs, voting on whether or not to execute the third payment.

Mentorship

The Decentraland Foundation could curate a list of mentors who would be able to coach recipients through the grant’s duration.

LAND

The Decentraland Foundation could help pair recipients with LAND owners.

Applications

Teams will use an extension of the existing DAO grants form to apply. Additional requirements include:

  • 1 page document summarizing the proposed game and its play-to-earn mechanic

This new tier may only be applied for in the last month of each quarter. Applications will only be accepted for one week, once per quarter.

The DAO would vote on each applicant. The three teams receiving the most VP would be selected, with a min of 2 million VP needed.

Schedule

  • Q3 2021
  • Aug
  • Begin accepting applications by 8/26
  • Sep
  • Applications close 9/2
  • Winners announced 9/9
  • First payment by 9/13
  • Q4 2021
  • Oct
  • MVP by end of October
  • DAO votes to continue funding
  • Second payment pending DAO approval
  • Nov
  • Third payment

Reporting

The DAO Committee and Facilitator would be responsible for monitoring progress, providing public reports every 2 weeks.

BENEFITS

  • Attracts talented and experienced teams to Decentraland
  • Creates content that will help to boost Decentraland’s attractiveness and retention
  • Attract capital to invest in Decentraland experiences
  • For: Approve the addition of the play-to-earn grant tier
  • Against: Reject the addition of the play-to-earn grant tier
  • Other: Revise the structure and terms of the play-to-earn tier

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2

I love the idea but voted for it to be revised. 30k is a huge step above the max of 5k today. I would rather see 30k spread out over a longer period. Or a team to ask for smaller amounts every 3 months. They can keep asking as long as they keep adding new features. Some projects stall out. I hate to fund one for 30k and have them stop developing after 6 months.

3

It’s not even 30k, it’s 30k PER MONTH over 3 months, so 90k.
Also there is no reason to limit this to only 3 teams quarterly or to make it a competition like that.
Why is it limited to play to earn game? This is just a hype, there is much more project that could benefit of similar grants.

4

There are a few things about this DAO poll that have me uncomfortable:

  • Only 1 week from proposal to vote.
  • No announcement in the Blog to engender discussion on a significant matter.
  • Hence no time for a real community vetting the pros/cons, hearing more of the explanation of the thinking, etc.
  • No clarity about how the “existing teams” are being queued up for application that opens 1d after the vote closes, so it sounds like this is being lined up for something already influencing the decision to hurry.
  • The Foundation is casting the vast majority of the yes votes to spend DAO money on this.
  • I feel this could set a bad precedent for the Foundation if it pushes things through quietly with its own voting power,
    and it could leave a very bad feeling in the community about how this DAO isn’t working for community input.

We really need to be more involved as a community about major proposals than how this one appears.

I could well decide to vote yes on this in the future if more thoroughly vetted and discussed as a forum post,
hence being improved and clarified and well understood before being posted in the DAO for a vote.

Having the DAO fund projects is ok with me.
And even a larger tier might be good, if well discussed, managed and curated by the community.

I will vote no on this particular one.
Update:

  1. I have changed my vote to Revise, because I’m not so much opposed to there being such a tier, but
  2. Maybe more flexibility on what it could be granted for than just p2e, what will be the next hot thing, etc.
  3. At this level, there should be a requirement that the proposal provide some very clear benefits back to the DAO – revenue stream, or something that brings traffic more broadly than just in the game scene, or something that has a high degree of certainty at raising LAND and/or MANA value
  4. And let’s take longer for community to ask questions, poke at the model, ask questions and get great answers, improve the proposal if needed, and ultipmately have it be something that the community strongly supports. I’d vote yes for that.
3 Likes
5

I like the title not the details.

Vote ends 25 aug
applications start 1 day later
applications close 1 week after

why that hurry? I think the “benefit” point “attract talented teams” is wrong unless application closes in let’s say… 1-2 months once proposal approved, then announce it openly, on blog, on twitter, and to the public instead of a silent movement, wouldn’t it attract more teams and be more a community thing?

Let those teams prepare and let the community have more options to choose the more deserved teams and better spent funds based on their technical work, resolution, community involvement and commitment and knowing exactly the people involved on those teams?

Also why 30K/mo ? cannot be customisable between range, and explained in the proposal of each team how it is spent ?

2 Likes
6

The overall idea of creating a new tier for seasoned creators is great but the plan exposed has some flaws.

  • First we need to clarify, Is it 30k per month or 30k per project?
  • Why only available for free to play games? Other experiences could benefit from bigger tiers, not just f2p
  • One week to approve a proposal approved? Crypto moves fast and I appreciate the speed, but would be great to have more bandwhich to decide on this. I could just create a project driven by Crypto Twitter weekly hype of the moment and then once the hype is out leave this…

I like the idea of just giving this funding to seasoned members, maybe setting up a project-achievement goal tracker to access to bigger amounts of funds, so you start with smaller tiers and get your way up to bigger tiers by showing the community what you are made of.

We need bigger projects with bigger budget, we can all agree on this, but the more money you ask, there should be more requirements, like a breakdown of what are you gonna spend your money on, ask to record a 2m video pitching your idea…

Just my 0,02 cents, I’m voting no on this specific proposal

7

Hello all,

As the main author/submitter of this poll, I want to share an update in light of the feedback we’ve received. I’d also like to address some of the specific concerns raised.

First, and most importantly, I’d like to withdraw the proposal. Given the responses that I’ve read, it’s clear that the most active and engaged users within the DAO’s community don’t feel confident in this specific change to the DAO grants program. While the proposal is currently passing in terms of VP, the broader sentiment is against the proposal.

It’s apparent that the changes suggested will take more research, preparation, and validation within the DAO. I do hear community interest in doing this, and I’m excited to help the DAO push that work forward in a collaborative way.

It’s important for the DAO to take the time that it needs to confidently scale up the community grants programs.

Second, instead of advocating for a purely DAO-funded grant, the Foundation would like to start its own program to help sponsor teams building play-to-earn games for Decentraland.

The Foundation does still believe that funding this genre is vital to the growth of the platform. To capitalize on current trends as quickly as possible, the Foundation would like to kickstart a private P2E grants program, with funding coming from the Foundation, other projects, and the DAO and Decentraland community if they so desire. The Foundation will publish an announcement outlining more details of this new program later in the week.

Now, to address some of the specific concerns that I saw regarding the original poll. There were a few core themes that I noticed:

  • The timeline appeared unrealistic.

  • The original proposal was suspected to benefit the Foundation in some way.

  • The Foundation might have pre-selected favored teams that it would support.

The original proposal would have benefitted the Foundation only so far as it would attract more developers to the platform. The Foundation did not have any teams pre-selected to rush through the application process. The fast timeline was only set to help Decentraland benefit from the industry’s rapidly growing interest in P2E gaming, not to exclude other applicants.

As I’ve stated in the past, Decentraland’s DAO is still young and there are many lessons to be learned as it grows. The role of the Foundation is to help provide some support, marketing and engineering effort, and momentum throughout this learning process. The Foundation does want to help the DAO work for community input, to borrow Carl’s phrasing, so all of the comments and criticisms we’ve received are important, and do impact the decisions that the Foundation makes.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to engage with the proposal in a meaningful way, and helping us all to find the best path forward.

8

@eric Please can the foundation give transparency in terms of the decision to give Decentral Games a strategic investment to develop their play to earn model?

DCL put this forum post on the table, which they wisely retracted in view of the comments on this thread by some well respected community members.

Decentral Games were reported to have received $5m in investment in June. So it seems a very strange decision to award more money to the best funded business in Decentraland in the face of other developers. Can we have transparency in terms of Decentral Games and what the relationship actually is between them and the foundation. Do any directors of Decentraland, or any of its founders have any personal investments in Decentral Games?

Who is responsible for making this decision? It seems a very centralised decision and doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of what the Foundation represents. So the community needs to dig deep and ask the tough questions on this to find out what is going on here. And the person or group should come onto this thread and explain why this was done and be prepared to have a thorough debate about it.

9

every time i call for transparency on a subject it gets ignored, hopefully they answer you to this though

10

Hey @HoneyBadger,

I think you’re referring to this press release announcing an investment from the Decentraland Foundation in Decentral Games?

As you said, the above proposal to create a DAO-funded P2E grant program was rescinded due to the feedback received from the community. It was clear that the community does want to see larger grants, but not if they’re limited to P2E games. However, the Foundation still intended to create its own, privately funded incubator for P2E games, given the Foundation’s belief that these experiences will help increase adoption of the platform. I stated this back when I rescinded the original proposal:

“Second, instead of advocating for a purely DAO-funded grant, the Foundation would like to start its own program to help sponsor teams building play-to-earn games for Decentraland.”

I want to clarify that the recent investment from the Foundation did not involve the Decentraland DAO or the DAO’s treasury in any way. The Decentraland Foundation is a private, non-profit organization with its own treasury, which allows it to give out funding independently from the DAO. It’s also important to note that this is unrelated to DG’s June announcement of a $5 million USD capital raise, which did not involve the Foundation’s P2E incubator.

This latest investment in DG was just one of the first investments in the Foundation’s new P2E incubator program, which will include other projects within the community. In addition to funding, the new P2E incubator will provide technical guidance, team mentorship, and biz-dev consulting to help make sure that teams get the expertise, help, and connections they need to succeed.

The Decentralad Foundation’s mission is to help stimulate and support the growth and adoption of the entire Decentraland platform. It’s done that by helping to set up the DAO, by contributing to Decentraland’s open source codebase (making updates and improvements in things like the Client and the SDK), and by independently organizing and marketing events to draw new users to the platform. The Foundation’s P2E incubator is just another example of an independent program intended to support the growth of Decentraland.

11

Create a new grant tier to fund the development of play-to-earn games

This proposal has been REJECTED by a DAO Committee Member (0xfe91c0c482e09600f2d1dbca10fd705bc6de60bc)

The proposal was withdrawn by the creator (Eric). Check the comments for more info.