Please describe your proposed solution.
Proto Automata has the potential to deliver lean solutions for a number of DAO shortcomings in the Cardano ecosystem, particularly regarding decentralized gaming.
The Problem
A large percentage of the most popular products developed using blockchain technology put a focus on wealth accumulation above almost anything else, save a potentially novel utility or charitable mission that a singular collection's sales revenue can provide in a short-term timescale. This has made for radically positive changes in a handful of very smart (and very lucky) people's lives, but many of the ways in which people are interacting with blockchain-based products are making better arguments for trade regulators than proving valuable product use cases for the technology in global markets.
Despite the allure of fast gains from quick flips, it is not uncommon to hear cryptocurrency & NFT holders speak very highly of gamified digital assets, online gaming, and ways to use blockchain technology in place of avaricious centralized monetization practices from "AAA" private game development studios. Cardano's NFT protocols in particular provide seemingly infinite potential when it comes to digital asset management in gaming platforms, but running a game development studio requires an entirely different organizational structure than the typical NFT projects we've seen getting the most attention thus far. Bigger studios are also spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing the most immersive virtual worlds on the market, which is a budget scale that requires a much higher adoption rate from a much larger user base making much smaller investments than typical NFT customers.
The Solution
Utilizing agile development practices, Proto Automata will test an innovative game development model that not only takes great advantage of Cardano's unique potential for digital asset management in games, it also takes a fresh approach to the legal DAO incorporation election in the US (to be registered in Wyoming) and provides a gaming-utility-driven user experience in a robust NFT product family.
The DAO as a US business will be entirely owned by its parent corporation Metapproach Industries Inc., NFT sales will fund the studio's game development, and profit from the games will be accessible to NFT holders.
The SEC acknowledges a "Regulation Crowdfunding" policy that allows US-based non-accredited investors to make small investments in crowdfunded startups without having to meet strict fiduciary requirements. Of course there are certain regulations and tax policies that the SEC expects US citizens to comply with, which Proto Automata will publish clearly in onboarding documentation; these regulations include maximum investments (the greater of $2,500 or 5% of annual income within a year) and in some cases holders are not allowed to sell their shares for 1 year (1 year being the minimum development timeline for the first game, so sales disbursements would not be realized within that timeframe).
The first NFT collections produced by Proto Automata will grant different levels of membership in the DAO, as well as delegate different levels of voting power and profit share for the first game developed by the DAO. The core concept for DAO activities revolves around voting on creative decisions and sharing sales revenue from the finished product, so holders have a collective interest to develop quality content. With these goals in mind, the long-term development timeline will proceed as follows:
- Professional game developers including members of the original Unbounded.Earth dev team will produce a pixel-style Metroidvania game with an engaging gameplay loop full of fun mechanics.
- Project management boards will be made available to DAO members to track development progress via the Aha! product management suite.
- Different tiers of NFTs that amount to different weights of influence will be released in sequence. Each tier should release 1 month after the last with a larger supply and lower price than the previous tier.
- With every new NFT tier released, holders will submit their concepts for a new gameplay element prompted by the development team. At the same time, voting will open for holders to select the best submission from the previous tier's game direction prompt.
- Demo versions of the game will be released as it is developed so DAO members can play along with the development process.
- The dev team will release other NFT collections with gaming utility throughout the development timeline. These NFTs will interact directly with the game.
- Once completed, two versions of the game will be made available to the public. One will offer a variety of blockchain-enhanced customization options and collectibles. The other will be stripped down to just a great single-player game, and published on conventional Web2 marketplaces like Steam.
Our goal is to fund six months of runway to develop the tools and infrastructure needed to launch a project of this scale successfully. Our team is asking for a bare minimum to build this company because the sales potential is great, but also because we believe we can empower other players in the space to succeed in their ambitious projects with the help of the tools we develop and publish open source to ADAO's toolset. A rising tide raises all ships.
The Audience
Proto Automata should appeal to both NFT collectors and gamers, from casual to hardcore players.
Cardano's innovative NFT protocols will allow us to release a variety of tokens with different utilities, including access to WebGL demos within NFT platforms, NFT customization, in-game asset customization to match your custom NFTs, and so much more. DAO members will have priority access to non-governance NFTs that facilitate some of these products - simple digital goods that should be treated as regular NFTs without the added securities connotation of profit share. These tokens should be considered "programmatic sales", as established the ruling from SEC v. Ripple on July 13th, 2023, as opposed to "institutional sales" that might include profit sharing utility from DAO member tokens (which will be addressed using the SEC's regulation crowdfunding policy, as previously stated).
All of these blockchain features aside, even with an amazing game there is still a risk that a large portion of the gaming market would be disinterested simply because the products take such great advantage of blockchain-based technology, unfortunately. This is why the end-goal developing Proto Automata's first awesome feature-rich Metroidvania game is to publish a "vanilla" version that has been completely stripped of blockchain features to conventional Web2 gaming platforms, like Steam, with a marketing budget to promote it. This is a sneaky way to introduce players who found a game they genuinely love to the great story behind its community driven development.
Further down the road, there is a particularly valuable potential to onboard gamers into the Cardano ecosystem once other Metapproach projects are funded as well, such as an account-bound wallet to hold assets for users who want to shop for digital goods we might develop for our games with other currencies like USD, which we have also proposed in Catalyst Fund10's "Building on NMKR" challenge.
The Proof
We believe this experiment in DAO governance has great potential to set several needed examples in our industries. DAO members deserve equitable returns on investments they can clearly and openly report without fear of violating federal law. Gamers deserve ownership of the digital goods they acquire. Fans deserve influence in their favorite franchises. Of course everyone deserves great games to play! Proto Automata can achieve all of this while nurturing a meaningful DAO community.
We ask that you sincerely consider our vision and the tools we can offer DAOs on Cardano when we request enough funding for a six month runway to launch our first game development campaign. With this funding we will develop the tools we need to do the job right, including but not limited to:
- The legal infrastructure to establish this concept with viable, sustainable organization
- A platform that allows members to submit ideas and vote on them efficiently
- NFT metadata standards that allow for robust customization and other forms of engagement
- A comprehensive product management environment
- A demo game to showcase our development and design skills
Our parent corporation Metapproach Industries Inc. will then publish these outputs their partner's open source platform at https://www.TheADAO.io/, where anyone can use them while developing their DAO. With these tools and the knowledge that comes with them, anyone will be able to quickly launch a product-driven gaming DAO. Publishing voting and metadata standards could even be a push towards standardizing crucial data points to allow for better interoperability between projects. Even more products & services developed by Proto Automata beyond the scope of the Catalyst fund will also be published, some on open source platforms and others as paid subscriptions. We want to build a great DAO, and in doing so we want to empower other DAOs to be just as great.
ProtoAutomata.com is currently forwarded to the parent company's website - Metapproach.co - which is under construction. Once completed, the newest Metapproach intellectual properties like Proto Automata or Sequential Squares will have their own pages that go into greater detail on project development and product rollout. We are happy to share the preview access code with the Catalyst community, though, so you can track our marketing development process in real time. That password is:
SamusBelmont
At time of submission the homepage is poorly formatted but contains some promotional text for Proto Automata. The next minor update will be tidying the format and moving the Proto Automata information to Metapproach.co/ProtoAutomata. Before the Catalyst vote begins we will post an early draft of Proto Automata's Green Paper on the website, which we will update once it is completed over the following weeks.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
Proto Automata will not just provide Cardano developers with powerful tools to create and manage DAOs, it will be an example of an innovative way to use DAO technology to develop unique, useful products that can offer layers of value and enjoyment.
The primary focus in the six month development runway we're hoping to fund with Catalyst is bringing "additional not yet existing tools to give Cardano a distinct advantage." We are an exceptionally creative team and we're great at making games. We also believe gamification will only become a more powerfully driving force in the continued digitization of global commerce and entertainment. The Catalyst team is quite insightful to recognize that DAOs will likely drive the next major innovations in the blockchain space. The gaming industry presents the distinct advantages Cardano DAOs need when making the most of Cardano's impressive capabilities distributing digital goods & services to a tech-savvy audience on a global scale. The video game industry might be Cardano's best path to true mass adoption, and operating game studios as DAOs might be a particularly efficient way to pursue this.
With positive reception, Proto Automata can repeat this model many times over to develop new games, as well as other products, especially entertainment products that require creative direction. With every new game and every NFT release, Proto Automata will add increasing value to the blockchain gaming space, helping further establish its legitimacy in the emerging digital economy. The point of this fund, though, is to improve the development of all DAOs on Cardano, and more DAOs achieving higher standards of management & distribution only enhances these effects. Proto Automata provides a replicable model for a variety of DAOs, particularly those working on creative products that can incorporate direction from their communities, but perhaps its greatest value is in the operations automation the team will develop. This includes:
- A basic open source DAO management platform published by ADAO
- Effective community engagement models
- Innovative product management frameworks
- Comprehensive governance guidelines
- Direction with distribution
- Intuitive voting mechanisms
- Demo game
Once the runway is passed and the DAO is successfully launched, over time it will undoubtedly incorporate more innovative features, as well as adding in more basic features that are expected from established tools like funding mechanisms for new DAOs, fundraising for common goals, options for physical DAOs, collaborations, altcoin support, etc. Anything Proto Automata develops for its own use can be retooled by Metapproach for whatever platform it best fits.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
Aha! is a particularly innovative product management software suite that facilitates an extremely efficient and digestible approach to managing large projects. With the Aha! Ideas service, we're able to setup meaningful data relationship with our users. Their own description says it allows companies to "crowdsource feedback, engage your community, and analyze trends — so you can prioritize the best ideas". This tool will help us automate user feedback while easily keeping members involved in company direction and decision-making at the highest level.
Measuring a project's benefits to the greater Cardano ecosystem gives a powerful meaning to the project's success, but it can be challenging to quantify how a single project impacts an entire blockchain, let alone comparing one project's impact to every other player in a highly anonymized space. Collecting accurate numbers in a decentralized environment is tricky, especially without cutting into what will need to be a fairly tightly scheduled sprint cycle.
Once funded, each team member will spend one day researching a different aspect of Cardano DAOs to establish the most accurate baseline we're able to without diverting all of our attention to researching the industry landscape.
- One team member will research the amount of ADA coming from DAO transaction fees at the time of funding.
- One team member will research the number of DAOs that use Cardano as their governance/management chain.
- One team member will research the number of DAO toolsets/frameworks available for DAO Ops that exist or are in development.
- One team member will research the number of DAOs working on gaming products vs the number of blockchain-based gaming products operating as completely privatized entities.
- One team member will research the amount of ADA being spent on gaming-related products.
After six months of development, each team member will follow up on their research to measure any changes. This should align with the completion of our Catalyst outputs. Moving forward, the way these research responsibilities are shared across the team may change, but Proto Automata will continue to collect these data and publish the metrics.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
Output tracking is where the Aha! software suite will really shine for Proto Automata. The project boards under a product seamlessly integrate between departments to maximize inspiration and collaboration. It also has a project management framework, Aha! Develop, that gives Atlassian a run for their money. Nearly every item under every module can be selectively published to team members with different roles, or to shareholders tracking production, or even made publicly visible through links. These tools will allow us to establish and publish quality KPIs.
We will be pursuing 7 major outputs spread out over six months.
- A basic open source DAO management platform - work will begin immediately upon funding and within one month the framework should be established to start posting models and guidelines at https://www.TheADAO.io/
- Effective community engagement models - work will begin immediately upon funding and within two months these models should be in use promoting Proto Automata and posted to the DAO management platform
- Innovative product management frameworks - work will begin immediately upon funding and within three months these frameworks should be setup to begin laying out the first Proto Automata game development projects; detailed guidelines to help any DAO setup a similar framework will be posted to the DAO management platform
- Comprehensive governance guidelines - work will begin immediately upon funding and within three months these guidelines should be clearly laid out, guiding Proto Automata's operations moving forward; these guidelines will be published to the DAO management platform
- Direction with distribution - work will begin immediately upon funding writing smart contracts, metadata, and the necessary proprietary code for Proto Automata's blockchain operations, all of which will be documented into guidelines that will be published to the DAO management platform within four months
- Intuitive voting mechanisms - work will begin within two or three months of funding, whenever development of the distribution code is far enough along, on a UI that facilitates token-verified account-bound voting, allowing for versatile voting capabilities without overcomplicating the transactional nature of blockchain-based systems; these tools should be published to the DAO management platform by the end of the fifth month
- Demo game - work on a demo game will begin immediately upon funding to showcase the team's development abilities, which should be completed by the end of the six-month runway; assets from this demo game will be published to the DAO management platform for game studios' and aspiring developers' R&D efforts
Beyond Catalyst, upgrades will be made to the DAO management platform, making it even easier for people to start a DAO on Cardano by automating some of the key processes in these outputs, like distribution and governance.