Idol: Decentralizing Fan-Celebrity Interactions

Funding Proposals Grants
1

Name of Project / DAO / Company

Idol

Application type

Product launch of competitive bidding platform to connect fans with celebrities.

Proposal overview

Idol is a decentralized protocol that allows fans to connect with their celebrity idols through live video chat and captures those once-in-a-lifetime memories as nonfungible tokens. Idol allows fans to competitively bid on the chance to partake in virtual video calls—or VR meetups—with celebrities. Fans receive virtual autographs capturing their meetings as NFTs, while celebrities have the opportunity to earn money from their interactions and meet their highest bidding fans.

The Idol Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is a subset of Idol allowing token-holders, who may be the Idol team, investors, celebrities, and fans who use the platform, to have voting rights in Idol Events: online celebrity events centered around democratically proposed projects. This DAO puts decision-making of future events into the hands of an automated, community-based system while cutting out the middlemen: brand ambassadors and event managers.

By incorporating a two-pronged protocol that involves (1) NFT packs with snapshots of fan-idol interactions and (2) an Idol Events Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), Idol shifts the power of celebrity public image from the media to the celebrities and fans themselves. In executing these components, Idol successfully decentralizes virtual meetups, sentimental autographs, and even public reputation.

We are requesting $50K in equity-free contributions. In addition to funding, we are looking for Harmony’s help with product development, talent recruitment, and strategy. Idol’s ability to facilitate rare fan-celebrity interactions poise it well for widespread public attention and virality. As such, we hope to see Idol direct mainstream attention from fans and celebrities to blockchain, DAOs, and—of course—the Harmony Network.

We have already received overwhelming support from celebrities waiting to be onboarded and fans hoping to meet their idols. We plan to start off by onboarding local celebrities and continue to onboard celebrities with higher social media following as we scale. Our customer acquisition strategy involves onboarding celebrities with the expectation that their fans will follow. We also have an MVP ready and are planning to conduct a beta launch with our first celebrity cohort within the next month. Growing our platform on the Harmony Chain with this grant will allow us to scale incredibly fast and keep up with the demand. We are a team of two engineers from UC Berkeley confident that our platform, combined with Harmony’s fast and scalable ecosystem, will gain rapid popularity both within and outside of the Harmony community.

Team

We are two UC Berkeley engineering students with strong technical skills and business acumen.

Proposal ask

$50K

Justification

This $50k grant will help us scale in three distinct areas: development, marketing, and legal.

Our focus on development involves backend engineering (scalable infrastructure, developers), blockchain engineering (NFT POAP autographs, Idol Events DAO and associated tokens), and frontend engineering (UI/UX, graphic designers). Our marketing effort involves celebrity outreach hires to onboard influencers, ambassadors for influencers to represent Idol, celebrity referrals to reward influencer referrals, and CRM for user onboarding. Finally, our legal focus provides attention to standard contracts, smart contracts, and DAO structuring.

Metrics for success

100 Influencers onboarded in the first six months, with an average influencer having 300,000 followers on social media.

Immediate milestones:

  1. Competitive bidding platform fully launched with active influencers pushed out in an ongoing series of celebrity cohorts.
  2. All token creation (NFT POAP autograph, exclusive fanclub access, etc.) features complete and deployed onto Harmony testnet.
  3. Give beta access to Harmony community to test and give feedback
  4. Deploy to mainnet and form DAO.

External links

https://www.myidol.tech
Idol Product Demo - YouTube

3 Likes
2

Stellar minds.

Was very happy to meet this team in Denver with @dpagan-harmony. Flown out with the scholarship program. @lij

I enthusiastically approve this proposal given the guidelines of Project X.

:rocket: :blue_heart:

1 Like
3

project x: “grant $50K to any project to launch on mainnet as a 5-governor DAO”

1 Like
4

After several enlightening conversations with the Idol team, I am ecstatic to present our milestones for this team. There will be 5 milestones with an awarded amount of $10K upon completion. These unique milestones were approved by myself and agreed upon by the Idol team under Project X.

  1. Form a multisig wallet with 5 signatories. 3 from the Idol team, 1 Project X grantee, and 1 Harmony community member. 4/5 signatures required. $10K

  2. Launch the closed Beta application with 3 influencers. $10K

  3. Launch on Testnet. $10K

  4. Launch on Mainnet. $10K

  5. 10 influencers onboarded and 100K users. $10K

2 Likes
5

Thanks for helping us set our milestones, Mikey! We’re looking forward to launching our product really soon, and we are sure Idol will become a key player in the metaverse for fan and influencer interactions. We currently have four out of five signatories ready to oversee the multisig wallet (three from the Idol team and one Project X grantee — Mikey), and we’re currently looking for a passionate Harmony community member who aligns with our vision and would love to be our fifth signatory. If anyone is interested in helping oversee the multisig wallet as our fifth signatory, please feel free to respond to this thread and we’d be happy to chat :slight_smile:

3 Likes
6

:raising_hand_man:Pretty sure I meet the qualifications

2 Likes
7

Thanks for your response, TrippyOneCrypto! We’re looking forward to potentially having you onboard. We’ll be having a meeting this Monday—can you please email us at idol.corporate@gmail.com or DM us directly here so we can send you an invite? Looking forward to this.

8

Hello Harmony Community! :blue_heart:

We just wanted to send in a quick update on what we’ve been up to since we posted our initial proposal. For more detailed updates, see our Twitter (@idolapp_xyz), but here are 4 key moves we’ve been making…

  1. Launched our platform, with a functional payment and bidding system at idolapp.xyz. Currently, the platform is filled with demo celebrities to share a sneak-peek at how it will look once bidding officially launches. We are currently working on some minor bug fixes related to the platform—more details on that on Twitter as well.

    • Although the platform is currently Web2.0 oriented, we are already working on Web3.0 features such as bidding via crypto, automatic minting of NFT’s with embedded snippets of the video call, and even VR integration. Stay tuned…

  2. Launched on Twitter (@idolapp_xyz), where we have been posting updates multiple times a day to encourage transparency with our community. We discuss the hurdles we have been facing, the visions that drive us, and the features we are working on. Transparency is part of our commitment to Web3.0, and we hope you join us on this lucid journey to building memories.

  3. Scaled our team from 2 cofounders → a team of 10 passionate students from across the nation working hard on Idol. Every single one of us is working entirely out of passion for the idea. Here is our team breakdown.

    • 5 Marketing Leads, consisting of people specialized in graphics, social media, and story-driven content.
    • 1 Front-End Developer
    • 1 Recruiter (just joined this week, to help us scale by bringing in front-end, back-end, and blockchain engineers)
    • 2 Cofounders

  4. Built our initial, beta celebrity cohort of three influencers with actual bidding tentatively opening on May 23rd, 2022. Stay active on our Twitter for updates regarding this timeline.

    • Building this cohort has involved collaboratively working on ideation for Idol calls with influencers, discussing terms and conditions, and coordinating event timings and logistics.

Idol is building the bridge between Web3, Networking, and Celebrity Engagement. We are so excited to create meaningful memories in the metaverse.

9

funded $10k: 0xeea13eeb53e8e3446b91e9f3349849e0b99760ef0b3ecf7712fa14bef627fe2a

10

Here’s our ONE MultiSig address, created by Gnosis: one169vjvvh5ccm0j7vwqrvll5x66p5umq8mf54gnz

11

We’ve recently achieved milestones two and three, and we’re looking for a $20K payout by next Friday. Our future events require heavy marketing, and the funds would be crucial for that if they arrive in a timely manner.

Milestone 2: Launch the closed Beta application with 3 influencers. $10K

Since our last event with Lauren Turton, we have already begun our event planning
process for future events with cast member Henny Russell from Orange is the New
Black, bulk talent from multiple agencies/organizations, and various independent
TikTokers sourced from personalized outreach efforts. We’ve fully launched our closed
beta, and have even completed an event with one of our influencers, Lauren Turton,
from start to finish. What follows is a case study on Lauren’s event.
Lauren Turton is a Forbes-featured public speaker and career coach with a small, tight-knit
fanbase. She is a growing local influencer with a following of 6k on Twitter, the primary
platform used to market the event. As an up-and-coming NFT podcaster, she aims to be an
inspiration for women in Web3.

Lauren Turton signed with Idol to auction off a coaching session and personalized
30-second commercial on her podcast, Freedom with NFTs. Lauren’s goal was to increase
engagement and monetization with her followers. Through Idol’s auctioning platform,
Lauren was able to reach true market value for her offerings. As a result, she sold her
coaching session at 2.7x more than her standard, flat-fee offerings. This was just Idol’s
beta-test launch, billed as an opportunity to win a “1:1 Coaching + Exclusive Feature with
Lauren Turton.” Here is the process followed with Lauren’s event:

  1. Lauren submits her event offerings, one-minute intro video, and starting bid price.
    Idol creates graphics to publicize the event, and plans Twitter Spaces events to help
    generate buzz
  2. Lauren’s event goes live, reaching a top bid of $100. The funds are processed
    securely through Stripe on Idol. 3. Lauren shares her availability with her fan through Idol. The session is scheduled, and the autographed NFT memory is minted.
  3. Lauren shares her availability with her fan through Idol. The session is scheduled, and
    the autographed NFT memory is minted.

The purpose of this event was to validate the Idol auctioning platform and relevant
technology, prior to reaching out to larger scale influencers and agencies. Given the success
of the beta launch, Idol is now looking to help larger influencers with fan engagement and
monetization through auctions.

Idol is also now being advised by a Hollywood talent agency with over 11 years of
experience in ventures such as Super Bowl advertisements. Idol hopes to leverage these
connections from advisers to introduce NFTs and Harmony One to the entertainment
industry.

The closed beta application has been launched and active for months. Now, Idol is working
to put together an ongoing events calendar for a plethora of talent for the months of August
and September. Idol is committed to developing marketing budgets for influencers prior to
their events. For this reason, receiving the funds early will be essential to guarantee
the success of the events we’ve planned for late August and September.

As an example of the events we’ve run, see Lauren’s event here.

Milestone 3: Launch on Testnet. $10K
We’ve launched our product on testnet (not deployed into production due to reasons already discussed with @cheualx). See the demo below to understand how this
works. Users can link their metamask when they visit the website. Although fans can
only make purchases in fiat via Stripe (our talent will not accept crypto yet), they link
their ONE address when they purchase a request or bid. After the event is automatically
scheduled via the Idol Scheduling Bot, the NFT Autograph created on DaVinci Gallery is
sent to their address.

Milestone 3 Video

@cheaualx connected our team with Stably for a fiat on/off ramp as well as LootMogul and MintBlack to see if there’s potential to collaborate.

@frwrdslosh has seen the ins and outs of the project and has supported it from the start. He is fully on board to approve Milestone 2 and Milestone 3 for a $20K payout for the Idol team. With the tremendous amount of traction we’ve built over the last few months, we’re so excited to see how transformative Idol can be for entertainment in the metaverse.

12

Funded milestone #2 & #3: 0xc9fd95d26c1eca7867a1f0f721a0a08940671192f388a0706b6b2304875be560

Form a multisig wallet with 5 signatories. 3 from the Idol team, 1 Project X grantee, and 1 Harmony community member. 4/5 signatures required. $10K
Launch the closed Beta application with 3 influencers. $10K
Launch on Testnet. $10K
Launch on Mainnet. $10K
10 influencers onboarded and 100K users. $10K