Monello – A cross-platform tipping and betting bot for Discord and Telegram

[midegi]

Name of Project

Monello

Application Type

Product Launch, Investement and Marketing

Proposal overview

The main goal of Monello is to develop a cross-platform bot automation, initially on Discord and then on Telegram, which integrates a solid and fluid tipping system to a series of more complex betting mechanics on games , directly playable on Discord and Telegram.

A different approach to gaming : The bot will be directly connected to the Harmony Blockchain and it will allow users to easily tip and to place bets, using the ONE coin. Regarding the betting system, the bot will permit users to bet on many different games. In fact Monello will initially include simple mini-games, for example as Tic Tac Toe, Align Four, Rock Paper Scissor, Odds and Evens, various type of dices games and more complex ones as table games, card games and even RPG adventures. We plan to modularly implement these games, which can be played between 2 players, between multiple players and between the players and the bot.

A digital artistic renaissance : A revolutionary feature of Monello will be the possibility to exchange NFT, exactly as they were collectible cards, on Discord between users in order to stimulate not only their sociality, but also their creativity, since they will even be able to mint their personal NFT. This will allow our community, which is deeply fond of art and art history in general, to grow and to consolidate a deeply artistic bond with many different creators and designers, by integrating preexisting NFT collection with new ones, directly created by our community. With these prerogatives we plan on holding some design contests between creators as well. In regards of newly created NFT collection, one fundamental condition that the Monello has agreed on is that a conspicuous part earned from every newly created NFT collection must be devolved to charities organization, that will be periodically and democratically chosen by our community.

Security and simplicity : In order to achieve all these functions the bot generates a virtual wallet for every user that starts to interact with it. The information about all the wallets, which are shared across servers, are first encrypted and then stored inside a secure Database, in order to facilitate the integration within Discord and Telegram.

Feasibility Study

Before starting the development, our small team held a carefully and concise feasibility study to highlight not only the practicality of this project, but also the critical points of failure that could lead to possible problems in the functioning of the application. In the first phase of this study, two surveys were proposed to the users of both platforms. From the collected data, obtained from a statistical sample of 693 Discord users and 320 Telegram users, it emerged a strong interest and curiosity for cryptocurrencies and for bots that can integrate them inside the respective platforms.

In order to clarify the conclusion that we came up to, it might be useful to briefly analyze at least some of the results obtained from the Discord survey. As shown in the graph, the majority of the userbase that voted in the survey has used a bot on the Discord platform at least 1 time. Furthermore, it is possible to infer, without too much surprise, that the most used types of bots on Discord are Music Bots with 330 votes , Economy Bots with 305 votes and at last Gaming Bots, with 336 votes . As we previously stated it should not surprise us at all. As a matter of fact, a rapid visit to many websites that provide metrics for Discord automations, clearly makes explicit how the most popular and the best rated bots are based on a hybrid model which integrates economic management features and gaming features. The numbers of users that use these bots is in the thousands, sometimes in the millions.

Various examples of some of the most popular Discord bot (Source: https://top.gg)

Then, it appears clear that this model of automation, that combines both of the previous factors, not only it has proven as a successful recipe for a Discord bot, but it has also a definite and already strongly established target.

To conclude, the final and most important incentive of our project is the possibility to “devirtualize” the currency usually earned while playing with other gaming bots, which would otherwise be confined to the Discord Ecosystem as a worthless virtual currency.

Deliverables

Our community carefully planned this aspect of the project, as well. These deliverables refer to the developing and deploying of the bot on the Discord platform . We thought and studied the feasibility of our project for long?, hoping to clearly define what services we will perform and what products we will create during the various stages of the developing of this bot. In this proposal we present a brief synthesis which shows the objectives we set out to achieve:

First month Objectives

1. Virtual tipping system prototype
2. Virtual betting system prototype

At this point we have an already functioning bot, with an integrated tipping and betting system, which works by using a a virtual currency on Discord. During the first month of developing of our project we plan to totally redesign and to improve the current skeleton of our bot, by implementing some essential security features. Also, we plan to implement more mini-games.

Second month Objectives

3. Feature-complete product on Harmony testnet

The next immediate step would be to deploy a fully functional product on the testnet that offers the possibility to deposit and withdraw ONE coins and to exchange and mint NFT. Especially the element of trading. Also we plan to create and launch our personal NFT collection.

4. Form a DAO

Since we want to create a community that revolves around the community-driven evolution of Monello, in form of a a shared digital experience, the next natural objective for our team would be to form a DAO of dedicated people.

Third month Objectives

5. Developing of the Monello token (ELLO)

Then, one of the most fundamental objective would be to develop and to deploy a specific token that would be used for betting on the bot. This essential step would help us to slowly but steadily achieve the self-sustainability of the project.

6. Modular implementation of new games chosen by the community

Since the bot is specifically built in Python with a modulation model, the last process would be to constantly implement new games, based on what the community decides, by checking in advance the feasibility of the implementation. And as stated in the previous paragraphs, we have many future ideas for new games which could be easily directly played on Discord Servers.

Proposal ask

$50k

$10K after launching a feature-complete product on our testnet
$10K after forming a DAO with 5-out-of-9 multisig with our DAOs
$10K after launching on our mainnet with audit
$10K after 1K daily active users (with launch video, full PR promotion)
$10K after 10k daily active users (with a detailed roadmap, governance process)

Metrics for success

Popularity : since the possible userbase that could be reached is very large, we plan to establish Monello as one of the most popular Discord gaming bot by reaching the ambitious total number of at least 100,000 total wallets . With that said, we know we have to start slow initially. So, in the first month from launch we plan to acquire at least 1000 daily active users , through a variety of marketing strategies on the platform. Specifically, we have planned to gift, to the first 1000 users that create wallet, an exponentially decreasing number of ONE coins. For example, the first 300 users to generate a wallet will get 30 ONE, the other 200 will get 20 ONE and so on. This could potentially lead to an increase in daily active users with a progressive reduction of the average cost per user . After the launch, if Monello gets enough traction within Discord, the only user costs it will face will be related to the transfer fees during the deposit of funds, which are not excessive at all. In regards of the withdraws of funds, those will initially be the main source of income, as the users will have to pay a small fee, redirected to our “liquidity pool”, in order to retrieve their ONE coins.

Cross-platform : deploy Monello on at least 2 other social media platforms . Discord and Telegram are the ideal solution and that is why launching the bot on Telegram will be the next necessary step to ensure its adoption and its self-sustainability. An interactive social media platform created by our community could be an interesting solution, as well.

ELLO Token: another necessary path to the self-sustainability of our project is the develop of a specific utility token that will be created 3 months after the launch.

Artistic collaboration s : after 2 months from the launch, we plan to create with our community at least 1 NFT collection which will be traded as collectibles on Discord. Also we plan to implement at least 3 external NFT collections .

Social interaction: increase the number of members in our social channels on Discord and Telegram with at least 50 users , in the first month. After that, we expect a steady growth, especially for our Discord Server, of a minimum of 100 members per month . Engage the community with polls, tournaments and other social virtual events.

Our team

• Midegi – Lead developer of this project. Digital Humanities student, professional Web Developer in Italy and Content Creator, deeply passionate about Web3 and Blockchain technologies. Also an Art History, Computational Linguistic and Artificial Intelligence enthusiast.

• RMN – Main developer of the Discord bot. Experienced in Ecommerce deploying and development, currently studying Computer Science in Italy. Cryptocurrency enthusiast.

• JoannaAfrica – Main developer of the Telegram bot, from Jordan. Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering and Master degree in Applied Math. Currently working as a Data Scientist. Also a passionate cryptocurrency trader.

• Paradroide – Designer and marketing strategist. Currently studying Design and Visual Communication in Italy, deeply fond of 3D and Motion Graphic, Videomaking and Touchdesign.

• Ggiallo – Project and community manager. Diploma in Social Science studies, studied Marketing and Economics in Italy. Very passionate about Data Analysis, Economics, Geopolitics and currently learning about Web3.

Since we want to be as transparent as possible, if it is necessary, we will be glad to provide other infos about us!

External links

• Discord Server: Discord
• Telegram channel: Telegram: Contact @m0n3ll0

[thirdj]

Extremely bullish for this project. This has a lot of potential. I hope the Harmony team won’t let this slip away

[jbeltran]

Thank you for submitting a proposal to Harmony’s $300M Ecosystem Fund. We are in the process of reviewing your proposal and will assign a representative on behalf of the Grants Ops team.

We would also love to have the Harmony community participate to ask questions and provide feedbacks.

If you have more details to add, please do so by replying to this thread.

[midegi]

Hey, thank you for you kind words and for your interest! Really appreciate it

[midegi]

Thank you! We are currently rebuilding our social channels and our brand identity. As I said, we are redesigning the core structure of our bot as well.

I would be glad to answer any question from the community. Also, I hope that other community members will give their opinion on our idea!

Edit: grammar

[SanZen20]

Looks like an awesome proposal. If only more of these and less trash DAOs…

[ifllim]

Just saw the project mentioned on reddit and the more I read about this, the more I thought “how hasn’t anyone already thought of this?”

I hope to see this project developed because this is a pure gem. Also the idea of letting other people trading NFT directly on discord is pure genius!!!

[John1]

Just saw this project on reddit and created an account to say that it’s a great idea! Hope it takes off because I’m definitely interested.

[midegi]

Thank to everyone for your support! Really guys, it’s very important to us

Also, @ifllim could you link the post where Monello was mentioned, please? Thanks

[midegi]

Never mind, I found it by scouting on reddit!

[Singularity]

This is a nice idea, I can see myself using something like this! Good luck on the project

[midegi]

Thank you @Singularity. Please join our social channels and feel free to pose any question about the project!

[thirdj]

hey @midegi, i’m closely following your project. Any updates from the Harmony team?

also I have an idea about a game that you guys can add: trivia. Lemme know what you think

[midegi]

Hey, first, thank you for the idea very much! It may be implemented in some way, for sure. We will carefully consider that! Also, please, consider joining our Discord and Telegram channels. That would be help us a lot

Second, not yet, but I am waiting for an update from @papi

In the meantime I would like to edit the post with some FAQ about the project. Stay tuned!

[Pioneer]

Regarding security, how can users be assured that the wallets that are created in order to interact with your bot are trustworthy? Can your bot be implemented to work with the existing discord bot? I love the idea and have seen other very successful and well received bots in the space (Amity bot) that have similar functionality, but no mini games and betting afaik. Excited to see another way for user interaction.

On a side note, how can your team make this tool more specific and beneficial to the Harmony blockchain? Since the grant is specifically coming from the Harmony ecosystem, I think that this project should somehow offer a semblance of loyalty or commitment, beings that it is mostly a social media tool that can be used anywhere

[papi]

Hey Team - thank you for your grant application. After reading it a few times, here are my initial thoughts and questions:

• A discord or telegram bot, connected on-chain, isn’t novel of innovative, and it’s been done before and with little success from my experience.

• That being said, what will make your approach unique and have a higher likelihood of success than other previous implementations?

• Growing our social presence isn’t a challenge; it’s actually quite easy, what is hard is growing more engaged users, less bots, and engaged means - actual humans conversing, with dialogue, adding value via conversations.

Let me know what you think. At this stage, it doesn’t feel like a good fit for Harmony based on what we are looking to do, but I’m wrong in any of my assumptions, please let me know.

[midegi]

Hey @papi, thank you for your answer and for your time. I will try to explain further why I firmly believe Monello would be a great add to the Harmony ecosystem. With this comment, I will try to address all the arguments you exposed. I hope to answer some of @Pioneer 's questions, as well.

First, I would like to address the concerns regarding the originality of our idea. We perfectly know that the core idea at the base of our project isn’t that innovative and that out there are a lot of bots, on Discord, Twitter, Reddit and Telegram. For example, Rhythm-ONE, the Banano tipping bot, tip.cc, just to name a few I can think of right now. The majority of these bot have one particular thing in common: they usually only offer a tipping service.

In that, Monello is very different than the other bots, because, besides its tipping system, it provides a real utility to its users. Monello permits to use cryptocurrenties to interactively play in real time with other users, without leaving the social platform. As @Pioneer stated in its comment, it’s not common to see gaming and betting mechanics in a cryptocurrency bots, as far as I am concerned.

Furthermore, as said in the post, we carefully studied the feasibility of our project. We have already taken into consideration the main flaws of the others bots we analyzed. Usually, those projects not only lack interactivity, but they also fail to take off because of a weak marketing. The number of Discord user is in the millions, but it’s commonly known that the majority of its users are gamers: they use Discord to play together and to watch things together, not only Youtube videos, movies, TV series but also chess tournaments, sport, e-sport matches and so on. So, in this case, we have a very broad target audience, especially on Discord: trivially there is a lot of demand for Betting and Gaming Bots but the offer of quality bots that implement cryptocurrency is very very low. Out there there isn’t a popular Discord bot which does what Monello does.

Just to make one last example, even after analyzing our competition, we haven’t found a bot which permits to its user to create, exchange and bet NFT directly on social platforms. That is one of the core feature of our automation and I would like to add a strong emphasis on the importance of NFT for our projects, since we can draw a parallel with the very common social behavior of exchanging stickers. I know that it may seems simplistic but I strongly believe this feature will actually engage a vast usersbase. I have no doubt on that. I personally study Digital Humanities and I totally believe what it’s stated in this citation from the Digital Humanities Manifesto:

Process is the new god; not product. Anything that stands in the way of the perpetual mash-up and remix stands in the way of the digital revolution.

We perfectly know that growing a community is the key to the success of our project and we are determined to achieve that. Also, the Harmony community sentiment has shown to be positive towards Monello. Some users in this post has brought to my attention that our bot was mentioned on r/harmony_one, as one of the most promising projects on the ecosystem. Furthermore, to show that we are committed to this community, I want to make clear that all the NFT collections created by Monello Users, and by us, will be minted only the Harmony blockchain. I hope that is good enough.

Last but not least, we know in the end what will actually matter is the execution. Monello is backed by a team of passionate, experienced, serious and dedicated people that are fully committed to this project. I may be biased, but I am very proud I am working with them. Also, we have no problem about doxxing ourselves and we would have no problem to work hand-in-hand with the Harmony team, if that is necessary.

So yes, we are confident that our approach is unique and that it has a higher likelihood of success than other projects. With that said, I hope I made you believe in the project at least as much as we do.

[Pioneer]

Very thorough, timely explanation! How would your bot be implemented into Discord servers? What is the installation process? And back to my initial question, how can users be certain about the security of your wallet? Is there an option to use different wallets?

What are some notable ways that you plan to market this type of product to the vast number of discord servers that we have established?

[tabasco_ow]

Hi all, I’m the developer of an on-chain bot named Amity DeFi (one of the most widely used bots in the Harmony ecosystem for tipping, raining, and just connecting communities to Web3). The options for servers in terms of on-chain bots are limited to two people at the moment; Myself and Sm0nks (another on-chain bot developer). Having a third option that provides more specialized utility to the communities that would benefit from it would support the overall ecosystem in my opinion. “Wallet bots”, especially those that are on-chain, ultimately enrich the experience of the communities that enable it and thus make the community feel more connected.

Although I do have a few concerns, one of which would be the legality of enabling what is essentially gambling as I understand it and Discord’s complicity with this. As someone who has wrestled with Discord to convince them to allow a bot like mine, which lacks any gaming functionality and acts purely as a link/transactional method between the blockchain and Discord, has been a massive headache, and they themselves have described on-chain bots as a new medium that needs to be individually visited case-by-case in terms of it’s compliance with the Terms of Service; adding gambling or betting to the mix may further complicate this process.

Finally, bots that utilize the account-handling method that yours does, that being custodial wallets, or in the case of my bot, “semi-custodial”, require a great deal of trust in those developing the application on the user’s behalf, and an immense amount of thought put into security by the developer. The first of these two things happens over time, and as far as I’ve found I can’t seem to find a project that you or the other administrator of your discord have contributed to, so earning that trust may take time without prior prominence in the community.

Ultimately I’d love to see another option for on-chain Harmony integrations into Discord, but there are some barriers that you guys would have to move past as I outlined above. I’d love to hear how you guys intend to move past these barriers; as a bot of this nature would be a fantastic addition to the Harmony bot ecosystem.

[Pioneer]

Was hoping to hear from you specifically @tabasco_ow, as your Amity bot is widely used in servers, our included. You raise a fair and cautionary point that I believe should be considered prior to grant approval in any case.

The idea is great, and I do think that the community would welcome it. However if it break the Discord ToS then it won’t get the chance to lift off, no matter it’s merit.