Name of Project
Piper DAO
Proposal overview
Piper DAO - The Messenger of Web3
• Mandates
Genesis. Inspire. Create.
• Overview
There is a huge opportunity relating to messaging in the crypto space, currently there are no good (decentralized) solutions to notify someone when their leveraged positions are close to being liquidated, their NFTs being sold, or other important notifications in the web3 space.
The Piper protocol will solve this critical gap by utilizing the old phones that currently just sit around in people’s drawers around the world, and using them to build a decentralized network of text message relayers.
Additionally, since the Harmony network’s gas fees are incredibly low, such a protocol could be built as an L2 to severely undercut any centralized messaging provider in the industry, given that a peer-to-peer (P2P) network such as Hermes would not be subject to the same strict regulations & fees.
This is also the reason why the solution needs to be decentralized. This project is technically feasible via a centralized phone farm, however with centralization, you are sending messages as a business, meaning you are subjected to all of the regulatory fees that all centralized solutions in the industry face. Moving forward with a decentralized solution means all messages are sent from person to person, which won’t have the same fee issue.
• Description
Genesis
The first step would be to set up a “testnet” of core phones that would serve as the initial messaging relays (aka validators) for the network. The next step is to expand and find other people to set up their old phones by spinning them up as “Piper relayers”, which basically means each phone they set up will become a node in the Piper P2P network, capable of sending and receiving messages.
Inspire
The second step will be to start rolling out and get web2 and web3 companies to use the Piper network to send messages at a much cheaper rate than they could get using any centralized competitor.
Using a network of even 300 phones would allow for ~9 million messages to be sent every month. Which at the competitive rate of $0.0075 per message would generate $68k in revenue per month, which would be paid out to the node managers. This figure is much higher in LATAM and the EU.
Create
One of the main reasons that decentralized apps don’t support text message alerts is simply because it is too expensive. However, the Piper messaging protocol will allow for new DeFi apps to be built on top which would allow any protocol to send messages for free.
For example: If we take OlympusDAO, with >$400MM value locked, if they deposited just $10MM into the Hermes DAO, which in turn, was deposited this into Anchor. A 20% yield would generate $2MM per year in revenue, which, at $0.0075 per message, would allow for 266 million text messages to be sent.
- Acquisition
Customers of the Piper Protocol will be acquired by using connections formed at an existing text message based business called Sendblue. Sendblue operates via a centralized phone farm, and basically serves the same use-case as Twilio, with the added benefit of having iMessage support. Sendblue regularly gets emails like this one:
The company has to reject clients like this because there is currently no way to support such massive volume. However, by setting up decentralized farms in the LATAM/EU, each node manager would be able to earn $200-$800 per month per phone that they manage (exact amount based on geography).
• Budget
Project Y funding will initially be spent on the initial buildout of the P2P platform on top of the Harmony network, as well as sponsoring node providers in the LATAM region by providing them with phones that they can set up to run in their homes.
The initial buildout will happen at the ETH Amsterdam hackathon, so a portion of the budget will be allocated to sponsoring the trips of talented hackers and collaborators who have the skillset to bring this project to life.
- Milestones
Piper Protocol’s goal will be to have a test network set up by the end of the ETH Amsterdam hackathon, with 3 enterprise-level clients ready to beta test the platform.
By the end of Q2 we will aim to have 100 independent relayers (phones) connected to the network, which will be enough to start the first few production rollouts for web2 and web3 use-cases.
• Governors
Adam Anzuoni - Currently an automation engineer at Blockchain.com, newsletter and community manager for Metaphor, and community manager at 101.xyz
Previous: Automation engineer at Nueroflash
Nikita Jerschow - Co-Founder of Sendblue.co, Frosty.so, cosmology.finance, and others. Loves to build projects for fun and turn them into sustainable businesses if possible.
Previously a back-end developer at PayPal, currently working full-stack on projects in the web3 space as a nomad.
Ben Miller - Currently a consultant for many individual and institutional investors in the crypto space, as well as an avid DeFi researcher and investor.
Previously: Financial manager at generation finance, product manager at Facebook.