Spaceway Bridge / NFT Adventures LLC DAO

Funding Proposals Grants
1

Name of Project / DAO / Company

Spaceway Bridge / DAO / NFT Adventures LLC DAO (proposed name)

Application type

DAO Formation, Product Launch

Proposal overview

Spaceway Bridge is a player-governed 4x idle game.

It’s an online card game where users own cards that represent a fleet. Users can make simple choices to configure their fleet, including choosing what adventure they want to try. Once a week, the system calculates how users fared in the adventure and divvy out rewards (equipment, raw materials, blueprints, and governance tokens). Adventures are generated either by an algorithm with flavor text by a GPT-3 AI, or by contracted writers using the game’s treasury.

Users can use the rewards to make more cards, upgrade their fleet, and even buy items that can be used in adventures. In addition, users can also trade or rent cards with other players.

The game makes money when a user chooses an adventure or configures their fleet. The system charges them a little more cryptocurrency than the overhead required to process and divvy out rewards. When a user activates a blueprint to “mint” something, they pay a nominal fee which is sent to the treasury. When NFTs change hands between players (or are rented for a mission), the system takes a portion of the fees.

Governance:
There will be three branches of government in the DAO. Two branches are elected, and one is composed of all NFT holders. The people’s branch votes on new things that will cost money, like building a bridge to move fleets between platforms and giving each platform unique items and adventures. One elected branch prevents things that violate the rules from happening. One elected branch handles things that cannot be automated, like taxes. NFT holders can vote no confidence to revert a branch to previous officials by an overwhelming majority.

Team

Currently one software engineer and one artist. We worked together previously for years during the last game company I formed.

As a DAO, we are developing the system to be as self-sustaining as possible, and a lot of work is being supplemented by an AI and existing open source software.

We have relationships with industry veterans lined up to help as consultants when needed, but do not currently have the funding to execute on this. The first step is to have an NFT release to fund the hiring of these veterans in a contractual capacity. Once the pipeline to do this is in place and an approval process is ready, we will be able to bring on work from the treasury based on community votes.

That said, it is my experience that it is critical to have staff members knowledgeable in software development to look out for the company’s best interest when dealing with consulting groups, so there are slots for elected officials on both elected councils. This will be filed with individuals I have personally vetted upon formation, and elected by the community in following elections.

As a DAO, the community can determine future spending based on growth after our milestones are met by hiring additional firms or individuals. Since the company has an overall direction and a set of guard rails from letting it go astray, once the framework is complete the future is in the community’s hands. Seeing the success of agile vs waterfall in this industry, as well as the mantra of adaptability for the ETH ecosystem and its success, I think this is a reasonable path to go down.

Proposal ask

Total $70k.

$0 Pre-phase-0. I don’t think it will be reasonable to ask for money as anonymous strangers without showing what we can do. The initial DAO formation and NFT release will be self funded, but we will post our progress in this thread to make sure our direction is in line with Harmony ONE’s expectations.
$10k Formation of DAO in Wyoming as an Algorithimic DAO LLC Money will go to up front legal costs, such as reviewing contracts for contractors. I expect regulations will be coming down hard on the crypto space soon as it’s no longer the wild west out there, so legal fees to ensure compliance are likely going to be our biggest expense. Even companies that comply with the law will eventually get sued even if they did nothing wrong, so a good legal team up front is critical.
$25k Contracts in place with established industry veterans.
$35k Completion of execution of contracts from industry veterans, to be used for marketing release and audits, mainly through influencers. Code must be on the testnet.

Justification

We need seed money to pay for up front legal costs, consultants, and to hire influencers for marketing.

In order to hire our consultants that are lined up, we need money. The consultants will allow us to finish development of the product and properly market during launch.

The phases themselves are designed to fund the development of the next phase.

Metrics for success

Phase 0:
Use personal funds if necessary or external funds if possible to generate a DAO LLC in Wyoming, including a functional smart contract for the LLC.

The DAO’s contract will be configured to release funds as things are planned, and after that, any following phases have funds released by user governance.

The DAO will sell up to 1,000 randomly generated NFTs. Ownership of one of NFT’s should allow for participation in governance. Once $75k is raised from either NFT sales or funding acceptance, move to phase 1.

Phase 1:
Use the funding to hire lawyers. These lawyers will be able to ensure legal compliance. This includes creating contracts for contract work for AAA industry veterans. We already have experienced industry veterans lined up to help with things like polishing game design, but they are waiting on a contract. This also includes marketing, such as influencers and celebrities.

Phase 2
Execute on the advice by industry experts and create gameplay mechanics based on the advice. Make use of the GPT-3 davanci codex to generate code to cut costs and increase speed when possible, under human supervision.

Phase 3
Marketing blitz, releasing the new ships and the rest of the 10000 governance NFTs.

Phase 4:
Ensure that the DAO has the ability to self-govern without the founder’s interference, with its fate determined by a majority vote of the users controlled by algorithms from the DAO during the initial release.

1 Like
2

Developer accomplishments during last 2-week sprint:

  • Code to generate random NFTs complete.
  • Access to GPT-3 ai granted and tests successful.
  • Establish contacts with AAA titles under their belt to act as contractors when funding is available.

Eric (artist) progress:

Next sprint (ends October 26th):
MrJ:

  • Get the discord server online with all channels and descriptions
  • Liquidate funds for an initial consultation with the legal team
  • Liquidate funds to have a consultation with experts with similar projects on a high level. Including discovery advice.
  • The game development/balance contracting suite is solid. Leverage personal script writer/book author contacts for the plot, as well as finding possible candidates for electe development board.
    Reach goal
  • If time and legal constraints allow, integrate calls to GPT-3 ai to give each bot individual AI-generated backstories. Overlay backstory into bot’s image.

Artist:

  • Fix alignment problem of left arms/hands during generation
  • Continue creating new assets
1 Like
3

Hi all! I was able to allocate $2,000 of my personal funds to hire a lawyer for some legal questions in preparation for starting a DAO. The legal fees for good lawyers range from $300 to $500 an hour, so I want to be sure I ask the right questions and make the best use of the time I can afford.

If anyone has any questions they think I should ask that I’m missing, please let me know now. It may not be as practical (or at least costly) to keep following up with a lot of little questions. Likewise, if there are questions that have obvious answers that don’t need to be asked, please let me know.

  • Are my governance rules (see below) in line with what the law expects for a Wyoming Algorithmic DAO LLC? My end goal is to create a gaming company that is self-sustaining and whose future is dictated by the will of its users. If I am not in compliance with my current plan, are there any guidelines I can follow that would allow me to follow the spirit of my goal?

  • When Sundaeswap wanted to make its ISO, it changed how the ISO worked because of the legal ramifications. Specifically, it was concerned about the Howey Test. My current plan is to create most of the initial funding through the sale of NFTs that can in turn be staked for governance tokens. Based on my current roadmap, it would likely take three months for the system to be completely self-sustaining and not dependant upon a central team. Does this mean that I’d be in violation of the law if I followed my current plan, or at least be considered a commodity (which would create legal restrictions that I do not have the budget to overcome)?

  • The law states that I need to provide a smart contract address when forming a DAO LLC. Does this address have to be an ETH address? Is the legal entity forever tied to a single smart contract, or does the law allow for the entity to evolve over time based on an 80% majority vote? If the address must be immutable, is DAO’s smart contract allowed to dynamically reference other contracts, or allow off-chain governance, or otherwise adapt based on a majority vote? Is there a standard set of methods that the smart contract needs to be a legally recognized entity?

  • I am aware that the DAO will be allowed to have its own US bank account, which would be necessary for fulfilling contracts with external vendors and paying taxes. I am also aware that Cryptocurrency is considered property and not currency. How do taxes work in regards to this, in the context of how the DAO does business? Is it allowed to pay contractors with cryptocurrency or must all transactions be in USD? What are the KYC requirements to comply with anti-money laundering rules, if any? Following up, what measures must be in place to ensure the DAO follows legal restrictions regarding sanctioned countries? Are there additional hoops it needs to go through in order to have international customers? Would it be restricted from making transactions over $6k over smart contracts if the law changes? If the DAO generates its own governance tokens for users who chose to stake their NFTs, how would this come into play with the above?

  • Would the DAO be considered to have a legal presence in only Wyoming, or something else? Assuming it only has a legal presence in Wyoming (the most likely answer), how do the rules for Wyoming corporations differ from Delaware corporations?

  • When I created previous LLCs I needed articles of incorporation. Do you have standard templates for DAOs that I can modify? Since the law states that the smart contract overrules the articles of incorporation, does it really need anything in it other than the legal minimum?

  • In the worst-case scenario, if the company loses interest (such as not having an elected board to handle tax and registration fees), it will still have funds and legal obligations, but be nothing but a network of computer programs. What happens then? Since the DAO would have legal personhood, it can be sued (frivolous or not). How does this work with an algorithmic DAO LLC?

  • Most of the development will be through contracting firms or respected individuals funded through the DAO’s treasury. Are there a standard set of contracts the DAO can use for individuals? Are there legal requirements made for individuals representing the DAO to sign a contract? Can the signature be represented by a majority vote of governance token holders or does it need a legal representative by human proxy? If it needs a human or legal firm as a proxy, what needs to be done to make that happen?

  • Are there any loopholes I didn’t think of that could be exploited by bad actors should the DAO begin to thrive, or otherwise adversely impact the ability for the DAO to become self-sustaining and grow? If so, how do you recommend I close them?

  • I am aware that DAOs that are not LLCs are usually considered general partnerships. If the DAO LLC holds governance tokens of another DAO that is not an LLC, does that mean the DAO LC can be held responsible for the other DAO’s actions?

Governance:

  • Governance token holders: Spending proposals (up to 20% of treasury) voting on spending proposals (80% vote), elections, votes of no confidence for elected officials (which can revert back to a previously elected official that wasn’t also given a vote of no confidence), vote on governance rules

  • Elected branch - Judiciary: Has the power to veto anything that isn’t a vote of no confidence. Expected to only veto rules that are in legal violation or in violation of existing governance rules. Any other use of veto powers is considered a breach of duties.

  • Elected branch - Executive: Performs actions that cannot be automated. This includes paying taxes, filing fees, reviewing software architecture, and other legal work.

ps: This is one of the situations where the key here is ROI for the capital spent, and in my experience, this type of lawyer can produce more per dollar despite having a higher hourly rate. To cut down costs, I’m consulting with someone who is an expert on the 26th for advice on what to present to legal. I may also reach out to some of my contacts from past projects (the MIT Enterprise Forum, MassChallenge & folks from MIT Professional Education Blockchain class).

But since this is a Harmony One project and I can’t be the first person to run into these issues, any support would be appreciated.

Edit: Clarity, grammar

4

Tasks from the last sprint:

  • Discord channel online, website started
  • Investigated legal concerns
  • Reached out to software contacts with more experience and recived feedback
  • Prepared next batch of contacts, contingent on DAO formation so traditional contracts can be written for consultation and creative development (non-smart contracts).
  • Updated NFT generator as per artis’s updates

Artist:

  • Fixed alignment problem of left arms/hands during generation
  • Continued creating new assets (4 backgrounds, 5 left hands, 5 left arms, a left leg, 8 torsos, 15 heads, a right leg, 5 right arms, 5 right hands)
  • Successfully ran random content generator Example
    image
    image1920×2880 220 KB

Major takeaways:

  • According to legal types, using the NFT sale like a kickstarter is a bad idea because the SEC is on a witch hunt for things like that. It’s better to get a basic game first so it can be an early access sale.
  • It turns out that a bunch of lawyers got together and created their own DAO. They automated the process of creating a Deleware LLC DAO which can be created with minimal paperwork and minting an NFT.
  • IPFS is a good option for off-chain decentralized storage.
  • The overall software architecture is solidified.
  • Tokenomics were flushed out on a high level, but good tokenomics is very important and should be used to incentivize positive behavior.
  • Looks like the end of November is a realistic timeline for the game to be online and playable in some form.
  • AI is very good at understanding intent brought up a good point and suggestion when rewriting the website for me. It pointed out that people get attached to characters, and not ships. Folks already have NFTs they have as profile pictures that they enjoy. Similarly, some game management is decoupled from NFTs into the game’s managing cotnract. With that in mind, people can use their profile pic NFTs as characters, and instead of just upgrading ships, they can get “fame points” for their existing NFTs that can be spent to give the NFTs special abilities. While these are managed in two different places behind the scenes, this is completely transparent to the user and they will feel that they are bringing outside assets into the game seamlessly.

Next Sprint (ends the 12th):

Mr J:

  • Finish website, post the discord server and website to this thread
  • Reach out to ONE on Discord since there is no feedback here, to ask if the original topic should be updated or amended
  • Incorporate via Richardson DAO, use an attorney to get a physical contract for a game designer ranked top 500 in the world, and use the game designer to balance gameplay components.
  • Create scaffolding to simulate general gameplay (frontend only).
  • Reach out to a celebrity to produce the elevator pitch as a video.
  • Reach out to book author and TV Producer contacts to write scripts for plot.
  • Store a single NFT with metadata on IPFS via the testnet. Use Open Zeppelin as per Opean Sea recommendation.
  • Watch “EconomicsDesign” videos to study up on tokenmomics (should in game currency be governance tokens to combat inflation? is logarithmic valuation to prevent top players from dominating the market a good idea, gated supply, etc)
  • Research cyber kongs, axie, etc to fill in “unknown unknowns”
  • Research using BrightId or other ID mechanics to comply with laws and minimize bad actor manipulation
  • Reach out to anti-rugpull groups to increase stability of product against manipulation

Artist:

  • Come up with workable logistics for 3d NFTs to be printed and shipped to users should they choose. Specifically, users can download a file to either print on their own or use a minimum of 3 major providers to print and ship for them.
  • Work with industry contacts to find the best person to write copy for examples of AI to consume. Create at least fifty AI-generated missions that sound like they were written by a human.
  • Name all components and do the above for backstories of every robot generated
  • If time allows, create placeholder assets for ships, equipment, ownable locations, fame points, raw materials, and blueprints
1 Like
5

Early Update (will still post a full update after the sprint is over as per usual):

1 Like
6

Thank you for submitting a proposal to Harmony’s $300M Ecosystem Fund

We are in the process of reviewing your proposal. We would also love :blue_heart: 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.

7

Commendable amount of work you have put in. Looks like a great concept and game. Also very interesting legal questions you have raised around the structures. Useful info, appreciate it. Good luck!

1 Like
8

Thank you Kenny for the words of encouragement. It’s great to read, and I’m very much looking forward to hearing Jack’s feedback.

We love questions because it helps us know what people care about.

On that note, we were chatting with folks who have a VC funded NFC just two days ago, and the talk really helped us refine our pitch:

Let your favorite NFT become the protagonist of your story.

Join Spaceway Bridge Central, and become an active citizen of the Spaceway Galaxy. Explore, Fly, Build, Trade and Survive in a strange and wondrous utopia.

Spaceway Bridge Central is a social experiment, where all citizens have the opportunity to participate in the governance of the Spaceway Galaxy.

9

Hello @MrJ -

First - I love the 4X genre. I cut my gaming teeth on games like Civilization, Master of Orion and others. Big fan. I really want to play this game!

Let’s talk grants.

The /300 and /apply provides some general guidelines on what fits into our grants and what doesn’t.

When you look at /apply you will see the following under the Launches category:

$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)

Importantly - all of our grants get transferred out to the teams AFTER they have finished a milestone.

So - I am more than happy to award you a $50K grant to launch (payable according to the milestones).

Do you believe that is something you can work with?

Thanks!
Sam Harrison
Ecosystem Growth | Harmony

1 Like
10

Thank you! This is very exciting to hear. We can certainly make this work with that budget.

The way you propose would give us access to funds when we will actually need them. Getting the game built isn’t an issue (this isn’t our first rodeo), and this schedule would solve our “chick and egg” problems in other areas (such as regulatory compliance).

What are the next steps?

1 Like
11

Fantastic! Grant approved!

Next steps - publish! Push out information to get the community excited about what you are building, get in contact with the Community DAO and run up AMAs and conversations about what Spaceway Bridge will look like.

When you launch the feature complete product on testnet – post in this forum again. Tag me and once we verify (i.e. I will go in and play the game :slight_smile: ) we will pay out the first milestone.

After that - each milestone you cross, come back to the forum and post a way for us to verify… links, address, etc. After we verify, we can submit for the payment.

Thanks you guys! Looking forward to it!!

12

I haven’t posted in a while and I just wanted to give a small update:

  • We are still active. We have had less time than planned due to some unforeseen circumstances (such as extended power outages) but the time we did have was significantly more productive than expected, so it evens out in the end.
  • We are currently in “keep your head down and work” mode. I’m focusing on writing smart contracts and Unity Code. Our plan is to have something shiny for our public first impression, coupled with an NFT giveaway.
  • Since our webpage currently reads more like a whitepaper, most of it will be replaced with a 3d demo that shows what the game looks like, with “read more” links that go to the wordy website for people who want details. This is far easier to do than it sounds.
  • We’ll be looking to expand with additional staff beyond Eric, myself, the AI, and paid consultants around the same time as the NFT giveaway.
  • The support we have been given not only here, but at nearly every step of the process is heartwarming. The positivity and “pay it forward” attitude from nearly every community we reached out to is amazing.
  • The tech we are using for the NFT Giveaway is the proof of concept of the engine in general. Essentially the plan is that once an NFT is minted on-chain, an AWS lambda process will be triggered to upload the metadata and image to IPFS. If this works and there is interest, I’ll be happy to open-source it. I can see this being useful as a project of its own, if anyone has the desire to take the code and expand on it (such as by making a service that fairly mints NFTs) . That likely won’t be us for the obvious reason that we are focusing on making a game.
  • We were able to get our first choice in game designers! Making a game that sounds cool and looks cool is one thing, but making a game that is actually fun to play for a sustained period is a different animal entirely.
3 Likes
13

In the spirit of transparency, I had to pause the development of Spaceway Bridge to take care of family. On top of that my wife is expecting with a delivery date in a few weeks, so I likely won’t continue until the baby is a good two months old for obvious reasons.

I want the project to continue and don’t want to take up space for the ONE fund for something that’s on ice. So, with that in mind, if anyone would like to take over the project, either during my absence or as the new owner to get it out the door faster, please send me a PM. I’ll give you a standard FAANG style interview to make sure you know your technical chops if so. Keep in mind that this will be a project of passion. I can set aside time to transition to the new owner if someone takes me up on this and can pass a standard FAANG interview.

1 Like
14

Thanks @MrJ for the update - keep the this thread posted on updates regarding new interim replacement. Looking forward to hear more on the project.

15

Thank you. I’m still pretty sleep deprived with the new baby and have a lot of work, but I am excited to get back to coding and building soon. Nobody took me up on my offer to take over the project while I was gone.

I’m sad to hear about the bridge hack. Does this mean payments for approved projects are paused/canceled? If that’s the case, I won’t be able to put more of my own cash into the project until I know I’ll be able to recoup some costs once I reach a milestone, but will be happy to keep programming in either case.

edit: By the way, I have access to Dall-E 2 now, though I’ll have to look at the TOS to make sure NFT games are allowed. They were previously forbidden but this may have changed with the new Beta.