AIP-100: To incentivize decision making activity by rewarding ApeCoin DAO voters with free NFTs

Original Proposal
AIP-65: To incentivise decision making activity by rewarding active ApeCoin DAO members with free NFTs from a new collection - Brand Decision

Reason it was not approved
The Special Council has deemed this proposal as a return for reconstruction. In doing so, they cited that the voting process should not be used to endorse projects.

Resubmission Updates
Now I don’t require sharing in social media. Also, now the project requires funding from the DAO


Proposal Name: To incentivise decision making activity by rewarding ApeCoin DAO voters with free NFTs

Proposal Category: BRAND DECISION

ABSTRACT

To create a new NFT collection and allow mint NFTs for free to reward active ApeCoin DAO community members in order to incentivise voting.

MOTIVATION

DAOs are crypto’s most important innovation. Voting in the initial stages of DAOs development are most important, first decisions will determine further destinies of communities. At the same time ApeCoin DAO voting activity in the first months is very low. There are around 80,000 $APE holders, but the ApeCoin proposals are receiving less than 900 votes on average.

So weak voting activity creates more centralization with very high risks that some proposals may be sabotaged or promoted by small groups of players, influencing future directions of the DAO that the majority of holders doesn’t want.

Also, it’s not healthy for the community when only a very small part of members are interested to vote and learn about the ecosystem.

We need to eliminate these risks and bring more decentralisation and democracy to the decision making process. In order to achieve this I propose organising a free mint of a new high quality NFT collection as a reward for active votes.

RATIONALE

ApeCoin DAO was created because decentralised governance is the most important part of building a globally wide community. Democracy is vital for the success of the APE ecosystem. But it’ll never work without decentralisation.

Animoca Brands CEO, Yat Siu, said:

"The best defence of a functioning democracy is a high level of education. And in the case of Web3, we still need to educate a lot of people. People don’t understand the space. What is it, DAO? How’s the token work? Why don’t I get this much? How does it benefit? We’re early in the process, and it’s all part of our duty to help bring people to the level.”

And this is what I want us to do as well, and I am ready to devote myself entirely to the idea, and looking for soul mates in this endeavour. I want us to incentivise as much as possible $APE holders to learn through actions - exercising their right to vote. Which will also lead them to the ApeCoin forum and into ApeCoin DAO space, to read proposals, participate in discussions, create their own proposals, coordinate and build together.

KEY TERMS

There is no new terms.

SPECIFICATIONS

As @4437 suggested I will use NiftyKit tool for technical generation of the art, metadata, smart contract, mint/drop site, this will ensure that we will avoid underwater rocks on these stages. Twitter, Discord and Medium for social media.

STEPS TO IMPLEMENT

  • NFT, website, smart-contract and promotional materials production period that will take 4 months
  • Free minting event
  • Promotion of the collection to make it self-sustaining

How will the NFTs can be distributed

  • ApeCoin DAO members will be able to mint for free one NFT for each 1,000 of $APE tokens used to vote in total.
    A cap on the number of NFTs that one wallet can mint: 20 NFTs.

The reward that will reflect voting activity will work the best and will help us in 3 ways:

  1. We will incentivise more $APE holders to participate in the Governance, making the decision making process more decentralised

  2. We will increase value of $APE tokens, since it will be additionally rewarding to use the tokens

  3. New voters will self-educate themselves during the voting processes, making the ApeCoin community stronger and healthier

Funding from the DAO for 4 months of preparation and 2 months of work after the minting event

  • $100k high-quality art production and generation
  • $100k collection marketing and promotion
  • $50k tech and security experts
  • $100k social media managers
  • $20k PR and marketing specialists
    = $370k for half a year of work in total, there will not be additional funding required since the collection will turn to be self-sufficient.

TIMELINE

Below is the basic roadmap I came up with.

Stage A (R&D Research & Development) - The first two months after the vote conclusion:

This stage A is critical to the project’s success, the more time and energy we spend here the smoother things will run once we begin final art working.

We will research market, compile reference art, create original mood boards, character sketches, hire important stuff, build social channels.

R&D TARGETS:

  • FULL creative overview for the collection including blueprints for the character designs & Variations
  • FULL list and visual references for character traits
  • FULL list of names & Development of the Concept
  • Complete a rendered draft of character concept & tests with rarity traits

Stage B (Design & development) - 3rd-4th months

This stage is the main processing, development and modification of the core character artwork. I will interview & select 3 artists. The artists will work on design details for the collection. I will provide full creative instruction and communication to manage each artist and expectation. The aim is to begin physical design on final artwork, steady development of traits & layers, review & revisions.

Also I will find and hire designers, tech specialists and social media managers to develop a website and prepare the minting event.

Stage C (Final generation and resolving of unpredicted issues if any) - 4th month

  • Finalise all ‘traits & layers’ for artwork generation.

  • Artwork Test

  • Generation of full 10,000 collection

  • Website and mint tests

  • Troubleshoot / Revisions

Stage D (Additional creative collaterals) - During all the process

Alongside the character artwork creation a number of key collaterals will be required for promotion and various online platforms. I have begun to compile a list below of the various collaterals I consider required at this stage :

  • Branding - Logo/s for various requirements
  • Banners & Avatars - For socials and online usage
  • Website artwork - Designs for a simple webpage covering the ‘Lore’, Overall Concept.
  • Modified character artwork for promotions
  • Promotional teasers
  • Videos about the production

Also, I have a number of creatives that may be interested in collaborating along the way, these range from motion graphics artists and animators who could assist us in developing animated elements -through to musicians and artists that may be interested in endorsing or supporting the project once we are ready to tease the concepts. This is more of a discussion for later when we are looking to tease and promote the collection or bring in collaborations to help with positive press coverage.

If you like the idea and have experience or other connections that can help to achieve the goals, please suggest your help in the comments or PM me.

2 Likes

Hey ASEC, this sounds like a fun project. A few notes here…

What do you think about using the Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP)? BAYC has used them in the past, and they seem like a perfect fit for attending a vote- like a high quality “I voted” sticker. I’m not sure that I agree with capping the distribution to voters with only 1,000 tokens, that seems way too exclusive for a voting sticker. I know it’s down from 50k, but we should look to include even those with a fraction of a token who are active. Especially if you’re considering tiers and rarity anyway. Everyone wants a cool sticker, and we want everyone to vote.

Is there a company or brand that would be executing this concept, or are you comfortable receiving and redistributing the funds? This is also relevant for any royalties attached to the collection, I don’t see notes about royalties?

I want to bring up the cost structure, because I do support this concept. The request should probably be denominated in $APE. To be honest it’s a little concerning that the ask is 50k for security and 220k for marketing. That’s a big ask for marketing, we have resources like the DAOs official social media and brand power that should help reduce that marketing cost.

Looking forward to seeing this proposal evolve and come to life.

4 Likes

Hi @Lost

I am not sure that POAP stickers can give that much value that holding a good NFT can. I am just afraid that if we will introduce the stickers this will add very little to incentivize for voting. My logic is that most of the $APE holders don’t vote because they bought tokens to make profit from them, not to get the right to vote. And if they want profit, this is what an NFT collection can offer them as a reward for participation.

I’m not sure that I agree with capping the distribution to voters with only 1,000 tokens

1,000 of $APE tokens is not a cap for voters who hold the number of tokens, but for voting power used in total. For example you hold 100 $APE, so you need to vote 10 times with them to be eligable to get one NFT. And we need a cap anyway to avoid bots.

Is there a company or brand that would be executing this concept, or are you comfortable receiving and redistributing the funds? This is also relevant for any royalties attached to the collection, I don’t see notes about royalties?

I belive I am able to manage the event and redistribute the funds. Talking about the royalties, I am not sure at the moment, but I have one idea in mind. What if, after the NFT minting event, we will create a DAO of holders that will decide what to do with royalties? For example we can decide that 50% of the fees will go back to NFT holders, and 50% will go to promotion of the collection, and the promo events will be managed by DAO members the same way we do here (idea submissions and executions). What do you think?

220k for marketing. That’s a big ask for marketing

This is not 220k, but 20k which is reasonable amount. And I am fine to denominate costs in $APE, just communicated in $ so it would be easy to understand the numbers.

1 Like

just my $0.02 but do we want to incentivize those people to vote? will they have the long-term interests of the DAO in mind?

increasing participation is a great initiative, but the goal should be to increase quality participation.

5 Likes

Even if some part of the holders don’t have the long-term interests of the DAO in mind, this doesn’t make them low-quality DAO members. They are part of us, and their voice should be heard.

Anyway my idea is to educate and involve in the DAO live as many holders as possible, I am thinking about that like about a marketing funnel.

  • We will give a reason to many holders to try voting
  • Voters will at least read proposals descriptions (which is already win)
  • Some of them will go to the Discourse forum and will read the discussions and participate in them
  • Some will start to create proposals and generate more value for the $APE ecosystem

This way we will turn a part of passive holders into builders. The more community members are building for the DAO, the more value our ecosystem will have. This is my logic here.

2 Likes

I 100% agree their voices should be heard! I’d prefer they participate naturally, vs participating because they want something for free :slight_smile:

DeFi has tried many different models of this, and it hasn’t ever really worked. I think the problem is that these models tend to attract value extractors rather than value contributors.

If the end goal is to bring builders into this ecosystem, I think you should consider flipping the approach and instead of incentivizing voting you actually incentivize building. Not sure what that looks like exactly, but maybe its that NFTs can only be minted by people who get a proposal passed, or when they ship a product for ApeCoin? Or maybe it’s even just for submitting a proposal.

Also, what’s the long-term plan for the NFT collection? If there’s no long-term utility, then I don’t think there will be a lot of secondary value and it likely will act more like a badge or credential (in which case POAP would be much easier / cheaper).

I know it has been tough to get feedback on the forum, so I hope this is helpful!

7 Likes

If the end goal is to bring builders into this ecosystem, I think you should consider flipping the approach and instead of incentivizing voting you actually incentivize building. Not sure what that looks like exactly, but maybe its that NFTs can only be minted by people who get a proposal passed, or when they ship a product for ApeCoin? Or maybe it’s even just for submitting a proposal.

Voting activity is extremely important part of a DAO so we should not focus only on builders.

Also, what’s the long-term plan for the NFT collection? If there’s no long-term utility, then I don’t think there will be a lot of secondary value and it likely will act more like a badge or credential (in which case POAP would be much easier / cheaper).

As a long-term vision, I want to create a decentralized place that will produce short films in the style of experimental arthouse. NFT owners will be able to participate in the creation of scripts.

4 Likes

Hi @ASEC,

Your topic will be automatically closing in less than 24 hours. Are you content with the feedback received, or do you wish to extend community discussion for a further 7 days?

If we do not hear from you within 48 hours after your topic closes, your topic will be moved straight to the AIP Draft process.

We look forward to hearing from you.

-Pearson

1 Like

You can close the topic

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 7 days. New replies are no longer allowed.

Thank you @ASEC for your ideas and the ApeCoin DAO community for the thoughtful discussions. A moderator will get in touch with the author to draft the AIP in the appropriate template. Once the AIP is drafted and meets all the DAO-approved guidelines, the proposal will be posted on Snapshot for live official voting at: Snapshot

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments. @ASEC please see your messages for the next steps.

-Pearson

1 Like

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@ASEC has completed editing their AIP Idea to be their AIP Draft.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-Pearson

1 Like

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

Our team has reviewed and discussed @ASEC’s AIP Draft and have sent a list of initial questions. We await answers.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-Pearson

1 Like

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@ASEC has responded to our questions and they are in our review once again.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-Pearson

1 Like

Hi ApeCoin DAO community.

This AIP Idea was tagged as “Need Administrative Review” and sent to the Special Council. Upon careful review, this topic has been deemed Return for Clarification.

We have provided @ASEC with the questions from the Special Council. We await answers.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind regards,

-moderator

1 Like

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@ASEC has responded to the Special Council’s questions and they are in our review once again.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-Pearson

1 Like

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

The AIP has been sent to the Special Council for review.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-Pearson

1 Like

When I read the name itself - it brings one thought to my mind: all of us have a lot of NFT garbage in the hot wallets.
So unless it’s a specific MFT Apecoin project that has a business plan - not sure NFT gifting is a future.
Meaning: if the NFT is not a part of the project to give back to the holders - it’s useless.

2 Likes

To promote the collection I will produce a viral anime web series, so these NFTs will have enough value to incentives holders to vote.

1 Like