AIP-120: ApeClub - Token Gated Social Network for the Yuga Community

[Wizav.eth]

Proposal Name: ApeClub - Social Network for the ApeCoin & Yuga Community

Proposal Category: Core: Ecosystem Fund Allocation

ABSTRACT

ApeClub is a social network for the ApeCoin & Yuga community, which was launched only several weeks ago. In such a short period of time we have managed to attract nearly 300 BAYC holders, proving that our community is very strong and eager to integrate.

We’ve received many positive reviews and amazing feedback from community members, which encouraged us to double down on our efforts and request an ApeCoin DAO grant to accelerate our growth.

Our goal is to unite us, the entire Yuga holders community (BAYC, ApeCoin, MAYC, BAKC, Otherdeed), on one platform giving you the following value:

• Enhanced ApeCoin utility both for signup and in app features
• New relationships through meeting fellow Apes in your area
• Feeling welcome in any country worldwide, by meeting Apes while you travel
• Create business relationships with other Apes across the world
• Easily organize and attend Ape events
• Promote projects you are working on and collaborate with other community members on their projects

We feel that our platform will perfectly complement The Otherside.

MOTIVATION

Our goal is to bring the entire Yuga Labs holders community together, both online and offline and help you, the holders, get maximum value from the NFTs/ApeCoin you hold. That value is the community behind the assets, and we aim to connect you with that community to create valuable friendships and business relationships.

Yuga’s asset holders are entrepreneurs, investors, artists, celebrities, scientists, and professionals from different sectors. Despite their assets and skills, they have limited tools to co-operate, thus decreasing their potential. ApeClub changes this situation and gives every holder maximum value from their membership in this elite Ape club.

We plan to allow access for ApeCoin holders with a minimum holding amount of 500 $APE. Out of all the 91k $APE holders, around 81,300 hold less than 500. This is a huge pool of people that may be inclined to buy additional $APE (and hold it) in order to access our platform and connect with other ApeClub members. This may drive significant demand for $APE, and incentivise people to hold the coin in order to remain members of the club.

We also plan the following solutions which will drive ApeCoin adoption & demand:

• It’s the bear market and uniting the community on the first NFT social platform adds immense value for the holders. This will put the eyes of the entire crypto community on ApeCoin & BAYC and drive demand for these assets.
• Allowing for ApeCoin payments for ads on our platform, part of which will be returned to the community.
• Providing additional services on the platform, paid in ApeCoin - such as skins or member highlighting (similarly to solutions on Discord & Telegram)

There are currently up to 140,000 people waiting to be connected (BAYC, ApeCoin, MAYC, BAKC, and Otherdeed holders).

RATIONALE

Our platform benefits the APE Community in the following ways:

• Driving demand for ApeCoin, by requiring a minimum holding threshold of 500 $APE to get and maintain access to ApeClub
• Will give ApeCoin utility for payments for various services on the platform
• Ability to pay for advertising on the platform in ApeCoin - with part of the funds going back to the community
• Connecting all the members for new valuable relationships & collaborations
• Giving extra value from assets held - through the ability to showcase your business or initiative and find supporters within the community
• Makes it easier to organize events and as a result create new friendships within the community
• Shows strength of the community to the outside world, making it a lot more attractive for outside people to join the community, and resulting in growth of the ecosystem

SPECIFICATIONS

As of today, our platform is live: www.apeclub.ai for BAYC holders (soon also ApeCoin, MAYC, BAKC, Otherdeed). Just a few weeks after the launch, we have acquired nearly 300 verified club members (including top key opinion leaders) and generated hundreds of thousands of impressions on our social media and websites.

The platform is token gated, with manual onboarding available - ensuring security and exclusivity.

We’ve spent over 5 months on development and are already running in production with the basic functionality being live. All the development until now has been self funded. As of today, hundreds of users can enjoy such features as:

• a map with the location of community members
• list of events organized by community members
• a directory of projects set up by community members
• notification systems and custom bots on Telegram and Discord
• several registration options, fully secure, without the need to connect wallets (but, with holder verification)
• helpdesk with dedicated community managers who are available to users 24 hours a day
• support for local Ape Clubs such as “Bored Club Canada”, “Ladies of BAYC” and “BAYC Korea”

Our 11-person ApeClub team is led by two co-founders, web3 entrepreneurs with over 30 years of experience in tech, security & media markets:

• VoyTech.eth - 27 years of tech experience, built a 2 million+ social network in 2004 with funding from Intel Capital, so he’s an expert at building and scaling such platforms. Built a software company Esvelo.com which built solutions for startups such as https://music.com. Big fan of crypto & NFTs since 2017, and focusing exclusively on the space now. Reach out: https://twitter.com/VoyTechEth
• Wizav.eth - Over 10 years of experience in business management and product development. Active entrepreneur and serial startups investor in space, fintech, IT, e-commerce. President of Esvelo.com and member of EBAN (European Business Angels Network). Reach out: https://twitter.com/wizaveth

STEPS TO IMPLEMENT

The APE Community grant will be used on further maintenance and building out additional functionalities of the platform:

1. Right now the platform is BAYC only - we want to enable secure access for ApeCoin holders, MAYC, BAKC, Otherdeed. This will be done in a manner which maintains exclusivity and privacy of members. For example a BAYC holder may choose to only participate in BAYC only events, or get messages only from other BAYC holders to limit the volume of messaging.

• This is where the demand for $APE will be driven by allowing only holders with at least 500 ApeCoin to join the platform. If their balance falls below this threshold they will not be able to use the site.

2. ApeCoin utility - additional platform features with payments in ApeCoin - effectively locking the coins until they are withdrawn or burned. The planned features are - advertising on the platform and upgrading your account to get extra in app features.
3. In app activity feed - to make it easy to view all the updates related to community members, events and projects. This will require implementing fully fledged feed mechanics with an email + mobile notifications engine.
4. Mobile app - so that every holder gets access to the platform on their mobile device, and receives notifications about events and fellow holders visiting his/her area. The app will be built for both iOS and Android and will contain the full functionality of the site.
5. Chat functionality - so that we can make it easier to communicate between members - around events, location, projects, common interests or needs. This way community members don’t have to go to Discord or Telegram to connect but can do it on our platform. Due to token gating our solution will eliminate spam & scams which are so widespread on other platforms. We plan to implement location based messages so that you can easily rally Apes around you.
6. Member directory - to promote Apes and their projects to the broader community. This will be visible both inside and outside of the site, so that we give extra visibility to our community for people aspiring to be members.
7. Authorizing for mints and other web3 apps with your ApeClub account - ability to authorize without connecting your Ape holding wallet, by using your ApeClub account in conjunction with an industry standard wallet delegation solution. This will increase your safety, eliminating the need to sign with your Ape holding wallet when utilizing token gated mints.

On the business side of things we plan the following activities:

• Team expansion - we want to strengthen our product, mobile and community management teams to be able to sustain future growth.
• Holder acquisition - this is an ongoing process which our community team will continue daily.
• Monetisation & funding - we plan to apply for funding in various DAOs, and explore different means of monetisation such as membership fees, sponsorship opportunities.
• ApeClub World Tour - a series of several events in major cities worldwide promoting the platform and onboarding members.

TIMELINE

Our estimate for implementing the above product goals are below. Features will be implemented subsequently within the deadlines listed next to the given feature:

1. Access for ApeCoin holders, MAYC, BAKC, Otherdeed - 1 month.
2. ApeCoin utility - 1 month.
3. In app activity feed - 1 month.
4. Mobile app - 2 months.
5. Chat functionality - 2 months.
6. Member directory - 1 month.
7. Authorising for mints and other web3 apps with your ApeClub account - 2 months.

The deadlines are conservative and take into consideration:

• The entire vision → design → implement → test → adjust → release cycle. We have nearly 30 years of experience in tech and adhere to the highest standards when building.
• Maintaining very high security standards which are of paramount importance in the space
• Ongoing maintenance & minor feature development will be happening in parallel and also taking the team’s time

OVERALL COSTS

Our operations currently consume on average $88,000 per month. We would like to request funding for the next 9 months of operations at an increased burn rate of $125,000 per month in order to achieve the goals mentioned above.

This will give us the fuel needed to onboard & satisfy the needs of the Yuga holders community, and explore various means of monetisation to fund future development and maintenance.

So our total grant request is 225,000 $APE.

[Amplify]

Wow, I just signed up and checked it out and this is really really cool! I think it may be best for smaller NFT communities though. I’m curious how it will work at scale with over 90k APE coin holders.

Can’t wait for the mobile app, I can imagine a scenario where you’re traveling and just need to ask a fellow ape in the city for some advice on good places to eat, places to stay, etc. I particularly love the Events page where we can add our own events and see them all in one place.

The map is really cool too, seeing apes globally is amazing. Glad to see more social networks for the community!

I did have a few questions though:

• How are you going to handle token gating ApeCoin holders? Will anyone with 1 ApeCoin be able to participate like they can in here?

• Will the token gated chatrooms and maps be specific per NFT? Can ApeCoin holders see where BAYC members are and vice versa?

By your metrics, with over 140k holders it may be difficult to manage the map but I trust you will add a filter.

Thank you for taking the time to put together this AIP Idea, it’s very cool!

[Wizav.eth]

First of all thank you for signing up and welcome on board
And thanks for the positive feedback
It’s only the beginning so we have lots coming up.

So for handling ApeCoin holders - as of today we’re thinking of doing some minimum holding threshold which would be required for people to join. This way we drive demand for $APE while avoiding spammers being able to easily join. We’re also exploring other ways to use $APE on our platform.

And when it comes to visibility - we plan to make the platform completely exclusive for every holder group. So if you’re a BAYC you can create BAYC only events, hide yourself on the map from non-BAYC holders, etc. Privacy and security are our primary concerns so we’re giving this careful consideration.

And yes, the map can withstand any number of items and will have filters by collection. And it will also contain events and various local Ape associations.

Let me know if you have additional questions.

[Wizav.eth]

Forgot to address your scaling to 90k users concern - my cofounder VoyTech scaled his social network startup to over 2 million users back in 2004, so we have that front covered as the need arises.

[alexandermazzei]

these guys have been doing great things to make it possible for the community to see who is within proximity, and make real world connections.

[6134]

I like the platform but am somewhat in doubt about the engineering and manpower used to build this.

The proposal mentions a many months of development and an 11 person team.
While the current state could be a decent base for a community portal, the available functionality and maturity of the platform looks like an MVP that could be created in a few weeks by 2-3 engineers (that’s being generous).

Also I would like to get a more detailed breakdown of the tasks than shown in the timeline. What exactly does Access for MAYC, BAKC, Otherdeed and ApeCoin holders include for example. If it was simple token verification and pulling the metadata for those collections, it does not warrant one month development cost for a team of 11.

Again, I dig the platform and it could be the base for something good, but I would not support the proposal in its current for as it asks for a lot of time from an 11 person team for what seems like very basic features.

[0xMarcella]

The idea of a Social Media for the ecosystem is really interesting!
I can’t try the platform because I’m not a BAYC holder, but it seems pretty nice and I love the map feature.

My only doubt is about having many platforms to keep up with (this forum, Twitter, Discord servers, proposed talent platform etc.) that could become difficult over time and limits engagement. What do you think about it?

Also, I agree with @6134 concerns on development.

[Wizav.eth]

Thanks for your feedback

When it comes to the multitude of platforms to keep up with - I feel you completely. We focused on building out the social aspect of things (map, events, project collaboration) first, because we felt that was the biggest shortcoming of other platforms. And we didn’t want to start by competing with Discord & others, but complementing them.

The next step, as outlined above, is to integrate chat & feed functionality and release a mobile app. At that point we could become the goto app for Yuga communities. Why would people switch to using our platform from, say, Discord then? Some reasons:

• You can send a location based message to BAYC around you
• You can have an automatically managed chat for BAYC in California (location based)
• You can setup an event for MAYC interested in Investing (profile tag)
• You can drop 1000 allowlist spots in a project to BAKC holders - in a very easy manner (and giving value to the club members in the process)
• You lose all the spam & scams (since we’re token gated & can throttle message sending in a lot more sophisticated ways than other apps)
• As a BAYC holder you can set an $APE fee someone has to pay if they don’t hold a BAYC and want to message you (controversial but manages spam and keeps the communication channel open for everyone)

I’m sure there can be many other scenarios we haven’t thought of yet, but since we’re dedicated to the Yuga community - we can tailor the product to our needs, instead of being a generic app like Discord.

Plus since we’re very fast moving, close to the community and open to collaboration we’re happy to integrate other platforms in some capacity, which is of course not much of an option with Discord / Twitter / Telegram.

I hope this answers your doubts. Let me know if any other questions come up.

[0xMarcella]

Thank you for the detailed reply, appreciate it.

[Wizav.eth]

Hey, thank you for the honest feedback, much appreciated and definitely shows the missing parts in our proposal.

When it comes to the 11 person team working for many months, I’ll definitely break it down in the final proposal since I agree it can be unclear. We have 3 devs right now, product owner, QA, 2 artists. We also have 4 people responsible for community, onboarding and promotion. Please keep in mind that many people are afraid to connect their Ape holding wallet to any site, so we need to onboard them manually which is time consuming. So it’s not 11 engineers working for 12 months to build this for sure, and I understand your perception of things based on the proposal itself.

All the work requires the full product vision → design → implement → test → adjust → release cycle, also maintaining a top security regime. So I admit it’s not as fast moving as a single dev rolling out an alpha of an app in 2 weeks, but stability & security is key for the space so we have to maintain it.

I’m also happy to provide more detailed breakdowns for the work to be done. Access for MAYC, BAKC, Otherdeed + ApeCoin consists of, among others:

• adjusting privacy features to make sure that for example you can specify which asset holders see your map location, or can DM you. And this is something we then have to maintain into the future as we release new features, so that every holder can keep their privacy
• adding filtering in the maps, projects and events functionalities - so you can browse events for MAYC only for example
• adding the ability to create an event that’s only visible to specific holders, so that say, BAYC can do a BAYC only event maintaining their privacy. This has the extra complexity of our Telegram/Discord bots reporting events so we have to figure out how to handle this.
• we’ll also have to change our authentication mechanism, as you already mentioned, since now we’re only using BAYC as the entry ticket to the platform. This will require adding ApeCoin checks too, and a bit of a refactor to hide/invalidate content created by people who sell their assets (right now we just plainly block their access).
• a bunch of other things that I’m sure will come up, as they always do with software development

On top of the above please keep in mind that our team will not be solely focused on that one feature throughout a month of development. We always have many more smaller functionalities we roll out in the meantime - for example right now we’re:

• streamlining notifications about people travelling (location based)
• showing events on our map
• handling timezone support in our events functionality (since for online events it’s important and hasn’t been handled yet)
• adding more admin capabilities (we could launch without many tools such as banning users but now that has to be created, and this is something we’ll always have to do when building any feature)
• implementing rudimentary DMs (sent via email to the recipient, so you can contact people who didn’t provide any contact info in a manner keeping their privacy)

Many more will come as we go so that time frame has a buffer for doing all the extra details that pop up along the way, which also consume a bunch of time.

I think I’ll include an external file with more details on each feature in the final proposal so that this is clear to everyone.

Let me know if this and the above will alleviate your doubts. If not fire the extra questions away, happy to discuss any feedback! Thank you!

[ChrisL]

It’s great to see the product has been partly built. The UI looks nice and cool. I have 2 questions here:

• How do you locate holders? Do they need to fill out the location or you will detect it for them?
• Usually the club is for NFT holders. If it’s open to Apecoin holders, which I assume has a much larger user base, will it be more like an open-to-everyone event?

[Wizav.eth]

Hey Chris,

When it comes to the location services - right now the users specify their location manually. They can only set it at the city level because we don’t want it to be any more precise for security reasons. And of course it’s optional to set it.

The club is not open to ApeCoin holders right now, that’s something we plan to do. And once we do it - we will require some significant amount of ApeCoin holding to become a member, and all other members will be able to filter out who they want to be visible to and who they want to communicate with. This should maintain exclusivity while driving $APE adoption.

Hope this answers your questions

[adventurousape]

I really like this idea. I’m a big believer in IRL events and networking.

I have some comments and questions other than those that have already been addressed

1. If AIP-91: Ape&Talent - Platform to connect talent within the Ape community, which is up for vote, passes is there a way to work with them? They are focussed on job networking, but I think if they could be linked together, that would cut down on the amount of places people need to check for networking in general.

2. I tried to join the website, but connecting my wallet through Ledger took multiple tries (I’ve had this problem before, so it may be on my end). Sometimes when this happens, I log in through MetaMask instead, but didn’t see that as an option. Now I seem to be stuck in a loop where it keeps asking me to sign in, but my wallet is already connected. Are others having this problem?

3. Regarding working with Bored Jobs, about a week ago, there was a some controversy around them that came up. I think you need to thoroughly vet them before you work with them.

• I listened to a Twitter Spaces where they were talking about them. Unfortunately I don’t think it was recorded, but a lawyer was going through their contract and pointing out how bad it was. Basically, all Bored Jobs did was modify a generic web2 contract. They were also talking about how Bored Jobs was gaining traction because so many influencers were signing up, but there’s no proof of deals they’ve actually made. It’s all hype. Those were my two main takeaways, but probably forgetting stuff, I was doing other things while listening.
• After that, I found out that the host of the Spaces and some other people have been doing some research on some bad actors in the space and they are starting to connect with Bored Jobs (not sure what research, that’s just what the host said). They said they had spoken with the CEO of Bored Jobs “nicely” on Zoom and he unfollowed them.
• Someone else who had been contacted by them, but was not in the Spaces, had had their legal team (which is exclusively specialized in blockchain law) look at the contract. They said that the contract is badly written and was improvised. They’re still waiting to talk to the Bored Jobs team about it and said they have been using illogical excuses.
• Others who had contact with them thought that they weren’t straightforward about what they were doing when they asked questions as well.

Thanks so much for your proposal! Look forward to your reply!

(didn’t mean to reply to Amplify)

[Wizav.eth]

Hey, thanks for your reply!

We’re open to collaborate and integrate with everyone in the ecosystem, the goal is to drive $APE and the broader Yuga community forward. So definitely open to working with AIP-91 project, and thank you for the warnings about Bored Jobs - we kinda assumed it’s the standard in the community and are about to talk to them this week. Will do extra vetting as you suggested before we integrate.

As for your login troubles, most people use MetaMask connected with their Ledger to log in, can you DM my cofounder a screenshot of where you’re stuck? He’ll try to solve the issue: https://twitter.com/VoyTechEth

Thanks!

[adventurousape]

I tried using a different browser and it worked, so I think the problem is on my end. Thanks for the help!

[Pearson]

Hi @Wizav.eth,

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

[Wizav.eth]

Yes, @Pearson I’m happy with the feedback. Would like to tweak it based on the feedback when submitting the AIP Draft. Thank you.

[Pearson]

Thank you @Wizav.eth 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. @Wizav.eth please see your messages for the next steps.

-Pearson