#10 [💔 declined] DAO Proposal: Social Layer dApp for MetaCartel

[rafaelcalcada]

Hello MetaCartel!

In the last couple of years, I´ve been working with Plurall to better understand communication platforms and coordination mechanisms. As doing that, we ended up joining the crypto world and lots of the concepts we were exploring are still here today. So here is how we imagine we could collaborate:

Proposal

Fund Plurall team to create a dApp version of Askker.io, a mobile-first social network and use it to become the social layer of communication for the Cartel.

What are you building?

The idea behind Plurall is to create a DAO to govern communication platforms. While we work on the DAO side(Hi, Berlin!), we shipped votter.io and askker.io and been exploring and evolving those products so they make sense for communities.

Who are you building for?

Both the crypto space, small green communities, and the digital social innovation hubs. Both seem to have similar goals and values, but still really disconnected in terms of UX, communication, onboarding.

How does it advance UX, usability or experiment with a new use case?

Most of the human traffic on the internet today is mobile and routed through some form of a social network. The crypto space still doesn’t have a standard. Twitter is centralized/banning people, FB is FB, Mastodon is not web3, etc.

That would be one of the first experiments in bringing a replicable model of a social network to the web3 and also with the advantage of being able to adjust it to more specific MetaCartel goas/desire.

Why is this exciting?

Everybody wants to be the next Google/Facebook/Instagram. No one wants to share its governance. We believe that dApps change the way that it can be done and creating the correct system to empower autonomous organizations can create radical and systemic change in the flow of information of society. Changing what we consume, how we think and how we coordinate.

Progress

We have a stable version running since last year. Here are some screenshots with some of the working features(groups, hashtags, voting, etc)

What needs to be done (major deliverables)?

• Front end changes to use MetaCartel design.
• Implement architecture change to leave AWS and AppStore and run the dApp at Ethereum.
• Further investigation in new features and best way to connect the social layer to other MetaCartel Dapps

What does Askker want to be?

Currently a centralized platform, we want it to be a white-label software for building the social layer. That way, people will start having access to p2p communication and group coordination without always relying on trusted-third-parties(censors, etc).

Contact

While this is an exploration topic, the idea if the reception is good is to better scope the features and changes necessary and request for a grant.

We would also like to better connect with anyone working in related areas or that has some ideas on how to evolve those concepts.

Happy to receive feedback and discuss further details at rafael@blinq-solutions.com, here in the forum or in Berlin during the Blockchain Week and MetaCartel demo day.

So bring it on everyone

[pet3rpan]

Hi thanks @rafaelcalcada, love to ask afew questions…

MetaCartel DAO is using discord chat for the internal DAO members coordination and telegram chats for the rest of it’s community. Migrating to a new platform has significant coordination costs and these current solutions work very well in my opinion. A few things weren’t clear here…

• Why do think the community needs Askker?
• What value is there by migrating to another platform?

[rafaelcalcada]

Hi Peter!

Thanks for the questions so let´s dive!

Any organization will have a set of communication tools, that usually range from threaded, instant communication, wiki, email, etc. With a few exceptions, most still rely on using another centralized entity to provide that access and connection. While this is convenient it doesn’t give you much decision power when it comes to the roadmap of the product and most important the rules of use.

Both Discord and Telegram could suspend MetaCartel service and won’t be that easy, for example, to ask them to add features that would bridge/assist us to connect MintBase with Kickback.

Also, there is value in having a Tencent style social app that let us experiment in onboarding users. Mobile is the present and video is the future and we are still really limited in those options in the crypto space.

To round up, there is also a difference in migrating to another platform and in fact creating a new platform based on a social standard that people are already using(twitter/FB/LinkedIn are mostly similar), and doing that with a integrated process of design would basically create an specific social layer for MetaCartel, adjusted also for the future needs of other Dapps.

Hope that clarifies a bit more. Would love to expand on actual/future use cases.

[pet3rpan]

@rafaelcalcada

Any organization will have a set of communication tools, that usually range from threaded, instant communication, wiki, email, etc. With a few exceptions, most still rely on using another centralized entity to provide that access and connection. While this is convenient it doesn’t give you much decision power when it comes to the roadmap of the product and most important the rules of use.

Imo - there’s little risk of that happening to MetaCartel for the near term + medium term. I don’t see the value in it. I don’t believe MetaCartel to be in the audience base you are building for.

@rafaelcalcada

Also, there is value in having a Tencent style social app that let us experiment in onboarding users. Mobile is the present and video is the future and we are still really limited in those options in the crypto space.

I don’t understand what you mean by using video to solve onboarding. What is the problem and how is using a tencent social style app going to add value? I need more specific examples with clear cut explaination of how things like this will work to further explore the idea.

[rafaelcalcada]

• not sure about how long it will take until something controversial becomes a reason for ban on those platforms, but in our previous research both the makers community and crypto community had high preference for censorship resistant alternatives and people would go a great length to both have privacy and control of their spaces. Still remember the meme about Vitalik having his character deleted in a game and using that as some Ethereum inspiration.

• people/users do not just appear at a url anymore. They usually discover something thru one of the main apps or social sites and follow the recommendation. A couple years ago we started the transition from feed based to video based. Thats how most young people(future target) are being presented to the internet. More like TikTok and Instagram Stories, less forums and irc channels. Fb added stories in all his products for example. In Asia the combo super app + video is even bigger: https://a16z.com/2018/01/13/super-apps-china-product-innovation-wip/

If you look at the use cases at this other post , all the actions are transported to inside some video screen, but there is still an super-app there making it all possible. Those are all advances in UX(making easier to people buy, exchange, communicate) that I still dont see in crypto. Even if we are not ready yet, we should be aiming to be because thats how people are exchanging today. See questions inside instagram stories and brand stores inside instagram post/feed.

So a few questions that might help explore this:

• If Metacartel had their own social network/social layer. Would it reduce the cost of bringing more people to the concept of a DAO and what is being done here?
  -Would a social app with groups/tags/friends lower the costs of coordination for the DAO?
  -Would a social layer help different Dapps interact and share both traffic and features?
  -How much of the entire experience of owning tokens and making decisions could be expanded with having a mobile+web3 ready social network?
  -What are the biggest risks?

[pet3rpan]

@rafaelcalcada

• not sure about how long it will take until something controversial becomes a reason for ban on those platforms, but in our previous research both the makers community and crypto community had high preference for censorship resistant alternatives and people would go a great length to both have privacy and control of their spaces. Still remember the meme about Vitalik having his character deleted in a game and using that as some Ethereum inspiration.

We’ll deal with it then and only then we will have a real motivation to migrate platforms.

These are maybe your personal values but not the MetaCartel.

@rafaelcalcada

If Metacartel had their own social network/social layer. Would it reduce the cost of bringing more people to the concept of a DAO and what is being done here?

@rafaelcalcada

-Would a social app with groups/tags/friends lower the costs of coordination for the DAO?

We do have our own social layer, that’s the discord chat + this discourse forum. These platforms do wonders in onboarding and communicating. These works very well.