Chili Pod #3: Pluriverse Pod

🔥 DAO Proposals
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MetaCartel <> Pluriverse Chili Pod

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Overview

The Pluriverse aspires to become a transmedia franchise that instigates, cultivates, and stewards the ideological voice for the Ethereum ecosystem. The group is elaborating the mythology of Moloch, coordination, regenerative economics, sovereignty, and identity through a diverse constellation of media, including (but not limited to): fictional short stories, non-fictional long form essays, theoretical research, graphic novels, music, infographics, digital and physical artworks, and more. We are working to hone the acuity of our lorecrafting methods in order to increase the resolution of our collective imagineering and visualize a future for earthly thriving. Successful coordination begins with telling better stories.

Context

Following in the lineage of MolochDAO, MetaCartel has done more to disseminate the importance of the Moloch meme than any other community in the ecosystem. Kevin Owocki (Gitcoin, Supermodular) began directing comic books to illustrate this meme in 2021, with issues #1 and #2 of Gitcoin comics premiering at MCON1. It was this event that brought TW and KO together to begin the next phase of comic production - as a collaboration between Gitcoin and RaidGuild - that would infuse more psychological weight into the Moloch meme in comics #3 and #4. This creative collaboration culminated in the first draft of A Guide to the Pluriverse, conceived as a fork of the 2018 Consensys Cellarius Universe Guide, to expand upon an optimistic future built upon regenerative and pluriversal principles for the community. “The Guide” was dropped at MCON2 this year.

The Pluriverse is currently transitioning towards a more concrete structure for our fundraising, creative deliverables, and community engagement. We hope operations and core personnel will be supported through a sponsorship model to form a Pluriverse Coalition (outlined below), but we also require funding to kickstart and steward artistic experimentation with creative contributors. The funds from the Chili Pod grant will be used to support artists to expand upon the lore of the Ethereum community through the tutelage of Pluriverse creatives and under the guidance of MetaCartel liaisons to maximize the cultural impact of our output.

More Info on The Pluriverse

What We Will Fund

The Pluriverse team is currently working towards our first multi/trans-media release in collaboration with Metalabel, to premier at ETH Denver, February 2023. This “drop” will consist of four creative artifacts:

  1. A v2 of the Guide to the Pluriverse
  2. A full-length concept album: Sounds of the Pluriverse
  3. A new physical/digital book of original ficition and non-fiction texts in collaboration with students of Nottingham Trent University, UK.
  4. 2-3 original artworks illustrating Pluriverse content, in the form of limited archival fine art prints and NFTs

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If the release is successful, we hope to orchestrate a new drop every quarter of 2023. Each drop will be curated, art directed, quality assessed, and designed by the Pluriverse team with the consultation of the Pluriverse pod outlined in this proposal.

Future contributors will be attracted through Schelling Point events (courtesy of KO), Pluriverse Community Calls (courtesy of TW), and trusted word of mouth. The selection of new projects will be at the discretion of the Pluriverse core team to ensure deep alignment with the concepts and an insanely high caliber of creative execution.

What We Will Not Fund

The Pluriverse is not a permissionless social club. Although we are actively articulating new invitations for the community that might take the form of bounties, open calls for submissions, and unique commissions, every creative project will be vetted and carefully supported by the Pluriverse core team.

As software entrenpreneurs, fine artists, and academics with many years of combined experience, we understand the feeling of rejection that inevitably accompanies narrowly curated projects. Therefore, we are dedicated to increasing awareness of these guidelines by conducting public critiques, emphasizing the importance of qualitative language alongside quantitative performance indicators, and being transparent about the aesthetic and conceptual choices we make.

Budget

  • We are requesting 16Ξ (~$20k at current prices).
  • This will support 1 quarter of creative releases, outlined above.
  • If all goes well, we hope to orchestrate a new drop every quarter, consisting of (at least) 3 new creative projects each. We calculate the cost as:
  • $5k per creative team x 3 projects per drop + an additional $5k as a buffer to float production costs (which, if not needed, will carry over to the next quarter)
  • 100% of the grant funds will be used to compensate artists and cover production costs of the work
  • 0% of the funds will be used for Pluriverse operations or MC personnel
  • Sales of the work will be divided between the Pluriverse treasury and the creative contributors in a 20/80% split (TBD variable on a case-by-case basis)

Team

Pluriverse Core Team:
  • Travis Wyche: Art Director & Creative Relations
  • Kevin Owocki: Meme Lord & Chief Green Pill Wizard
  • We hope to add 2 additional contributors in 2023 to oversee community strategy, sponsor relations, project management, etc
MetaCartel Liaisons:
  • VenGist
  • BorrowLucid
  • MetaDreamer
  • Elco
  • Yalor: Champion of the Cause

A 3/7 multisig will be setup to handle the funds.

Funding Structure

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DAO Structure

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I’m a big supporter for of lore & creative projects, however, I would like to highlight a few important points that came up during yesterday’s Townhall after TW presented this proposal:

– The grant amount is more than we usually give to projects. (A solution is to pay in 2 installments - 1 now and 1 after several months as some work gets completed).
– We would like to see some KPIs (up to TW’s discretion what exactly they will be) added to the proposal, for increased accountability.

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Thank you for these comments Rika! You also wanted me to respond to the value that this initiative might bring to Metacartel, so here we go:

Value to Metacartel

  • This is an opportunity for MC to disseminate its integrity-rich, community-first stance through innovative cultural artifacts. We are attempting to raise the sanity waterline for the whole Ethereum ecosystem by scaling the vision and values of the Moloch/MC through potent lore. Some might consider this a marketing justification, but we might consider it longer-term cultural production for the MC family.

  • MC will help set the precedent for this novel transmedia initiative to perform and demonstrate their continued commitment to community-first values. MC has conducted some awesome experiments in the past and this risk taking generates strong cultural credibility for the DAO.

  • These efforts will be on display to capture the attention (hearts and minds) of everyone at ETH Denver, slated to be tens of thousands of people. We hope to raise morale and generate visceral optimism by focusing on rad-tastic cultural products, inspired by how MC has conducted itself in the past: producing value locally that scales to the larger web3 conversation.

Key Performance Indicators

  1. The release is successful. This means all of the work in the proposal is executed (minimum) and far exceeds all of our expectations (the stated goal). Success here is measured by the mind melting radness of the artifacts, which will be apparent in the spirit of the audience receiving it during the event.

  2. The sales will speak for themelves. This drop is in collaboration with Metalabel, which just sold out their alpha release in hours. Basically, we hope for some quantifiable financial success here. The profits will go to the artists, so as a metric we hope to prove that The Pluriverse (in collab with Metacartel and Metalabel) might demonstrate a powerful funneling of attention and value to non-web3-native art and artists (who we are pilling in the process) that create future incentives for them to keep working with us and attract more regen web3 attention from their local communities.

  3. Based on the previous points, we will attract additional sponsors and grantees to allow us to continue the experiment into Q2. The cultural artifacts produced from this grant will allow The Pluriverse to build a stable foundation, using ETH Denver as the schelling point. If these points fail, we will not be returning for additional grants.

A side note: we are really trying to shift away from the loss leader strategy of the previous releases (the comics) and towards an economically viable/sustainable franchise strategy. This is definitely a bold experiment for a bear market, but we think the cultural/community value is much needed during these trying times.

As to the point about this being a larger grant request than MC usually distributes, I would defer to @Dekan’s original Grant Giving Chili Pods post that outlines the proposal conduct for this initiative and states “teams without proven track records can request up to 20k.” We are positioning The Pluriverse into this category, as we might not have the “history of successful distribution” to request more. If the funds were decreased, certainly the scope of the output would need to be as well. I would also note @Yalor’s ETHos Chili Pod #2 proposal which successfully allocated 32ETH recently, double the amount of this proposal. I encourage more discussion on this point from any Metacartelians that might be so inclined to weigh in.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration in reading this material!

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Thanks for this proposal @TravisWyche

I would like help clarifying whether this is a Pod or this is a Grant ?

The other pods have requested a specific budget to give away to other proposals that they review, but you have outlined the deliverables quite clearly here that your team will be delivering, which is a bit confusing ?

Are you giving grants to artists to create this work, or are you paying yourself and your team to create these deliverables ?

If it’s the former, how are those candidates selected and what does the distribution method for these works look like ?

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Hi @Yalor!

Yes, this seemed to be a point of confusion for others as well, so allow me to clarify.

These funds are for a pod, not a grant to the team. Hopefully there will be multiple rounds of grant distributions in the long-term. For the first distribution, the grant recipients have been pre-selected due to time constraints in trying to deliver before ETH Denver. 100% of the funds will be dispersed to the artists; 0% will be used for compensation to the core team (which currently is just me and Kevin, plus the MC pod liaisons). I consider the distribution to artists to be the first round of grants and the recipients are not part of the core Pluriverse team/pod.

As to your second question re: how the candidates were selected: I hand selected artists from various communities that I believe are incredibly value aligned, competent, have proven professionalism in their previous work, and could work closely with me under the time pressure to deliver stellar quality work. I’m already working with these artists to educate them on the core mission of Metacartel, Pluriverse, regen crypto economics, and the larger philosophical vision of the Ethereum ecosystem (a rather labor intensive and time consuming mission in itself). For future dispersals, I hope to confer with the MC Pluriverse Pod crew (Ven, Metadreamer, Elco, Chrstina, and yourself) to counsel on how to choose from a pool of curated and submitted artists. A major goal for the drop at ETH Denver will be getting attention from creatives to submit their work for consideration, so hopefully the proposals will start flowing after the event. If this first round is deemed a failure, I obviously will not expect continued funding.

I hope this answers your question clearly enough. Feel free to ping me again if you wish for me to elaborate further. :pray:t4:🫶🏽

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Um… one more point might be worth disambiguating.
#1 on that list of deliverables is a v2 of the Pluriverse Guide. This will be executed by me and the core team. We will not be compensating ourselves from this pod grant initiative for this work. This is obviously confusing now that I look at it and if I could edit the proposal I would remove this deliverable. Hope that helps.

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Okay, thanks for clarification.

I am in support of this proposal as it currently stands under one condition: The DAO is to receive a written report on the results :bar_chart: ( this could look like comics distributed, new members added to the DAO, funders pledged, or artists submissions ) I don’t know what is the right metric for success at the moment as I’m sure you don’t either but try to measure something that you feel is relevant so we have some thing to compare against.

For example, in the #ETHos Pod I am commissioning interviews with all our grantees that will become a comprehensive written article published quarterly with our funding candidates, the result of their events, and any lessons learned along the way.

You’re quite good with content so I imagine this would be an easy ask.

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Yes, this is a very reasonable request and I believe along the lines of what @rika.sukenik6 was requesting as well. I will be thoroughly documenting the proceedings and can be held personally responsible for delivering the report. Thanks for your support!

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DAO Proposal: DAOhaus

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I have sponsored @TravisWyche proposal, I think it’s a solid plan albeit a bit outside out traditional funding thesis, but Travis has proven to be an excellent steward of grants capital via his work with Moloch and the results of the comic series I’ve seen so far have been stellar.

Fingers crossed that we can help rally more eyes to the next round of work and help this initiative take flight in 2023 :fire:

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Can we please break this into 2 proposals:

  1. give travis a share
  2. fund the pod multi-sig

Sending directly to travis’s wallet is not very dao-y. voting no for now but i will vote yes on both when broken up

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Update as of 10.30.2023

Thank you for your service @TravisWyche and kudos to the stewards @vengist @billw @owocki @Christina @META_DREAMER @Yalor :saluting_face:

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Results of the Pluriverse<>Metacartel Pod

As per the original proposal above, the initiative focused on 4 main deliverables:

  • A v2 of the Guide to the Pluriverse
  • A full-length concept album
  • 2-3 original artworks illustrating Pluriverse content, in the form of limited archival fine art prints and NFTs
  • A new physical/digital book of original ficition and non-fiction texts in collaboration with students of Nottingham Trent University, UK.

v2 Pluriverse Guide

This was promptly revised and published according to schedule. The result can be seen here. No funds were used to execute this work.

Artwork

The allocated budget for the artwork was $5,000 USD, which was provided to the artist to conceptualize five distinct images that would create a fertile foundation for envisioning the future of coordination. This process involved numerous weeks of dialogue to familiarize the artist with the ongoing discussions within our community. Surprisingly, the collaboration yielded 20 images, from which 10 were selected for the final grouping. Although the initial plan was to mint these artworks as NFTs, we decided to simplify the release to focus on the album as the primary artifact and use the images for the packaging content. These pieces were printed and showcased at the Metacartel side event at ETH Denver in February 2023, allowing hundreds of cartelians and friends in attendance to view them. Sadly, since the Pluriverse.wtf project has now died a silent death, the numerous other intentions and potentials of this work will remain unrealized.

Album

A sum of $5,000 was directed towards the musicians to cover their time and production costs. Following extensive discussions to help them grasp the core concepts, they managed to complete, master, and prepare the album for release by the designated deadline – a commendable feat given the complexities involved. The release was planned to coincide with ETH Denver via the Metalabel.xyz platform. However, due to unforeseen challenges, the Metalabel team prioritized another release. As a result, our launch was postponed multiple times, and market conditions evolved significantly in the interim. We finally initiated the NFT mint in June, selling 31 on-chain records. I am currently preparing to distribute the album via traditional means, hoping to expose a new non-web3 audience to the delicious complexities unearthed in the work. If there are sufficient profits from these efforts, they could still be reallocated towards a future release with another group of musicians, although based on the response it is more likely that we will just distribute the earnings back to the artists. I am personally extremely pleased with the outcome of this album! The completed release can be viewed here.

Publication

From November 2022 to January 2023, I engaged in intense discussions with students from Nottingham Trent University in the UK. They were enrolled in a unique creative marketing program, with many focusing their thesis on metaverse-related topics. Although there was a $5,000 incentive available, their commitment to their dissertations made it challenging to draw their attention to our more abstract efforts. Despite various subsequent strategies and outreach to other web3 writers, we ultimately abandoned the idea of releasing a publication by ETH Denver. By March 2023, I began dialogues with diverse professionals outside the web3 ecosystem to reinvigorate the idea of an academic journal, but the sheer complexity of the technical concepts inhibited many from participating. The allocated funds for this endeavor - 4 ETH - were returned to the MetaCartel DAO treasury.

Reflections on the Initiative

For the duration of this project, several organizations experienced significant internal changes unrelated to our endeavors. The Pluriverse community’s engagement dwindled down to silence, Metacartel underwent major cultural transitions, and Supermodular saw Owocki’s departure back to Gitcoin, effectively ending the Pluriverse conversation. A key challenge was the miscommunication with the Metalabel.xyz team concerning the release schedule and needs of the minting mechanics, which greatly deflated the momentum behind the efforts. Reflecting on the overall community engagement, it was startling to witness the lack of involvement from both core and associated communities during the open mint. It is hard not to feel as though we may have experienced a very different outcome if the release had dropped according to plan, to the eager and affluent audience of ETH Denver.

Final Remarks

I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Kevin Owocki/Supermodular, Yalor, and the signatories of the pod multisig for their leap of faith in this highly experimental project. Special shout out to @billw for his enthusiastic support and curiosity about the potentials of the Pluriverse from day one. The past year has been a profound learning experience for myself, full of difficult lessons underscoring the critical juncture at which our ecosystem currently stands. We are experiencing a profound ideological crisis in web3 that reflects the numerous larger crises in the world. The Pluriverse project failed to address or ameliorate these tensions in any proximity to what I had hoped to achieve. Although this lorecrafting experiment has come to a close, I remain deeply committed to the need to clarify our cultural values and am ever ready to engage further with those that might feel likewise invested in contemplating our collective future fates. It remains more essential than ever that we challenge each other to question “what we are coordinating towards” and take responsibility for the tides and currents of our industry.

Should there be any queries or concerns regarding this report, I am available for clarification.

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Travis, you’ve created rich and meaningful artifacts, although I’m not sure I’m using that term correctly. Forgive me if there is a better word. Thank you for the art from The Pluriverse, interviews in Death Guild, the Gitcoin comics and whatever comes next!