Proposal to Co-Sponsor Sudden Dapp
Hey everyone! This is a proposal I’m submitting on behalf of DAO Masons, a new service DAO that designs and implements DAO games and coordination models.
Description
Sudden Dapp is an interactive coordination game that is designed to increase voter turnout and shine a spotlight on dapp builders.
The game kicks off with an open call for dapp ideas, followed by a community vote to identify the best concept. Builder teams apply to participate, and the community selects one team with a vote. The clock ticks as the chosen team works to develop the dapp to spec within 30 days.
To keep participants and observers involved, Sudden Dapp provides real-time updates and interviews in the style of a game show. The finale brings in judges for evaluation, awarding prizes (ETH or stables) for dapps that meet requirements and demonstrate usability.
Co-sponsorship
In the first season, Sudden Dapp will showcase the DAOhaus SDK and MolochV3 contracts. We have approached PublicHAUS to be the leading sponsor, and in exchange, all three dapps will be built with the DAOhaus SDK.
We plan to feature MetaCartel throughout the season and elaborate on their impact in funding key projects in the space. However, we would like to hear other ways we can use this game to help MetaCartel. For example, we offered Public Nouns a public-goods-themed episode(public good DAO app) in exchange for co-sponsorship. We would like to do something similar for MetaCartel.
Feel free to leave some ideas in the comments 
Manifesto/Vision
We’re surrounded by brilliant protocols, products & technologies that may hold the keys to a new paradigm of prosperous human coordination. However, very few know that these technologies exist and even fewer take the time to learn, use, and build with them.
The communities promoting these technologies are typically limited to patterns like hackathons, grants, and bounty boards to encourage building. These tools do get some developer attention, but there’s much more to the puzzle than just getting code into a repo.
We need something new. A system where users can articulate their needs and potential solutions, and where builders are constantly tuned into the community’s pulse, receiving early, accurate signals. Simultaneously, the system must create enough buzz around dapps to foster usage and organic promotion. Yet, the balancing act required to synchronize these initiatives often exceeds the capacities of DAOs, underlining a need for an innovative and harmonized solution.
We believe that games are the best way to tackle systemic challenges like these. Sudden Dapp recomposes mechanics from game shows, hackathons, and multi-choice voting and weaves them into a coordination game that can consistently synthesize community signals into a network of well-used dapps.
How it Works
1) Idea Collection
The game begins with an open call to the public for dapp ideas. We provide clear guidelines on what is an actionable idea that can be built in 30 days.
This is a great opportunity to educate the wider community about what the technology is capable of, and we will provide content to help generate informed ideas.
For our first season, we’ve invited PublicHAUS and the DAOhaus SDK to be our sponsoring technology.
2) Idea Selection
The actionable dapp ideas are presented clearly in a multi-choice, token-weighted vote for the sponsoring DAO. We engage the community by asking them to select their favorite options from the list.
Once the vote is finished, we take the idea with the highest amount of votes and write out a detailed RFP/Product Spec that we pass on to our network of community builders.
3) Builder Selection
Once the RFP is completed, builder teams are invited to throw their hat in the ring and create proposals to build the dapp.
Once again, we gather the builder team proposals and post them for another round of weighted voting. The community then decides which team will take on the 30-day challenge.
4) 30 Days of Dev
The chosen team is “in the spotlight” for the next 30 days. With the clock ticking, they begin to build the dapp to spec.
We keep the community in the loop by following the progress of the builder team, providing updates, and live interviews.
5) Dapp or Die
After thirty days, a panel of 3 judges will test the app live and prize money will be awarded to the selected builder team based on three metrics:
Does the app meet the requirements? The team wins $4,500
Is the app reliable and bug-free? $1,500
Is the user experience enjoyable? Another $1,500
The Hosting DAO is encouraged to offer tokens, NFTs, POAPs, or other perqs to the dev team as participation prizes if they submit a non-qualifying dapp. In the case of DAOhaus, this would be 1000 HAUS tokens.
Builder teams will have access to the judgment criteria before they start building.
6) Repeat
We do this three times, back to back, for our first three-episode season. We anticipate the momentum and interest to grow over time as builder teams see the challenge taking place and sign up to try their hand at the next round.
What Problems Are We Solving?
Problem: Great projects aren’t getting attention in the wider conversation.
Solution: Through regular promotion and open participation, we can build energy and excitement around a single focal point – the dapp. As one round leads into the next, we believe that the dapps can gather momentum and bootstrap a larger network effect.
Problem: The feedback loop between developers and users is broken.
Solution: This game lets a community generate an idea in a bottom-up way and developers build based on the signal the community creates. Because the community has greater involvement with the idea, they’re more likely to use it.
Problem: Currently DAOs are not capable of holistically addressing problems past a certain level of complexity.
Solution: Sudden Dapp is a gamified process with set schedules that guides all stakeholders to where they need to be, tell them what they need to do, and organizes a well-promoted dapp development and launch process - all in a fun and entertaining way.
Problem: Many voters aren’t engaged and don’t participate
Solution: We believe that Sudden Dapp can help solve this problem in the following ways.
- We can habituate governance by providing a set schedule for rituals.
- By leveraging game mechanics, we can enhance the overall experience of voting itself and make it more fun.
- The game reliably provides simple decisions in a digestible context. The decisions people need to make are predictable, repeatable, and easy.
- The game builds the autonomy and trust of voters by repeatedly demonstrating the tangible outputs of their decision-making (ie. finished dapps)
Differentiation
We believe this is a first-of-its-kind model for dapp development. It is a close cousin to the hackathon, but threads in aspects of game shows, incubators, and DAO governance.
This program also has a unique model for surfacing ideas from the community and involving them during dapp development. The game show element adds a level of publicity and promotion to what would normally be a closed-door contract for application development.
Team
DAO Masons is a service DAO that creates bespoke web3 solutions inspired by game design. We are a team of builders, designers and web3 enthusiasts who want to see DAOs begin to outcompete traditional business structures.
The core members are: Boiler (Chris), Jord and UI369.eth (Matt)
Why DAOhaus?
We believe that DAOhaus is the ideal pilot season for the following reasons:
- DAOhaus and MolochV3 are great public goods that have the potential to offer a lot of value to the ecosystem.
- However, DAOhaus and MolochV3 are complicated tools and it’s been really challenging to make DAOhaus part of the wider discussion. We believe that if we can generate serious activity on DAOhaus, then this model can be reproduced to help bring attention and dev power to other great protocols.
- DAOhaus has a stack that allows developers to quickly build more UX-forward, simple applications that are geared towards single-use cases.
- Because everyone on the DAO Masons team has a deep understanding of the DAOhaus stack, we can more easily bootstrap support and educational material for DAOhaus, which would help save on costs.
Grant Request $
10,000 XDAI
While the total cost for this 5-month production is $50,000, we have requested the majority of funding for Sudden Dapp from Public HAUS. We have also requested funding for 1 episode from Public Nouns, which also includes cross-promotion and the promise to build an app suitable for public goods.
Help
Promotion: While aim to tackle the brunt of the content creation and promotion, any extra help promoting and getting the word out there would go a long way. The more participants we can get (idea submitters, voters, builders), the merrier.
Guidance: MetaCartel has a great track record for throwing excellent events. We would welcome any feedback/guidance that MetaCartel or its members can provide.
Funds
Funds will be transferred to DAO Masons Safe on Gnosis: 0x996F0530fD4EeFcA0893e503354162fe60289fED