Grant Proposal: PizzaDAO - Pizza as Public Good

Description

We founded PizzaDAO to connect the Web3 community in real life by partnering with pizzerias to support community Web3 events with abundant pizza. This gives small businesses exposure to cryptocurrencies and draws the attention of technical talent that is curious about Web3, giving PizzaDAO a large surface area of potential Web3 ecosystem contributors and participants. Now, we want to share this exposure with ecosystem builders who share our vision of creating public goods. We align with the vision of MetaCartel and want to introduce MetaCartel to our audience for two concrete reasons.

We want to showcase MetaCartel, firstly, as a good example for the creation of public good in Web3. Secondly, MetaCartel has a robust system for matching contributors with projects. This is important to see for new talent in Web3, because one can easily get lost. For this reason, we think partnering with you is a natural fit.

Therefore, we ask for funding to augment our team of contributors to transform our organization from throwing one global pizza party each year to ongoing giving for the public good. MetaCartel will benefit from heightened visibility to its target audience and access to talent for building its vision of Web3. A contribution from MetaCartel of $3,990 USD will assist our transition to a sustainable operation, characterized by a stable team of sponsor relations and pizzeria retention experts. Our expanded team of collaborators will then provide tailored sponsor and developer experiences for organizations and individuals alike.

Vision

PizzaDAO educates and supports pizzerias around the world in using cryptocurrency to empower their businesses while giving back to their communities. It is not by accident that communities have formed around pizzerias as inclusive social spaces all over the world. Just like Meta Cartel, PizzaDAO has baked the vision of public goods and creating value together into its mission to facilitate community ownership of pizzerias in the digital age.

We believe that small businesses are an integral part of local communities and that the members of those communities understand the value of those small businesses better than anyone. Therefore, we want to tokenize pizzerias in our network, using open source technology, to improve their operations and liquidity. We orient our efforts to support local communities surrounding pizzerias around our principles:

  • We believe markets can be positive sum and enrich communities.
  • We honor memes as powerful vessels for raising awareness.
  • We value artists as important members of our community.
  • We leverage digital scarcity to bring analog plenty.
  • We advocate for equal inclusion of all pizza toppings (yes, even pineapple).

Problem

During the last cycle, institutions and funds have been pushing the narrative of ‘onboarding the next 100 million users to crypto’ to shape their thesis for the future of Web3. Meanwhile, applications or protocols that are being built seldom apply these principles to the products they ship. PizzaDAO was founded to give new entrants and citizens from all walks of life a reason to engage with the crypto ecosystem and guide them along the way.

‘Crypto’ is often perceived as abstract, remote, and detached from everyday life. Buying a pizza with crypto, getting it for free, or receiving funding to feed your students, changes this perception. More broadly, we are facing an increasingly unequal world, where financial literacy determines the economic fate of the individual. This knowledge is as much concentrated as capital itself, therefore, PizzaDAO engages with underrepresented communities to share knowledge and reward learning with pizza.

Solution

As a first step towards a long-term sustainable solution to inequitable user onboarding to Web3, PizzaDAO has celebrated two annual Bitcoin Pizza Days in 2021 and 2022. We plan to celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day in 2023 and beyond, however, a single annual global event is not enough. We have expanded our charitable giving to support smaller events throughout the year. This allows us to connect to local pizzerias and communities, as well as to large and medium-sized suppliers in the pizza sector.

For developing a public good that connects knowledge, people, and pizza, we need to build our organization. We are currently establishing channels which can sustain our core mission of bringing the internet, cryptocurrency, and pizza together as global phenomena. Our operation then solves information asymmetries in local populations by making crypto tangible and powering pizzerias with cryptocurrency.

Product

PizzaDAO delivers surface area for large organisations to enhance their brand visibility and gain exposure to talent that is entering Web3. We provide custom and recognizable developer experiences through sponsoring Web3 ecosystem events with pizza. Ecosystem and infrastructure actors gain exposure to new audiences by partnering with us for supporting these events, because their brand or marketing assets are prominently featured at the events.

We have chosen NFT-based marketing as our vector to establish relationships with pizzerias and communities worldwide. Together with the communities and owners of pizzerias, we are creating demand for an open source business suite for the pizza industry. By orchestrating 314 international artists to design 10,000 generative pizzas, we funded the charitable giving of pizzas as tangible public good of Web3.

Since the first Bitcoin Pizza Day in 2021 we have refined our governance structure to make Pizza Parties that are accessible to anyone. Today, organizing Pizza Parties in a participatory and fun way with the broader Web3 community helps us to refine our product vision and build our community of pizza and Web3 enthusiasts.

This community supports us in building a large cohort of supporters as well as compiling a database of pizza knowledge and market data, which enables us to build an open source franchise for Public Good Pizza (PGP). We envision this technology-enabled network to allow pizzeria owners to streamline their operations, request consultancy, fund community gatherings, or deepen their liquidity.

Validation

Since the inception of PizzaDAO, we have given away pizza in over 75 countries and spent a grand total of over $500,000 USD on said pizza, as well as donating pizza to social impact organizations around the globe. Most importantly, however, we have onboarded thousands of small business owners and individuals to Web3.

Our activities have previously been financed through the charitable sale of generative art in the form of NFTs. Our dream of a global pizza party and our pizza box and pizza NFTs were so popular that we initially raised over $1M USD in Ether (ETH). Yet, throwing the world’s largest pizza party only happens once a year. Therefore, we have already partnered with NFT.NYC, DCentral Miami, NFT Paris, NFT Sydney, ETHDenver, SXSW, NFTLA, and many other smaller events, to foster a network of stakeholders within Web3 that drive user onboarding through Pizza Parties on an ongoing basis.

We already have sustained demand for ongoing pizza support for local Web3 community events, whose organizers come to our Discord to submit proposals for pizza funding to our PizzaDAO voters. At these events, local Web3 enthusiasts learn and engage with each other to develop the future of the Web3 ecosystem.

Recent Events Supported

  • November 2022 - Manila, Pobcrawl at Draper Startup House Manila

  • December 2022 - New Dehli, India , DAZE: Art and Chill.

  • December 2022 - Costa Rica, Solidity Testing with Foundry 101

Market presence

With the support of our stakeholders, we have established a permanent representation through local community leaders in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Ghana, China, South Korea, Japan, Pakistan, Australia, and more.

Pizza Industry

PizzaDAO has become serious competition in international pizza baking contests, ranking second place in the Neapolitan Team Tandem competition at the World Pizza Games. We believe that for onboarding users to Web3 through pizza, we must understand the pizza trade thoroughly. Winning at world class contests as a DAO validates this approach. We have built great visibility for the brand PizzaDAO, which is exemplified by the recognition of PizzaDAO by leading non-profit organizations in the pizza industry, such as the World Pizza Champions and Slice Out Hunger. Having forged these powerful relationships, we are now recognized by pizzerias in many major cities from Accra to Paris to Vancouver.

Progress

PizzaDAO has transformed its operation from an event-based business model to an ongoing marketing and Web3-onboarding organization. We have reached many developer communities within Web3 and enabled novices to participate in the ecosystem. Giving away pizza and organizing pizza events requires an organizational structure that allows continuous presence in key markets as well as expansion to new markets. To this end, we seek operational partners like MetaCartel who can benefit from our educational outreach and forwarding of talent.

Our impact to date

  • Over 160,000 slices served
  • Over 400 pizzerias supported
  • Presence in 75+ countries
  • over $500,000 USD of pizza given away
  • Thousands of people onboarded to Web3

PizzaDAO’s highlights

PizzaDAO raised $1M USD to spend on public good pizza (PGP) specifically. It established the NFT brand Rare Pizzas, which received Web3-wide recognition and generated revenue of 300+ ETH that has been spent on PGP. Bitcoin Pizza Day fueled PizzaDAO’s expansion and introduced a benchmark for success, while serving as a central objective for the organization. In short, we have grown our market-presence by over 25% on a YTD-basis, now present in over 75 countries with over 400 pizza affiliates, and have talent marketing channels in 17 key regions or 20+ major cities.

  • January 2021 - PizzaDAO founded
  • February 2021 - Rare Pizzas NFT
  • March 2021 - Rare Pizzas Box Sale raises 300 ETH
  • May 22, 2021 - Bitcoin Pizza Day #1 in 60+ countries with USD >300k given in pizza
  • Spring 2022 - Event sponsorship, fundraising, shop onboarding, and party planning
  • March 2022 - 2nd place in Neapolitan Team Tandem at the World Pizza Games
  • May 22, 2022 - Bitcoin Pizza Day #2 participation grew by 25%
  • August 2022 - 400 pizzerias onboarded to PizzaDAO
  • October 2022 - Kickoff organizational structuring of core team

Roadmap

  • December 2023 - Launch of sponsorship strategy for Web3 companies/employers
  • January 2023 - Sponsorships for Bitcoin Pizza Day 2023 become available
  • February 2023 - ETHDenver PGP onboarding event
  • May 22, 2023 - Bitcoin Pizza Day #3
  • July 2023 - Market study for pizzeria needs is published
  • October 2023 - Launch of pizzeria affiliated program Public Good Pizza (PGP)

Differentiation

PizzaDAO is a user-facing, community-oriented organization that requires funding to ensure its longevity for sustainably onboarding talent to Web3. We have a strong track record of raising funding for Bitcoin Pizza Day, which will be hosted by communities all over the world for the third time in 2023.

We are focused on fostering adoption by individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises outside of Web3 because we believe that for Web3 to succeed, we must focus both on technical talent acquisition efforts and on education of the broader community. Thus, PizzaDAO delivers tangible results through providing pizza as a public good.

Our operations has a strong history of channeling talent that enters Web3 to large infrastructure- and community-building organisations, where they become successful contributors. Additionally, supporting MetaCartel to increase its recruiting surface area positively impacts our mission of supporting pizzerias directly, because we can draw on the MetaCartel talent pool to provide services and expertise to the small business owners in our network.

Team

Our team came together on February 18th, 2021 to agree on our manifesto and mission. Since then, we have gathered a community of thousands of aligned members and built a team of eight core contributors who ensure the long-term functioning of our organization:

Crispy, Operations

Crispy holds an international business degree and now pursues her passion for working with diverse and talented global teams. Together they optimize business operations and manage projects. In Web3 she is focused on growing NFT projects where she leads teams with a no-nonsense approach.

Ruben Suau, LATAM Lead

The event manager and producer leads PizzaDAO’s presence in Latin America. Ruben is a savvy growth marketer, who has organized events IRL for over 20 years. He also has combined experience of over four years in growing Metaverse communities and a large local network of supporters in Chile.

Darko Ristevski, Artist Relations

The digital artist, living in North Macedonia, is known for crypto and generative art which revolves around chaos to escape linear thinking. His work has been featured at events such as Art Basel Miami and NFT London.

Shaun R. Smith, Communications

The 2007 Canisius College graduate owns a full-service marketing agency serving national brands and nonprofit organizations including pizzerias and NFT projects. His landscape photography, minted as NFTs, was featured multiple times at NFT NYC. He also supports freshmen through his Vizthum Scholarship Fund, $7,000 to date.

Brandon, Design

Brandon has been working with large consumer brands for over fifteen years, such as Universal Studios, Citi Bank, and Nike. He is now helping legacy brands transition to Web3.

Matt Wilhelm, Lead Developer

Matt has a passion for mobile development and over fifteen years of experience in writing applications for web and Windows.

John May, Developer

John has been working in Web3 for nearly a decade. He has won multiple hackathons and worked on various products, most recently contributing to the Nifty’s marketplace, Cosmos ecosystem projects, and others.

Anthony Shafer, Lead Artist

Anthony is a career digital artist, with experience working on major motion pictures including the Harry Potter series and the Star Wars prequels, who is now full-time in Web3. He is also a co-founder of frogland.

Grant Request

We ask for $3,990 USD to increase the resilience of our organization by growing our team of collaborators, who will be tasked with developing an ongoing sponsorship program with large ecosystem and infrastructure actors in Web3. By providing us with the grant, MetaCartel will secure a visible representation of its brand at our scheduled Web3 engagements, as well as on marketing materials we provide for our pizza parties.

MetaCartel has built resilient ecosystems, which is why we want to offer you the opportunity to become one of the first partners for our sponsorship program. The MetaCartel ecosystem will also benefit from our matchmaking program, where we match individuals from our events with organizations who need builders.

Funds

PizzaDAO currently has a treasury valued at approximately $100,000 USD, viewable on-chain in our Gnosis Safe at PizzaDAO.eth

Help

For further information please email snax@rarepizzas.com or reach out to snax#6922 via our Discord, visit rarepizzas.com, or see our activity on twitter at @Pizza_DAO.