Proposal – Amplforth Parks Expansion

[Sunambre]

Summary

Proposal to use Forth DAO funds to expand Ampl representation in the metaverse by purchasing DCL land to expand on the Ampl parks project currently living in Decentraland.

Introduction

For those who don’t know me, I am Sunambre. I’ve been a member of the community for about a year or so, maybe a bit longer. Normally fairly quiet, unless someone mentions games… I’ve been 3D modeling since I was very young with Ray Dream Studio 4 and have since worked in industry using Solidworks to develop medical device components. I’m using Blender now as it’s amazing, free, and now I work in Web2.0. I’ve been working on the transition to Web3.0 since the Chainlink Hackathon last year, am a mod on the PRL discord, and slowly working to further colonize Marz.

Proposal

I am proposing that the Forth DAO use a portion of the treasury to purchase land in Decentraland on which I would create additional parks similar to the ones I have made on my own land (-148,-146) and (11,150). If I were to stop there, the Forth DAO would be holding several NFTs that have been appreciating in value nicely over the past few years, as well as voting rights in DCL’s DAO (2000 votes per plot), while having created several opportunities for people exploring DCL to learn about Amplforth. Building out the parks would, ideally, be just the beginning.

Having multiple and larger parks will also allows us to create simple, fun user experiences like scavenger hunts or quest / farm type games which can be used to promote other community projects, partnered DAOs, or the Ampleforth community as a whole. DCL wearables, POAPs, and other NFTs could be integrated as rewards to drive participation in these events. This way, when the experience / game is over, there is something left over for folks to hang on to and say, “I was there”. Future projects and partners in the ampl ecosystem might even incorporate some sort of “buff” to their product / service should the user wallet be holding a NFT reward from completing the projects quest line in the parks. When the parks aren’t being used to promote something specific like a community project, they could fall back to default models that provide education and links pertaining to the Ampl ecosystem and community.

Currently, land is going for between $10k and $25k a plot depending on location and proximity to roads and districts. Names will be needed for each location (plot or group of plots (estate in DCL terms)) which run 100 Mana (~$250). To do this we will need at least one 2x2 or larger estate and two more plots in addition to the use of my two plots. These DAO owned plots would cost approximately $100k with today’s mana and land prices. Ideally, we could do it on a few estates and a few plots, which would be right about $250k. As land prices keep going up, more now might be better. It is really up to the community on how much it feels like investing in the DCL land / voting rights, then using it to try and bridge Ampleforth with other crypto communities through Decentraland.

I believe I could have the parks built before the end of Q3 and some basic gamification in place by the end of the year. Likely sooner, but better to under promise. I would be doing this in my free time, so there is no cost to the DAO for my time or use of my land (the first two plots). If in the future, the DAO decided that the project was not worth it or the land investment was no longer viable, it could always vote sell the plots and have the proceeds returned to the DAO. If it turns out that we can create some fun user experiences in the metaverse and increase our community size, it would be nice to have the DAO pick up a couple of extra plots in the future so I could get mine back to use for other development. If it turns out to be something we really get a lot of use out of that would necessitate fulltime work, I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to creating a “Parks Manager” line item in a future proposal and expanding the parks further (possibly into another metaverse).

Forth DAO Benefits

• Exposure to new crypto communities and DAOs.
• Exposure to new crypto users in general.
• NFT assets in the treasury that are expected to continue growing in value.
• Voting rights in Decentraland’s DAO.
• Gamification of Amplforth education.
• Promotion of community projects.

Grant Breakdown

Proposed grant amount: $250,000

• $245,000 for DCL land purchase.
• $2000 for DCL parcel names
• $2000 gas fees
• $1000 for wearable / reward minting

Deliverables

• NFT land with voting right to Forth DAO treasury upon purchase of said land.
• Default park models developed and uploaded by the end of Q3
• Basic gamification by the end of the year.

Contact Info

• Email: Sunambre@Sunambre.com
• Discord: sunambre
• Twitter: Sunambre1

[ducc]

Do you have any metrics for how many people you can expect to reach through this community engagement? I’m not familiar with DCL so I don’t know what the volume of virtual “foot traffic” is. A quarter million is quite of bit of money and I’d like to know that this will actually reach new users in a cost-effective way.

[Sunambre]

Hi Ducc, thanks for asking. I don’t have a lot beyond what I can google, which seems to match what I see when I login. It says 18,000 users a day, with an active monthly user base of 300,000. Poker draws 6000 unique users a day. As far as community engagement their discord has on average 25 times more online users than ours. Most of the people there are part of some sub community within DCL, some with roots in the real world. The WonderMine is one of the more successful non-gambling games. I have no numbers for it, but it is a great 20 minute time sink guilty pleasure that is never empty, regardless of the server or time of day.

DCL also has a new desktop client for better game play that is just about out of beta and is seeming to make good progress improving their product on a regular basis. Decentraland is generally considered one of the best growing metaverses in the cryptospace.

DCL loading area

Poker in DCL

Wonder Mine crafting game

The parks themselves I can’t honestly see bringing a lot of traffic on their own through random wandering. If we organize some events and make use of them though, I have seen video conferences on web 3 tech and NFT art go very well at other venues within DCL. POAP tokens at events announced in the DCL always seem to get good attendance as well.

Adding the reward element would be where I imagine we see the biggest increase in traffic. The second people can “click the bricks” and get a cool wearable, plots can get pretty busy.
The presence in DCL will not be driving billions of people to Amplforth a month, but the ones that are there are pretty likely to explore new things in Web 3.

In the event that it isn’t preforming up to expectation, one advantage of this approach is that since it wouldn’t be going into a single large plot, selling and recouping the smaller plots and estates would likely be easier should that be the way of things. I also mentioned we could do it with less, but aim high right? Similarly, I remember thinking that I would wait for those over priced $4k plots to come down in price around this time last year.

[Sunambre]

It occurs to me that I might have under promised and left a lot more “trust me” than folks are comfortable with. Getting models made to have the parks exist and not just be NFTs we are hoping “go only up”, will not take as long as I said. I highly doubt that basic models (like what I have on the existing plots) for all the plots would not take more than a weekend or so per parcel.

The interactivity is what will take the most time. That too, I left with a lot of “trust me”. I’ve got a lot of game concepts built out that I would like to adapt to the Amplverse. I’ve pulled some parts of the game UI into the southern park (-148,-146) for anyone that would like to see in on the live server. I need to get the game server back up before I get the game play rolling again but it’s a start. The game would be your basic gather and craft game except with a bit more storyline than currently lives in DCL. Using the multiple plots is what will help with the story telling.

Southern Park w/Game UI

Southern Park w/Craftable UI

I’m going to be working on the northern park soon to bring back a live demo of the ship game component while still having the “jumbotron” which can show off community art, video, broadcast, whatever. The idea I’m most excited about though, is adapting the current ship game component. Right now, it allows you to take your ship to multiple galaxies to harvest minerals. This could easily be changed to orbiting different sectors of Marz and game play in DCL could be used to drive events on Marz.

Ship game play

DCL has also already handled inexpensive game components by partnering with Polygon way back (last year, but this is crypto). DCL / Polygon minted Marz components could then be used to enhance DCL game play while somehow rewarding the plot holders they are deployed on. This is the area that would take the longest, but think it is totally doable based on the DCL SDK and what the casinos have been able to do with it.

[Nestor]

Couple comments on this proposal.

• I’d like to see some metrics on growth of Decentraland over other Metaverse platforms.
• I’m concerned about making a large purchase with the intention of value will accrue on the asset & 250K is very high where I think the DAO shouldn’t be in the game of trying to sell NFTs down the line for value accural.
• Are these land assets to purchase ones that you currently own?
• Why does the DAO need a large land plot, would a small 10K plot suffice for exposure to DCL?
  -Which communities specifically do you think AMPL could bridge with?

other ideas:
-How could we get AMPL used a fee token on the proposed games on in DCL?

[Sunambre]

Hey Nestor, thanks for the comments and questions. I’ll try and address them as well as I can:

1. I can work on getting some comparisons of DCL vs other leading metaverses if that is a big concern. I’m not as well versed on others for no other reason that after trying them out, I didn’t like them as much. I’ll see if I can get some numbers together if your biggest concern is truly DCL vs other metaverses, but it seems the others are pretty far behind. Only sandbox really holds a candle in my opinion, and only because they have a bit of celebrity clout, but it’s a much different flavor and I feel while it owns second place, it’s not really in the same league. Enjin could be a really good one down the road, but it’s hard to say.

2. I cannot emphasize enough… The idea of selling the plots down the road, possibly for more, is more of an option to make people feel safer about taking the chance on the project. The cost of the project… is me putting in a ton of hours and a risk that DCL could fail and the THEN, the DAO would loose the money because at that point, what good is the land. It is by no means a suggested method to make the DAO money. If I believed that the plan was simply to wait on the land to go up in value for the DAO to sell it, I wouldn’t bother putting in the time to build a game to try and get us exposure. The intention of the project is to create something fun to drive some user engagement and possibly pull ampl out of being a coin that only super smart money guys like, and something that regular people might appreciate. How much would we pay for exposure to such a crypto friendly audience through other methods? What would be the cost per click to get equally qualified impressions through google or more traditional online marketing? If our google campaign didn’t work, could we then sell the receipts to recoup our cost the same way we could sell the land? So again, selling the plots in the future for profit, is missing the point entirely, and frankly something I would hope doesn’t ever happen.

3. The plots I have in mind are not mine nor do they belong to anyone I know. It’s an honest question that needed to be asked. If I had the plots I needed for the project I wouldn’t be asking, I’d simply be doing. My only upside to this is that I’ll have a nice little resume piece and that someday, someone might pay me for some comparable work. That and maybe if we were a bit more appealing to regular folks, my stacks of ampl and forth might go up.

4. The larger plots come with larger amounts of system resources (models/materials/triangles allowed per plot, height of structures, MB of data that can be used, and the ability for more than a few people to be in the parcel without it being crowded. It creates a better game experience. The other rational is more of a clout thing… Pretty much anyone can get a plot if they really wanted to, even with today’s prices. Multi plot parcels have a bit of status that come with them. For me, as Sunambre, to make a game for me, on my couple of single plots… “Way to go little buddy, keep it up.” For Amplforth to build on a single plot… We literally make money… Not wanting to say it would be sad… but it would be really sad. I’d be embarrassed for us. Spreading the game over multiple plots not only gives us an easier escape if it fails, but lets us look bigger than we are. To get a parcel like Wonder Mine or the casinos use… I’d have another zero on the ask.

5. I don’t know specifically what communities we would be able to work with but after listening to the musk.gold twitter spaces, it sounds like if you have even half a thought of starting a DAO, ampl has just the solution for you. Be it DCL, sandbox, cryptovoxels, enjin, whatever metaverse you choose… they all have lots of little communities that would seem to be very likely to want to make stables out of their memecoins. Maybe I misunderstood what Evan was selling there in that twitter spaces event, but I think I was putting one and one together properly.

6. How do we get Ampl used as a fee token on proposed games? I really didn’t have an intention of monetizing the game as it is more of a marketing piece, but I had little doubt that one of you big brain money guys might be down to figure that out. My goal was simply to at some point justify that we “broke even” and then any further traffic generated is simply more free traffic. One big thing we (by “we”, I mean someone deeper on the dev side) could do, would help DCL get a manaStable coin for their in-game currency… That might be a game changer for them, especially if we did it on the polygon side as they work on eth and matic. It would help take the “but I’m making money hodling this Mana” out of the equation and give them an in-game currency that doesn’t fluctuate drastically to the point that people would rather stop playing till developers adjust in world pricing, than spend their investment, and gets mana back to being the proverbial quarters at the arcade. Similarly, it might be something to talk to the folks at Decentraland Games about and somehow get it in the casinos.