[DRAFT][GF: Phase 1 Proposal] Geo Web

Project name: Geo Web

Author name and contact info (please provide a reliable point of contact for the project): Graven Prest - graven@geoweb.network; TG - gravenp; Discord - graven#0001

I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant: Yes

I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here: Yes

L2 recipient address: 0xDE798cD9C53F4806B9Cc7dD27aDf7c641540167c

Which Voting Cycle are you applying for?: Cycle 10

Which sub-committee should review your proposal? (Builders Grants, Growth Experiment Grants): Growth Experiment Grants

Project description (please explain how your project works): The Geo Web is creating the World Wide Web for the physical world. We’ll achieve this by creating public consensus for geospatial augmented reality publishing & browsing. The core of the Geo Web is our partial common ownership/Harberger taxes smart contracts (deployed exclusively to Optimism) that administer a fair & productive digital land NFT market.

Our land parcel NFTs are like 3D domain names/web pages. Licensors have the exclusive right to anchor any digital media (NFTs, AR, data, traditional web content, etc) to physical locations within the bounds of their parcels. Users discover this content on their smart device (eventually AR glasses) through a universal browser application that can resolve arbitrary content based on geolocation rather than a URL.

100% of the Geo Web’s land market revenue is used to fund public goods. This is done both to earn legitimacy (a private group shouldn’t be the landlord of the world) and to create a flywheel of public/OSS investment & innovation. We can outcompete the closed metaverse(s), app stores, and attention economy algorithms in the next computing paradigm if we choose to coordinate. That’s what the Geo Web is all about.

Website: https://geoweb.network/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegeoweb

Discord/Discourse/Community: Geo Web

Other relevant links (including any demos): Cadastre (claim land, publish content) - https://geoweb.land/ ;
Spatial Browser (best on mobile at a claimed location) - https://geoweb.app ;
YT Channel w Demos - Geo Web - YouTube

Additional team member info (please link): Github Org - Geo Web · GitHub ;
Core Contributor Githubs - codynhat (Cody Hatfield) · GitHub, gravenp (Graven Prest) · GitHub, & tnrdd · GitHub
Twitter Profiles - https://twitter.com/codynhat, https://twitter.com/GravenPrest

Please link to any previous projects the team has meaningfully contributed to: We helped found the Partial Common Ownership working group/independent chapter of RadicalxChange: Plural Property - RadicalxChange. We foster conversations and education around partial common ownership/Harberger taxes.

Relevant usage metrics (TVL, transactions, volume, unique addresses, etc. Optimism metrics preferred; please link to public sources such as Dune Analytics, etc.): We haven’t created any Dune dashboards yet as we’re just building initial traction, but here are numbers as of submission:
- 45 parcels claimed (Contract Address 0xba1231785a7b4ac0e8dc9a0403938c2182ce4a4e | Optimism)
- ~.632 ETHx raised for public goods (registration payments + streaming payments = funding raised for public goods; Contract Address 0x5ad276439e3772fdb6696b6cb61401902d4e8b72 | Optimism)

Competitors, peers, or similar projects (please link): Over - https://www.overthereality.ai/ ;
SuperWorld - https://www.superworldapp.com/ ;
Arcona - https://www.arcona.space/

Is/will this project be open sourced?: Yes

Optimism native?: Yes

Date of deployment/expected deployment on Optimism: 1/14/2023

What is the problem statement this proposal hopes to solve for the Optimism ecosystem?: The Geo Web is an application-layer manifestation of the Optimistic vision. We’ve been living and building to the values of impact=profit, positive-sum coordination, and anti-plutocracy since before the Optimism mainnet was publicly announced (we started building in 2020 before we had a scalable, value-aligned network to launch on…).

We believe our use of innovative concepts (partial common ownership, permissionless public goods funding mechanisms) and technology (streaming payments, Diamond proxy contracts, p2p content) can solve the most important societal challenge of the next computing paradigm: who/what controls the default content/application platform for always-on, field-of-view smart devices. We want it to be public interests, not private.

With the Optimism Collective’s help, we can show another example of how crypto is about more than DeFi ponzis and overpriced jpgs. Instantiating prosocial values into our protocols/applications isn’t a hindrance, but ultimately our superpower.

How does your proposal offer a value proposition solving the above problem?: We’re admittedly better builders than marketers. We’ve built one of the most ambitious demonstrations of a full-stack web3 dapp, but need help exposing the masses to our new ideas and tech for it to matter.

Our land market is explicitly designed to promote sustainable, utility-based value growth rather than speculative fervor. Our balanced incentive structure is why we’ll succeed where traditional private property rights systems on the blockchain will fail. But in the market for attention, easy money & speculation are our short-term competition. Once we get people through the proverbial door, we think we can inspire them and keep them.

A growth experiment grant to incentivize land claims would help jumpstart a flywheel of adoption and public goods funding for the open metaverse on Optimism. The legitimacy and attention bestowed on the Geo Web as an OP grant recipient would be almost as valuable as the financial incentives themselves.

Why will this solution be a source of growth for the Optimism ecosystem?: If we’re successful with the Geo Web, a core piece of infrastructure for the open metaverse (think of our land registry like DNS/ENS for the AR metaverse) will live on Optimism. At one point, having a website was just for the nerdiest of nerds. Now, every business and many millions of individuals have them. Based on how they’re used, licensing Geo Web parcels could become more widespread than that.

We acknowledge that there are and will continue to be other digital land registries and competing closed alternatives. But the greatest value of augmented reality comes from concentrating consensus for shared human experiences—not fragmenting reality. As a true public good, we have a unique opportunity to transcend the competition. We have the incentive structure (partial common ownership) and feedback loops (public goods funding) to make the desired coordination a reality.

The Geo Web will help drive network effects on Optimism through sticky usage, but also as a sustainable engine of public goods funding. This is how we visualize it: : LOOPY (v1.1).

Has your project previously applied for an OP grant?: We have not applied to Optimism Governance directly for a grant, but we did receive a 20K OP grant via Superfluid (Announcing the Recipients of Our Superfluid Builder Grants for Optimism | by Superfluid | Superfluid Blog | Jan, 2023 | Medium). It is being distributed 60% to our core team as stipends over Q1 2023 for our full-time commitment to the project. The remaining 40% will be used on marketing efforts largely around ETHDenver (AR content, printing costs, travel to the conference, supporting/marketing partner integrations, etc.).

Number of OP tokens requested: 25,000 (open to bigger initiatives if our size is not size :slight_smile: ))

Did the project apply for or receive OP tokens through the Foundation Partner Fund?: In Process

If OP tokens were requested from the Foundation Partner Fund, what was the amount?: We requested 50k OP through the online form around the time we were launching. We have not heard anything back.

How much will your project match in co-incentives? (not required but recommended, when applicable): We’re a bootstrapped public good, so don’t have the budget to match incentives.

How will the OP tokens be distributed? (please include % allocated to different initiatives such as user rewards/marketing/liquidity mining. Please also include a justification as to why each of these initiatives align with the problem statement this proposal is solving.): 100%/25K OP - User rewards (via land claims/quests): direct incentives for users to claim Geo Web parcels and stick around as Geo Web publishers/licensors on Optimism. We’re interested in either using https://quest3.xyz/ or we’ll build our own simple module on the Cadastre that allows wallets that become Geo Web parcels licensors (min .005 ETHx payment) to claim their OP rewards. We’d start with a higher per parcel reward (3~4 OP per parcel depending on the current OP:ETH price ratio) to incentivize early activity and scale down as we gain traction.

Over what period of time will the tokens be distributed for each initiative? Shorter timelines are preferable to longer timelines. Shorter timelines (on the order of weeks) allow teams to quickly demonstrate achievement of milestones, better facilitating additional grants via subsequent proposals: 12 weeks/1 quarter seems like a reasonable ramp time, but would be open to feedback.

Please clearly define the milestones you expect to achieve in order to receive milestone based installments. Please consider how each milestone relates to incentivizing sustainable usage and liquidity on Optimism. Progress towards each milestone must be trackable: The Geo Web isn’t quite an open edition NFT mint, but the theoretical max number of parcels claimed is at least in the tens of billions. We’re not minting out any time soon, so targeting a traditional 10,000 mint seems like a good stretch goal to justify the grant (given historical OP:ETH price ratios, we’d immediately generate more in dollar terms for public goods funding than incentives granted–plus ongoing streams of public goods funding from users would continue).

The milestone to trigger the remaining 60% of the grant could be set to 2k parcels minted. This would prove our traction, but also account for marginal adoption (i.e. the next mint) becoming easier with compounding network effects. We’re more than happy to adjust the milestone or add tranches.

Why will incentivized users and liquidity on Optimism remain after incentives dry up?: Geo Web land parcels are utility NFTs, so our target audience/use case doesn’t face the same mercenary incentives of DeFi traders/LPs seeking the highest yield. Incentives will help us bootstrap the initial adoption density to make the Geo Web land market interesting. From there, the ongoing utility of publishing on the network and a growing ecosystem of OSS tools/creators will justify continued participation in our partial common ownership market on Optimsim.

Please provide any additional information that will facilitate accountability (smart contracts addresses relevant to the proposal, relevant organizational wallet addresses, etc.): Geo Web RegistryDiamond (view of our registry contracts) - https://louper.dev/diamond/0xBA1231785A7b4AC0E8dC9a0403938C2182cE4A4e?network=optimism

Geo Web Network Treasury (ie public funds, not the core team’s) - Contract Address 0x5ad276439e3772fdb6696b6cb61401902d4e8b72 | Optimism

Geo Web Core Team Wallet (operational funds mostly from Gitcoin grants) - 0xDE798cD9C53F4806B9Cc7dD27aDf7c641540167c. This will be the initial recipient of the funds then we will send it to a new Safe made specifically for the user incentives claims.

Geo Web Core Team Safe (holds our OP grant from Superfluid) - Safe

Confirm you have read and agree to the Eligibility Restrictions (here): I have read the Eligibility Restrictions and agree to abide by their conditions

4 Likes

have used geoweb - it works, and has lots of utility. exactly the sort of social utility projects the optimism collective should support.

2 Likes

Awesome :clap: great seeing this proposal !

Augmented Reality NFT & Gaming apps are much needed on Optimism and hope to see you get the same type of support from rest of the committee.

1 Like

Thanks for the support @cleanapp & @FractalVisions! We’re excited to get more eyes on the Geo Web and recruit users, developers, & other contributors to join us on this journey!

1 Like

Sounds like a pretty cool project :heart_eyes:

2 Likes