Geo Web: Growth Experiments - Cycle 11

ARCHIVED & OLD Missions Grants Council Cycle 10-11
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Basic Details

Project name: Geo Web

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

L2 recipient address: 0xDE798cD9C53F4806B9Cc7dD27aDf7c641540167c

Which Voting Cycle are you applying for?: Cycle 11

I confirm that I have read the landing pages for the Builders and Growth Experiments Sub-Committees and that I have determined my proposal is best suited to be reviewed by the Growth Experiments Sub-Committee: [Yes/No]: Yes

I understand that Growth Experiments grants are subject to a “no sale rule,” as explained in this post, and I have read the terms of the rule: [Yes/No]: Yes

Project Details

What are you building?:

We’re building public consensus for geospatial augmented reality.

Think of Pokemon Go but rather than just a siloed application, relevant & composable content, applications, & information are discoverable at physical-world locations through a universal spatial browser (like a web browser that uses GPS instead of URLs).

We use a novel property rights system (partial common ownership/Harberger taxes*) to administer a fair & productive market for who can anchor content where in the world on the network. Instead of installing apps on a device, publishers anchor “apps” to locations on Earth for all visitors to experience in augmented, shared reality.

100% of the funds collected through the land market are allocated to public goods and the creation of positive externalities through market incentives.

With this model, we can bootstrap a coherent open spatial web browsing experience that challenges the app stores & attention economy algorithms for supremacy in the metaverse era.

*In short, partial common ownership requires landholders to continuously contribute to a public goods treasury fund proportionally to what they say their land is worth. Someone else can always purchase their land at that same self-assessed price in the open market.

Why do you believe what you are building is going to succeed?:

We’re going to succeed because of our wholehearted commitment to and innovative implementation of public goods funding mechanisms/incentives.

App stores and algorithms are the incumbent application delivery models that want to extend their monopolistic practices to the metaverse. At this point, it’s not just crypto natives that understand this isn’t the future we want. They’re looking for credible alternatives. We can deliver.

We have an elegant, decentralized mechanism (partial common ownership land NFTs) for creating an orderly, open, and useful AR metaverse experience. It so happens that this mechanism creates a sustainable revenue stream that we have wholly committed to funding public goods.

We’re not trying to build the future of the metaverse by ourselves. We’re creating a flywheel of public goods funding and innovation for it to evolve as an open ecosystem:

How many users does your project have currently? Please include how you arrived at this estimate:

How will receiving a grant enable you to further the mission of maximizing the number of users interacting with Optimism? Please include a step-by-step flow of how you imagine this grant can lead to a greater number of user interactions with Optimism:

  • We need to overcome the cold start problem for our network.
  • OP incentives would help us offset a user’s direct financial cost of licensing a Geo Web parcel.
    • The minimum cost of claiming a Geo Web parcel is .005 ETH plus an ongoing fee equal to 10% of the self-assessed value of the parcel.
  • As more users claim land, the coordination value/utility of each parcel goes up and the need for external incentives goes down.
    • It will also give our team opportunities to learn from users to improve our UX and enable more use cases for landholders/publishers–further increasing the core value proposition.
  • The Geo Web land registry (i.e. the source of truth for the network) is Optimism-exclusive. All Geo Web land transactions (primary & secondary) happen on Optimism.
    • It’s also natural for any on-chain applications built for the Geo Web to be on Optimism so landholders/publishers don’t have to manage cross-chain assets for a single use case.
  • All Geo Web land market fees are allocated to public goods funding. We can spur second and third-order usage on Optimism by funding an ecosystem of creators/artists, games, tooling, businesses, etc. that earn from their positive-sum contributions to the Geo Web.

Tell us about the users you plan to target with this grant. Include any defining characteristics that will help you identify and target them.:

  • Public goods maxis & regens
    • We can directly reach out to ~14k unique contributors that have donated to the Geo Web Gitcoin grant previously
    • Claiming and holding a Geo Web land parcel is like contributing to the Gitcoin QF matching pool, but you get a metaverse land parcel in return, so we can also target people that donate to other projects/the matching pool each quarter (and often post about it on Twitter).
  • AR/VR/3D artists
    • Creators are always looking for networks/mediums to showcase their work. They can be found through and engaged with social media, Discord communities, NFT marketplaces, etc as they share their work publicly.

How would these users interact with Optimism? For how long?:

  • Land transactions - Partial common ownership requires an initial claim and an ongoing network fee stream. Publishing on the Geo Web will entail perpetual engagement on the Optimism network.
  • Building & publishing on the Geo Web - Landholders and builders alike will interact with and create content, NFTs, apps, experiences, and tooling for Geo Web parcels. These assets would naturally default to being on Optimsim (better UX & that’s where funding will be allocated).
  • Public goods funding allocation decisions - At first periodically through quadratic funding rounds then via perpetual streaming mechanisms, landholders and Geo Web citizens will vote for/fund public goods on on-chain on Optimism.
  • Browsing the Geo Web - Browsing content on the Geo Web currently does not require on-chain interaction with Optimism, but permissioning and interactivity will eventually provide another ongoing mode of interaction with Optimism for Geo Web users.

Provide us with links to any of the following for the project:

Do you have any metrics on the project currently? (TVL, transactions, volume, unique addresses, etc. Optimism metrics preferred; please link to public sources such as Dune Analytics, etc.):

1.0197 ETHx - public goods funding raised since January 14, 2023

  • ETHx is ETH wrapped for Superfluid streaming

Who are your competitors, and are they on Optimism?:

  • SuperWorld - Ethereum

  • Over - Polygon

  • Illust - EVM-compatible contract

  • Arcona - BNB Chain

Please link to code audits (if any): N/A

Team

Who are your founders?:

What makes your team well-suited to carry out the project described in this proposal?

We have a truly unique vision for how to bootstrap the open metaverse. We’re audacious enough to believe it’s possible and driven enough to do it right. We’ve been on a public goods maximalist mission with the Geo Web since 2020 without taking shortcuts and leading by example. Better-capitalized and larger competitors can’t legitimately co-opt our strategy. Eventually, they’ll join us.

Cody is a full-stack web3 engineer who’s done everything from building our partial common ownership auction system, modular Diamond Proxy smart contracts, Superfluid streaming payment system, Ceramic + IPFS p2p content layer, and more. Since he’s not the one writing this proposal, I’ll just say he’s a badass.

I (Graven) am a mission-driven problem solver. I thrive bridging the gap between technical and business. I have a knack for complex system and mechanism design.

Is this your first Web3 project?:

  • Cody - No
  • Graven - Yes, but has been working on it since 2020.

If not, what else have you built? (Share links, Github repository, or any other useful information.):

Cody’s other web3 work:

Grant Request

What is the size of the grant request? (250k OP max): 2,000 OP

How do you justify the size of the grant?:

We’re a small project (so far), and this is a small grant request. We value the social signal of support for our experiment from the Collective even more than the grant allocation. We’re attempting to bootstrap a new global property rights system that could be integral to the future of the open web/metaverse. Even if we’re a bit early in the market, we don’t think this is an outsized request to help jumpstart sustainable network effects.

Roadmap and Distribution Plan

Describe in discrete steps how you will successfully implement your grant plan:

  • Create a fresh Safe on OP to hold the Growth Grant (3 of 4 signers; 2 separate hardware wallets x 2 Geo Web cofounders)
    • We’ll utilize the CSV Airdrop app to manually distribute awards based on claims.
  • Release a blog post outlining the distribution table for parcel claimants (see next question)
  • Kick off a social and community campaign to drive awareness about the Geo Web and the availability of OP incentives
  • On a monthly basis, retrieve and submit the list of eligible OP recipient addresses and amounts for payout via the Safe
  • Continue to engage users and drive new claims through office hours, community calls/Twitter spaces, Discord/forum conversations, use case deployment, and partner outreach

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 aligns with the problem statement this proposal is solving. Distribution should not include the sale of any tokens by the grantee or the use of tokens for compensation, protocol expenses, etc. See the no sale rule here ):

100% of this growth grant will be allocated to user rewards for claiming Geo Web land parcels.

Upon program commencement, each subsequent parcel claim would earn the claimant OP rewards based on the tranche in which their claim was made:

  • Claim #1 - 200 - 2.5 OP/parcel (Total - 500 OP)
  • 201 - 800 - 2 OP/parcel (1200 OP)
  • 801 - 1000 - 1.5 OP/parcel (300 OP)

This would represent a big leap forward in Geo Web adoption on Optimism and create momentum for continued growth on the network. This adoption would represent an identifiable audience for AR artists, games, and entrepreneurs to market to on the Geo Web as well.

Each parcel claim would also immediately generate .005 ETHx in subsequent funding public goods (5 ETHx plus ongoing fees to be allocated through quadratic funding).

The $ value of OP granted to claimants will be less than their required public goods contribution, so we can avoid mercenary incentive hunters and attract users interested in the long-term vision.

Over what period of time will the tokens be distributed for each initiative?:

We will distribute the in the three months following receipt of grant funds.

Please provide benchmark milestones for this project. These milestones should guide the Optimism community on the progress of your project throughout your work on the project. Do not use the distribution of the grant itself as a milestone:

  • If we receive a grant, we will release a blog post announcing the Geo Web’s OP incentive program and structure by April 17th
  • We will reach the 200th new parcel claim by May 8th
  • We will reach the 600th parcel claim by June 17th
  • We will reach the 1,000th parcel claim by July 17th
  • Development progress targeted during the grant period:
    • We will release a Web3Auth sign-in & fiat-to-crypto onramp (pending compliance review) for the Cadastre to improve the claiming UX by April 30th
    • We will release a persistent, shared, & cross-platform AR use case for Geo Web parcel licensors by May 31st
  • We will continue to pay monthly OP rewards by the 17th of each month until all grant funds are exhausted (e.g. 2nd month = June 17th, 3rd = July 17th, etc).
  • We will run our first public goods quadratic funding allocation round by the end of July 2023

Please define critical milestones for this project. Critical milestones are meant to show good-faith efforts to accomplish the project. Non-completion of these milestones could lead to the revocation of remaining grant rewards. Do not use the distribution of the grant itself as a milestone:

  • We will deploy the Safe to hold/distribute OP rewards by April 17th
    • We’ll distribute rewards to users via the CSV Airdrop app that is integrated with Safe
  • We will pay the first monthly tranche of OP rewards by May 17th

If the OP tokens are for direct distribution to users, why will incentivized users and liquidity on Optimism remain after incentives dry up?:

Geo Web land parcels are administered under the perpetual partial common ownership licensing system. OP incentives will help offset, but not exceed the value of ETH that the land claimant must commit to the public goods funding pool to mint a parcel. This means our program will not be a mercenary arbitrage opportunity.

Users that claim land under these conditions are making a financial and time commitment to the Geo Web that entails continued engagement to return value. We will continue to drive network effects, improved UX, and new use cases that these landholders want.

Please provide any additional information that will facilitate accountability (smart contract addresses relevant to the proposal, relevant organizational wallet addresses, etc.):

RegistryDiamond (view of our registry contracts) - Louper

Geo Web Network Treasury (i.e. public funds, not the core team’s) - 0x5ad276439e3772fdb6696b6cb61401902d4e8b72

Geo Web Core Team Wallet (operational funds mostly from Gitcoin grants) - 0xDE798cD9C53F4806B9Cc7dD27aDf7c641540167c. This will be the initial recipient of the funds before sending it to a smart contract for distribution.

Geo Web Core Team Safe (holds an OP grant via Superfluid) - Safe

Optimism Relationship

Does your project solve a problem for the Optimism ecosystem? If so how?:

Yes, the Geo Web can solve two problems for the Optimism Ecosystem:

  1. By supporting metaverse adoption on Optimism - Whether you hate the metaverse buzzword or not, the internet is undeniably becoming more three-dimensional and geospatial. The Geo Web can help establish a critical piece of infrastructure for the future of the spatial internet on Optimism and the spillover effects that entails.

  2. By creating funding for public goods - 100% of the Geo Web’s land market funds will be allocated to public goods and creating positive externalities. We are an app layer extension of the Optimism vision and will help drive more public goods building in the OP Stack.

Why will this solution be a source of growth for the Optimism ecosystem?:

I don’t want to repeat the whole proposal here so… The Geo Web will attract new users with unique NFT utility, by sustainably rewarding builders, creators, educators, & innovators with non-extractive business models, and by perpetuating the meme of public goods+coordination to the masses.

Is your project Optimism Native?: Yes

Confirmations

I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant: [Yes/No]: Yes

I understand that I will be expected to follow the public grant reporting requirements outlined here: [Yes/No]: Yes

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Hello and thank you for your proposal! Throughout the application process, this forum thread will be one of the official means of communication. Please be sure to monitor it for updates over the course of the review period.

At this stage, applications are mainly being reviewed for completeness, and nothing at this stage should be construed as support or opposition by any members of the Grants Council.

Just a few questions on my side to help improve the proposal and my understanding of things:

  • How does Geo Web plan to handle public goods (picking projects, distribution, etc.), and will there be any collaboration with Optimism public goods? Can you provide some details on the approach and any potential partnerships or collaborations in this area?

Just to make it clear, will this reimburse the full cost of the parcel or more? I know that’s related to the value of OP and ETH, though just want to see if that’s the idea.

Given it’s all going to public goods anyway, I just want to make sure there isn’t a profit incentive for users to claim large amounts and farm OP rewards.

[quote] Please provide benchmark milestones for this project. These milestones should guide the Optimism community on the progress of your project throughout your work on the project. Do not use the distribution of the grant itself as a milestone:

  • The Geo Web’s public announcement of the OP incentive program and structure
  • Parcel claim #200 (can be monitored at Geo Web Parcel License (GEOL) Token Tracker | Optimism)
  • Parcel claim #800
  • Parcel claim #1000
  • Development progress targeted during the grant period:
    • Web3Auth & fiat-to-crypto onramp for the Cadastre to improve the claiming UX
    • Release a persistent, shared, & cross-platform AR use case for Geo Web parcel licensors

Please define critical milestones for this project. Critical milestones are meant to show good-faith efforts to accomplish the project. Non-completion of these milestones could lead to the revocation of remaining grant rewards. Do not use the distribution of the grant itself as a milestone:

  • Deploying the OP incentive Safe
  • Monthly payouts of rewards to users based on claims via the CSV Airdrop app integrated with Safe
  • Running our first public goods funding allocation round with protocol treasury funds

The benchmark milestones provided lack defined timelines and do not follow the Milestone Assessment. Please refer to the Milestone Assessment to ensure that your project can be considered for a grant.

Besides all of that, I think the idea is really interesting, and being public goods maximalists is a great thing for the project. The grant size is one of the best I’ve seen as it’s VERY fair to where the project is at.

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Thanks for the review and feedback, @MattL. I’ve added additional information and responses below.

Great question! This is the area that we’re most excited to experiment and collaborate in. Effective public goods funding allocation is what will allow the Geo Web to compete with proprietary alternatives.

To limit complexity & maximize participation opportunities, we will use Gitcoin’s Allo protocol to administer our initial public goods quadratic funding rounds. It’s an OS protocol and leverages Gitcoin’s years of QF experience, so we can run small rounds ourselves as we build momentum for the project. We’ve had positive conversations with Gitcoin team members about collaboration/support for our efforts. RetroPGF will also grow into a great tool for our PG funding toolbox and we’d welcome any collaboration opportunities within the Optimism ecosystem (anyone interested in collaborating, experimenting, or developing, hmu :slight_smile: ).

The proposed incentive structure was designed to keep the OP reward (in $) less than the ETH cost (in $) of claiming a parcel for this reason. At current prices, the top reward would be $6.55 (2.5 OP x $2.62/OP) while the claim price would be $8.90 (.005 ETH x $1779.93) plus the ongoing PCO stream. That should be enough cushion to absorb relative price changes between OP/ETH and maintain the desired incentives, but if the ratio dramatically changed before the program launch we could adjust the allocations in this intended spirit.

Thank you for this link. Below are our updated milestones with dates (I’ll also edit our original post to match):

Benchmark Milestones

  • If we receive a grant, we will release a blog post announcing the Geo Web’s OP incentive program and structure by April 17th
  • We will reach the 200th new parcel claim by May 8th
  • We will reach the 600th parcel claim by June 17th
  • We will reach the 1,000th parcel claim by July 17th
  • Development progress targeted during the grant period:
    • We will release a Web3Auth sign-in & fiat-to-crypto onramp (pending compliance review) for the Cadastre to improve the claiming UX by April 30th
    • We will release a persistent, shared, & cross-platform AR use case for Geo Web parcel licensors by May 31st

Critical Milestones

  • We will deploy the Safe to hold/distribute OP rewards by April 17th
    • We’ll distribute rewards to users via the CSV Airdrop app that is integrated with Safe
  • We will pay the first monthly tranche of OP rewards by May 17th
  • We will pay the second monthly tranche of OP rewards by June 17th
  • We will pay the third monthly tranche of OP rewards by July 17th
  • We will run our first public goods quadratic funding allocation round by the end of July 2023
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As a reminder, while grant evaluations are being finalized, grant distribution is as follows:

If a grant plan is approved, the applicant will receive 40% of the total funding. To unlock the remaining funds, critical milestones must be met. Please ensure that your milestones are discrete, trackable, and geared toward accomplishing their aims in 4-8 months

To evaluate your milestones, you can use this milestone assessment link: Milestone Assessment.

If your critical milestones are well-detailed, align with the guidelines provided in the milestone assessment link, and you are comfortable with them, then you’re good to go. However, please be prepared to submit documentation proving that you have met your milestones, where necessary, to avoid delayed disbursement of the remaining funds

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Do all critical milestones need to be met before the remaining 60% of funds are distributed? Or is consistently completing the critical milestones scheduled for the early months of our plan sufficient to unlock the remainder?

As currently written/planned, we’ll have fully distributed the first 40% of OP to users before we can complete the June & July critical milestones, and we would effectively be blocked. Let me know if the council is looking for full critical milestone completion or rather staying on track to release funds. I’ll adjust accordingly. Thanks, @MattL!

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Hey Graven.

Apologies on the delay, yes you’d have to complete all of the critical milestones to receive the other 60% of the grant. Let me know on the updated milestones for these. Thanks!

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All good. I went ahead and moved the Critical Milestones that (without the second portion of the grant) would have blocked continued progress to the Benchmark Milestone section instead. Thanks!

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Milestone Type Milestone Source of Truth
Critical Deploy the Safe to hold and distribute OP rewards Safe – Dashboard
Benchmark Release a blog post announcing the Geo Web’s OP incentive program and structure Claim Geo Web Land, Receive OP
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Milestone Type Milestone Source of Truth
Critical Cadastre UX (Web3Auth & Fiat Onramp) Cadastre, Web3Auth Testnet Integration

We will not complete this milestone by 4/30 as originally drafted. We instead focused on and released a fully mobile-responsive version of the Cadastre on 4/26 which aligns with our goal to improve the UX.

We decided not to take our test integration of Web3Auth to production to avoid “Cadastre Lock-in” (wallets generated through the social login integration would be tied to our Cadastre & we want to maintain user choice). We’ll revisit Web3Auth when we implement account abstraction techniques.

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Greetings,
I absolutely support this project. However, some of the features of the project need some clarification. For example how we can be sure that the land we claimed will increase in value?
Besides that, I believe the project founders have a vast approach to the metaverse which I admire. Right now plenty of Web 3.0 projects just focus on bridging or trading. This is an ambitious project and I love its founders that think billions of miles outside of the box. Good luck

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Thanks for checking us out and sharing words of support, @cryptoAYA!

We can’t be sure that land values will increase, but our belief is that investing the land market funds into public goods (like open-source publishing tools, spatial browsers, applications, etc.) will increase the network’s utility, adoption, and legitimacy. That can make Geo Web land more desirable (i.e. land value increases) and create a virtuous cycle of more public goods funding.

We need explorers just like you to help spread the word and get the network effects started!

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Greetings,
Thank you for this reply. Well, I would be honored to spread the word. But I think you can provide a situation for users like me to have an opportunity to work with your project in a situation same as testnet where the users do not spend money, and only spend their time interacting with the project from different perspectives and sharing the feedback on social media. All the people around the world who can use the internet and have decent devices can contribute to your great project. It was a time that I had an idea to somehow connect blockchain to planting trees and making it a profitable activity for the users. I strongly believe the time is right now the most valuable asset everyone has. Web 3.0 geniuses such as you can benefit from people’s time and provide a win-win output.

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For sure! Our testnet runs on Optimism Goerli and is accessible here: https://testnet.geoweb.land/. If you haven’t already, you can join our Discord, and we’d love to chat through ideas you and others have for building on the Geo Web.

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Greetings,
Appreciate that. I will join your discord. And I love to interact with this testnet and share the feedback. That is great. God speed.

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I m usually not a fan of social and location based features but this is interesting.

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Final critical milestone completed on 5/17 as scheduled:

Milestone Type Milestone Source of Truth
Critical Pay the first monthly tranche of OP rewards Optimistic L2 Transaction Hash (Txhash) Details | Optimism
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Updates on benchmark milestones as of 6/16:

Milestone Type Milestone Source of Truth
Benchmark Pay the second monthly tranche of OP rewards Complete - Optimism Bedrock Transaction Hash (Txhash) Details | Optimism
Benchmark Reach the 200th new parcel claim 163 of 200 Claims (81.5% complete) - Geo Web Parcel License (GEOL) Token Tracker | Optimism
Benchmark Release a persistent, shared, & cross-platform AR use case for Geo Web parcel licensors WIP - Infra complete for persistent image target anchoring; not yet integrated to the Cadastre (awaiting completion of Account Abstraction UI work)

Note: Our final critical milestone was completed as of 5/17.

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Updates on benchmark milestones as of 7/17:

Milestone Type Milestone Source of Truth
Benchmark Pay the 3rd monthly tranche of OP rewards Complete - Optimistic Etherscan Transaction Hash (Txhash) Details | Optimism
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Very interesting idea. I wonder if we would have sone opportunity to create a relationship with IOTX to support the system?

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Thanks @Andol! We haven’t had any conversations with IoTX yet. There are definitely integration opportunities (and needs) for local sensing with the Geo Web, so we’d be open to chat!

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