[Review] [GF: Phase 1 Proposal Cycle 7] Dope Wars

đź“ś Grant Proposals Governance Fund: Phase 1
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Hi @OPUser @jrocki.eth,
Thank you for your time in giving feedback. Having contemplated the general sentiment, we think that given the following revision, we can still deliver on the same milestones in a timely manner, and come back with a new proposal, if applicable, once we have released the games. We hope that the following reduction in our ask will make the proposal more palatable to the delegates:

  • 100k Dope MMO User Incentives can be tabled for this proposal. While we would like to have this available soon for the release of the game, we understand your position of wanting to see the game first.

Given the virtually unlimited ceiling of our project, we think the potential benefits for the OP community are immense. OP should be the home for public goods gaming and I don’t think it can be overstated that OP is currently lagging other L2s and alt-chains in the gaming sector. Dope Wars embodies the Optimistic Vision, and as far as we know there are no gaming rivals on the network in terms of scope, vision, community or traction. We have amazing support from @quix, a critical piece of the OP network.
We understand that the developer incentives are a sticky subject here, but given the above, we would love to be the example and help work through the OP team’s modeling around this for future projects.

(Edit: formatting)

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Hi @salparadise , appreciate the positive attitude towards the feedback.

This was refreshing to read and would love to contribute. From my side, I would focus on providing information that gives confidence on what you want to built and how you plan to do it keeping focus on fund distribution.
Refer to what you have mentioned, what could we add to make sure that we know how those 4 verticals will be delivered. I dont think we need a kanban board for this but rather than asking for full dev funding, I would focus on iteration, you know more about your goal so break it into module and try to paint a full picture of end result. Refer to Rotki proposal for ideas.

I will try to add more on this but could you provide some information what i requested in last comment.

Do you have a documentation or tutorial related to two mini-games(paper rock schissors and Dope Frenzy). As a user, what action I need to perform to receive the OP Incentives ? And how the distribution will look like ?

I want to play game to understand the need and to evaluate the proposal.

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Great proposal !
Very exciting times for the Optimism community… Dope Wars has great potential to bring Ethereum users to the OP ecosystem.

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Maybe I can chime in and help with the time + scope aspects at a high level as I’ve worked on each of these projects. I understand how the timing of these things might seem strange to outsiders of the project, but it all has a rhyme and reason.

Primarily, we are insuring we set the DAO up for success with stable legal footing before taking potentially dangerous steps into waters that could endanger our community who reside in increasingly crypto-litigious locations such as the United States.

Because of this, we’ve had to shuffle the priority of efforts in flight, and some things have been paused so we can sequence them correctly

1. SWAP MEET + PAPER

The DAO has been advised by legal council that we must demonstrate utility of our gaming token PAPER before we actually release a game that utilizes the token.

We’ve taken that to mean that we should at minimum allow players to buy/sell Hustlers and Gear on our Swap Meet using PAPER. I’ve been working with the team at Reservoir for the past few weeks to implement a proof-of-concept store for another project which has successfully launched on Eth Mainnet. They recently (as of last week) released the ability to use ERC-20 tokens in their React kit!

This should finally allow us move away from some hand-rolled solutions we’ve made and had been considering creating – and instead quickly iterate to fix some bugs and finally check this off the list after way too long.

a. Tasks

  • Store listings for DOPE, Hustlers, and Gear across Mainnet and Optimism in our API from Reservoir
  • Allow DOPE community members to list and purchase items in PAPER on our marketplace at Dopewars.gg using Reservoir Kit UI
  • Move away from our home-rolled OpenSea and Ethereum indexers to provide a more stable experience for people buying / selling gear
  • Re-enable our 1-click Hustler Quick Buy that mints a hustler on Optimism using the new listing system

b. Time

  • 80-120hrs

2. PAPER ROCK SCISSORS

I can offer documentation on the inner workings of PRS by linking you to the product brief for it. The smart contracts are done and publicly available on Github. The source has been deployed on Goerli Eth for testing. We intend to use the grant to further develop the front-end experience, smooth out any issues with gameplay and deliver it to market, along with providing incentives for users to play the game.

We intend to run competitions over periods of time, where the best players over certain timeframes can gain extra OP tokens in addition to PAPER for playing PRS. Our leaderboard will be publicly stored on Tableland for anyone to verify fairness of game results. We will finalize what those competitions look like and how best to run the incentives for participation once the game is operational.

a. Tasks

  • Work with Chainlink (or someone else) to understand if we can take any token and swap it to PAPER for increasing a players balance using an on-chain oracle
  • Deploy smart contracts on Optimism
  • Deliver a front-end experience hosted on Dopewars.gg
  • Run our first competition incentivizing users to play for PAPER+OP tokens

b. Time

  • 120-160hrs

3. DOPE MMO

This is a bit further out as we have some internal work to do in order to solidify the game engine, and is a more ambitious project. We have a playable alpha that we can stand up for people if they’d like to check it out later on, but would require I put in some hours to make that happen.

Currently players can run around the map, chat with each other, and explore during daylight and night light in an immersive environment. DAO members have also worked on a series of quests (example) that are ready to be implemented once we have funding to do so.

Players will participate in quests such as these, then be able to gain rewards for completing them, such as minting NFT items, or receiving tokens as a prize.

As a product manager, this feels as if it needs the most definition and probably comes last.

a. Tasks

  • Implement a more standardized authentication solution that works across Dopewars.gg and the game (probably Firebase auth using SIWE as the mechanism)
  • Improve multi-player performance
  • Design + implement a NFT rewards system that can gift players items securely once they’ve completed a task
  • Store results of these player quests in a public ledger (maybe Tableland)

b. Time

  • 160hrs+

Hopefully this illuminates the inner-workings of dev across these efforts and can provide OP delegates with confidence this time around that we are asking for the appropriate amount of tokens to make significant progress.

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Thank you for taking our feedback to heart. I think that is a good adjustment to make to the proposal and would like to see this move to the committee review phase. In order for this to happen the following will need to occur before tomorrow (10/5/2022) at 3pm ET:

  1. Update (click edit on your post) this proposal with what you outlined
  2. Have a delegate with enough OP (>= .5%) delegated to them post their approval as a comment in this thread
  3. Post your Quix approval comment plus the additional delegate approval comment from above here
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I am an Optimism delegate [Delegate Commitments - #29 by Exosphere ] with sufficient voting power, and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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Hey @jrocki.eth @OPUser

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions, Dope Wars have updated our proposal and has added a structure for developers incentives.

Your feedback on our Retroactive Developer Incentive Program is welcomed.

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Cycle 7

Dope Wars

Voting recommendation: “No” with the guidance they resubmit with adjustments for Cycle 8

Summary:
This was incredibly close, in fact, the committee was initially split right down the middle with two members for, two against and one appropriately abstaining due to a conflict of interest. In the end we were able to come to a consensus and recommend to vote “Against” this proposal with guidance to adjust based on our feedback and resubmit in cycle 8. In the end the decision came down to the amount of $OP requested tied to games that are still pending release. Before we dive in lets summarize the proposal request:

75,000 $OP - In game incentives for PAPER Rock Scissors
75,000 $OP - In game incentives for Dope Frenzy
150,000 $OP - For a Retroactive Developer Incentive Program aimed at rewarding the community
building games for the Dope Wars ecosystem now and into the future.

We as a committee believe the best approach to fund innovative and experimental proposals like Dope Wars is to do it in an iterative manner where we are able to maximize learnings while minimizing the initial outlay of $OP funding. With the understanding that projects are encouraged to request funding on an on-going basis and are more likely to receive that funding if their last proposal was a success for the Optimism ecosystem.

  1. Assessment of the in-game incentives funding ask: The concept of in-game incentive programs for gaming has been proven to drive new user growth and usage for the ecosystem they are implemented in so we are in agreement this would be beneficial to the Optimism ecosystem as well as help kick start the gaming ecosystem on Optimism. Gamers have already proven there is a huge addressable gaming market just on layer 2 with the $MAGIC gaming ecosystem topping 180k+ total users on Arbitrum. Our recommendation to adjust is to prioritize incentives for the first game being released then subsequently submit a proposal to incentivize the next game closer to it’s launch date. This recommendation was made after having consulted the Dope Wars team on where they are at in the development phase for these games.

  2. Assessment of the Retroactive Developer Incentive Program (RADIP) funding ask. This is a concept we vetted and refined with the Dope Wars team. We feel the “RADIP PROCESS” outlined in the proposal provides sufficient assurances to ensure the $OP will be utilized for it’s intended purpose while mitigating risks associated with anyone trying to game the Retroactive Developer Incentive rewards Program as the incentives are retroactive in nature and therefore tied to milestones with defined outputs, agreed upon by the DAO, and distributed after the initial release across several months to ensure the quality of the work. Our recommendation to adjust is to request only the amount of funding needed to incentivize and reward development over the next few months at which point Dope Wars would be encouraged to submit another proposal for more funding. The amount of funding likely to be approved in the future is only limited by how effective Dope Wars utilizes funds it has received previously from the governance fund.

I would like to thank the Dope Wars team for their commitment to this proposal and active collaboration with the NFT & Gaming Committee. This is the second voting cycle that Dope Wars has submitted their funding proposal, and we hope to see a modified version of this in cycle 8!

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Damn. That’s a bummer.

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I completely understand, your feelings as from the Dope Wars POV you submitted in a prior cycle, incorporated feedback, then did the same thing again here only not to get a recommendation.

So it seems like we moved the goal posts on you guys a bit but I can assure you that is not the case. With the introduction of committees this voting season there is now more concentrated feedback coming from a smaller group of delegates doing a deep dive. So the assessment process is slightly different

That being said it is a rock solid proposal in my opinion as far as what is being funded and how that will be distributed.

In the end it came down to the amount being requested and our preference to fund in smaller, iterative chunks.

Now the reality of the situation is really that NFT & Gaming project funding is and will continue to be more heavily scrutinized by the community at large until we can demonstrate the value of using governance funds on such projects.

Defi incentives are more widely accepted in general which is why you see so many defi projects getting passed with such large amounts of OP.

Now I am of the opinion that it is going to be NFTs and Gaming driving the next bull run and not Defi 2.0 as it were which is why I put this committee together. We just need to get over this initial hump by iteratively proving out the value of funding solid NFT and Gaming projects

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Thank you @jrocki.eth for writing this up.

Please keep in mind that I am only a community member of Dope Wars, Dope DAO has never paid for me for any type of work, and my views here are my own and do not represent that of the Dope Wars community or DAO.

I feel that we have done everything that has been asked us based on delegate feedback from our first proposal (seeking 1M OP), and in the week of feedback for this proposal (400k, reduced to 300k based on feedback)
For example, from our first 1m OP proposal @lefterisjp wrote:

I want to stress this splitting up the proposal. Even if you indeed need 1M $OP for 2 years of development, making 1 new proposal every 6 months is a much easier way to get this approved. You could even mention in the initial proposal that you will in total need 1M $OP and plan to follow up with more as the milestones of your proposal are completed and that delegates should only approve if they are comfortable with you coming back for more in doses like that.

And then

This is a hard vote for me as a delegator has contacted me in Twitter and asked me to specifically vote YES here, and since I really like what you are building and how you are doing so.

But the amount is simply too high for a single proposal.

If you follow through again later with splitting this into multiple proposals as I suggested above, with each proposal representing a certain milestone of the project it will be much much easier for me to vote in favor. Which is something I really want to do.

I think the same applies for most other delegates.

Please don’t be discouraged and resubmit another proposal taking in all our feedback.

And this from @linda:

Thanks for sharing your proposal. Similar to other delegates, I feel the amount requested is too high and I would prefer this amount to be broken up into multiple batches based on the progress/traction of the fund usage so I will be voting no on this specific proposal. Happy to re-review for a future one!

We got a Yes in that proposal for 1m OP from current NFT & Gaming Chair @jrocki.eth:

YES

Dope Wars will be putting the funds to good use in order to bring a new cohort (gaming) of users into the ecosystem

And this from @quix

We voted yes on this proposal. The Dope Wars team was the first major NFT project to move from layer 1 Ethereum to Optimism (before there was a marketplace). They have a strong track record of technical development and community building. We believe it’s important to support novel use cases of NFTs, and funds given to Dope Wars are likely to support the type of interesting experiences that bring new users to Optimism.

Moving to the first iteration of current proposal, we updated things to reflect the current state of DW, and based on advice like the above from the previous proposal, dropped our ask 60%. We then dropped it another 25% (to 300k) based on forum feedback, and structured and began internally implementing RADIP, primarily based on the guidance of NFT & Gaming Committee member @OPUser

We did not receive feedback from Committee member @Michael, who voted NO. From Michael’s delegate commitment post:

My Web3 interests:

Economics, Infrastructure, DeFi, Social Impact, Wallets

My skills and areas of expertise: Software Engineering, Machine Learning/Robotics, Economics, Finance, Product, Education

My favorite Web3 projects: Optimism, Gnosis Safe, CowSwap

I think it important for delegates to note the lack of mention of anything NFT or gaming related in Michael’s post, and also to note that they did not provide any public feedback to DW.

Personally, it feels that the OP delegates are simply more comfortable with DeFi, and we all could speculate on a number of reasons for this. But I believe this is short-sighted. I am highly interested in the gov processes being worked on here and the OP Vision in general. However, it would be a shame to see Optimism become a farming-centric chain rather than one that takes risks in innovative areas with potential for massive disruption via public goods framework, within a vertical that has seen huge traction on other chains.

EDIT: Delegates should note that only 2/5 committee members voted NO. Due to an abstention (which would have otherwise been a YES), there seems to have been an impasse.
Neither of the 2 NO voters have joined the DW discord server, the most obvious place for due diligence.
There were no other projects for this committee to vet this cycle.

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Thank you for writing this @salparadise .

One thing I do appreciate that DW incorporated our feedback in new proposal and we discussed this internally while reviewing the proposal. Looking back to the last recommendation and feedback is important and it keeps delegate in-check but I would like to mention that rules and guidelines are changing every cycle.

like @jrocki.eth said, I do understand the frustration of not getting approval in second attempt but one thing can tell you with confidence, we looked into all aspect of the proposal. There are many things to consider, such as token need, targeted audience, use case, value creation and plan, and it varies with each proposal type

When I compare with last proposal and new guideline, DW has made good progress and look at the bright side, your community came up with a plan for doing dev funding, on-chain games are in making and you are focused more on user value creation.

One goal from proposal side is to remove “if” part and focus on answering the 3Ws “what, how and where” in the proposal . When we were discussing this, there were few open question, some suggestion were made, we ponder around different idea to make this proposal more aligned towards long lasting value creating and we discussed this with the author.

Looking forward towards updated proposal. Also join in on our channel in OP Discord to discuss the RADIP.

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FWIW I think delegates must consider the broader landscape of L2 competition right now. Optimism isn’t the only L2 chain seeking great projects and builders and in my opinion has a fair amount of catchup to do in order to be competitive with Polygon, Immutable, Starknet, Solana, Arbitrum–the list goes on.

Continuing to shut down one of the most prolific gaming and NFT projects in the ecosystem over a couple hundred thousand OP difference is, in my opinion, penny-wise and pound foolish. If (when?) Dope Wars give up on this and move to Starknet or Polygon or other chains that are more than willing to incentivize building with a fraction of the hassle it will be a major indictment on this process, community governance generally, and what builders have to look forward to when initiatives like RPG come online.

Edit: If I’m doing the math correctly, 300k OP represents 0.13% of the total Phase 1 fund. I was around for the hotly contested debate at Dope Wars about a year ago now over whether the project should go all-in on Optimism to build out the game. They took a huge, arguably existential, bet on building here. In my eyes this warrants the benefit of the doubt over a difference in 0.05% of the Phase 1 grant pool.

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That is a fair assessment and that was a big concern of mine as well. In order to mitigate as much as possible we tried to provide a very clear path towards approval in the next cycle.

So ideally there will be a slight tweak in the OP amount, add to cycle 8 and in 2 weeks time the Dope Wars thread should have a yes recommendation from the committee

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Flagging that Dope Wars are now voting to move off of Optimism to Starknet or Polygon:

https://snapshot.org/#/dopedao.eth/proposal/0xd46d2cf6507e8f404c48c220c60032003738731b207459002ac35c68b7a968c0

This is a disappointing outcome and should trigger some reflection for delegates and committees on the frameworks they’re using to evaluate proposals.

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Just because the committee voted against the proposal, doesn’t mean it’s dead in the water. I plan on still voting for it in cycle 7 and invite other delegates to join me. Optimism has a lot of momentum on the NFT front right now, and it’s a bummer to see one of the most innovative NFT projects on the network getting yanked around by the governance process to the point that they are considering moving to another network. I really think this is a case of perfect being enemy of the good.

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Voted yes - Although this is against the NFT and Gaming Committee recommendation, I really like this proposal. I believe gaming is undervalued in the space and the proposal provides gaming incentives which will increase traction on OP. I also really appreciate that 50% of the tokens will be used for developer incentives, which is also something I would love to see more of. Overall, I don’t see a downside and support this proposal.

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We voted in support of this proposal, as we did with their original proposal, and encourage other delegates to do the same. The Dope Wars team was the first major NFT project to move from L1 Ethereum to Optimism (before there was even a marketplace or standard bridge). They have a strong track record of technical development and community building. We believe it’s important to support novel use cases of NFTs, and funds given to Dope Wars are likely to support the type of interesting experiences that bring new users to Optimism.

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Love the positive vibes and not blindly following a recommendation this is how governance should be.

I actively encourage this sort of discourse

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Very well said, perfect vs good was one of the reasons we as a committee were split down the middle initially on this one

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