The Metamorphosis of Creatives DAO

Creatives Creatives DAO
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THIS IS A DRAFT AND WILL BE CHANGED AS PER CONSTRUCTIVE COMMUNITY FEEDBACK.

Given the urgency to deliver a structure for funding to begin, while ensuring sustainability of the DAOs and bringing the best talent on NEAR, this was the best I could come up with in the given time.

Please know that this is a draft, and your inputs and suggestions will make it complete. We can go ahead with this structure, take elements from it to make a new structure or completely reject this as a proposition.

My request is for you to provide the reasoning and a suggestion to move forward so we can build this together.

I urge you to look at this as something that can help fund meaningful projects in a more organised, open and supportive manner, like how a community should be, even when we are not a part of NEAR or when the funding exhausts.

I hope you find value in this.

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How to suggest change for any section

  1. Find a topic or a section you want to change.
  2. Share the changes via comments
  3. For example - You don’t like the name of the new DAO suggested. ArtTechNationDao
  4. Comment - I don’t like the name and would rather have it remain as Creatives DAO
  5. Community can vote by liking your comment showing their belief in your change.
  6. If someone wants to add to your point they can “quote” it and add changes again and the community can vote to show support.
  7. If we don’t have at least 15 votes no point changing something. (We can revise vote approval number to 10 or to 20 as per community decision)

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The Metamorphosis of Creatives DAO: The ArtTechNation DAO

In 2021 the Creatives and Marketing DAOs were born with a goal to spread NEAR tokens and build a community by helping enthusiasts get their activities funded CreativesDAO and MarketingDAO.

Communities from around the world came forward to build this dream of a truly decentralised community pioneering a cross section of tech, art and communities in the blockchain space.

In the span of a year and a half, Creatives DAO has:

  • Created the biggest DAO ecosystem in the entire blockchain space funding creative projects from around the world
  • Communities from over 40+ countries that have participated in our funding helping to make NEAR a known name amongst creatives
  • Created 2 versions of decentralised voting mechanisms where council leadership of the Creatives DAO was given to the DAOs participating in the growth of the community instead of individual leadership
  • 80 DAOs with over 1200 members which use an average of 4-6 Dapps, increasing internal interaction between communities and Dapps
  • Impacted lives for good by community building activities all over the world.

We have so many communities and DAOs that have been created, however we need a new system and incentive structure to tease out the amazing, market-ready arts and innovation projects that can help sustain those doing great work in the DAO ecosystem.

NOTE: Even though this experiment brought a lot of value to the NEAR ecosystem, and communities around the world successfully learned about web3, we have identified many issues and see a need for another round of iteration.

Factors that demand a change in how we function:

  • Change in the macro environment and the recent beginning of a bear market and global recession
  • Lack of sustainability model for Creatives DAO as an entity, which puts meaningful projects getting funded in jeopardy in case NF funding stops
  • Lots of existing communities and projects lack a plan for getting financially sustainable, which makes us completely dependent on NF funds
  • No presence of CreativesDAO outside the network of NEAR as an entity supporting art and innovation.
  • Total amount spent on building the community has been 1,560,834 USD with less than 5% projects possessing a long term vision, roadmap, community and a team to build something sustainable.

A few problems with current model:

  • DAOs forming a cartel and voting for each other. It will be an issue when a majority is formed as they can keep voting for themselves to get funded.
  • Funding being given on a monthly basis can create dependency on NF and censure of funds can leave a community feeling unhappy at the least and aggressive at the worst.
  • Proposal creation and reporting has not been given a structure.

Solutions for a better DAO:

  • We have come to a point where Creatives DAO is ready to become something it has been evolving into since the beginning by the use of art, tech and innovation. It’s time for a metamorphosis; it’s time to turn into ARTtechNation DAO

    • Generating value for NEAR in a more streamlined way:

  • Support, educate and market the existing ecosystem of 80+ DAOs associated with Creatives’

  • Helping reach the goal of onboarding millions of users in the five years

  • Helping popular artists build on near and use NEAR dapps

  • Help creators build projects that will fuel and support community growth

  • Promote NEAR as a blockchain that supports innovation and diversity

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Inspired by Blue Ocean Strategy (a new market creation strategy) which focuses on finding new oceans to explore instead of fighting in a small ocean with many fish, this approach has been put together to create our own value and leverage through a hybrid model of art, tech and business.

  • We are also not creating a space for artists/creative DAOS already outside NEAR

  • We need a new sense of value and collaboration to expand and grow our amazing space

  • We need a better process to keep and attract the best creative people and Web3 products in the world

  • What is missing is a business-based approach that can glue everything together and ensure financial sustainability and internal cohesion of communities.

  • We need to get business development and marketing members into alignment with the existing community.

    • There are opportunities we missed and this next step is a way to bridge the gap between enthusiasts and professional commercial projects. We CAN grow, we just need to structure that is collaborative, with a business savvy team.

  • We also need to redefine our funding model as there are many logistical issues with it. We should instead go for a quarterly funding plan

  • The model proposed below will be LESS than Creatives DAO spends annually now and will save NF 25% from what it is spending now (currently 1.5+ Million USD has been spent on the creative ecosystem in the past 9 months, this proposal looks to STOP any excessive funding, while streaming and giving focus to our goals)

  • At the end of the day, ARTtechNation DAO will be both a granting organization, a talent scout, and will bring ROI back into the ecosystem with investment form VCs, NGOs, Corporate sponsors etc. This is an emergent model and validates your investment, as well as make us a better player with NF.

A quarterly milestone based funding plan allows for:

  • Recipient DAOs to have a reasonable time, and space the workload out to help them focus on delivering quality results as recipients don’t have to create monthly proposals and reports.
  • Gives us time to create better tools e.g. an open dashboard to view all DAO reports
  • Helps create marketing activities like DAO interviews, workshops for creative workshops around area that the community might be facing problems.

What we can achieve:

  • Support the existing DAO ecosystem and purpose-based Web3 communities that would want to join the NEAR ecosystem.
  • Onboard Web3 and Web2, tier 1 and tier 2 artists in developing Web Nations
  • Invest in creative infrastructure projects which are market researched and VC funding ready, with a clear roadmap and business plan.

What The ARTtechNation DAO provides:

  1. To DAO ecosystem - Supporting a milestone based ecosystem through funds allocated to make the web3 community sustainable and help in getting grants from NF if the community later needs to grow larger. Early entries in creative projects, tokens and NFTs web3 and web2 artists.

Sheet attached below

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/14OboxDvEiEpxdGAF0WG--fqYmEQSSmyil1oGtx5fulU/htmlview

  1. To Web3 and web2 artists - Creating an onchain minimum viable community for them by milestone based funding that will be web3 ready. Access to a web3 ready multi national creative community (DAO ecosystem)

Milestone based funding tiers (Inputs from community needed)

  1. To Creative infrastructure projects - Milestone based funding and a list of VCs who could potentially invest in their projects. A huge creative community (DAO Ecosystem) that can help support and test the product or service for a feasible value prop.

Metrics to evaluate Creative web3 projects (Inputs from community needed)

Tech requirements to get this running:

  • Create an ARTtechNation DAO DApp with database dashboard functionality showcasing the progress of the milestones to store all information about projects, DAOs, products, and other critical info to make it easily accessible by community

Enforced modalities:

  • NEAR and ARTtechNation DAO branding on every event and poster to grow brand awareness
  • Mods must change annually
  • ARTtechNation DAO will be an active player within NEARCON to ensure global visibilities

Core ARTtechNation DAO Team:

  • Mod team - 7 members (all regions of the world represented, gender equal, professional experience mandated, have IRL/Web3 experience funding arts, tech and entertainment)
  • Business Development team - 2 members (both MUST have IRL/Web3 experience with fund raising IRL, entertainment experience a plus, can write deal sheets and identify new markets)
  • Marketing team - 1 member (must have IRL marketing experience in art and tech)

Responsibilities of ARTtechNation DAO Mods team

  • Proposal review by upcoming web3 communities
  • Host community calls, AMAs, collaborative community discourse
  • Monthly newsletter about the happenings in the governance forum, important announcements and updates
  • Active collaboration with the marketing team to do commercial level marketing and PR
  • Onboarded tier 1 and tier 2 artist in all regions with phase 1 to phase 3 growth

Responsibilities of Business Development Team: Cross expertise (tech, entertainment, arts)

  • Actively searching for projects via events and direct outreach for amazing projects and people
  • Engaging VCs and creating a list of creative inverstors who are looking to invest in creative projects that can become products and services.
  • Find projects and services which are market researched and potentially would be a good match for investors, corporate sponsors, NGOs and VCs to fund it
  • Provide funding and support to various web3 entities to grow on NEAR based on the clear Tier system created for funding.
  • Getting projects ready to get funded by the likes of Sequoia investment and Big Brain etc.

Responsibilities of Marketing team

  • Case study development of ALL projects that are funded, as well as manage the database with their innovation, creative and tech metrics
  • Create strategic marketing plans and campaigns to attract tier 1-2 artists IRL and in Web3
  • Social media content strategy and execution
  • Weekly twitter spaces AMA calling web3 natives from outside NEAR ecosystem for better education of the community.
  • Plan and execution of IRL events in partnership with various media channels, DAOs and .io partners
  • Running polls to understand what the community needs for resources and education
  • Plan in-house workshops for education the internal DAO ecosystem on various topics

New funding model for ARTtechNation DAO: 2022-2023

250k - Allotted towards recipient DAOs

125k - Tier 1 and tier 2 artists from developing nations that are currently doing remarkable work

125k - Web 3 projects that ARTtechNation DAO will own equity in through on-chain smart contracts and DAO

50k - Marketing and PR of associated projects

Total: 550kUSD per 4 months (3 quarters annually)

(This is LESS than Creatives DAO spends now and will save NF 25%)

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Happy to see great initiative by @creativesdao-council happy to support:)

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This is amazing, this is an initiative and step that must always develop in every DAO, but implementation to real life is a different game, thanks for your idea :coffee:

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FYI: For those who are unsure of the context of this proposal: this is a possible approach proposed by @Cryptonaut, not an official proposal by Creatives DAO moderators.

We would love to hear community’s feedback so that we can come up with a common direction. With that said, right now, there are 2 discussions regarding Creatives DAO:

I think we also should have a timeline for this thread to gather feedbacks and work together for a defined direction.

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Thank you for sharing @Cryptonaut

And for yout time and effort. It is not easy to come up with solutions like that.
Just wondering if it would be easier for the community to grasp the overall ideas (yours and Pawel’s) if there were visual presentations (prezi, PDF or something alike). Or if you could Record a Loom or something similar. Written text are fundamental, but considering we are trying to communicate with a wide collective, I just Wonder if a visual/audio pitch would also be even more accessible/digestible. I know it is a looot to ask and I also know that the community calls are not the right place for focusing on explaining it all too, so this is just a suggestion.

I particularly would rather keep The name “Creatives” as the DAO name :slight_smile: I will read everything again and see what I can comment.

Cheers

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Thanks for everyone’s effort :white_heart:

I think a name is not the problem, anyways I think I like the idea of ArtTech DAO, nice to me.

Can we have our own mintbase-like DAPP?

Or maybe ArtTech/Creatives DAO store on mint-base… If building our own NFT marketplace DAPP would be a problem.

At least, 1 more of this new moderators can recommend this back,

With my experience in the Traditional Industry, Collaboration with more popular artists is a good thing which brings more Rep. and adds value to your brand, Which i believe same can be applied to web3 projects with 'em also.

But for sure the popular artists will charge for their work, but only one of this present moderators found Value in that, proposals was closed for its sake.

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Hey @Cryptonaut

This sounds like a well thought out plan for the evolution of creatives dao that addresses a lot of the previous issues & challenges…but with an eye on likely future realities. Appreciate there will almost definitely be plenty of fine-tuning and revisions to come…but a promising start.

Particularly pleased to see an outline strategy that includes non-DAO (non-Community) individual creatives included within the initial framework. Would be good to know more detail on how this might work…but appreciate that it is at the embryonic stage :+1:

thnx

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Just to add…I saw the detail in the spreadsheet on Tier 1 & 2 onboarding & milestones. :+1:

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hello, thank you for this! :slight_smile:

A few general comments:

about the name: I don’t think it matters much, at this stage, but would try to keep it simple. ArtTech DAO sounds cleaner, or just keeping Creatives DAO would also work. Something to ponder: would it be beneficial to add NEAR to the name, e.g. NEARCreatives DAO or NEARART DAO (etc), from the point of easing marketing?

about the general mindset of this proposal: I agree that, being in the web3 space, this is inevitable and and we should do well in preparing the way for what’s coming.

about general goals of this proposal: I agree with them all. Thank you for helping this community think about it in terms of economics. I believe having a project-based structure and a larger time span for each ‘project’ is beneficial, quality-wise. It will also improve the health of the community (not only but by also improving the mental health of the individuals).

A few comments regarding each section:

The table proposed seems realistic and aligned with our goals as a community.

After seeing that both social media AND professional expertise are being valued, i.e. an artistic can be considered based on their social media presence (which values specific artforms and usually is lowbrow) but also on their professional career (which allows us to value highbrow artforms and artists). Happy with this and happy with the possibility of supporting individuals, as @zeitwarp suggested.

Much needed and in need of a dedicated team with skills not present in the community (in general).

about the dapp needed to run this system: I have been vocal in the past saying that we should above all else consider creating systems non-dependent on TG, the forum. An app would be really welcomed to help manage an ever growing ecosystem.

about moderators/council: In the proposed system I think we are talking about council and not moderators, and I agree with finding the best people for the job, i.e. hiring speciallists who are not council of DAOs.

Plus:

Long time ago (in May 2021 but it seems farther away) I wrote this:
brutus.pdf (58.1 KB)
I am not proposing ‘this particular system’ but though it would be a nice throwback.

Imho all turnout should follow this kind of system:

epoch 1: AAAAA
epoch 2: AAABB
epoch 3: ABBCC
epoch 4: BBCCD
epoch 5: CCDEE
…

This prevents sudden loss of expertise an too much adaptation time.

about funding: I think that since most of the DAOs are also frequently requesting $ from the Mkt DAO. Is the total value presented (1.something million$) pre-changes, i.e. currently takes both Creatives DAO and Mkt DAO into account or only the Creatives DAO accepted proposals? If the former is the case, would it not make sense to increase the funding for this proposal and remove the Mkt DAO from the equation? @Cryptonaut

I think all the numbers presented make sense, but I have some doubts about the 250k for DAOs and 125K for artists split.

Let me know if your logic is something like this:

  • DAOs have more people but include many generic users
  • Individual artists have higher expertise and/or large social media following
    -and therefore:
  • the $ value per person is lower at the DAOs tier
  • the $ value per person is higher at the individual artists tier
    -if this is correct, then is it not true that:
  • financially-wise, it would be better to fund only high-expertise individuals?
    -this creates a problem:
  • without the DAOs ecosystem there would not be quorum and the larger pool base of individuals would disappear.
  • individual artists will dissipate a higher % of the funds they get, because their activities are rarely community-based, that is, they will help you brand NEAR but rarely expand the user-base; maybe the only exception are really really famous artists (snoop dog or beyonce) who might create x token holders by just using the chain > 125k would not be enough for those so I assume they are out of the picture.
    -my intuition tells me that:
  • DAOs should receive a larger % of funds, for example 300k
  • and individual artists 75k, using your caps as guide.

Final Comment: I think this proposal makes a lot of sense. My only concern is the time needed to implement it. Would it make sense to establish a roadmap consisting of 1) six month of @Paul 's proposal and a transition to 2) @Cryptonaut’s proposal? If this proposal would be implemented right away, when would operations resume, realistically?

Thank you all for this. Serious discussions. :+1:

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Deep point,
This is why we are more Valuable,

I think we should stick to the DAO vertical way of funding. It makes us more accountable IMO.

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I totally support the model. In my opinion, we need to give more power to councils, decision-makers, and business developers instead of DAOs in the current structure.

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Thank you for your opinion. Have a great day!

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hello @Cryptonaut, doesn’t it go against Near Foundation “beyond the hype” ideal?

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I think it is too much to call the mutual support that is happening “cartel formation” I’ve been council in 3 DAOs, and I’ve never seen anyone negotiating votes, but artists encouraging each other.
but the vote system is a little “empty”, yes or no, I think those votes should have an explanation, “we support this proposal for X and Y reasons, and think that Z can be interesting too”

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This is absolutely brilliant.

Totally appreciate all the awesome ideas and thoughts towards growing and this is a step in the right direction, a dashboard to properly handle projects and proposals is awesome, ArtTechNation DAO is also a good name but we don’t necessarily have to change from Creatives Dao, however this is good and can be implemented, the tiers is a bit tricky and have to be carefully implemented but overall it makes good sense.
Big hugs :people_hugging:

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To be honest I got confused on this part too, this is definitely not true from @Cryptonaut’s saying. No one is forming any Cartel, we are we ourselves,

Everyone DAO is entitled to be there, those that are currently voting are the ones that submitted their DAO’s for vote,

it sounds TRICKY TO HEAR some are forming Cartel… Nah, Don’t forget its not just 1 person voting from a DAO, it’s always consisting of 3 to 4 more people, so we have to wait till all complete.

The issue we should emphasize & fix is how we wanna make noise for NF. a.k.a Marketing

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This is a quarterly cap that I’ve suggested which will be paid on completion of milestones shared by the DAO or the projects and evaluated based on the metric system for DAOs and community and for artists and projects in the proposal above.
This funding is only for Creatives DAO, marketing DAO funding not included.

Marketing DAO being a part of this could be an issue as they are focused on funding marketing actives for the whole ecosystem and funding projects in various verticals while we are focusing on funding the infrastructure projects that will be only focused on providing solutions to creatives of the world. (for example NFT marketplaces or Metaverse Design companies or Crypto based freelance marketplace)

Yes, I totally agree that without DAO ecosystem there is no point of doing anything. Hence preservation of the current ecosystem and funding more purpose based creative DAOs is the goal and highest funding allocated is for that purpose.

We do need Artists that already have visibility in the outside world for NEAR to be known and its dapps like mintbase, Tamago, 3xr etc to be used by non-near community for us to be seen as a blockchain that supports creative endeavours. Hence focus on bringing tier 1 and tier 2 artists from outside and give them web3 solutions as a lot of artists do want to have their NFT stores or

Totally open to fund restructuring suggestions. This is just a draft :slight_smile:

Funding for DAO ecosystem can begin by November.
We will open call for marketing and African community mod and will have candidates picked in Nov.
We should open call for business development in NEAR and outside once we have our marketing person who will help the post reach out to get best candidates.

The whole team can start working together in December and should aim to have the new model come functioning by Jan or Feb.

Hope I answered your questions?

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You did, thank you :slight_smile:

In regards to Mkt DAO I was only wondering if we should somehow take into consideration that most of the DAOs also request funds there and so the money spent by NF on these DAOs is actually higher than what we see if we only look at the Creatives DAO.

Let’s say for the purpose of this discussion that this proposal somehow established that the Mkt DAO is not the place for DAOs to request $ from (and they would focus on entirely different projects).

If we do look into that than the proposed reduction is even higher than 25%, which can be looked at in 2 different ways:

  • higher reduction than presented, should be updated
  • margin for a higher request

(not defending one over the other, just making sure we are able to ‘sell’ this to NF as well as we can)

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NF actually just wants what community wants. We have to as a community decide what we want from this new model.

I’m proposing changes but we need to as a community vote what we need and don’t need. That in my opinion is a more decentralised way and opinions of members shape how the future will look like

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Hey @pinkalsky , @sheadyyy

There have been in the past where same members are a part of 3 or more DAOs approving funding for each other as Councils of Creatives DAO.

This was noticed by creatives mods and also marketing DAO council and became a big issue as Creatives’ DAO reputation was being targeted.
This hasn’t been happening a lot but has the potential to get out of hand if there are same people in different DAOs as Councils of Creatives.

I saw the video but didn’t understand the correlation. Can you please elaborate a bit?

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Hey @Dacha

Thanks for your support.

To be clear, the model suggested is of a more clear evaluation system and to bring artists with more visibility outside of NEAR into NEAR and projects with ROI and value creation for creatives all around the world (for example NFT marketplaces or Metaverse Design companies or Crypto based freelance marketplace)

The voting can still be done by DAOs to approve or reject the funding as the fund is a community fund, with a clear explanation of why they are saying yes or a no.

A thorough and clear due diligence will help DAOs make better and informed decision.

That is the goal of this model.

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