[PASSED] BIP-5: A $500M blockchain gaming ecosystem acceleration DAO

[RonenKirsh]

Proposal Title: The largest blockchain ecosystem acceleration DAO

Authors: Ronen Kirsh from Forte Labs and Jon Allen from Magnus Ventures

Date: October 28, 2021

Proposal:

We propose a $500M blockchain ecosystem acceleration DAO specifically designed and built to accelerate the adoption and development of the blockchain gaming industry, and become the largest unbiased, impartial blockchain gaming support network in the world.

The community will be seeded by Forte, BitDAO, and through the process of this proposal, we hope to add many other aligned supporters.

Game7 will focus on three key levers to spur greater adoption of blockchain-enabled game economies for a global base: open-source public goods fundings, education, and strategic capital with industry know-how.

Game7 will set ambitious returns and social impact metrics, measure itself against quantifiable results and emphasize community participation. We will bring together the global gaming community and lead the transition from the current status quo to a new, prosperous meta-world.

Read the full proposal here

You can contact us for more information by visiting Game7.io

Follow us on Twitter @ronenkirsh @jonathantallen1

Vote on this proposal (BIP-5) on the BitDAO Snapshot

[jefftunn]

I think this is a great idea. As the founder of blockchain, community economy game system, we have been working for three years to help make this happen. We are secure in our beliefs that this is the way to go, but the real world doesn’t think it yet. As an example, here is the opinion of somebody that I used to work with,

“Don’t fall down this hole dude. It’s scammy bullshit and it’s bad for the environment. There are so many amazing things to do with games - stuff that hasn’t been done yet - that don’t force you to leverage tech bro nonsense”

Gamers mostly feel the same as my former colleague. Check out their responses to Valve’s announcement that they will not support crypto token or NFT games. Mostly Valve’s move was cheered on from the sidelines.

I truly believe that if people take the time to really understand token and community based game economies that allow for true ownership of digital items, they will never want to go back to the old ways.

I am here to help if you need me.
@jefftunn (same handle on Twitter)

[deefs]

This is a burgeoning space, and I’m always surprised by that attitude when I encounter it myself. Particularly from friends who are game developers! Who are actually also resentful of digital-rights management policies, haha…

Great proposal, and wonderful to see such a forward-facing team. I can’t comment much on the allocation, other than it appears to be quite high. Though, I have no doubt that a competent team in this space could provide enough value to make the up for the size in allocation. I would prefer someone else to chime in about this…

I can comment on the state of computer science education, as I’m a comp. sci undergrad here in Canada. I see their decision to allocate 5% to educational initiatives as a hugely +EV play. We need as much help as we can get to legitimize this space in academic circles. Without going too far into it, I’ll just say that the Canadian academic scene often appears extremely guarded with respect to anything crypto.

[jimmie]

Important Info
Forte has raised more than $400M from leading gaming and Silicon Valley ventures funds such as Andreessen Horowitz, Griffin Gaming Partners, a16z Crypto, Griffin Union Grove Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Canaan and more.

Forte will commit $100M in USD and/or other convertible virtual assets. BitDAO will commit $400M in ETH, BIT, USDC, USDT or any other assets held in its treasury.

The initial upfront funding will be $100M. Forte commits to fund $20M USDC and BitDAO commits $80M in USD-equivalent from its treasury assets.

Comment
An ambitious project with seemingly capable initiators. Voting rights is arguable as BitDAO only has 20% voting rights.

[RonenKirsh]

Status update and a note on purpose.

First, I want to thank everyone for taking the time to review this proposal and provide feedback. It’s been great to see the engagement and discussion so far!

The soft proposal period, which is slated to end on November 4th, is a critical time to gather feedback and suggestions and we are committed to reading and considering everyone’s input for the final proposal.

I have been receiving support and insightful feedback in my DMs as well, from both crypto and gaming organizations who, like us, are excited about this initiative and its collective implications. I encourage everyone to post their contributions in public to allow for greater transparency for the community!

We’re also in talks with some great partners and luminary leaders to take part in the Phase 1 steering committee so that there is a broad set of advisors and decision-makers involved in maximizing the DAOs impact to help everyone in blockchain gaming. Collectively, our goal is to ensure the DAO spends its funds in a way that benefits all blockchain gaming stakeholders.

To that end, we would love to see relevant parties who are currently advancing the industry have a seat at the table. Please continue to reach out! We need to make decisions together, and this includes organizations like L1 blockchains, L2 systems, traditional gaming studios, both indie and AAA, blockchain gaming startups, and other blockchain gaming platforms in addition to Forte. Anyone who can contribute to accelerating the adoption of blockchain gaming!

Our collective commitment to this initiative comes from our conviction that the Web3 blockchain industry should be built to be interoperable and inclusive. We believe that service providers will still have their own business models on top of open source technologies. Ensuring that true property ownership is interoperable across different services and technology stacks come first.

To contact us and learn more about how to get involved, please fill out the form on game7.io

[JonAllen]

Really appreciate your input and it highlights a very important piece of the intended strategy! First, I’ll reference this paragraph in the proposal:

EXAMPLE: Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), the parent company of Google, is a good example of the difference between voting and ownership we believe many DAO’s are trending toward. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt own over 60% of the company’s B voting shares that carry 10 votes per share. In contrast, their Class A shares have only one vote per share, while the company’s Class C (GOOG) shares have no voting rights. In contrast, BitDAO will have less voting power than ownership even though they are providing the vast majority of the capital. This structure serves to empower DAO members while still ensuring that economic incentives are aligned.

BitDAO has a significant amount of capital, but not any particular domain expertise. We believe that the subject matter experts and day to day operators of Game7 should be empowered to make decisions. The model that is being employed is one where autonomous entities (this is what we call entities like Game7) are funded and then governed by SME’s. These SME’s will cede voting rights to other domain experts until Game7, and other BitDAO autonomous entities like it, are ran by many diverse and extremely capable individuals (in our mind the goal should be for no participant to have over 20%). Forte and other partners we will engage for Game7 have significant experience in the gaming world and are committed to making thoughtful choices in regard to steering this entity toward that goal. BitDAO is aligned in that its ownership of Game7 matches with the funding it provides.

BitDAO’s role on the other hand, in our opinion, is to identify the most capable, intelligent, and motivated individuals, support them with funding, and enable them to create explosive fractal growth in their domain of expertise. If BitDAO was involved in every decision along the way, once there were dozens of autonomous entities, growth would be extremely bottlenecked inhibiting potential growth. In contrast, the model expressed in this proposal can scale to encompass every vertical in the blockchain domain and enable near limitless BitDAO growth.

A check on misuse of funds is that not all capital is distributed to autonomous entities like Game7 up front but rather through a series of funding top ups over several years. If BitDAO does not believe funds are being used appropriately, it can decide to not approve subsequent top up requests. Succinctly: BitDAO focuses on coordinating capital, and autonomous entities focus on building. Since the initial proposers of Game7 are such well known and experienced individuals, the initial funding is larger, but on other proposals where individuals are less established, we expect to see smaller, more frequent funding top ups to limit risk.

Overall, we expect (and hope) to see numerous different experimental models for autonomous entities tested. This will help the entire industry find the best tools and governance to allow efficient and secure coordination in support of any number of innovative ideas.

[JonAllen]

Some fantastic conversation happening in the soft proposals section of BitDAO Discord. Would love to have more people involved!

Join here if you haven’t already: BitDAO

[monty]

This is brilliant! At Monumental, we’re building blockchain-enabled, collectible games designed to appeal to mass audiences. We are searching for creative ways to make token-based gaming accessible, digestible and plainly valuable to the average gamer.

My partners and I have explored emerging platforms and technologies for over 25 years. We built games for the early web, BREW/J2ME, Facebook, free-to-play, and modern mobile games – each platform leading to new and exciting ways to engage and delight players. Now we find ourselves at the earliest stages of the next evolution of gaming and we couldn’t be more excited!

The support offered to developers in this proposal will dramatically accelerate blockchain game development and adoption. This is exactly the right proposal at exactly the right time.

Monty Kerr
CEO, Monumental

[jimmie]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. They are much appreciated.

While the example and rationale you provided sound perfectly fine, my only concern is that with only 20% voting rights, I do not see how BitDAO can have any effective influence on the future direction of Game7, especially with the majority of the community partners being closely related to Forte (possibly). As you mentioned, this distribution of voting rights would benefit the efficiency of the DAO. However, it also asks for the members of BitDAO to put in our trust in Forte and the Community Partners with few effective ways of saying NO.

The linear funding over five years mitigates some of the risks. Yet, an initial upfront funding of $80M in USD-equivalent from BitDAO treasury is still a significant amount that can, alternatively, seed several early/mid-stage blockchain projects.

I would recommend granting BitDAO the veto power, as this would enable BitDAO to have our entitled rights to reject any proposals that are not in our best interest but also ensure the efficiency of the DAO during the decision-making process.

[MasterOfYield]

Forte raised $400M and wants to invest $100M, is there anything to show for the other $300M?

There is a lot of talk around gaming, and there is sure to be a market for it. The incentives can become a moral hazard if not properly handled, we already hear kickback about turning kids into gamblers. But that isn’t my biggest concern. Nor, surprisingly, is the very…generous, voting allocation you’re asking for. That is a close 2nd, it’s far too much. Who exactly are the Community Partners?

But my biggest concern is the game. The $100B gaming industry you reference runs on 500GB+ gaming consoles and Nvidia graphic cards. For almost $1Billion I want to see Call of Duty quality. How likely is that? Look at the current quality of blockchain games, they’re trash.

Do you think you can put out a game to compete with the likes of COD or some other game kids play, I don’t know any other names, I’m 43.

[RonenKirsh]

Thoughts on Community Partners

As we outlined in the soft proposal, Game7 is committed to fostering an altruistic, inclusive community that accelerates blockchain gaming and the supporting infrastructure on which it is built. This community should make collaborative decisions, challenge each other’s perspectives, and ensure inclusivity. No single actor — but, rather, collective buy-in — would determine standards, and ensure acceleration of the industry at large.

Our vision for an interoperable metaverse and gaming economies is expansive. We firmly believe that Game7 can only fulfill its mission if it’s supported by multiple stakeholders who believe in interoperability, collaboration, and altruistic values to advance the blockchain gaming ecosystem at any cost.

After Game7 published the proposal, we were thrilled to receive incredible interest and support from both the crypto and gaming communities. Dozens of interested parties have signed up to contribute and help lead the community.

To select the initial Community Partners and ensure objectivity, we welcome any input on the selection criteria and process. Given that a formal voting process isn’t in place yet, we want to suggest selection criteria to solidify the list of Community Members after the Voting Period if the proposal is approved.

We believe that the initial partners should add tremendous value to Game7 with gaming expertise, technology know-how, and legitimacy. Therefore, we suggest the following criteria to select the initial Community Partners:

• Gaming expertise - We are a gaming acceleration community, we need SMEs who live and breathe the gaming world.
• Blockchain infrastructure expertise - We need robust infrastructure to power game economies and partners who are committed to building this infrastructure, supporting game developers, and committing to industry standards that foster interoperability across technology stacks.
• Industry influence and legitimacy - We need a presence to make a true impact. We should select individuals who are pushing the blockchain gaming industry to become a more sustainable and responsible ecosystem.

We expect a commitment from Community Partners to provide input on Game7’s initiatives, grants, capital deployments, and projects. For Community Partners entities, we suggest delegating a member from the organization.

Time commitment and responsibility

• Periodic partners discussions (likely two to four times per year)
• Advice on critical decisions related to partner’s specific expertise (game design, publishing, technology, marketing, etc)
• Share opportunities with Game7 which fit Game7’s mandate, i.e grants, and deal sourcing
• Review of grants initiatives and investment opportunities on a periodic basis.
• Vote on the inclusion of future Community Partners

As stated in the initial proposal, Community Partners will collectively receive up to 60% of the total community votes. See Community Partners pool.

This is our current thought on choosing the initial set of Community Partners and we’re open to community feedback on how to improve upon it.

@MasterOfYield I hope this post answers some of your concerns

[MasterOfYield]

Unfortunately it does not. As you request $400M I’m still wondering what happened to your $300M.

Everything else aside, nobody has produced a halfway decent blockchain game, nor has anyone shown that there is a path to get there.

I think big, I swing for fences…so I like your style.

Unfortunately I don’t think it’s a sound investment, the R/R is to high and in such a fiercely competitive field as Gaming the Risk of Ruin is real.

I’d rather see $700M completely focused on metaverse. The potential for almost limitless growth will dwarf that of gaming, we can be at the forefront of something entirely new and we will not be measured vs others with far superior technology, which we can’t match.

[ChrisAkhavan]

Thank you for the question, @MasterOfYield. I recently left Electronic Arts to join Forte to lead our partnerships with game developers. A big reason I got excited about entering this space is we are already seeing AAA game developers (the industry term for the professional, high-fidelity games you’re referring to) very seriously exploring blockchain technology.

This is coming in the form of AAA talent leaving major studios to start their own blockchain gaming studios as well as in the form of the biggest game studios in the world actively exploring the space and how they might leverage blockchain across their titles.

We absolutely believe we’ll be able to invest in teams that will bring world class, high end games to this market. You can read more of what I’m seeing in the space here if you’re interested in a deeper view: Why Chris Akhavan left EA to join blockchain gaming platform Forte | VentureBeat

[JonAllen]

Fantastic analysis of future potential governance issues given the current balance of BitDAO Ownership (majority) and Voting Rights (minority)! We are working on some of the language around exactly this, and agree it is especially important to get things right in the beginning because that can set the trajectory for years to come. Really glad you highlighted this. So far we have included:

To allow for an unbiased transfer of voting rights to the community, BitDAO can veto the transfer of voting rights to proposed community members, providing appropriate reasons and stating any conflict of interest leading to such a veto.

Do you think this veto power should be extended to any Game7 decision or simply for transference of governance rights? If for any decision, what would the process of this be? For context, perhaps this veto right would be executed by the BitDAO representative who would be voting on all DAO decisions already rather than a full BitDAO vote. I say this because if not, that would require most decisions observe at least a several day waiting period to allow the BitDAO community to see the Game7 vote, and hold a BitDAO snapshot vote in support or opposition. I could see this being an issue on some decisions which may require timely execution.

There could also be some middle ground here, like perhaps this BitDAO representative veto right would apply to any transference of governance rights, investments over $10M, but then only be valid while Forte holds < 40% voting rights. This way BitDAO eventually cedes control to the community once the entity is sufficiently community governed. Totally just using the above as an example but would love more input on specifics here as I think it is a key piece to the puzzle!

[jimmie]

Great to see the veto right has already been considered.

How to structure this right is indeed a key piece to the puzzle, potentially a pivotal step to improve the governance of investment-focused DAO (as per my understanding of BitDAO’s nature).

To answer your questions, I think this veto power should at least cover three aspects of the decision regarding the governance of Game7:

1. Onboarding of major Community Partners with a certain threshold of voting rights.
2. Investments over a certain threshold of capital. (as you have mentioned)
3. Transference of voting rights among Community Partners and from Community Partners to Forte.

These measures could potentially provide BitDAO and its community members with some level of control over this large investment project (total investment around 50% of the annually contributed capital from Bybit).

To balance governance and efficiency, BitDAO representatives could decide on non-major decisions (e.g., establishing strategic partnerships). In contrast, any decision that involves voting rights or capital that exceeds a certain threshold (e.g., 10% or 10M) should be presented to the community via soft proposals and decided through a BitDAO snapshot vote. I do not see how timely execution would benefit these major decisions.

[MasterOfYield]

Great, I’ll read into it today. I’m not the stubborn type, I’m always open to changing my mind.

[franklin-pantera]

Providing input on behalf of Pantera Capital:

Thanks @RonenKirsh and @JonAllen for putting forward this proposal - regardless of the outcome, I’ll always have respect for anyone willing to publicly put up new ideas and engage with community feedback.

There’s a lot in the full proposal that I wholeheartedly agree with, primarily the Grants allocation and the need to fund open-source infrastructure, tools, primitives, regulatory education - all much-needed public goods that would move Web3 gaming forward significantly. 15% even seems low for this.

I’m slightly less convinced on the Education allocation and whether this is overly prescriptive for an area that’s still largely experimental where the “playbook” is barely written. It seems more likely to me that the market will reveal this over time, rather than a curriculum set out and created by SME’s. Not for lack of confidence in those SME’s, but historically doesn’t seem to play out this way. For example, a “How to win the Internet” playbook written in 1999 would more likely be about Yahoo and GeoCities than it would Amazon or Google. Ultimately, the best models and tactics should have no issue garnering attention. Shining a spotlight preemptively may have a negative impact by adding to the noise. All that said, 5% is admittedly a small amount and maybe worth testing.

On the Investment allocation, I have two questions:

1. Why is $500 million the right number? Not from BitDAO’s perspective, but from Game7’s. Why not more? or less? Curious to know the thought process and maybe some data points for arriving at that figure. For example, is there a pipeline of A+ gaming teams that are fundraising and not getting funded (and therefore a funding gap that Game7 will fill)? Given the capital flowing into the space today, this would be a surprisingly large oversight by the market.

2. Why does the $500 million need to be committed today? Again, not from BitDAO’s POV but from Game7’s. For example, why not progressively raise the money? Wouldn’t that be a more effective way to diversify community participation and build credibility & quality partnership over the long-term for Game7? Same as my previous question, asking out of curiosity on the thought process and not with any pre-judgment.

[DeFiVader]

I believe blockchain gaming will get bigger and would love to see BitDAO support a DAO that invests in accelerating the blockchain gaming ecosystem. Gaming has been long dominated by centralized entities - out of every $ earned by a mobile game studio; 30c goes to Apple, ~65c goes to FB. Roblox, Fortnite, EA make billions from in-game item purchases but don’t allow for true asset ownership by players. Axie Infinity has made a great case of how blockchain can disrupt the traditional value distribution model through community ownership and distribution.

The existing capital that finances blockchain gaming startups mainly comes from VCs whose main priority (by design) is to maximize returns rather than advocating for decentralization as VCs have a fiduciary duty to their LPs. It would be great to have a DAO that provides a decentralization-first capital, both to accelerate the blockchain gaming adoption and blockchain gaming decentralization.

“BitDAO’s mission is to support builders of the decentralized economy and showcase the potential of DAOs by creating/partnering with specialized autonomous entities.” Having an active set of community partners could enable Game7 to actively get involved with portfolio company proposals/decisions and advocate decisions that benefit the decentralization. This highlights the importance of having active community partners/members whose ethos align with BitDAO’s and whose experience, expertise, vision can add value to the ecosystem.

The scope and composition of the funds allocation makes sense. I am personally excited about the Education component. There are 3 main barriers for traditional game developers to develop blockchain/p2e games:

1. Designing, managing a blockchain game economy
2. Building, scaling, managing a web3 community
3. Deploying web3 smart contracts

1 is an extremely young area and there isn’t a consensus on what the best practices are. Organizing hackathons and other such events on this topic can accelerate dissemination of the know-how. Bringing together traditional game economy designers and traditional economists could help us improve on existing models.

I believe guilds will have a very active role/influence in blockchain gaming as they have an existing community that games want to tap into, which helps guilds get early access to gaming dealflow. Game7 might consider building an in-house guild or partnering with an existing one that represents its ethos.

@jimnie I think your concerns about BitDAO’s voting rights and potential veto power are valid, however the veto power should be carefully designed to avoid creating bureaucracy. Here are some excerpts from the BitDAO litepaper:

• “Find ways to avoid micro-decisions from being bottlenecked by the top-level BitDAO governance process. Limit BitDAO governance to mandate and funding approval. Allow partners to be autonomous.”
• “Attract builders and align incentives. Make the creation and operation of autonomous entities as convenient as possible.”
• “Focus on fast execution of ideas. Encourage high experimentation with interim solutions based on policy, trust, and risk management mechanics.”

Selection and performance monitoring of Community Partners transparently is crucial to ensure a well functioning, unbiased DAO. Thank you Ronen and Jon for putting forward this proposal. I have been writing/tweeting about blockchain gaming and left my job in September to work in this industry full-time. I would love to contribute to Game7 as much as I can.

[MasterOfYield]

Call of Duty is coming out with NFT’s. The rest are sure to follow, making this even more of an uphill battle. I mention this now only because I read it an hour ago.
While everyone here is super excited about blockchain, little Billy, and his parents, don’t know what it is.
I’ve asked a question a few time without response, so I’ll rephrase it.

Convince me why this is a bad idea, please. Game 7 puts up $400M, BitDAO $100M… Voting remains the same, no BitDAO veto.

I can’t really wrap my head around why you would want such small ownership in something you’re convinced will be huge, but you want all the control of our $400M when you just raised your own $400M+. Why not invest more in yourself?

What kind of salaries do AAA game people demand?

[avgolos]

@MasterOfYield

Convince me why this is a bad idea, please. Game 7 puts up $400M, BitDAO $100M… Voting remains the same, no BitDAO veto.

I can’t really wrap my head around why you would want such small ownership in something you’re convinced will be huge, but you want all the control of our $400M when you just raised your own $400M+. Why not invest more in yourself?

What kind of salaries do AAA game people demand?

Dude idk if you’re just trolling or literally losing your mind coz of some large number. Have you ever participated in any community or DAO before? If you did, you’d know that if one entity owns the majority of the upside, there’s no point in doing a DAO. You want multiple parties all equally aligned to make it work. Here, BitDAO will control most of the upside for a reason coz they’re committing a ton of capital but if I had to guess, once the proposal is approved, BitDAO will allow other orgs like Alameda etc to contribute capital and make it even bigger (at least seems like a rational thing based on what’s happening in the space today) If you read the proposal, you’d understand why forte isn’t asking to put up all the capital bcs then its just a forte fund not a BitDAO ecosystem fund… it’s clear based on the BitDAO backers that BitDAO has no experience in leading a gaming specific initiative and the fact that forte committed that much money (actual USD not some magic crypto money that can cut in 90% in the next bear market - you would know that’s a possibility if you’d been in crypto long enough) clearly shows they believe in this initiative, at least that my opinion. I am just a shrimp in the BitDAO community to make a difference here but I think if there’s a proper staged and controlled process over the funds and transparent metrics on how, why, where they are spent, it seems like a good initiative to support and see where it goes. My understanding is it’s not $500M upfront so maybe the returns on the first $100m would be so great that they won’t even call for the rest of the capital? From DeFI Vader’s comment, it seems like this kind of initiative is the reason BitDAO was created, so shutting down the first initiative seems counterintuitive lol just putting out my godly words here. peace