Following The Sandbox DAO Request for Proposal, we received 2 submissions. This SIP aims to select the winning candidate to create and manage The Sandbox UGC Platform.
Why
TSB DAO aims to empower the community by giving ownership of the platform to its members. The Platforms goal is to enhance visibility and accessibility of creators’ experience on The Sandbox platform through an independent UGC website, driving increased traffic, developer engagement, and player retention.
How
The selected team will implement the platform, funded by the DAO. and develop a revenue model for long-term sustainability.
When
Discussion begins December 11th. Voting opens December 25th and run for two weeks. The Candidates have an implementation timeline between 3 to 4 months.
Who
2 candidates, The Council and Wakeup Labs with their linked proposals in their summary below.
SIP Details
Background/Context
The Sandbox DAO is focused on tackling the following issues:
Boost traffic to existing Sandbox experiences.
Provide independent creators with a platform to list and showcase their experiences.
Simplify player access to experiences and reward participation with SAND incentives.
Benefit to The Sandbox Ecosystem
The creation of a new UGC platform will serve as a hub to list, showcase, and promote UGC experiences in the Sandbox ecosystem.
Key benefits:
Increasing traffic to Sandbox experiences.
Empowering creators with a platform to display their work.
Simplifying player access to experiences and rewarding participation with SAND incentives.
Primary Personas:
Creators: Gain visibility and attract players to their experiences.
Players: Discover and engage with diverse experiences more easily.
Resources Required
Request Budget will be taken from Game Content Treasury.
Revenue Model
The DAO receives 100% of the revenue generated by the third-party company until its initial investment is fully recouped.
Once the investment has been recovered, the revenue is split 50/50 between the DAO and the third-party company until the DAO earns 3 times its original investment.
After this milestone is achieved, the revenue split will move to 80/20, in favor of the third party.
Voting Options
Candidate A
Candidate B
Abstain
You will be asked to spread your voting power among the 2 candidates or abstain from voting.
For instance: 100% on candidate A, 0% on candidate B; 50% on both candidates, 20% on candidate A, 80% on candidate B
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Solution Proposed by Candidates
Summary of the Candidates
Alex Florez and Joseph Madding of “The Council” QA LLC” (not affiliated with the DAO Special Council)
Alex Florez, Project Director, Deep knowledge of The Sandbox operations and development since 2019.
Joseph Madding, Project Director: Expertise in marketing, community building, and Web3 ecosystems.
Tom Rolfe, Lead Developer: Full stack web developer who has previously built two websites for Alex and Joseph. Portfolio: tomrolfe.co.uk
WakeUp Labs is a software development company with over 40 projects successfully launched, including collaborations with Arbitrum, Optimism, Coinbase, and other notable companies.
The team is highly experienced, with a proven track record of delivering scalable platforms for DAOs and startups.
Key features
$SAND Token Incentives: Users and creators will pay additional fees in $SAND to promote their experiences or incentivize reviews, with a percentage going to the DAO treasury.
Revenue Transparency: All data on revenue and platform engagement will be available publicly, with Google Analytics integrated for transparency.
Budget Requested
64,928 SAND / 57,750 USD
2 Senior Full Stack Developer - Full Time.
1 Technical Lead / PM - Part Time.
1 QA Engineer - Part Time.
1 Designer - Full Time.
Implementation Plan
Milestone
How do we measure success?
Completion Date
Unlock Payment
Milestone #0
SIP Acceptance
Day 1
20% of budget
Milestone #1: Product Discovery, Architecture, Database, and Technical Specifications
The final prototype and design have been validated by the DAO team. Similarly, Epics, Milestones, and Tasks have been outlined and documented in Notion, Jira, or Trello for the technical team to execute.
End of Month 1
20%
Milestone 2: End-User App - Back-End Development API Development.
A POC (Proof of Concept) demo showcasing the backend will be provided, along with a technical video call to explain the current status and deliver the repository. Although this project was specifically created for and by the DAO, it is not intended to be open-source.However, we can share the GitHub repository with someone from the DAO for monitoring and follow-up.
Mid of Month 3
20%
Milestone 3: End-User App - Front-End Development
A POC (Proof of Concept) demo showcasing the front-end will be provided, along with a technical video call to explain the current status and deliver the repository.
End of Month 4
20% of budget
Milestone 4: Production Deployment, Documentation, and Testing Production Deployment
The project launch includes announcing it on social media and ensuring the website operates smoothly in the production environment, free of major bugs.
Links in their proposal don’t link to anything for me
Do they have a website? I don’t see anything about their team
WakeUp Labs is not charging any fee to The Sandbox DAO for this project but commits to running the service for at least one year after launch, maintaining uptime and ensuring there are no bugs that disrupt the platform.
Who will have control of the servers at the end of that one year?
and
For the QA Council
I don’t think I fully get the access pass. I understand the concept, but not how it’s being applied here. 10M access passes are minted and sold on the market…which give access to any of the experiences listed on the UGC platform?
One year should provide enough time to evaluate the project’s traction and determine if the revenue mechanism is robust enough to cover server costs and support ongoing demand.
Our goal is to maintain the platform and ensure it thrives, but we also recognize the importance of aligning with the community’s and users’ needs. If we establish sustainable revenue, not only would the service continue, but we could also expand with additional developments.
While committing to maintaining the servers indefinitely might not be realistic from a cost perspective, we are focused on collaborating with the community to build a solution that grows organically and is sustainable over time.
We could potentially offer two years of maintenance, but that’s a consideration for the distant future, where the product’s proper iteration isn’t yet fully clear. Extending the maintenance period would also increase the budget, which ideally isn’t something I’d like to see happen given the scope of the project.
Ultimately, our goal is to be mindful of the financial resources of everyone involved in the DAO and to ensure that decisions reflect sustainable growth for the entire community.
I think it’s good that we separate both entities to ensure independence. That independence ensures that we don’t prioritize different categories of content over the other (e.g Brand exp Vs UGC).
It also allows a different team to directly handle matters related to the UGC website instead of having to wait for the dev team at TSB to solve any issues on top of the multitude of issues that the main website has (hint: the marketplace).
This, in the big picture, is also a move towards decentralising where content can be found.
It’s great to see 2 different proposals with 2 different offerings and at 2 different price points.
Gives everyone an option to choose, while not having too many to choose from.
Btw just as a heads up. Builder’s Challenge is likely to start in 1Q2025. It’ll be full on UGC mayhem so it’ll be a good testing ground to see how the winner’s platform performs in peak periods.
Yeah I’m interested to see how this works out too with the new BC. Floor Droppers got lucky with being in alpha season 4, otherwise I think our stats would’ve been unremarkable.
I really like that we have 2 solution providers. The RFP process being handled by DAO Admin team works and definitely gives us additional ability to expand our focus on the ecosystem.
I’m glad they had an RFP on this. I really wanted to submit a proposal but this one was too much given everything else I’m up to. Next time though!
The business model will likely become clearer once we have completed Milestone 1 and finalized the full design.
Subscription models can be challenging, which is why we’ve chosen a revenue approach where people pay to showcase their experiences and a fee system tied to incentives that encourage end-users to rate these experiences or earn rewards for trying them.
Hi all, happy to answer any questions, and thank you for your consideration. Anyone that has seen @TheVisionEx and I in the Sandbox for the past five years knows how dedicated we are to promoting the UGC builders and empowering them to make amazing things.
While I agree with @Biversen that much of this can be handled on the official website, we jumped at the opportunity the RFP presented to provide the community with the best services possible. Where The Sandbox will have its own priorities to fulfill the needs of and obligations to its partners, we will be totally focused on the community’s needs.
Here we see ourselves as friendly competition with the main platform. We are not working against each other, but by working towards different goals, we get the opportunity to try out different ideas to see what works best. The users/creators win by getting the best ideas out of the separate platforms.
As for the budget, we know this is high price to ask. We actually had even more ideas but narrowed the scope to fit inside a 200,000 SAND budget. We believe in paying people who work for us fairly and competitively to give them the best conditions for their valuable skills resulting in the best end product for you. With recent upward trends in SAND, however, there is the potential to stretch the budget further and add some of those cut ideas back for an even better user/creator experience.
I love the idea that 2 of our most prolific members of the community are on this because who else knows better what a UGC website requires than people who have their hands on the pulse of the community.
The cost is a concern though, because the budget spread between both proposals is quite huge. Is there by any chance you’d consider reducing it by scaling down? Considering that it’s possible to launch a 2nd request for funding down the line. It’ll be good to reduce the DAO’s financial exposure for a product that hasn’t come to market yet.
It would be great to do that—it’s a good way to engage with a wider community. We’re open to doing it both before and after the proposal’s election.
My first comments will be on the proposal of “The Council”
I will start with a general comment the fact that your company is called “The Council” is a bit misleading. I know it is explained in the proposal itself but for most of the people that are staying with TLDR it should be more clearly stated. Ideally @Geraldine would add something like “The Council” company is not linked to the TSB or the the TSB DAO council.
Now about the proposal itself:
it is really appealing to me that this proposal is coming from well known people from TSB ecosystem.
I have to say that I was impressed by all the ideas like Karma systems, merch oportunities… unfortunately while going through the proposal I can see that those are only additionnal features that are not part of initial budget and would require additionnal 175 kSAND. The fact that those features are mentionned in the TLDR is therefore also misleading and all what are not keyfeatures should be removed or disclaimer about need for additionnal funding clearly mentionned in TLDR
Help me with the maths: 1400 kSAND/day / developper at 60$/h makes 14 hours a day. Is this realistic that a person works 14 hours a day?
Is the maitenance and operations included or not in the budget as reading this sentence in the proposal Funded via Revenue Share Model does not sounds so. What if the revenue sharing is not sufficient to cover those costs? Not sure also if it is meant that it is the part taht is supposed to go to the DAO that is paying it or the part that needs to go to “The council”
Am I reading correctly that with the standard product in the base case you are estimating the annual earnings to the DAO to $51,250? For an investment of 200kSAND at 0.6$/sand this is 2.3 years of ROI (if ops cost are not coming from DAO earnings or it will be longer), which I found long for the standard product.
Unfortunately we had already established out LLC as “The Council” in 2022, long before the DAO launched. I typically try to refer to the DAO’s as “The Special Council” as I think that’s how it was officially named on launch, but often gets shortened. I don’t have any plans on changing the company name as it involves a bunch of legal paperwork and updating tax accounts, and it directly ties into our IP’s lore.
We can clarify the proposal so it’s clear what are extended features and what is part of the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) deliverable.
With regards to the math, we may need to re-run the numbers. When this was originally written SAND was at only around 25-30 cents. I’ll double check with @TheVisionEx on the math as this went through several drafts over the past two months while SAND shot up in value. There is also the aspect of taxes and other overhead expenses associated with employing developers, so it’s possible that number is correct. It’s typical for web development teams to bill about $1000 per day - per developer, while the person writing the code would get about half of that (8 hours * $60 being $480).
I leave Joe to reply more on the numbers.
Edit: oh and I should note, there are some inaccuracies in the summary, for instance the “1 developer” should be “3-4 developers”. We didn’t write the summary, and I can see now how the Key Features would be confusing as presented in the summary, which should make more sense in our original write-up. @Geraldine I’ll send you a marked up version so the post can be updated for clarity/accuracy.
We are open to ideas on ways to trim the budget. This proposal is already reduced from our original plan, which included all of the “Additional Features” by default. While we understand that this is a big expense, we are also confident on our ability to deliver, having already completed a larger contract for TSB successfully. What we don’t want to have happen is to cut out so many features and reduce the budget so much that the site never reaches the critical mass it needs to succeed.
