GRAPE Incubator Project Proposal

[Ovenpunch]

Proposal Purpose:

This is to propose the incubation of the Strange NFT project by Grape, which is an existing project Ovenpunch is involved with. The DAO will either Accept or Reject this motion.

Grape Proposal Overview:

If accepted, Strange NFT would become the next GRAPE incubator project. Ovenpunch would lead the project and onboard a few members from the GRAPE community to help in any step that is deemed necessary to lead this project to its completion.

Stakeholders

GRAPE community, content creators, development team.

Costs/Resource Requirements:

The only input would be time and effort from the GRAPE members involved in the project until the completion of the project.

Strange NFT Project Overview and Context:

The goal of Strange NFT is to propose a solution to the currently oversaturated NFT market on Solana by proposing an economic model that is sustainable and fair for all parties involved (investors, artists and the community). We want to change the current “fast-consumption” environment and set a precedent for an NFT model that makes easy cash grabs and rug-pulls a thing of the past. We propose many novel ideas that help align the interests of everyone and we hope to show the world how an NFT project should look like. At it’s core, we are a community that is focused on science, art and sound financial investments.

This is an NFT project at first glance, but at it’s core this is a utility project, an economic concept that can be scaled to other NFT projects and an NFT Launchpad for future projects.

• Why would people buy this NFT? Because our economic concepts gives it an implicit value, because everyone’s interests are aligned and because the art is of high-quality.
• Why would people launch their NFTs on the launchpad in the future? Because we offer an economic concept that protects the investors and the community behind it and we also provide a higher standard of artistic value. Our brand would be synonymous to safeguarding and high quality products.

Strange NFT Team Background:

• We are all aged between 35-40, live in Switzerland and have about 15-20 years experience in our respective fields

• Istvan aka @Istvan – Art Content Manager, Otaku and Digital Artist Freelance
  Digital artist since 2012, he specializes in using mathematical processes to create series of pictures and animations about natural elements and life forms. Istvan has worked on art projects for major names in the industry like AC/DC, Pink Floyd, John Coltrane, David Bowie and Joe Hisaishi.

• Nathan aka @noonespecial – CTO, Contrarian and Full Stack Engineer
  Co-founder of Dawn Entertainment and half the team behind it, co-founder and former CTO of Authorea and former physicist. He is comfortable architecting and building full-stack web applications and has interests in computer vision, augmented reality, and machine learning.

• Cathy aka @fdCathy – Community Developer, Brain and Physicist
  University professor and collaborator at the largest particle accelerator in the world. Her main interests include looking for new particles arising from models with extended gauge groups, investigating possible sources of lepton flavour violation and the baryon asymmetry in the early universe.

• Olivier aka @El-Kif - Researcher, Diamond Hands and Investment Manager
  Olivier studied actuarial sciences and worked in different roles in the banking industry : from risk manager to product specialist and finally as an investment manager managing large funds. He loves investing in disruptive technologies and as such was attracted to the cryptocurrency industry. He thinks that our investment decisions today will lead to a more equal world in the future.

• Joël aka @Ovenpunch - Project Manager, Dreamer and Investment Manager
  Joël studied quantitative finance and worked in different industries: hedge fund, energy trading, advisory, before working as an investment manager managing large funds. His passion for investments is what drove the idea for this project along with the need to offer better protections to investors in the crypto space, especially in the NFT space. He is in charge of project growth and evolution.

Strange NFT Art:

Istvan is quite active on the ETH blockchain under diverse artist names and we would use one of his previous collections to make a generative NFT with an AI quality check integration and manual touch-up on rarer pieces.
We want to keep the NFT a secret until we get closer to launch date, but it is one of the collections in the image below:

You can view his personal projects here: https://chaoticatmospheres.com/projects
And clients projects (there’s big names here like David Bowie, Pink Floyd, AC/DC): https://chaoticatmospheres.com/copie-de-projects

Strange NFT Roadmap:

We have a rough estimate to mint towards end of December, but this will all depend on the market and how much we grow our followers base. We won’t consider a mint as long as we don’t have a critical mass. I would estimate that number to be around 4’000-10’000 followers on Twitter. We’re not looking to over-hype this project with cheap marketing strategies (i.e. share and tag 3 friends), but rather appeal to people’s common sense. We would say that we’re more serious in nature than other projects (that doesn’t mean we don’t like to have fun). We just want to appeal to investors because of the common sense we put into structuring this project and also target a class of investors that is conscious about the value of their investments in NFTs, interested in a higher quality product and an NFT with utility. We believe that the investor and the community will build around this product as it offers novelty, high-quality art and financial security.

Our developer and our artist are currently working on the iterative part of the NFT. We just secured our website and will start building it. The basics for our Discord channel are more or less built, but we haven’t opened it to public yet and will likely only open once we reach a certain amount of Twitter followers (1000-2000). We want to build excitement and keep our NFT a mystery until we reach a certain following. In the meantime, we might design and mint a Strange NFT Pass to early adopters which will keep the excitement high, reward early adopters and give us time to make sure our final product is up to our standards.

Benefits for GRAPE:

• Here I have listed proposals that were in the previous GROMs proposal and adapted them to be able to fit our model. I don’t think this is exhaustive as I believe we will come up with ideas that benefit both parties along the way. If someone in the process needs to be rewarded above and beyond, we would make sure that’s done.

• 7.5% of the Strange NFT team’s gross minting income
• 7.5% of the Strange NFT team’s NFT supply of Strange NFT (NFTs cannot be sold on the marketplaces by GRAPE for 1 year after mint)
• Strange NFT will offer pre-sale tickets to GRAPE members for the Strange NFT mint and for every subsequent NFT mint launched on the Strange NFT platform
• Strange NFT will provide GRAPE with priviledged access to the NFT lanchpad
• Strange NFT will offer alpha bounties to it’s members that are paid in GRAPE
• Strange NFT will hold a minimum of 2.5% of GRAPE in it’s treasury at all time
• Release 1 Grape x Strange NFT collaborative NFT for each NFT mint launched on the Strange NFT platform
• Market and advocate for the Grape Incubator Program
• Provide mentorship to future Grape Incubated Projects
• Provide mentorship to Grape applicants in domains related to art, science and finance
• Be part of a project that could change the NFT landscape (my very biased view…)

What is expected of GRAPE:

• Here, I have listed most of the items in the GROMs proposal, but I don’t want to put numbers on what is needed or not. For the mutual benefit of both parties, there should be no limit to what is needed to bring a project to completion. We can bring this project to completion on our own, but we greatly increase our chances of success and the speed of execution by partnering with GRAPE. This benefits both parties in the end. We don’t know how much work this will require, the market will dictate that. My motto is if something is worth being done, it’s worth being done right… and there’s no measure for that, it’s whatever is necessary. It could be a little, it could be a lot, it could be in between.

• Help in any aspect of the Strange NTF Roadmap that is deemed necessary (not limited to product dissemination, writing of product articles (for example on Medium), website development, growing membership base, promotion, community building, helping to ensure an error-free mint, etc.)
• Help with the setup, maintenance and moderation in the Strange NFT discord server for the entirety of the term.
• Provide the Grape tooling free of charge for the entirety of the term.
• Market and promote the Strange NFT mint and future events.
• Provide access to the Grape workforce for any needs leading up to the mint.
• Mint date will be determined when the project followers reaches critical mass. This is an objective measure but rough guidelines are 4’000-10’000 twitter followers.
• Facilitate introductions and recommendations to Grape partners and investors when appropriate.

GRAPE Incubator Project Proposal

• Accept Strange NFT for the GRAPE Incubator
• Reject Strange NFT for the GRAPE Incubator

[Durden]

Are you not at liberty to talk about what the “economic model” is?

[Ovenpunch]

Not really. I gave as much information as I can.

I wish I could say more, but with the amount of people in this community that are themselves involved in their own projects or advising other projects, nothing would prevent them from applying our idea to their own project.

I have to respect the people that have already put time in this project.

[DeanMachine]

I voted to reject this proposal. I think 7.5% for the entire list of expectations of Grape is very low

I would voted to accept a modified proposal where:

7.5% of mint revenue AND trading revenue is sent to GRAPE

and

Grape’s contribution is

• Help with the setup, maintenance and moderation in the Strange NFT discord server for the entirety of the term.
• Provide the Grape tooling free of charge for the entirety of the term.
• Market and promote the Strange NFT mint and future events.
  *1 AMA before the mint
  *3 hours with key members for strategy discussion including introductions and recommendations to Grape partners and investors when appropriate

[Takisoul]

I am not inclined on voting for this proposal.
The main reason is that I can not see what is special (that is communicated to us at this moment) about this project that has not been iterated before.
I totally understand and respect your wish to keep your cards close to your chest, but on the flipside does not convince me that there is something special to this.
-NFT generated with AI has been done already and I am not sure it is a very explosive trait to set a project apart from the competition.
-“This is an NFT project at first glance, but at it’s core this is a utility project, an economic concept that can be scaled to other NFT projects and an NFT Launchpad for future projects”. I can not have an opinion on this with no knowledge of what your concept (either artistic or economic).
-I think the expectations by Grape are undervalued vs the proposed benefits.

[Ovenpunch]

On the first point, that would affect the balance in the model. The value would accrue through the price of the NFT and this should be considered. The team is accepting to take a risk and be paid through the NFT and the partner should be willing to do the same. The whole idea is to walk away from the cash grab model that we see and give investors more security and give everyone a fair compensation.

On the second point, I understand the concern to limit the resources needed, but as I mentioned before, I believe it is counterproductive for both parties to set limits on the resources available. The objective is to maximize the chances of completing the project successfully. If 1 AMA is enough than fine, but what if 2 would have been optimal?
I would surely follow these constraints to the best of my abilities, but what happens if more is needed ? Or this can be the turned the other way around, if the resources are not all used, is there a refund, reduction in the shared fee? This can get complicated quickly. I tried to find a proposal that is fair for everyone, not just Grape, or us, but also for investors, the creator and the community.

[CryptoPawz]

Hm, that’s a tough one. As @Takisoul mentioned, I also can’t see what makes this project different. You say:

@Ovenpunch

We want to change the current “fast-consumption” environment and set a precedent for an NFT model that makes easy cash grabs and rug-pulls a thing of the past. We propose many novel ideas that help align the interests of everyone and we hope to show the world how an NFT project should look like.

Yet you don’t give any example on how to achieve this and why anyone/the majority would even want this; many people appreciate the speculative nature of the NFT space.

My problem with this is if you can’t tell us now what the project’s USPs are, how are you going to do proper marketing for it? Why should people care to get invested in the idea and how will they be able to understand that the project isn’t just like any other NFT project?

If I leave aside that I can’t evaluate the project, the only things I can decide on are the benefits for GRAPE vs. the expected work to be done. And if even you can’t say ‘how much work this will require’, how should we know and calculate with resources?

I think I get what you mean by doing whatever is necessary but I’d much more appreciate some clear defined tasks, like @DeanMachine mentioned. I also have no doubt that if we decided to do this together, nobody would be against a 2nd or even 3rd AMA, if we feel it’ll help the common goal. That’s not the issue though.
Having such a loose agreement is bound to fail since it is more likely that one party thinks that the other either didn’t do what was expected or wasn’t honest in the first place.

Also, the list of expectations is quite extensive. That in itself isn’t the problem but I strongly feel that an additional share of trading revenue in perpetuity would be appropriate since GRAPE would potentially be a huge boost and would guarantee a lot of exposure.

For those reasons, I rejected the proposal.
That being said, I’d really love to hear more about your idea and would also vote for it being the next incubator project, if the agreement would look more like what Dean outlined.

[Ovenpunch]

Understandably, there’s many concerns and I’ll address them:

1: The art is nothing different

To be honest, any type of art could be used for our project. That’s just what our artist wanted to do. I just don’t want it to be the same old garbage that is being sold everyday on Solana that can be done in a day by any artist. If Solana wants to grow at some point they need to walk away from “junk” art and offer something where time was actually put into it. I know art is subjective and everyone has their own taste. For me, if the artwork can be done in a day or a week, it’s quite frankly an insult to artists that have been doing that work for years and put a lot of time in their work.

2: Lack of information on project

I’m in a tough spot here and my hands are tied. What I can propose is that one person of trust is designated by the DAO to go through the whole project and then they decide if it makes sense or not. It can be a person that rejected the proposal: Dean, Takisoul, CryptoPawz.

3: Compensation

This seems to be a sticking point for most, but money is really the least of my worries and I can accommodate any proposal. I just want to keep it in line with the previous GROMs proposal and respect the ethos of our project. I would say that 5% trading fees, 5% minting, 5% NFTs is more than what GROMs proposed and a fair balance.

4: Incubation Service Package

This is an area that probably needs a wider discussion amongst ourselves. I think Grape’s proposal lacks clarity and we need to formalize what we can offer to future projects. This shouldn’t be something the “client” needs to come up with and ask for. As a client, the concern #1 is the Success of the Project and it’s a very binary outcome: success or failure. They come up with an idea, a project and they want help and support to make it to the finish line. They don’t know what all the micro steps are and what exactly will be needed (that’s where Grape should have the expertise). This should be a headache free decision for the client. Having an “À la Carte” menu of tasks complicates the whole process and honestly makes me personally wonder if Grape would put all the effort necessary to arrive to the finish line. This should be an all-inclusive and worry free package from a client’s standpoint. For full transparency, I have just sent an application to Solanalysis for their Moonshot program to understand what they offer. At first glance, their approach is much more stress free. You can select among 4 categories of help needed (Minting site, Marketing and promotion, Community building and DAO formation). I don’t know what kind of resources are deployed for each category, but their first project was quite successful. There should be no doubt whatsoever that Grape can bring a project to completion in the client’s mind because that will be the primary reason someone would choose us over someone else.

[Ovenpunch]

Following my comments above, I have made the below changes and added the voting tool

Updated Benefits for GRAPE:

• 5% of the Strange NFT team’s trading revenues in perpetuity
• 5% of the Strange NFT team’s gross minting income
• 5% of the Strange NFT team’s NFT supply of Strange NFT (NFTs cannot be sold on the marketplaces by GRAPE for 1 year after mint)

GRAPE Incubator Project Proposal V2

• Accept Strange NFT for the GRAPE Incubator with the updated fees
• Accept Strange NFT for the GRAPE Incubator if a dissenting member accepts the project (vote below for who)
• Reject Strange NFT for the GRAPE Incubator

Member to review the project + review compensation terms or service package

• DeanTheMachine
• Takisoul
• CryptoPawz

[Durden]

I think for the member to review the project, since they didn’t ask to be voted on, they should probably self-select rather than be chosen by bystanders so that whoever is most interested can take the lead (doesn’t necessarily have to be one of the three listed).

[rustandmoth]

I agree with you that the NFT market will mature.

I agree with the objections raised by others here, but my main concern is the fundamental issue of the imagery itself (which you said could be anything). Only because you dismissively refer to; "the same old garbage that is being sold everyday on Solana that can be done in a day by any artist”, am I going to counter and speak-up about the issues you raised. I don’t want to argue. Your project may well be a huge success, but what I do understand of it, isn’t really for me.

Art is philosophy not necessarily dependant upon labour. Consequential art may be created in mins. I find it more useful to refer to NFTs as illustrations rather than art.

Imo the imagery is paramount in almost all NFT collections. I can make a pretty strong defence of much of the “junk”, whilst I struggle to find much of interest in the images presented here. You also mention that you’ll be re-cycling existing images from an ETH collection.

This may seem harsh and you may say it’s a subjective matter, but I think I disagree with the core thesis rather than the practical details.

I love NFTs, but I’m dubious about the practicalities and benefits of Grape incubating NFT projects.

I’m wary of projects that are ideas looking for imagery, rather than passionate visual-creators and their visions. If any, these are the type of projects I think Grape might be better helping.

[Ovenpunch]

@Durden
That’s completely understandable. The idea was that if the persons that rejected the proposal in the first place could be swayed to accept the project, that should give everyone the necessary comfort. All I have for information about who rejected the proposal are the public voices that rose, and I have only these 3 names. And since these are the only people that have voiced their concerns, the voters can at least be able to align their concerns with them and choose a representative that portrays their concerns. Now if one of these person gets chosen to review and they don’t want that task, they are free to choose a person of their choosing they trust that can complete the task.

[CryptoPawz]

I would do it, but I’m not necessarily the most qualified for it since NFTs and art, in general, are kind of a mystery to me
If someone who isn’t affiliated with the project would make a convincing argument for doing it, I’d probably agree to it. It’s nothing personal @Ovenpunch it’s just that you can’t be objective in this case.

[butter1234567890]

I rejected this proposal. Without intending any offense, I feel the essence of incubation is misunderstood in the proposal. The idea is to provide an enabling environment to ventures that are not clients rather partners looking to create value for each other. GRAPE’s premise is to create decentralised and censorship free communities and that’s the incubation it is offering. I’ve added some comments to the points I felt needed addressing.

@Ovenpunch

Help in any aspect of the Strange NTF Roadmap that is deemed necessary (not limited to product dissemination, writing of product articles (for example on Medium), website development, growing membership base, promotion, community building, helping to ensure an error-free mint, etc.)

This renders the scope of this engagement from an incubation to a full on Joint Venture. 1. GRAPE’s value proposition is not that of a digital agency and I doubt GRAPE even has the bandwidth needed to undertake such a commitment. Then there is the opportunity cost of it all 2. The proposed payout is highly skewed vs the expectations from GRAPE.

@Ovenpunch

Provide access to the Grape workforce for any needs leading up to the mint.

'Any needs’ is too broad in the context. Launching a project is a grind that the team undertakes. GRAPE can only match the spirit in what it offers i.e. community development and advisory.

@Ovenpunch

This is an area that probably needs a wider discussion amongst ourselves. I think Grape’s proposal lacks clarity and we need to formalize what we can offer to future projects.

I feel GRAPE’s proposal is clear in that we are offering incubation on the strengths we have i.e. community building tools and initiatives.

@Ovenpunch

They come up with an idea, a project and they want help and support to make it to the finish line. They don’t know what all the micro steps are and what exactly will be needed (that’s where Grape should have the expertise).

Figuring out how all those micro steps come together is literally the job here. It’s the battle the team set out to fight - and bet on itself to win.

@Ovenpunch

Having an “À la Carte” menu of tasks complicates the whole process and honestly makes me personally wonder if Grape would put all the effort necessary to arrive to the finish line. This should be an all-inclusive and worry free package from a client’s standpoint

It would be unwise to treat GRAPE as an outsourcing agency that charges you for a service. IMO you are looking for a digital agency that can help you with planning and launch of your project.

@Ovenpunch

You can select among 4 categories of help needed (Minting site, Marketing and promotion, Community building and DAO formation). I don’t know what kind of resources are deployed for each category, but their first project was quite successful.

I’m interested in knowing their charging model here. Success or failure of a project is only complemented by the incubation it undergoes. Most of the work is put in buy the project team. You can’t buy a ‘successful launch as a service’ in any market.

[Ovenpunch]

Thanks for the comments everyone. For the proposal, we will continue working on our end and maybe when we are more advanced and able to provide more information we will update, but at the moment I don’t see any need to continue with this proposal even though there weren’t many votes.

To me the incubator still needs to be defined better. Thanks @butter1234567890 for providing your feedback. I agree that what was expected of Grape was too broad, but my understanding of an incubator is that it’s a full scale range of services to bring a project from A to Z. If it’s not, then it’s a rather a partnership and maybe there should be another avenue for this and not fall under the guise of the incubator program.

There’s many questions that remain for me and that should probably be formalized for everyone to have access to the information, so that they know what to expect from the Grape incubator or how they can form a partnership for more specific needs. We just formalized the Grape membership benefits and perhaps this is a good occasion to also discuss the benefits of the incubator. I think there’s a lot of value that can be extracted from these incubator/partnerships and they will probably form a sound basis for the future revenues that Grape can count on. We should have a formal offer that everybody can consult.

My main questions are:

• Who is the incubator intended for ? (Early stage projects, fully developed projects ?)
• Who can apply for the incubator ? (Any Grape member ? Can an external project come to Grape for help? What are the requirements ?)
• At which development stage should applicants be at before making a proposal?
• Is every proposal fixed in terms of expected benefits for Grape ?
• What is the help that can be provided for the different projects ? (Marketing, community building, development ?)
• Is there a price range for each provided service ?
• Should the decision to help a project be decided by the SubDao that is the most impacted by this (for instance if a project needs help only from designers, should they have the ultimate decision to accept or reject a proposal seeing they are in the best position to know which resources are available.

[butter1234567890]

Thank you for taking my comments in a positive light.

[rustandmoth]

I completely agree that the incubator needs to be better defined. I’m not sure I understand it, but perhaps this could be my shortcoming / ignorance. All the questions Ovenpunch raises, I do too.

[MetaVerse_Explorer]

As I voiced prior to our GROMS incubation, a plan and an actual team was needed to ensure a smooth delivery of an incubator.
Items like deliverables, time commitments, resources used, amount of participation etc.
These items were not carefully planned out and as such we did not have a smooth incubator experience.
IMO we would seriously need to lay out the foundation prior to any new incubators.
We now have the experience of GROMS behind us and now have a better idea of what is actually required.
I recommend the people most closest to the groms incubation communicate to either delegate a new team or assess viability of producing an incubation team within grape

[BloodBath1]

I agree the projects who will be lunching should be curated and we could even vote on them if we want this lunchpad to be successfull. Results will matter.