Hi frens - most of you know who I am, so I will skip the pleasantries and just get right down to it.
BACKSTORY
When I joined the DAO back in June 2023 , I had a lot of hopes and dreams. In fact, being a community minded person and avid gamer and legacy game dev, I was so engaged here that I made TL 3 in less than three months.
During my time here, I authored several AIPs, specifically AIP- 316 which was originally a $ 2 M community initiative which would not only create a game for us, but which would also have hired community people to work on it, test it etc. Like most games that have come through here, in Sept 2023 , that AIP failed spectacularly.
But despite that, unlike others who breeze through here, I never left. I stayed - and continued to engage the community, mentoring, advising and communicating with anyone who reached out. Even though I am a public figure and well-known game dev, I never forgot where I came from. And so, I am always accessible.
In due course, lost my [much coveted] TL 3 rating when I caught a temp-ban ( 10 / 12 / 2023 - 01 / 12 / 2024 ) over the 0 xPolygon AIP- 368 to build ApeChain. After which I was on a self-imposed boycott, never to return even after the ban expired.
Though I was quite upset about the temp-ban over the 0 xPolygon AIP, I was still on the outside looking in, writing massive tomes on X and elsewhere, while keeping in touch with my many DAO friends - many of whom I chat with almost on a daily basis through various mediums.
DAO GAMING - AGAIN
At one point, after Yuga seemingly came clean about Otherside, which I wrote about here on Medium, a group of us were going through various ideas of how to make a game which would feature the IP.
One such idea (mine) was to create a custom RPG game using the same game engine from my AIP- 316 , and to deploy it on ApeChain, thus becoming the first game - and from the DAO - to be deployed on there. It would simply be a re-skinned version (not unlike various skinned Web 3 games, e.g. Dookey Dash) featuring Bored and Mutant ape models replacing the game’s pre-existing models. Everything else (quests, monetization, lands etc) would remain the same. In fact, over 90 % of the work would be in the creation of various ape models to replace the pre-existing game and NPC models.
To say the least, it was a grand idea. As, like others, I am not likely to run another game AIP through the DAO, the few of us were going to fund it ourselves and assign it to a small ( 6 -person) team to work on it because my teams were already working on our own Web 3 projects.
As we had already done a lot of work these past months on the original game and engine, and which was a part of AIP- 316 , at the time of this idea quest, most of the blockchain work was already either completed or in the process of being so. Thus, assigning the project to a small third-party team wasn’t that much of a challenge - though there would have been a learning curve.
While we were in those discussions, my team and advisors were already engaged with various gaming chains to bring my three-project (DePIN interoperable tech + MMORPG + MMOFPS) Web 3 portfolio over in exchange for grant funding. I had opted not to do that, while turning down offers for various reasons - primarily being: wtaf am I going to do with a $ 100 K grant for a $ 16 M+ portfolio with a monthly burn rate of over $ 100 K?
Though we were already using Mercury (long before it was made public at this past Consensus) by my friends over at Neon Machine (Shrapnel game), and which was deployed on AVAX, I was still planning to deploy my projects on a different chain - specifically Arbitrum (directly, and not via Treasure, XAI or any of those platforms).
ARBITRUM GAME CATALYST PROGRAM
Then amid all this, out of nowhere, the Arbitrum delegates and their pals, seeing that gaming was a huge factor to the success of any chain - an opinion which I have long since held - came up with a $ 265 M gaming fund. Then they pinged me. And off I went. That fund passed easier that most had expected. You can read my coverage over on X.
APECHAIN / THE BANANA BILL
Then, as the mainnet deployment approached, the noise surrounding ApeChain started increasing. This was immaterial to me because I had long held that ApeChain was a case of too late + our voting system will all but kill game projects for it + so wtf are we going to put on it?
Then out of nowhere came the Banana Bill which, aside from other things, appeared to be supportive of GAMES. Imagine my surprise and excitement (which quickly subsided once I realized that Horizen was involved).
After much “encouragement” (you know yourselves. lol) for me to engage and opine, I broke my boycott.
And just like that, I was back here on June 14 th.
Due to the inherent risks involved, aside from timing, I’m not currently planning on deploying anything on ApeChain - let alone via an AIP. I already made that abundantly clear in that thread, while explaining why.
That said, if any of you guys are interested, and you can put a [competent] team together to do it, I would be open to issuing a license to the custom game engine so that you guys can go re-skin it as some of us were planning to do back then. I believe that it’s worth a shot, especially now that Yuga has released 3 D models, which Otherpage is also utilizing in their frontend.
To see the scope of the game and its engine, please read AIP- 316 .
SHAPING THE DAO
All that aside, as I have said time and time again, I would love to see my DAO have a win - at anything that’s not mired in some controversy, negativity etc. But still, ApeChain aside, we have a lot of things to address and fix in our DAO. And so, in the past 24 -hrs, I have authored a total of 9 AIPs designed for this singular goal. I had a total of 12 , but I ended up consolidating some of them. While some may very well have been consolidated, the difficulty is that putting too many things in an AIP increases the chances of failing at vote because there could be one variant that blows it for some voters.
I thought long and hard about what I saw in the DAO ops that needed fine tuning or a different approach. And those issues were the impetus behind the string of AIPs. Even though I know that I’m not popular with the whales who are likely to vote down anything that I put up, they do so to the detriment of the DAO. For my part, as I always have, I want to be able to say that - at least - I made an effort when nobody else bothered to, either because they don’t care enough or they don’t have enough confidence in their ability to change anything due, in part, by our linear voting system that’s controlled by whales.
Below is the list.
AIP-???: Restore Elections Data Visibility
AIP- 487 : ApeCoin Community Engagement Platform
AIP- 464 : Future Election Leadership Requirements
AIP- 465 : Alignment Of Working Group Terms And Budgets
AIP- 466 : Proposal To Close Non-Essential Working Groups
AIP- 467 : Proposal To Revise Special Council & WG Stewards Term Limits
AIP- 469 : Ape Foundation To Clarify Ability To Terminate Contracts
AIP- 471 : Special Council To Propose Voting System Reform
AIP- 474 : Delegated ApeCoin Community Voting Wallet
AIP- 475 : Fast Track Proposals and Enforce Leadership Transparency
AIP- 476 : ApeCoin Gaming Sub-Domains
AIP- 477 : Special Council To Clarify The APE Foundation
AIP- 478 : Require Ape Foundation To Disburse AIP Funds In Timely Fashion
I encourage you all to participate, offer suggestions on what you believe needs to be added, revised etc. At the very least, make a point to show up to vote for whatever you feel is important and impactful to the DAO.
That is all.
ps. I no longer communicate via DMs here on Discourse - except with leadership. So, if you wish to reach me directly, you can find me on X (dsmart), Discord (thedereksmart), or Telegram (thedereksmart)
