GIP-55: Should GnosisDAO fund Dark Forest DAO for Arena game mode on Gnosis Optimism?

Governance GIPs
1

GIP-55: Fund Dark Forest DAO for Arena game mode on Gnosis Optimism

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GIP: 55
title: Fund Dark Forest DAO for Arena development on Gnosis Optimism
author: cha0sg0d @cha0sg0d
status: Draft
type: Funding
created: 2022-06-26

Simple Summary

Dark Forest DAO (dfdao) is a team of developers and players that has been building on top of Dark Forest, an open-source, web3 game.

We reached an agreement with the former xDAI team in mid April to fund four months of development (April - July) to build a new game mode of Dark Forest on Gnosis Optimism.

The payment was in two phases: Phase 1 was the development of the new game mode. Phase 2 is hosting competitions and stress testing Gnosis Optimism.

The xDAI team paid us for Phase 1, but disbanded as part of the Gnosis merger before paying us for Phase 2. This proposal is to request payment from GnosisDAO for Phase 2 of our work, due to the xDAI / Gnosis merger.

Specification

We agreed on 3 goals with the xDAI / Gnosis team:

  1. Develop a new game mode of Dark Forest on the Gnosis Optimism (GO) chain
  2. Test GO infrastructure for transaction capacity and developer pain points.
  3. Bring 500+ Dark Forest players to the GO chain.

Here is our progress relating to each goal:

  1. We created Dark Forest: Arena, a fast-paced, beginner-friendly version of Dark Forest. Due to the low costs of Gnosis Optimism, this game mode has been free to play.

  2. We have tested the GO infrastructure, documenting broken URLs, identifying infrastructure problems such as Blockscout UI lag and downtime for the Graph node, and stress testing the network with a community round totaling over 200k transactions in one weekend.

  3. Our first official game mode has been the Grand Prix, a single player time trial. Players spawn identical universes and race for the best time across the map. We have run 4 Grand Prixes this month, totaling 348 unique users and over 1,000 races run.

We still have one month to go on the contract, with some new game modes and competition formats dropping soon. We will also be releasing an Optimism Builder's Guide, sharing tips for future Gnosis developers.

Motivation

Here is the funding allocation in our agreement: $159k

Engineering time for 3 developers (2 full time, 1 part time):

  • $109k

Strategy and comms time for 1 community manager and 1 game design advisor:

  • $28k

Miscellaneous funds for prize pools, client + testing infrastructure, accounting support, and micro-grants to other contributors.

  • $22k

Implementation

dfdao has a multi-signature wallet to administer the funds allocated to fulfilling the mandate. The details of this multi-sig wallet are as follows:

Multisig address on ETH mainnet: 0xe20Ce9B9Fe3E91B92eBe719909c5623675722a77

We request $159,000 to be sent to this address in a stablecoin (USDC, DAI, or USDT).

GnosisDAO Snapshot

Phase 2 Proposals: Please ignore this section, and leave as is. It is used for Phase 3 proposals.
Phase 3 Proposals: Add a link to the corresponding GnosisDAO Snapshot poll you’ve created.

1 Like
2

Can’t vote. Has this been closed?

3

hmm trying to figure out how to unclose.

Edit: Fixed it! voting should be good.

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Optimism on Gnosis Chain was a product launched by the “former xDai team” after the STAKE/GNO merger proposal was already voted in by both communities.

The new management team asked the former xDai team to pass along “Optimism on Gnosis Chain” to the Gnosis’s infrastructure. It seemed rational to the former xDai team because of the latest temperature check and discussions between Gnosis and Erigon to replace execution engine on Optimism on Gnosis to Erigon. The former xDai team acknowledged that direction and decided to transition the product. Thus, they assume that all responsibilities and obligations are transitioned to the new management team.

On the other side, since it’s a new arrangements between two DAOs (GnosisDAO and dfdao) it will be good to see long term commitment of dfdao to build on “Optimism on Gnosis Chain”. We would like to see adjustments to the proposal with GNO vesting to the dfdao’s long term commitment.

3 Likes
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This is an easy “yes” from me. We should find a way to collaborate with Dark Forest and the 0xParc zero-knowledge ecosystem more, possibly even leading the way by adding ZK-friendly opcodes and precompiles as a testing ground for Mainnet.

Let’s promote this to Snapshot? @john_szczepaniak

1 Like
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Hi all, I’m gubsheep, the creator of Dark Forest. The DFDAO team has been doing really incredible work over the past year with building community and creatively experimenting with Dark Forest on GnosisChain. They’ve been operating as an independent team from DF Core but over time we’ve gotten to know them better and have worked closely together on a few projects; they’ve demonstrated a commitment to innovating on crypto-native gaming patterns and pushing the narrative forwards on what’s possible on a blockchain. I think that this team is one that is worth supporting and empowering and I know that many of our collaborators agree!

3 Likes