73: Funding Proposal - FWC "DAO Palace"

UberHAUS
#1

We are excited to announce our first event that will be called DAO Palace, held in Schloss Bückeburg, Schloßplatz, Bückeburg, Germany.

While this is the first of it’s kind our team is no stranger to pulling off amazing events and hackathons, MCON, MetaCamp, MetaCron, and many more under our belt. We’re optimistic that with DAOhaus involved this event will ooze with value alignment :pray:t4:

The DAO Palace is a two-week focused residency at a 700-year old palace in Germany. 30 participants will be invited to build projects, develop theories, and standards aimed at supporting the development of resilient DAOs that can withstand economic, environmental, and regulatory forces.

One of the outcomes of the event will be to launch a DAO focused on regenerative use of traditional spaces, and bringing innovation and collaboration back to these historic venues, a People’s UNESCO. Members will have access to a global network providing co-living and co-working spaces for Web 3.0 Incubation.

Together alongside 50 special guests and sponsor / speakers such as yourselves we will gather for 14 days (July 1st - 15th) to dive deep with active DAOists, engaged thinkers, builders, or contributors to the DAO ecosystem.

Why DAOhaus

As the leading community driven DAO interface with 5 core team members already in attendance we believe DAOhaus has the potential to be the leading the narative of DAO development, providing the right framing insights about the power of Molochs, helping us make the DAO Palace a hub of value creation and information sharing.

Agenda

There is no clear cut agenda for topics to be worked on, as the team believes in the natural synergies that occur from a selection of top-level participants. Instead, there will be some room for group building activities towards the beginning, presentations to be held throughout the event, and a “Open House” Weekend between the 7th and 10th July to invite outsiders, VIP guests or Investors to visit the facilities and view our progress.

The Ask

The ask for sponsorship is $15k in DAI or ETH to cover event costs and attendee needs + $15k in HAUS, the later portion to be held in the treasury for later use when joining UberHaus DAO.

We are very open to feedback for improving the event and gathering strong sentiment from our attendees about the their desired program, please join us a sponsor so the wizardous minds of DAOhaus can help direct the focus of this event towards the highest possible good !

#2

Hey DAOhaus team, we spoke about this proposal during the last war-camp I would like to expound on the value it provides to us and help push it forward :fire:

I believe that the value of joining this network as a sponsor/supporter will serve the DAOhaus community in the following ways.

  • Lifelong access to the network of events that happen as a result of FWC efforts.
  • Yearly access to the DAO Palace co-working space, located at the Schloss Bückeburg Castle ( think team off-sites, retreats, semi annual DAO gatherings)
  • Brand equity for DAOhaus, logos & website listed on all promotional materials, Website, Twitter, Blog posts, news articles, or future documentaries.
  • Lastly I am confident that having a seat at the table of DAO Palace will help shape and influence DAO tooling, governance solution, and future national policy in Germany for how DAO’s might be treated from a legal and regulatory perspective.

I would like to propose 3 sponsorship tiers for your consideration :abacus:

  • Signal sponsorship ($5,000) DAI/USDC
  • Partner sponsorship ( $15,000) DAI/USDC
  • Alliance sponsorship ( $15,000) DAI/USDC + $15,000 HAUS

0 voters

*All HAUS will be held in reserves and used to join the UberHaus DAO after the completion of the event.

I would appreciate your feedback on this, critical or otherwise. I intend to put one options of this proposal up for a vote next week :pray:t4:

Thank you for your attention and consideration.

1 Like
#3

I don’t believe it would be an appropriate use of resources for War Camp or Uberhaus to sponsor this particular event.

I hold this position, primarily, for two reasons:

  1. War Camp has limited resources and no guarantee of future funding. We must secure our runway and be extremely deliberate about how we spend, especially given the current macroeconomic conditions.
  2. Schloss Bückeburg is a palace owned by a family of Germanic princes. I can imagine no institution more directly antithetical to the values of egalitarianism and the commons than hereditary nobility. As such, I would not personally be comfortable with the idea of associating the DAOhaus project and brand identity with an organization headed by an actual and literal nobleman.
#4

The concern I hear the most, or at least notice hearing the most, while hanging out with all my favorite people in Warcamp is that DAOhaus should be driving the DAO narrative, but it’s not.

DAOPalace is the first event of many, where some of the most influential people in Web3, including decision makers and culture influencers, come together to discuss, build and create what they see is the most beneficial for humanity.

This collection of innovators is coming to DAOhaus for partnership, knowing our values and wanting to be aligned with them. As far as I can tell, DAOPalace is intentionally not looking for VC funding. They are also organizing an event for DAOs, specifically.

My role at DAOPalace is the blog content and lore. I will be attending the event and publishing daily. Issac, Sky, Yalor and Jeremy will also be there. We all have demonstrated value alignment with DAOhaus and looking at the patterns of the work that you’ve witnessed from us, DAOs on the DAOhaus app is pretty much the standard.

DAOhaus will benefit from this event whether DAOPalace receives funding from UberHaus or not.

Warcamp could continue grinding away and expect the narrative to be handed to DAOhaus because that’s what it deserves. We all know that DAOhaus is the best DAO platform. It’s obvious to us, because we’re intimate with it.

Or, Warcamp could support the launch event for a DAO, with the potential to drive the DAO and Web3 narrative, and be a partner in that future.

6 Likes
#5

I agree with ceresbzns’s comments. There is so much more I could add on both of these points, but for sake of brevity I will echo that this is not an appropriate use of DH resources. I support the WC crew that wants to attend to participate in the conversation and I’m eager to witness the results of this meeting, but I do not think DH should sponsor.

1 Like
#6

If DAOHaus were to sponsor, would it be compelling if we could devote specific sessions to working on how the platform sustains itself and captures some value from all of the activity in the DAOs, and develops incentives for the future development of shamans, boosts and other more complex tooling.

As BorrowLucid said, DAOHaus will benefit from the event either way as is already a significant cohort of attendees associated with the community. But I think there is an opportunity to help shape the agenda and drive outcomes that are specifically relevant to DAOHaus as a whole. The IRL war games & role playing sessions I am planning for the event are directly inspired by Haus party sessions and it would be great to have help planning more things like that.

4 Likes
#7

I do not see the word egalitarianism in the DAOhaus manifesto, so maybe I’m missing where that value is embedded in DAOhaus as such. I do however see a callout to pluralism and the diversity of thought as a value, so perhaps not discounting points of view based on status at birth would be a useful to sticking to what we claim to stand for rather than what is being read in. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the first point holds much more sway in my view.

5 Likes
#8

Screenshot_20220509-180936

This is in our manifesto. Hereditary nobility in Europe is an institution with a 1000 year history rooted directly in violence, oppression, and exploitation - the repercussions of which extended well past the German revolution in the 1910s.

It’s one thing for someone to be born a noble - we cannot choose our parents after all - it’s quite another to proudly claim that identity and privilege in the top billing of the website.

1 Like
#10

Screenshot didn’t upload so here’s the quote from our manifesto.

DAOhaus aligns with Ethereum community values. We are here because we desire fairness and equality. We strive to foster ways of interacting that do not inflict violence, oppress, exploit, or extract . We believe in the power of purpose-driven communities.

#11

Note also where it says “fairness and equality”

#12

I think we should extend that fairness and equality to everyone, even nobility. As long as this event is not meant to “inflict violence, oppress, exploit, or extract” then it should fall within the bounds of something we support. Maybe this is just me coming to grips with the community values, but I still disagree with the 2nd statement in the original response.

4 Likes
#13

I hope it is clear that the event is not meant to “inflict violence, oppress, exploit, or extract”. Our intention is to bring many diverse and inclusive perspectives to the event to not only work on building resilient decentralized systems, but also strategize how we can repurpose legacy institutions and spaces to support a new, participatory, and community owned ecosystem.

3 Likes
#14

Definitely NOT intended to inflict anything of the sort, as was mentioned it is impossible to choose our parents or our station in life at birth . Yet, it is possible to choose what we do in this life, how we use our influence, resources: whether they be considerable or meager.

I think it is extremely unfair to dismiss someone because of their “Nobility” status or heritage, most of these titles are completely irrelevant and hold no extractive power in the modern age.

A person’s actions should be the only thing that account for the basis of our opinions. I don’t know about you guys, but if we are creating a world where our past is the thing that determines our worthiness to create value for society then I might as well give up now :face_with_spiral_eyes:

4 Likes
#15

I really encourage you guys to read our latest announcement, Weekly newsletter of Dao Palace || Hello@Daopalace.Xyz - Issue #3 | Revue

Do not dismiss this opportunity to be at the table, feel free to adjust the request to something that seems more inline with the budget of WarCamp, but for lord sakes don’t let DAOhaus get skipped over again in an article or a statement about DAO’s…

3 Likes
#16

I have mixed feelings here.

In one sense, personally I am glad this event exists and I hope there are more conversations and events about DAOs in a variety of contexts and formats. DAOs are too important to be precious about who gets to talk about them, and that’s not for any individual entity or person to gate-keep anyways.

Similarly, I know and have a ton of respect for many of the individuals organizing and attending this event. Personally, I support them in their efforts to push DAOs forwards, especially in contexts where they have not yet seen a lot of play.

However, in my role as a member of DAOhaus, Warcamp, and UberHaus, at this point it is difficult for me to advocate that DAOhaus sponsor this event.

There are a few reasons for my current position.

1. Resource constraints

Similar to @ceresbznsii’s reason (1), DAOhaus resources are limited – especially so with the most recent market volatility – and at this stage in our development our first priority must be to ensure that we have sufficient funding to build what we need to build to fulfill our vision and purpose.

Partnerships and sponsorships can be valuable, but are a secondary priority.

2. Exclusive events are not a great fit for sponsorships in general

As mentioned above, I don’t personally have any problem per se with exclusive events (I myself just attended one over the weekend). The trade-off between inclusivity and signal to noise ratio is real and cannot be avoided. The DAO space should have events at many points in that trade-off space.

That said, I don’t believe it is appropriate for DAOhaus to sponsor such an exclusive event. Exclusive events create direct value for the participants, primarily by creating a high-signal container, much less so because of the economies of scale and network effects they create. The latter makes sense for sponsorships because it’s important to ensure that a large number and wide range of people can attend. Since that is not important for exclusive events, it makes more sense to have the people receiving value pay for it directly. As a comparison, the exclusive event I attended had no sponsors and each participant paid to attend.

In other words, non-exclusive events are public goods, while exclusive events are more like private goods.

If participants (or the organizations they represent) are not willing to pay for themselves to attend such an event, it should be questioned whether the event is as valuable as expected and also whether the potential sponsors are simply paying for access to and influence over an elite group of people who are getting two weeks of living expenses covered. If the goal is to enable lower-wealth people to participate, then it should be questioned why a less expensive format was not selected.

3. Exclusive events are a poor image fit for DAOhaus

DAOhaus strives to create coordination tools for everyone. While we are far from vainglorious marketing experts, it remains true that our image is crucial to our success in attracting communities to our vision and mission, which is important to our ability to achieve both. Simply put, sponsoring events that significantly constrain participation – especially those hosted in exclusive, luxury locations – would be a risk for our image.

To be clear, I am not saying that this event is a bad idea – in fact, it sounds pretty rad! What I am saying it is not a good fit for DAOhaus to sponsor. If the :couple:t5::two_men_holding_hands:👩🏼‍🤝‍👨🏾 w :european_castle::european_castle::european_castle: DAO were to apply to join UberHaus, I would vote for it to join.

As always, this is my current best thinking and I am open to being convinced otherwise.

3 Likes
#17

I feel that, as the person of subject within the broader conversation here I should highlight a few things:

The role of Nobility or Aristocracy, is in this day and age meaningless - it does not hold any power, nor does it represent the views that we share. The Hereditary aspect applies only to the Stewardship of extremely expensive cultural heritage objects that are near impossible to maintain. Our title, therefore, is only a representation of our obligation towards these objects and our inherent responsibility towards them - it is now an antiquated role like “Lieutenant” or “CEO” - nothing more. This means that I do not have a choice in my life - I am obliged to maintain and curate a museum - I did not choose this role, but I carry it with dignity as far asI cab.

Our family, like many others of similar backgrounds in Germany, have changed their views entirely - we do not wish for monarchies to re-emerge, nor do we endorse any failures of past family members. We are all Democratic to the core and believe this in our very essence.

The issue was that Castles were historically Exclusive places - reserved for upper echelons of society, and open only to invitation by the “Ruling” members. My hope is that this changes - the same way access to resources is being democratised across the Web3 space, I was inspired to hopefully democratise access to cultural heritage sites, so that they can serve as spaces for people of diversity to unite and build a better future.

This would be symbolic - to redefine how cultural heritage sites are used, seen and genuinely beneficial. The hope is that they now represent the symbolic changes that Web3 and DAOs enable - for all people to come together under a unified cause and build. I view it as an opportunity for a DAO to become a Peoples UNESCO - the same way that Constitution DAO tried to disrupt how society dreamed of the joint stewardship of a significant historical item.

The team believes in this - they see the opportunity that this can represent, both actively and symbolically:

Actively, in the projects, insights, research and Collaborations that can come out of a focused two week event without distraction. Alongside the idea that this will be opened up to DAO members in the future. This has happened at castles in the past and been widely successful (See Glitch Residency).

Symbolically, in that Web3 now has the opportunity to re-define and disrupt another ancient legacy system for the better, and allow all people of all backgrounds to access the benefits of these monuments to both cherish their culture and make use of what they could offer in this modern context.

If the issue, therefore, is with the event taking place at a castle, then I ask why - this is an opportunity to Disrupt the status Quo as DAOs should - and to open up this previously Exclusive place for the people.

If the issue is with myself and my name, then I am happy to remove it from the banner - to me the only thing that matters is that the group has the opportunity to build something meaningful.

I truly believe in the power of democratisation, and the opportunity ahead for DAOs in changing the ways that anybody can access resources they were previously restricted from. This is the only thing that matters, and it is what we hope to enable in absolute terms at the event.

The event is designed to make leaps for DAOs, not to reflect on past history - the enemies to our vision now are Big Tech, not Ancient already deposed and mostly irrelevant families.

5 Likes
#18

Thank you for sharing. I respect this perspective. I personally do not take issue with your name being attached to the event, though I do think more could be done in the materials to convey what you just shared.

I quite like this vision to “reclaim” something bad for something better. Not terribly dissimilar from how Moloch DAOs “reclaim” the concept of the demon of human coordination failure as a meme to support human coordination.

However, on the topic of whether DAOhaus should sponsor this event, I don’t think any of that is relevant. The reason for my dissent is focused on the exclusivity of the event. The context of a literal palace, nobility, etc does not help break the feeling of exclusivity, but it is not the main point.

3 Likes
#19

After a really good conversation with some people I highly respect, I have broadened my perspective.

I remain unenthusiastic about the idea of exclusive events relying primarily on sponsorships (instead of participants paying for the value they get out of the event), and less supportive of having DAOhaus explicitly sponsoring exclusivity. Those events are valuable, but IMO the cost of creating that value should be borne by the people the value most directly impacts, ie the participants.

However, I would support DAOhaus sponsoring and supporting a DAO that is focused on facilitating many such high-value community events. This is a subtle difference, but to me it’s an important distinction.

I also do think it makes some sense for DAOhaus to be involved in (and to be seen as involved in) a movement to reclaim locations that were and are currently symbols of historical oppression into centers for DAO values and DAO coordination, assuming that remains the vision throughout. That has a relation to but is distinct from paying for a small group of people to live in one of those locations for a couple weeks.

That latter vision was not at all clear to me until today (thank you @DSL), and it’s crucial that it be more widely appreciated and integrated for it to make image-management sense for DAOhaus to sponsor this concept.

Conditional support

With all that in mind, I would support a sponsorship under the following conditions:

  1. The sponsorship be considered and acknowledged as a sponsorship not of this first event but of the eventual DAO that has the goal of enabling & facilitating future additional events and an associated community.
  2. There be strong consideration by that DAO that attendees of future small, high-signal events will be responsible for paying for their own attendance.
  3. In combination with (2), part of the DAO sponsorship funds go towards a scholarship (or similar) fund to cover at least some of the attendance cost for participants who should be there but cannot afford to pay their own way.
  4. The DAO do a better job of clearly articulating why these particular locations are aligned with DAO values, i.e. why in this context they should not be seen as the symbols of oppression that they have represented throughout most of history.
  5. We see a breakdown of how sponsorship funds are to be spent.

I welcome any questions or responses to these conditions.

3 Likes
#20

I will re-evaluate my position if we are presented with a credible, detailed cost breakdown for the event.

1 Like
#21

After speaking with some participants/organizers today, there are a few things I can add on why I think DAOhaus should sponsor.

The exclusivity is both by design (tight community - Dunbar’s) and a practical limitation of the physical space. I’ve experienced firsthand the quality of interaction/innovation that emerges from a small group with shared values, no structure, in an inspiring schelling point. Fresh ideas can emerge organically from naturally flowing conversations/collaborations. This particular location sounds ripe for quality innovation, not because it’s ‘luxurious’, but because of it’s rich history paired with the hosts’ and stewards’ desire to repurpose it as a hub for community innovation. Assuming sufficient value creation, I hope this event can be a start to an attempt at scaling such hubs/events of community first innovation.

Some short term value I think will be created, and shared to DAOhaus directly:

  • participation and voice in an experiment of the exact type of raw community building and innovation i think is the most valuable to explore.
  • new DAOs will emerge (some are already being discussed)
  • invited to use it as our own schelling point for future events
  • there will at least be 3 of us from the haus there and I’m sure we’ll both help steward value creation throughout the experience as well as have many shared learnings upon our return

The real long-term value creation opportunity I personally see is in DAOhaus helping to steward a movement of reclaiming these old houses of lords (castles, palaces, etc) and converting them into houses of community events and innovation. This is the first event at this location, but the idea is that, if all goes well, a DAO is formed to connect with similar groups/spaces to form a network of spaces reserved for community innovation. Though it’s short notice and information is just now propagating, I think this event/interaction is exactly the type DAOhaus should support. Certainly I think some things could have been formed and communicated better, but by participating now, we gain voice in how future events take shape.

2 Likes