Hard Reset - Towards a DAO-Centric, Fully On-Chain Ecosystem

Draft Proposals
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Abstract

In light of the current state of the treasury and the unsustainable costs of maintaining the core game in its current form, a hard reset is unavoidable. We propose to reallocate resources to replacing the core game with a fully on-chain experience. This pivot will enable us to operate with a leaner and more sustainable team. At the core, this proposal is designed to reduce treasury burn, implement a codified deflationary economic model, and enhance product alignment with the DAO and community.

Motivation

Recent developments have made it clear that we must adopt a different approach to building within the DAO. The Crypto Unicorns core land game, as a hybrid experience, requires ongoing management of traditional servers, live operations infrastructure, as well as ongoing design and product effort. This requires continuous management of both technical infrastructures and in-game economic policy. In contrast, a fully on-chain game operates autonomously, eliminating the need for centralized control and significantly reducing long-term maintenance costs.

Details

We’d like to propose the following path for the DAO moving forward:

1. Deprecation of the Current Core Land Game

  • As outlined in the Sunset Plan published on Substack, the core game will be sunset on August 30, 2024.

2. Transition to a Fully On-Chain Game Experience

  • Following the shutdown, we propose replacing the core game loop with a fully on-chain experience. This will enable fully transparent, autonomous operations with minimal ongoing maintenance.
  • Rationale: Transitioning to a fully on-chain model reduces operational costs and better aligns with the decentralized ethos of the DAO.

3. Implement a Codified Deflationary Economy

  • The fully on-chain game will have its economic policies codified at the smart contract level, with a focus on maintaining a deflationary model.
  • Rationale: Codifying the economic model reduces the need for constant rebalancing and the unexpected surprises on the players’ side.

4. Community Buy-in Prior to Development

  • Prior to the development of the new game, the team or any DAO member may submit game specifications and design proposals for community feedback through the proposal process. A voiced working session will also be conducted to ensure alignment with community expectations. The final design will be formalized by a Snapshot vote before being built. Further smart contract changes will require a different Snapshot vote - unless in the event of security risks and exploits.

Conclusion

We acknowledge the significant implications of this reset, but firmly believe that this transition is the most viable path forward. It ensures our project’s continuity by embracing a more decentralized solution, while reducing treasury expenditure and achieving better product alignment. We respectfully request your support in this critical transition.

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  1. How much time it will take to develop a new game?
  2. Who will cover costs of development?
  3. May we see a list of remaining LG members, their names and roles for this project?
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I finally saw from Laguna a genuine request for help from the players.
The hubris is gone.
But I have to answer some very specific questions first. And not to be evasive.
One of them was asked above

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Thank you for putting out this proposal, I have a few comments and questions below.

Comments:

  • This statement of yours “This will enable fully transparent, autonomous operations with minimal ongoing maintenance.” should include FINANCIAL transparency too. I do understand that we have a treasury report, but still there are many questions from the community regarding finances. Moving forward, any DAO member requesting fund should provide financial transparency with a proper breakdown where the money is going for and not just a high level expenditure that does not provide any detail.
  • On that same note, what is the situation and expenditures that we have pertinent to the Toys, TV show, etc? These have already been paid for from the DAO Treasury in the past and I personally would not like to pay for that anymore. I believe the team should continue this endeavour based on what has already been paid for, and if this is not enough I would rather scrap it off and not pursue this venue and instead reduce the monthly expenditures on the DAO to purely focus on the On-Chain game. Because again, this seems to be an overly priced endeavour without any results. Promise and hope and interested from people in the industry is not enough anymore. If they want to pay for the content great, lets seal the deal, if not then its time to move on.
  • Again, I would like to know what kind of timeline we are looking for in terms of Development and we also should include a clause that mentions a penalty for either being late in delivering a product or not delivering a product at all. The DAO shouldn’t assume for risk of a team being negligent in delivering a promised product. We have seen this with both LG promises and 3rd party investments we have made.

Besides this, I think this is a good step and direction to take.

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Not sure I understand fully how we got here but it is what it is. That is my response.

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my 2 cents. We are quickly sinking, with no clear path ahead. Cut all funding to everything so that we can save whatever money we do have left to put towards a well thought out voted on plan. Each day we keep operations going is another day we waste budget on things that won’t be around in another 10 days. Please stop funding the core game even till the 30th, we can always vote to turn it back on for a well thought out plan in the future but why expend money now?

Once we have closed everything off, we let the DAO do its thing and vote on best next steps. Personally i believe the IP is the strongest thing we have going for us, and would like to see all remaining funds be put towards pitching to someone who is willing to fund the next step in the CU universe, whether that be a new game (don’t think that is feasible without massive funding), physical toys (don’t think this will be useful until CU is recognized outside of this community as we don’t have a robust team to create marketing for it.), Netflix show (tbh there have been like 20 other projects that say they have contact with people at Netflix, and I’ve yet to see one do anything or even come out with a pilot to show to their community, this seems more like a dangling carrot for project owners and wishful thinking).

Again i have no idea what can be done to revive CU and as much as I want it to happen, I believe unless we cut all spending immediately, we are sinking faster and faster.

Let whatever remaining payouts stand for those who invested, and regroup without spending anymore money on a sinking ship.

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My first thoughts are game sunsetting we pretty much have no option now going forward. Moving forward I think we need a completely new White Paper. We kind of lose our identity here with what’s happening. Hard to agree with changing to a new game when none of us know what game we are agreeing too. Almost feel we need the community sessions before agreeing to anything. With a new white paper. We need clear understanding of what project is here moving forward. What we are spending money on and hoping to accomplish. While I appreciate the treasury reports. I think we could use a emergency treasury report of all assets held in treasury and debts owed. I think we need to have expectations of what treasury funds will be used for and only what they will be used for. We now have a very small team. Is this team 100% committed to the project. Or are they working other projects at the same time. While its okay for people to work more then one job. I feel its impossible for anyone to be fully committed to making project work and succeed. If anyone is not 100% willing to commit their time to make this work I do not think they are what project needs. We need everyone to have a passion building this project and not doing it to check a box to say we did it. It should not even be about money at this point. But passion and love for the game and project. Yeah I am dreaming here. But this is how projects succeed passionate people working hard for the love of the project they create. These are the indie roots. You build something you love and want to play it yourself. So my call here is focus. Or we wrap things up now.

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Hi Atlas,

Notes below:

  1. TBD based on community feedback on our upcoming proposal for the new onchain game. We should have this live ASAP and can go from there. Ultimately, we are proposing a game that takes a large chunk of Shadowforge code and repurposes it for a Unicorn version (“Uniforge”). From there a modified TwT contract would be use as the central “battle” sim. Goal here is to try to get to market ASAP. Given the market movements this morning I think it’s imperative that we move quickly.
  2. The DAO as it always has will continue to cover the cost of development (~$150k/mo) which includes both RR and this onchain game + LiveOps support.
  3. Here’s the team breakdown →

Full Stack Web Developer
Full Stack Game Engineer
Blockchain Lead
Sr. Blockchain Engineer
Sr. Blockchain Engineer
Art Director
Product Director
Growth Lead
Executive Producer (RR)
Governance Manager
CM Lead
CS Lead
Content Lead (socials)

Beyond this we have 2 part time resources handling the IRL Toys / Merch / TV initiative and our backoff finance team.

Basically the bear minimum crew necessary to push forward the onchain game and continue to manage the RR Team.

Names are easy to find on Linkedin, etc.

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Hi Prof,

At the end of the day it’s important to remember that LG is a significant DAO stakeholder. I have no plan to sell LG’s tokens that have not already vested to team members. As I’ve stated in the council discussion thread we will continue forward with the same level of transparency. It’s hard to argue that other games come anywhere close. To put it simply… you’ll have to outvote me with sCU to push on further levels of transparency beyond what we already provide. Again, I don’t see anyone else being this transparent with their community.

Less than 2% of our entire treasury expenditure to date have been on the Toys, TV show, etc. Well worth it for the potential upside of revenue (50% of which would be used for buy back and burn of $CU). Going forward it’s ~2.5% of our monthly expenses. I think it’s well worth continuing to pursue these initiatives.

I would hope development timeline is less than 90 days. Can’t give certainty until we have the game loop defined which is the next major step. Please look out for that proposal ASAP.

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Thanks,

Looking forward to feedback on the onchain game.

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It’s silly to think we could just cut burn to zero and not have everything collapse. I’ve cut the team down to the absolute bear minimum possible to keep things moving forward.

To be clear - if you disagree you will need to bring together a voting block capable of outvoting LG’s sCU. People can get mad about this but… I’m also staking a ton of CU (1-year lock) vs selling it.

Pick your path and no matter what I appreciate all the support you’ve given us over the years.

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I hear you TT.

I wish we’d of had time to announce the sunset and get the onchain game fully defined. Alas, the crypto market did not allow for this. We will be sharing our initial ideas here shortly and pushing hard on gathering feedback from the community so we have the minimum level of buy in on the path forward.

LG and the remaining team are committed to making this work and finding a path forward. We’ve kept the core crew of true believers. It’s been a tough few weeks but people are optimistic about the future.

I agree completely on the focus front and building something we’d play. I’m anxious like many to find a path for all my CU assets going forward and ideally finding a way to reignite interest in the project (ie. Play to Mint ideas we discussed in the council channel). Pulling any rip cord necessary to keep things alive and moving forward is where I’m at.

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Thanks, Will keep trying my best here to support anyway I can. Thanks for taking the time to answer everyone’s questions

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thanks Aaron, my main reason for being here this long was trust in your vision and leadership.

My goal for cutting burn to zero was mainly for anything not RR and Shadowcorns. I get that the 2.5% was for toys/TV potential, but i still feel those are not going to take off if the overall CU IP is in the dirt. No project has broken through to Netflix or almost any streaming service let alone a project that just somewhat died.

I disagree on a lot of things, and do i have the power to change any of it… probably not :slight_smile: just putting my thoughts out there. I would love to keep some kind of hope out that CU can turn things around down the road, it just seems wasteful in my mind to still be carrying “dead weight”. We are in a clear crisis period. I also get you have employees to care for too at Laguna so cutting their jobs is not an easy task.

My mind is simply in survival mode and think other lofty goals should be shelved atm.

Keep on keeping on. CU4LYFE

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This idea is hopeless and a waste of more money.

Divest the remaining funds to active players and move on.

All of our NFTs are worthless now.

This is a rug, don’t get it twisted. They milked the cow and now are going for the meat.

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Yes, I remember Aron mentioning that as one of the possible outcomes.
The question is how to divide

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There was no better way processed prior to this hence I will just approve this given all the discussions internally and the nature of our current situation.

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150k$ per month for mini game is enormously large amount, since LG failed to deliver flawless game with millions of funding, team members names are hidden, i do not believe they can manage to do this now. Currently it looks like a waste of xai grant, can not support this. At first we have to see technical specifications, game mechanics and then come back to proposal. Currently it looks like give us 150k each month and we will deliver something

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Hi Aron,

Thats fine we get that you have majority votes and this isn’t a real DAO anyways, you’ve reminded us of this point many times. In the end, both you and we want to somehow have this project succeed for all of us, doubt anyone wants it to fail and loose all the assets (you guys included). So we obviously are all for the new on-chain game because it seems to be the last hope we have left from this project.

When I speak about financial transparency, its not so much salaries of each individual and doxxing people. I am more asking about things similar to what TT is asking for. For example:

  • In the past, LG has taken money from the DAO for marketing purposes. You have told us all the marketing initiatives have all been budgeted and allocated for. Hence, moving forward… do we still have this marketing budget set in LG, or did it instead be used for salaries instead?

We basically want to understand our situation financially to also be able to take better and more informed decisions. This isn’t to dox anyone, but what kind of decisions can we take when we don’t know these things. Like does LG have any cash on hand from what its taken from the DAO, or did it use it all. Can you see our perspective for this point? I know sometimes it can come off as an attack, but its not. Even you as a CEO of your company, will always need to know your financial situation to be able to make any sort of decision. Imagine your CFO simply telling you, no I refuse to share this info, and go take a decision with the high end knowledge I gave you.

In terms of dev, would be great to have it to be less than 90 days, do you think some form of transitory incentivised staking could work as well while the game gets developed? In the case that XAI pumps during these 90 days, it would be nice for the community to also be able to extract something and not feel like we are missing out on the pump.

Again, know that we are supporting you on this next stage, but as a DAO it is normal to be asked these questions, otherwise whats the use of calling ourselves a DAO… we can just say this is LG and move on instead of adding the DAO curtain. Some responses/questions may feel a bit aggressive from people because some of your community members that trusted you literally just lost their whole live savings on your product and promises.

Lastly, the toy, tv, etc is a good gamble, but if it drags on, we will most likely be spending more on it via salaries/fees than ever making on it even if it does go live and happen. This is something that we would need to consider as well, maybe giving it a realistic deadline of “either its executed by this time, or its just cut off” could be a good thing. Otherwise, this will just be a forever sunk cost.

Anyways, we are in this together and hoping it works out for all of us.

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I hope there’s still community who are willing to help no matter how much times Aron mentioned LG has majority of sCU and we can’t outvote them if they vote for themselves. Poor point, considering that we as community not trying to attack but to help, taking into account Prof’s and TT’s questions. Consider me naive, but I still have small amount of faith that CU can comeback one day. But in this case LG should really let community help, not gather some lulz feedback forms.

  1. cut costs
  2. stop tv/toys stuff
  3. focus on mini-game, and while it’s being developed - add some sort of staking lands and/or lands+unicorns or any other incentive for community’s assets so there is value for it
  4. developed the mini-game asap with community brainstorm sessions
  5. maybe it’s high time for team members to believe in the project and start getting paid in $CU? let’s show some real enthusiasm and faith in the project!

Right now this DAO thing is farce.

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