(Oct ‘23 Beta) Play-to-govern DAO for Arbitrum

General
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Heya ARB ! Duck from Taho here :duck:…

TL;DR

Taho is launching our DAO in early 2024 on top of a browser-based map control game. Think: Settlers of Catan, but with gauges. We’ll be launching on Arbitrum One.

In Q4 2023, we’re doing a closed beta of the game + dapp on testnet with 5 partner DAOs. For obvious reasons, we’d love to welcome Arbitrum DAO!

:point_right:With this point we’re looking for input on the onchain behaviors Arbitrum DAO would like to incentivize in connection with our beta launch.

Background

About Taho

Taho began as a community-owned web3 wallet, incubated by Thesis. Our founding team has previously built Casa, MetaMask, Fold, Thesis, Threshold.

Our current traction:

  • 200K+ users have tried Taho

  • 150K+ Discord

  • 50K MAU

  • $150K+ in Gitcoin grants

Our goals in launching this specific play-to-govern DAO design are to:

  1. Make the web3 user experience less lonely, more fun, and more multiplayer

  2. Make it easier for DAOs and web3 projects to engage their communities

DAO & Game Design

The Taho DAO is played, not governed. It’s the game of settling a mysterious Island on the Net and battling for emissions.

The Island is subdivided into 24 realms vying with one another.

The guardians of the realms collectively form the Taho Council. They own game parameters, as well as all core DAO functions (grants, treasury management, etc.).

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How it works

Four times a year (at the end of every Season), emissions flow to all active realms on the Island, who in turn distribute it to their citizens:

  • The largest ones (measured by stake) receive the greatest emissions for their citizens

  • Inside each realm,citizens may claim emissions according to the experience points they’ve earned that season

How to play

  • As a Guardian - you create, grow, and defend your realm. Your goal is to entice users with exciting and profitable quests. Your growth will be blocked by neighboring realms, so you’ll need to execute multi-day raids against neighbors (and fend off their attacks!), to keep leveling up. Over the course of future seasons, we plan to introduce cross-realm alliance mechanics as well, encouraging community-to-community collaboration. We expect DAOs, projects, communities, and even social groups to act as Guardians.

  • As a Nomad - realms will compete for your attention. You decide where to become a Citizen and then complete quests to earn experience points. If your host realm is under attack, you can help defend it… or abandon it and sell your experience points on the black market.

Quests

Quests can be made up of any queryable onchain activity, for example:

  • Burning funds

  • Deploying contracts

  • Using specific dapps or protocols

  • Holding specific NFTs

Wallet

The Island is your overworld and the Taho wallet is your HUD. Users will track your active quests inside the dapp, as well as the in Taho wallet. Credibly neutral metagame.

Arbitrum DAO Alignment

  • Over 50% of Taho users are regular Arbitrum users

  • Over 130K Taho users/addresses have bridged funds to Arbitrum

  • We’re launching our DAO on Arbitrum One, these mechanics just would not be possible from a gas perspective on Mainnet

The Q4 Beta

The goal of our beta is to ensure the game is fun and understandable. And also to get the right projects in at the ground level.

Specifically, we want feedback on:

  • UI/UX

  • Is this as fun as our playtests tell us it is?

  • How can we make this as powerful a tool as possible for DAOs like Arbitrums’

Beta partners

We’re inviting just 5 partner DAOs to the beta:

  • Each partner gets a spot on the map

  • They can invite their communities to participate

  • They get the chance to launch incentive experiments (quests)

  • They get an early seat at the table for feedback and helping inform overall direction

The Opportunity

There’s no cost or time commitment needed for Arbitrum DAO members to evaluate our beta mechanism.

What’s needed from Arbitrum DAO:

  1. A few onchain behaviors you’d like to incentivize in Q4. We will use these to write quests that beta participants can engage with. (We’ve included a few ideas below to get the conversation started)

  2. Feedback on how we can best invite ~1,000 members of the DAO to participate (our current plan is to share a link here and on Discord for users to sign up using a custom Deform

Here are our working ideas of onchain behaviors the DAO may want to incentivize:

  • Delegating $ARB

  • Completing at least 1 on-chain transactions on Arbitrum per week

  • Bridging to Arbitrum One or Arbiturm Nova

  • Contract deploys

  • Participation in Arbitrum Odyssey?

Some additional suggestions from speaking with DAO members:

  1. Voting weighted by vote weight
  2. Bridging net wealth to arbitrum
  3. Generating fees
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"Hello @LowPolyDuck LowPolyDuck,

Thank you for sharing the exciting details about Taho 2’s upcoming DAO launch and the Q4 Beta on Arbitrum One. We’re eager to explore potential collaboration opportunities with the Arbitrum DAO. To help us better understand and align our efforts, could you kindly provide more details on the following:

  1. Specific Onchain Behaviors: We’re interested in learning about the specific onchain behaviors or actions that the Arbitrum DAO is keen on incentivizing during the Q4 Beta. This could encompass actions like delegating $ARB, completing on-chain transactions on Arbitrum, bridging to Arbitrum One or Arbitrum Nova, deploying contracts, and participating in Arbitrum Odyssey.
  2. Alignment with DAO Goals: It would be valuable if you could elaborate on how these incentivized behaviors align with the overarching goals and mission of the Arbitrum DAO. For instance, if the DAO’s objective is to enhance user engagement within the Arbitrum ecosystem, we’d appreciate insights into how these behaviors contribute to that goal.
  3. Additional Suggestions: If there are any additional suggestions or innovative ideas you have in mind for incentivized behaviors that could mutually benefit the Taho 2 project and the Arbitrum DAO, we’re open to hearing them.
  4. Logistics: Understanding the logistical aspects is crucial for effective collaboration. Could you share insights into how you plan to implement these incentives within the Taho 2 game and Dapp? This might include details about the mechanics of the quests and the rewards structure.
  5. Open to Discussion: We’re enthusiastic about the prospect of collaborating and fine-tuning these incentivized behaviors to align perfectly with the interests and preferences of the Arbitrum DAO community. Please let us know if you’re open to further discussions and how we can best facilitate that.

Your insights will be instrumental in ensuring a successful partnership between Taho 2 and the Arbitrum DAO. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best regards

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Participation in Arbitrum Odyssey would likely pull in hundreds of thousands of users and engagement, not sure if that is what you intended or you would be prepared to handle especially if you are focused on feedback and gameplay. My suggestion would be quests through Galxe or other platforms to drive the engagement and then award the 1-2k via discord to pull in the feedback. Maybe its sequencing-> start with gameplay and refinement then move to bring in the masses once you have a polished product.

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Appreciate the feedback :pray:

The product has a level of polish greater than what we revealed in the post :smirk:-- we are certainly excited by the prospect of Arbitrum Odyssey !

The beta is intended to serve as you suggested prior to mass engagement, the suggestion to integrate galxe quests into the beta is something thats been bounced around, i like it alot !

What do you think of the core of the product my fren ? If you dont mind me asking

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Great point. Invites will be capped to 1K from ARB DAO members, but point remains. The idea of distributing via a galxe campaign or similar is def interesting. :pray:

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Loved reading this.

This is brilliant, huge fan of Taho and my head is swirling with ideas for how many ways this program could incentive specific user actions that are desired!

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I love the idea of play to govern. Could you provide some realistic examples on the formation of the guardians and alliance mechanism? I love the idea of raids and it seemed to work well in some web2 formats (World of Warcraft comes to mind) but trying to understand how the formation would happen across communities, DAOs, etc. Also would Nomads have any governing power at all while they stand solo?

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You can think of each realm as a subDAO governed by the guardians. Guardians can be elected, overthrown, etc.

Glad to hear on the raids. WoW was definitely an inspiration :slight_smile:

Full transparency - we’re still exploring alliance mechanisms! Nothing we’re happy with mechanism-wise yet.

Great final question. Nomads only have governance power while they’re staked in a realm. If they don’t want to join any of the existing realms… our hope is they create a new one

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I’ve been reading the project, and among the points, I find the combination of governance and online gaming interesting. I believe it will lead to increased community participation, primarily by motivating it through a clear incentive system.

As constructive criticism, I would suggest providing more specific details on how the gaming and governance mechanisms will be implemented. It would be helpful to include concrete examples. The game of incentives can potentially lead to speculation rather than genuine community involvement. Care should be taken to ensure that users are motivated by a desire to contribute rather than just rewards.

Regarding scalability, it would be wise to project how the platform will handle an increase in demand and traffic as it experiences exponential growth.

In terms of transparency and governance, I would emphasize the need to establish a clear and transparent structure to avoid centralization in decision-making within the DAO.

One question that remains is regarding the distribution of rewards in the testnet for $TAHO. Have you already defined how it will be distributed? And for participation in the testnet, how will access be granted?

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Thank you ser ! A pleasure to see you here :duck:

The game of incentives can potentially lead to speculation rather than genuine community involvement. Care should be taken to ensure that users are motivated by a desire to contribute rather than just rewards.

This is something we’ve thought about at length, its a super important call out. From what ive been able to gather personally; questlines that promote tvl based [or time based] metrics are more resistant than strictly volume based ones.

Theres probably going to be a bit of variety in the various questlines offered by realms until a solid meta is in place.

Regarding scalability… project how the platform will handle an increase in demand…

…In terms of transparency and governance, I would emphasize the need to establish a clear and transparent structure to avoid centralization in decision-making within the DAO.

Scalability and transparency i can address at once. The scalability of individual questlines is hard to nail down [especially if a ton of data is required to be collected]. We’ll likely see things try and fail to scale-- there are great lessons to be had from platforms like galxe; not every desirable action is consistently scalable. And transparency is going to tie into all of this-- if it just so happens that a realm is attempting to forward a questline that would be impossible or broken, the citizens can see and veto that

One question that remains is regarding the distribution of rewards in the testnet for $TAHO. Have you already defined how it will be distributed? And for participation in the testnet, how will access be granted?

Not exactly yes, but not exactly no :smirk:

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Thanks for this Noa!

As constructive criticism, I would suggest providing more specific details on how the gaming and governance mechanisms will be implemented. It would be helpful to include concrete examples. The game of incentives can potentially lead to speculation rather than genuine community involvement. Care should be taken to ensure that users are motivated by a desire to contribute rather than just rewards.

Appreciate that! More details coming soon. We’ll be sharing on our forum first.

In terms of transparency and governance, I would emphasize the need to establish a clear and transparent structure to avoid centralization in decision-making within the DAO.

100%. Each realm is effectively a subDAO. The Council (aggregate of leaders of each realm) = decides game parameters, controls treasury, executes ‘global’ DAO actions

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