[Sanko GameCorp] [FINAL] [STIP - Round 1]

Archive Incentive Framework (Round 1)
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SECTION 1: APPLICANT INFORMATION

Applicant Name: Sanko GameCorp

Project Name: Sanko Dream Machine

Project Description: The Sanko Dream Machine is a multimedia-focused infrastructure protocol and suite of games hosted natively on Arbitrum. Sanko GameCorp is fully community-driven and independently supported without VC funding.

Sanko GameCorp’s upcoming Arbitrum Orbit Chain will be a hub for on-chain activity across social media and gaming.

Live streaming has exploded in popularity in recent years and there is high confluence in the user demographics of streaming, gaming, and crypto. Existing streaming platforms suppress streamer earnings by taking up to 50% of tipping revenue. SankoTV aims to gain market share by significantly increasing the share of earnings for streamers and viewers while offering additional earning opportunities in the form of SankoTV Passes – a SocialFi mechanic analogous to keys in Friend Tech. Each streamer can elect to set a price in their unique Pass to view a particular stream or to give the ability to watch or chat based on the number of Passes a viewer holds. In addition to Passes, SankoTV integrates Friend Tech keys themselves – keys will have the same functionality as Passes and allow people to use Base based assets to transact in meaningful ways on Arbitrum. We expect this app to increase user metrics and volume on Arbitrum, comparable to social app activity on Base.

The Dream Machine currently features five fully developed games: McAfee’s Main Event, ¡Sanko!, Miya, Sakura Pinball, and Milady Tekken. The Sanko GameCorp team has multiple games in development slated for the launch of its Orbit Chain, including Sankoscape, a crypto-native MMORPG with integrated DEX and NFT trading, action-adventure games Sakura Park and Streets of Milady, and additional games of skill. In addition to games deployed by the Sanko team, independent web3 game developers will also be able to deploy their titles on The Dream Machine.

Team Members and Qualifications:

Smoovie – CEO; a seasoned leader at the forefront of crypto markets and marketing. His expertise in market dynamics, consumer behavior, and strategy drives his ability to craft compelling campaigns and narratives that captivate users and drive growth. Smoovie orchestrates approaches to product development and growth that bridge the gap between crypto-native culture and a golden age of crypto mainstream adoption.

Ketiddies – CTO; a technical leader with significant experience in product development, distributed systems, cryptography, and blockchain development. The chief architect behind Miya, SankoTV, and Sankoscape, Ketiddies has unrivaled expertise in building from 0 to 1, while navigating tradeoffs between security and UX to deliver the best experience for users. His breadth of experience developing at startups, growth-stage, big tech, and crypto-native companies paired with his passion for developing products that incite joy enables him to wrangle the complexities of software into delightful experiences.

Company Phone – Lead Artist; the artist behind the Sakura Park and Streets of Milady collections, Company Phone’s work blends design innovation with retro aesthetics to create worlds that are at once familiar and reimagined. Company Phone specializes in the interactive and animated, reviving past aesthetics to reconfigure future spaces in crypto gaming and media.

Deww – Senior Software Engineer; a full-stack developer who previously worked at TikTok and specialist in UX/UI. With an exceptional grasp of network structures and the streaming landscape, Deww brings his experience to architecting a platform that combines traditional streaming with SocialFi. Deww emphasizes simplicity and ease of use in his work.

VCE – Software Engineer; a veteran developer with 7 years of professional experience producing full-stack products across many platforms. VCE has expertise in optimizing software functionality, enhancing user experiences, and building unique UI solutions. He enjoys working with and implementing cutting-edge systems. His keen eye for design and intuitive interfaces allows him to create smooth interactions and gaming experiences for players.

Sanko GameCorp’s team includes 6 additional devs and growth hires.

Project Links:

Contact Information

TG: @smoovie420

Twitter: @SankoGameCorp

Email: info@sankogamecorp.net

Do You Acknowledge That Your Team Will Be Subject to a KYC Requirement?: Yes

SECTION 2: GRANT INFORMATION

Requested Grant Size: 500K ARB

Grant Matching: N/A

Grant Breakdown:

Sanko seeks to leverage the grant to fuel streamer involvement and viewer interaction, thereby expanding Arbitrum’s SocialFi ecosystem. Through a compelling product and a rewarding points system, we aim to attract and retain streamers, viewers, and players to SankoTV and the Dream Machine.

Total: 500K ARB

Funding Address: 0x233cfCFB0D57C7e44F6836918eB2cFDd0760b6ED

Funding Address Characteristics: Safe Multisig with 2/3 owned by team members.

Contract Address: N/A

SECTION 3: GRANT OBJECTIVES AND EXECUTION

Objectives:

Sanko GameCorp intends to become the premiere web3 streaming service and gaming platform by introducing novel means of financialization to in-game and attention economies.

SankoTV represents a significant opportunity in streaming as an on-chain use case with clear advantages over incumbent platforms:

  • Through participation incentives, viewers are rewarded for contributing to streamers in ways not possible in web2 streaming platforms.
  • Streamers retain the lion’s share of the revenue they generate.
  • Streamers earn trading revenue from their Passes and increased flexibility over how viewers engage with their content.
  • Viewers earn points for tipping their favorite streamers and benefit from their success via passes.

Sanko GameCorp’s primary objective for the grant is to attract crypto-native streamers and their audiences to SankoTV. Providing incentives to early adopters of SankoTV would serve to accomplish the following objectives:

  1. Onboarding streamers and users to the platform at launch, increasing the amount of content generated on SankoTV and the likelihood of achieving virality early on.
  2. Increase attention on Sanko GameCorp products to increase the user base for forthcoming releases.
  3. Establish Arbitrum as the home for the first viable on-chain streaming economy.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

SankoTV grant KPIs will focus on the increase in users of the platform and the value generated from tipping and Pass trading:

  • Daily active streamers
  • Daily active viewers
  • Daily tip value
  • Daily SankoTV Pass volume
  • Revenue generated from Pass trading

How will receiving a grant enable you to foster growth or innovation within the Arbitrum ecosystem?:

  1. Establishing Arbitrum as the home for on-chain streaming.
  • The broader crypto ecosystem lacks user-facing applications.
  • Given the global popularity of streaming and crypto’s heavily attention-based economy, SankoTV is well-positioned to capitalize on the budding SocialFi sector.
  • Streaming appeals to web2 users – creating consumer-facing applications that cater to newcomers as well as crypto natives will add to Arbitrum’s reputation as the home for innovative tech by onboarding new users to the ecosystem.
  1. Drive adoption and demonstrate the potential of Arbitrum Orbit to host novel applications.
  • Driving attention and adoption to the deployment of the first multimedia Arbitrum Orbit Chain would serve as a successful proof of concept for the technology and a significant win for the broader ecosystem.
  • On-chain streaming and on-chain MMORPGs have yet to be executed successfully – using incentives to jumpstart adoption would help ensure that Arbitrum is the home of the first viable example of these applications.
  • SankoTV’s addition of SocialFi mechanics and unique NFT tipping make it the first streaming platform of its kind.
  • The integration of Friend Tech keys allows users to transact in meaningful ways on Arbitrum using assets from Base chain.
  1. Differentiate Arbitrum from competitors as a hub for original content.
  • Viral content originating from an Arbitrum-native application would effectively establish Arbitrum in the zeitgeist beyond niche crypto circles.

Justification for the size of the grant:

Sanko GameCorp meets the requirements for the Siren ARB grant:

  • Deployed to Arbitrum mainnet in May 2023
  • TVL of > $4M
  • $13M 30-day trading volume
  • $10M in Main Event volume since inception
  • 1.4k players since inception
  • 217k games played since inception

Execution Strategy:

500K ARB rewards will be distributed to SankoTV streamers and viewers at the end of the first rewards season on December 31, 2023. The grant will be allocated to SankoTV users using a points system that is updated weekly to keep users engaged for the duration of the incentives period and ensure that they engage in good faith. Points will be awarded for performing on-chain interactions, including SankoTV Pass trading, gift-giving, and hosting popular streams in terms of gifts received and viewership metrics. Points will also be awarded to users who issue referral links to others who engage with the protocol by trading SankoTV Passes and streamers with top-value Passes by market cap each week.

At the end of the incentives period, ARB rewards will be distributed based on the user’s portion of points relative to the total amount of points distributed. For example, a user that has accrued 1% of the total points distributed will be rewarded with 1% of the ARB in the rewards pool, a user that has accrued 0.5% of the total points distributed will be rewarded with 0.5% of the ARB rewards pool, and so on.

Do you accept the funding of your grant streamed linearly for the duration of your grant proposal, and that the multisig holds the power to halt your stream?

Yes.

SECTION 4: PROTOCOL DETAILS

Is the Protocol Native to Arbitrum?:

Yes.

On what other networks is the protocol deployed?:

All Sanko GameCorp games and products are hosted natively on Arbitrum.

What date did you deploy on Arbitrum?:

May 2023

Protocol Performance:

Q2 2023:

  • May:
    • Launched Milady Tekken and Sakura Pinball on Arbitrum mainnet, as well as the DMT staking contract.

Q3 2023:

  • June:
    • Launched McAfee’s Main Event.
  • July
    • Launched ¡Sanko!, a variation on Crazy 8’s.
  • August
    • Launched Miya, a psychological game of skill and strategy.

Protocol Roadmap:

  1. Expand into SocialFi with the launch of SankoTV in October 2023.
  2. Deploy SankoChain, an Arbitrum Orbit Chain.
  3. Expand into MMORPG tokenized gameplay experiences through Sankoscape, Sakura Park, and Streets of Milady.

SECTION 5: Data and Reporting

Is your team prepared to create Dune Dashboards for your incentive program?:

Yes – Sanko GameCorp has a Dune Dashboard that will be updated to include SankoTV usage metrics upon its launch.

Does your team agree to provide bi-weekly program updates on the Arbitrum Forum thread?

Yes.

Does your team acknowledge that failure to comply with any of the above requests can result in the halting of the program’s funding stream?:

Yes.

9 Likes
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Amazing plethora of noval complications that would be a good touch to Dream Machine, this sounds like an intriguing concept, do you have a timeline for when you think this will be out?

Overall great work!

4 Likes
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amount seems justified. play on

5 Likes
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Thank you. We will be doing closed beta tests starting next week with a public beta on October 4th.

7 Likes
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Amazing! Very unique! You have my vote

3 Likes
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I am support this STIP

1 Like
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I would love to be considered for closed beta :black_heart:

2 Likes
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the product has a unique value prop; the team is ambitious, professional, laser focused on delivering their vision. culturally, they’re in a league of their own which is important when you’re creating cultural products. no one could ever accuse sanko of being unoriginal.

this is a strong proposal. socialfi is fun because of the strong networks that get built from people showing up and having fun together. incentivizing that platform bootstraps the network; the grant brings ppl in the door, and the golden glizzy keeps them there.

5 Likes
9

spamming the application is not allowed.

1 Like
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Sanko GameCorp saved my life

5 Likes
12

Please can Sanko confirm if migration actually meant migration, or simply expansion (deployment) to Ethereum Mainnet. The perception taken from this tweet is that Sanko GameCorp was effectively leaving Arbitrum (as per the word migration).

Would like to understand where genuine loyalties lie with the Sanko platform.

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All of our products are on Arbitrum and always have been. “Migration” here meant partial migration of liquidity for trading the DMT token on Ethereum with the intent of attracting onchain traders on L1 into our ecosystem of products on Arbitrum L2 + L3.

Since that tweet, we’ve launched our contracts for Miya on Arbitrum and are currently testing SankoTV on Arbitrum Goerli with the intent of deploying on Arbitrum.

5 Likes
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Not part of the team but liquidity was deployed to mainnet. Every SANKO game lives on Arbitrum. I believe the plan is to migrate that to L3 utilizing Orbit.

I also would like to say I only experimented with Arbitrum when Arb 1 and Nova launched nothing too substantial. But after SANKO deployed to Arbitrum, I use Arbitrum almost everyday now since SANKO games are on there.

3 Likes
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sanko does look a bit funny and may still be very young, but i have to give credit to something that is entirely unique, especially when it’s native to Arbiturm.

i have tried to read all 100 of applications on here, a mixture of DEXs, lending markets, perps, and so on. Rarely do you actually see someone trying something new, so for that alone i think Sanko is worthy of support. we need more people trying new things.

personally not sure how to come up with a justified number, considering this is widely different from DEX incentives and so on.

6 Likes
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These guys are the sole reason I use Arbitrum on a daily basis

5 Likes
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Question: while DMT is housed on Arbitrum, are the games themselves smart contracts on Arbitrum, or are they off-chain/centralized products? I feel this would be relevant to qualifying for the grant.

1 Like
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Hi there - core Sanko team member chiming in…

To be clear, the proposal states 100% of the ARB grant will be directed towards users of SankoTV who partake in onchain activities related to the application. These activities are tipping streamers and trading passes, both of which will occur as transactions on Arbitrum.

The other games we currently offer - McAfee’s Main Event, ¡Sanko!, Miya, Milady Tekken and Sakura Pinball - all run off-chain, but leverage Arbitrum to escrow and settle funds.

The primary reason they run off-chain is due to open problems around “Incomplete Information” and “Collusion”. The core problem is that it’s difficult to have private information used in computations onchain. And of course collusion or verifying a set of addresses belong to unique individuals is also difficult.

There is some cutting edge research around fully-homomorphic encryption and ZK proofs, but the solutions aren’t perfect and they are non-trivial to implement. I look forward to the day we do crack these problems and perhaps implement them onchain with Arbitrum Stylus or trustlessly offchain.

You can read more about this in Paradigm’s The Open Problems of Onchain Games

4 Likes
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Hello @SankoGameCorp thank you for submitting! Please make the following changes to your proposal to comply with the program rules.

  1. Please provide the addresses of the contracts you plan to incentivize and a spending plan for how you will incentivize them as per
  1. Also please note funds should be distributed as they are received and should not be all given away at one time.
1 Like
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Thank you! We believe that incentivizing usage of Arbitrum’s first SocialFi streaming app holds merit in terms of the grant’s objective of fostering innovation and onboarding new users to the ecosystem. The success of a consumer app that brings new types of users into the fold and increases transaction volume on the network would be a big win for the broader Arbitrum ecosystem.

While there aren’t many comparable products in the applicant pool and SocialFi incentives certainly differ from DEX/lending incentives, Sanko is also asking for less funding relative to its market cap than the majority of other applicants.

3 Likes
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Hi Matt, thanks for the feedback. The SankoTV contracts haven’t been deployed yet, but we will have them ready for October 4th.

As for the distribution of funds — while it makes sense for funds to be distributed as they’re received for LP incentives, it’s more optimal for max participation and engagement on SankoTV if the airdrop happens once in a lump sum.

If the ARB is disbursed as it’s received, the earliest participants will be rewarded disproportionately. The points system would distribute a percentage of the ARB rewards pool to users based on the percentage of points they’ve accrued relative to the total amount of points users have earned — this would allow us to accurately align rewards with engagement for the entire duration of the incentives period. Incentivizing the use of a SocialFi app is much different than incentivizing LPing with a rewards drip, and we would greatly appreciate if a compromise could be made to reflect this.

6 Likes