MV #16: Inside the PVFD Small Council
The first three weeks of activity have been fun, eye-opening, and kinda boring
This is MetaVault, the best way to keep up with the Pixel Vault universe: PUNKS Comic, MetaHero, United Planets, $PUNKS, $POW, and lots of DAO.
A quick reminder that I launched the MetaVault podcast with my co-host, Brad Barrett. We had the creative force behind Pinballer Comics, Riley, on the show this past week. He talked about his creative process and dropped some alpha on his MetaHero derivative project. Technically, it’s the first comic in the MetaHero Universe! It released on March 6th and it’s a fantastic entry into the world he and his illustrator Serjo created. Mint at pinballer.xyz!
And our frens over at Moonlings sold out! Wow. Congrats to Rusty, Khateva, JuicyJama, Brooklyn and the rest of the team. If you missed the mint, grab one on OS or LR! And keep an eye peeled… I may be giving some away to subscribers!
And remember, you can always find me on Twitter and via email.
We got some juicy Pixel Vault Founder’s DAO updates this week. The first two proposals (procedures and mechanics, gnosis safe signers) are live and actively being discussed by members. There’s a flurry of activity in the discourse forum page that hosts the proposals and discussion. People are engaged. It feels like a new day for the DAO! From passive club to active organization. Exciting times.
But how’d we get here?
Some Basics
I got involved early through a community vote in the Founder’s DAO channel on PV’s Discord. There was a call for five to ten PVFD holders from the community to collaborate directly with PV to build momentum around the DAO. After a day or so of nominations, the top 10 community members who received nominations were selected, and I was lucky enough to be one! Thanks to the community members who nominated me. Here’s the full list of participants across two formal sessions and a few sidebar conversations:
I was happy to see Keef added to the group. As a PV Discord moderator, PVFD holder, and builder in his own right, he brought a great perspective. The mods are this insanely valuable bridge between official PV and the community. Part PV, part us!
Here’s how the first few sessions and side conversations went from my perspective.
Bright-eyed & Bushy-tailed
Prior to the first call, Arrahatteck sent a message to the group in a private Discord channel to frame the objective:
These calls will be focused on the initial DAO mechanics such as voting and the action of submitting proposals. NOT actual DAO proposals. Depending on the productivity we may need to schedule additional calls so that we can get the DAO up and running, end goal being that we hand it over to the community.
As I jumped into the Zoom call a few days later I immediately saw GFunk sitting in his home office, remotely chopping it up about life with Arrahatteck who was in his home office. Both were on-camera, just hanging out virtually. As other started to funnel in, most had their cameras on too! “WHAT?! I thought this was Web3 where we all hide our true identities behind jpegs?!” It was refreshing, really. Hosting the MetaVault podcast has provided a similar opportunity to put faces with names — it’s an audio podcast but we use a tool that includes a video feed to make it easier to talk to each other. Love it. Our little Web3 world is full of actual humans!
We dove straight into details on off-chain voting parameters. And I’ll be honest, I was a bit lost. I was sort of expecting a preamble, a more defined objective for this small team, how many calls it might take, and then a short “round-the-horn” introduction for each participant. Basically like any other project kickoff. I’m someone who needs to get oriented to the task and see the big picture before diving into details. But, we were full bore ahead and I didn’t want to stop the train.
The first thing that became immediately apparent was that both groups were full of incredibly sharp brains. The combination of Chuba (dev), Jacob (legal), and Arr00 (mechanics) brought next level understanding of DAO complexities. VGF, Arrahatteck, economist helped steer the ship and drive productive conversation. And to think, PV has these resources in-house! Bravo GFunk. Richard summarized it well in this past week’s Community Call:
You start to see how things are working and you start to see in person the actual people doing the work. It's one thing to say, “PV’s a great team.” But then, on the meeting with the team, seeing how they operate, your perspective kind of changes. And [the team] is unmatched.
I'm a healthcare executive, and I'm in corporate boardrooms for large companies, and I'm able to see how executive teams interact and leadership teams interact. PV’s up there. It's amazing to watch. And I think just an hour or two on a call, that became real clear, real fast.
And the PVFD group was full of incredibly sharp minds too. We’re current or former entrepreneurs, executives, lawyers, engineers, educators. I have no idea how this hodgepodge of personalities was nominated in by the community and all ended up being smart thinkers and builders. Makes me bullish on what the larger group will be able to build together.
One thing to mention here: GFunk didn’t talk much. Don’t read that as disengaged. He was certainly engaged. It’s just that the entire vibe from the PV team was, “How should we do this, together, as a collaborative effort?” — with a very distinct preference for however the community wants to do it.
PV was highly interested in any decision that made it hard for them to assert influence over the DAO. We talked about the fact that they had 1,000 PVFD tokens, a significant portion of all PVFD tokens. Would they vote? After a bit of a back and forth with Chuba to understand the technical details, he realized that their tokens are held in a multisig which is not currently capable of performing off-chain voting via Snapshot (don’t kill me if I’m wrong here — but that was my understanding). This effectively means that PV can’t influence proposal voting by pushing all of their tokens in one direction. That’s huge. And the reaction from Jacob and the team was excitement, not consternation that the community would drag PV into terrible decisions.
At the close of the first call we talked about scheduling the next one. Again, the goal was to get the initial mechanics outlined to provide a proposal to the community. We had a few more off-chain / on-chain parameters to work through before sketching out the framework for the community to review and vote on.
After the call I DM’d Arrahatteck to chat through some management stuff (project plan, high-level voting workflow). He asked to jump on a call. We talked through the fact that PV was getting the engine started, but didn’t want to drive the car. The community will lead the DAO. PV will guide, assist, and connect us to professional resources if requested. Awesome.
Down to Business
In the second call we jumped back into the various parameters required to ratify a vote and execute an action on-chain. We discussed timeframes for community discussion and voting, edge cases when an urgent proposal needs to get pushed through (and bypass off-chain voting). We talked about voting mechanics and the group felt best that rank choice was the way to go.
One thing to point out here, throughout the discussion we came back to the fact that if any given parameter doesn’t meet the need of the DAO, we can change or amend it through a proposal / vote. We’re not stuck with our decisions forever.
By the end of the second call we had framed the two primary proposals that were later published.
Oh, You Flatter Me Ser
After the second call I got a DM from Jacob asking if I had time to chat. We hopped on a call and talked about PVFD community member additions to the multisig. He asked if I was interested? I said of course! With the understanding that the multisig authorities will rotate (currently proposed to be a one-year term), I felt comfortable that others would get a chance to represent the DAO as a trusted signer.
He and I talked through some other proposals that I think are important for the DAO to consider sooner than later — things like a mission statement, working groups with formal budgets, our own Discord (or another tool), and a liquidity pool for $PUNKS. One aspect that I brought up in this side conversation was the user experience — from chatting with DAO members to formulating an idea to crafting a well-written proposal to off-chain and on-chain voting. The Founder’s DAO should focus on making the interconnected tools a seamless experience. Basically, the DAO product should be joyful to use.
Later that same day I had a call with Arrahatteck and BCheque to discuss the working groups. A DAO is basically a small business — what are the primary departments need to get started? Operations to make sure we’re actively managing the DAO. Engineering to design, build, or select systems and tools to make the DAO function more effectively. Finance to determine budgets and manage our assets. Then which departments would be needed specifically for the DAO that PVFD aims to be — as defined in our yet-to-be-ratified Mission Statement? Maybe an Art department to select the pieces we collect; a Partnership team to build alliances across Web3; a Product team that leads development of our own projects. More to come on this topic and I’m excited to engage with the PVFD community on this.
What’s Next?
Work. It’ll feel a lot like work, because it is. Half-way through the first call with the Small Council I realized, “Oh, this is a work meeting. We’re 14 people around a virtual conference table talking through a decision.” From simple excitement to work mode. If we want to build the DAO into an industry-leading organization that drives value to ourselves and the broader ecosystem, it’ll require a lot of work. Excited to build with you!
Weekly Alpha
Comic #1 Physicals. PV launched the claim window to claim Comic #1 physicals. Very straightforward process. Super simple to verify if a physical has already been claimed — just in case you’re looking to grab one on secondary. Important to remember that PV has said this is likely the only comic that will come packaged like this. Excited to get it in hand.
MP2. Wow! Now that’s an experience! There’s a ton of lore that I’ll have to spend more time digging through. GeneSynth Industries. Fabricell. GeneScript7. FTER. Then, toward the bottom of the page, there are six levels listed, which one could assume represent the long-promised Sidekick levels. Then there are three little dots below Level 5. When clicked, this appears:
Sidekick Burn. VGF confirmed in a recent Community Call that the leveling up process is a burn of both an MP2 and your current Sidekick. I completely understand the MP2 angle. But why burn a beautiful Sidekick?! Doesn’t it feel egregious? Ha. Odious, Chris Wahl, and Virtunaut worked so hard to design and curate these! For them to just get incinerated feels wrong! Ha. How about this: when a Sidekick is burned it goes into a graveyard of sorts — or maybe it’s turned into a mutant or zombie — or if they have a planet origin, they could be vaulted into the planet’s DAO for them to decide what to do with later. Don’t just erase these from the face of the MH Universe!
Um, PV Tried to Buy CryptoPunks and Meebits. During all of the swirl yesterday around Yuga’s acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits — there was this tweet by GFunk:
Roadmap
Some of this is speculative — as always, look for official announcements through PV’s Twitter accounts.
March
Claim Physical Comic #1. In progress!
Launch Mint Pass #2 Claim. In progress!
Core Giveaway. 72 given away. 72 to go. I’m curious to see if all will be given away by the end of Stage 1 staking.
TBD
Origin Stories #2 - Confirmed. TBD. With the announcement that we’ll use $PUNKS to vote for the next focus, we should know more soon.
Punks Comic #3 - Confirmed. TBD. PV has stated several times that this will be the MetaHero introduction. If they stick to a quarterly release schedule, we could expect to see PC#3 in March?
UPDAO Procedures & Mechanics - Confirmed. TBD. First order of business is establishing how the UPDAO functions. Second order? Fix the $POW distribution?!
Sidekick Mint - Confirmed. TBD. Looks to be at least a month or more out from the end of the MP2 claim window.
Founder’s DAO PfP - Confirmed. TBD. We know this is a big project in Odious hands, but have no idea on timeframe. And this hasn’t been talked about much publicly outside of the Founder’s DAO Discord channel.
Gamified $POW Staking - Confirmed. TBD. As stated, this has been delayed. Unclear when this would launch. Likely Fall to Winter 2022 timeframe.
Game Platform on Mercury - Confirmed. TBD. Expect big news on who the game studio partner is in the next couple of months.
3D Avatars for each MetaHero - Confirmed. TBD.
TV Series - Unconfirmed. TBD. Expect big news far in advance of a series ever being made.
By the Numbers
With MP2 in the wild, let’s remind ourselves how many of these are out there in the world (via the Medium article):
90,080 MintPass 2 NFTs which can be claimed by the community
10,000 MP2 NFTs which PV holds in its corporate treasury
203,282 MintPass 2 NFTs which the smart contract permits to be minted (this a total that could ever be minted — no guarantees this amount will ever be minted)
Obviously deflationary with a very aggressive mechanic (I assume) to entice the community to burn and level up. What might the total number of Sidekicks settle at? GFunk has thrown out a guess of 20k. I’d say closer to 35k.
MetaHero Highlight
Randomly I filtered MH Generative Identities by Most Favorited. This villain from Uranus in a low cut Molten suit and Slick Blonde hair is by far the most favorited: 109 favorites. The next highest is 43 favorites. What is it about this guy that gets people so excited?! Ha.
Community Shine
WestCoastWalker came sprinting into the PV community over the past few months. Full of ideas and speculation (my favorite kind of partcipation!). Pushing for improvements. Love it! Someone to follow on Twitter and in Discord.
Some Disclaimers: None of this is financial advice. DYOR. And yes, I’m obviously a PV collector and long-term hodlr. Not a whale by any measure (maybe a squid?).