MetaCulture
Community & Privacy
< status : funded >
Project Details
The function of MetaCulture is to build bridges between Cult DAO and value aligned communities such as MOROS NET, DarkFi, LunarDAO, and Gitcoin.
The objective is to accelerate exchange of worldviews and ideas (culture) and capital across divisions within crypto. One path here is synthesizing the strengths of Lunarpunk and Solarpunk protocols in order to maximize attention on the need for privacy while also funding its development.
Yet, many within the broader Ethereum ecosystem view on-chain transparency as a foundational value, and therefore that on-chain privacy contradicts what they believe in. In reality, the cultivation of Ethereum’s cypherpunk values (2) like decentralization, permissionless global participation, and censorship resistance is impossible without adequate privacy solutions.
With help from Kevin Owocki to solve for this while introducing Cult to Gitcoin’s funding system, MetaCulture managed Cult DAO’s first Gitcoin appearance in August, 2023 (1); a second round in November the same year; and has spearheaded a plan to fund development of Lunarpunk communities through Gitcoin OSS and/or community rounds.
People tend to be more likely to talk about things like the need for privacy solutions when those solutions are competing for the same pools of grant funding. As such, DarkFi and LunarDAO engaging with limited pools of funding on Gitcoin is a memetic warfare technique which should yield positive sum value for all involved.
(1)explorer.gitcoin.co/#/round/10/0x2871742b184633f8dc8546c6301cbc209945033e/0x2871742b184633f8dc8546c6301cbc209945033e-227
(2) https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/12/28/cypherpunk.html
The objective is to accelerate exchange of worldviews and ideas (culture) and capital across divisions within crypto. One path here is synthesizing the strengths of Lunarpunk and Solarpunk protocols in order to maximize attention on the need for privacy while also funding its development.
Yet, many within the broader Ethereum ecosystem view on-chain transparency as a foundational value, and therefore that on-chain privacy contradicts what they believe in. In reality, the cultivation of Ethereum’s cypherpunk values (2) like decentralization, permissionless global participation, and censorship resistance is impossible without adequate privacy solutions.
With help from Kevin Owocki to solve for this while introducing Cult to Gitcoin’s funding system, MetaCulture managed Cult DAO’s first Gitcoin appearance in August, 2023 (1); a second round in November the same year; and has spearheaded a plan to fund development of Lunarpunk communities through Gitcoin OSS and/or community rounds.
People tend to be more likely to talk about things like the need for privacy solutions when those solutions are competing for the same pools of grant funding. As such, DarkFi and LunarDAO engaging with limited pools of funding on Gitcoin is a memetic warfare technique which should yield positive sum value for all involved.
(1)explorer.gitcoin.co/#/round/10/0x2871742b184633f8dc8546c6301cbc209945033e/0x2871742b184633f8dc8546c6301cbc209945033e-227
(2) https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/12/28/cypherpunk.html
Objective(s)
MetaCulture has three objectives which address challenges Cult DAO has faced, while also addressing Lunarpunk development needs and leveraging Gitcoin as a platform for promoting privacy projects.
Culture: Facilitate positive sum dynamics between Lunarpunk and Solarpunk communities like DarkFi, LunarDAO, and Gitcoin in terms of exchange of culture and capital.
This includes Spaces along the lines of those we coordinated in 2023 with Kevin Owocki, DarkFi, & LunarDAO but centering on GitcoinLunarpunk symbiosis mediated by MetaCulture as a proxy for Cult DAO.
Capital: Sustained financial and network growth incentives for Cult builders, investees, and aligned partners in the form of quadratic funding and other crypto native mechanisms. Cult has a pool of investees without experience on Gitcoin who all have experience and capital to gain by engaging with Solarpunk communities there.
Governance: Explore Cult DAO’s potential transition from web2.0 to on-chain governance, possibly along the lines suggested by TW’s Hellraiser solution described at hackmd.io/@bootleggers/ryhxfQYn3.
For Q1-Q3 of 2024, MetaCulture’s focus is on Culture and Capital as these most effectively build the positive feedback loop between Cult DAO, the Moros community, Lunarpunk and Solarpunk communities.
The first step is that MetaCulture will manage, along with reps from DarkFi and LunarDAO, a Gitcoin OSS and/or Community grant round in April for “opening the portal” in terms of both culture and capital between Solarpunk and Lunarpunk.
We have a planned Space on X for talking about this leading up to Gitcoin Grants 20 in April.
This repeats each Gitcoin round this year (see below).
To sum up: The process of building the following Culture, Capital, & Governance Bridges is a phase of the solution to Cult DAO’s greatest problem: It’s isolation and hence lack of volume to grow the treasury to fund proposals, including other funders.
Ultimately what is most effective is the positive feedback dynamic of funders supporting each others’ grant rounds: A “fund the funders” circle. This might include MOROS NET, Cult, Gitcoin, LunarDAO, and CLRFund, and thereby most effectively accelerate network effects and development funding for early stage projects. To my knowledge, Hydra Ventures is the most similar existing DAO doing this. The difference is that Hydra is a managed entity versus a modular network of DAOs.
Culture: Facilitate positive sum dynamics between Lunarpunk and Solarpunk communities like DarkFi, LunarDAO, and Gitcoin in terms of exchange of culture and capital.
This includes Spaces along the lines of those we coordinated in 2023 with Kevin Owocki, DarkFi, & LunarDAO but centering on GitcoinLunarpunk symbiosis mediated by MetaCulture as a proxy for Cult DAO.
Capital: Sustained financial and network growth incentives for Cult builders, investees, and aligned partners in the form of quadratic funding and other crypto native mechanisms. Cult has a pool of investees without experience on Gitcoin who all have experience and capital to gain by engaging with Solarpunk communities there.
Governance: Explore Cult DAO’s potential transition from web2.0 to on-chain governance, possibly along the lines suggested by TW’s Hellraiser solution described at hackmd.io/@bootleggers/ryhxfQYn3.
For Q1-Q3 of 2024, MetaCulture’s focus is on Culture and Capital as these most effectively build the positive feedback loop between Cult DAO, the Moros community, Lunarpunk and Solarpunk communities.
The first step is that MetaCulture will manage, along with reps from DarkFi and LunarDAO, a Gitcoin OSS and/or Community grant round in April for “opening the portal” in terms of both culture and capital between Solarpunk and Lunarpunk.
We have a planned Space on X for talking about this leading up to Gitcoin Grants 20 in April.
This repeats each Gitcoin round this year (see below).
To sum up: The process of building the following Culture, Capital, & Governance Bridges is a phase of the solution to Cult DAO’s greatest problem: It’s isolation and hence lack of volume to grow the treasury to fund proposals, including other funders.
Ultimately what is most effective is the positive feedback dynamic of funders supporting each others’ grant rounds: A “fund the funders” circle. This might include MOROS NET, Cult, Gitcoin, LunarDAO, and CLRFund, and thereby most effectively accelerate network effects and development funding for early stage projects. To my knowledge, Hydra Ventures is the most similar existing DAO doing this. The difference is that Hydra is a managed entity versus a modular network of DAOs.
Technical Specification (including tools and technologies to be used):
In terms of Culture and Capital objectives, MetaCulture has used X and Telegram for ease of use for the Cult community, with a plan to shift to Matrix.org and a private IRC to secure coordination.
Governance: Once funding is available, MetaCulture will morph into Cult DAO’s first on-chain subDAO with a Moloch V3 custom build, built by Bootleggers.wtf
The plan is that MetaCulture then manages Cult’s transition from DiNO (DAO in Name Only) to a DAO with on-chain infrastructure which reflects Cult’s commitment to censorship resistance and protects the treasury against governance attacks through battletested code rather than web2.0 based social platforms.
Governance: Once funding is available, MetaCulture will morph into Cult DAO’s first on-chain subDAO with a Moloch V3 custom build, built by Bootleggers.wtf
The plan is that MetaCulture then manages Cult’s transition from DiNO (DAO in Name Only) to a DAO with on-chain infrastructure which reflects Cult’s commitment to censorship resistance and protects the treasury against governance attacks through battletested code rather than web2.0 based social platforms.
Budget Breakdown
Funds received will support:
(a) Operations for optimizing engagement and opening funding mechanisms between Gitcoin, DarkFi, and LunarDAO.
(b) Building out “fund the funders” coordination infrastructure for generalizing the above, (a), to arbitrary value aligned funders.
(a) Operations for optimizing engagement and opening funding mechanisms between Gitcoin, DarkFi, and LunarDAO.
(b) Building out “fund the funders” coordination infrastructure for generalizing the above, (a), to arbitrary value aligned funders.
Project Timeline
2024: Q1-Q3
(1) Culture & Capital
a. Coordinating grant processes between DarkFi, LunarDAO, & MetaCulture via Gitcoin. This includes:
-Design and management of each Round, and guerilla marketing across the myriad Spaces which occur during the Grant cycle
-Ensuring community members understand how all facets of the grant process works so that community education becomes decentralized and organic
-Adaptation during and between rounds to refine strategy as needed
Gitcoin Grant Rounds in 2024
GG20: April
GG21: June
GG22: August
GG23: December
The goal for each Round is to at least 2x the previous Round’s number of donors and amount of funding received from the matching pools. The first few rounds are usually hardest, with subsequent rounds benefiting from an existing donor base that knows how quadratic funding works and can onboard others.
2024: Q3/Q4
Governance: Transition MetaCulture governance to a Moloch V3 subDAO within Cult DAO which coordinates Cult’s governance transition to on-chain governance tooling.
Our aim eventually is to generalize MetaCulture such that it bridges between communities which in principle occupy a shared ambient space of values and vision, but in practice encounter frictions which short circuit their effectiveness. Tools which automate dispute resolution like Aiki Wiki (1) have a role to play in both the internet of today, and the world of tomorrow’s privacy preserving and censorship resistant digital infrastructure.
(1) https://aikiwiki.com/
(1) Culture & Capital
a. Coordinating grant processes between DarkFi, LunarDAO, & MetaCulture via Gitcoin. This includes:
-Design and management of each Round, and guerilla marketing across the myriad Spaces which occur during the Grant cycle
-Ensuring community members understand how all facets of the grant process works so that community education becomes decentralized and organic
-Adaptation during and between rounds to refine strategy as needed
Gitcoin Grant Rounds in 2024
GG20: April
GG21: June
GG22: August
GG23: December
The goal for each Round is to at least 2x the previous Round’s number of donors and amount of funding received from the matching pools. The first few rounds are usually hardest, with subsequent rounds benefiting from an existing donor base that knows how quadratic funding works and can onboard others.
2024: Q3/Q4
Governance: Transition MetaCulture governance to a Moloch V3 subDAO within Cult DAO which coordinates Cult’s governance transition to on-chain governance tooling.
Our aim eventually is to generalize MetaCulture such that it bridges between communities which in principle occupy a shared ambient space of values and vision, but in practice encounter frictions which short circuit their effectiveness. Tools which automate dispute resolution like Aiki Wiki (1) have a role to play in both the internet of today, and the world of tomorrow’s privacy preserving and censorship resistant digital infrastructure.
(1) https://aikiwiki.com/
Team Background
Three anon DAO contributors, including Wastelander, whose background is as a contributor in several DAOs, including Cult DAO from its inception. He is currently learning Rust with the assistance of likeminded individuals in the space with the objective of building programmable social coordination tooling.
Project Impact
(a) Building Access to Capital: MetaCulture bridges Cult, MOROS NET, DarkFi, LunarDAO and future initiatives to Gitcoin while coordinating their ability to support one another.
Gitcoin is Ethereum’s most known and well-capitalized grantmaking hub. It distributes funds through Quadratic Funding (1), an algorithm which assigns funds to projects from a matching pool based on how many donations they received relative to others, rather than the amount any given donor gives.
So, the more donors (which pass the sybil criteria) a project has within a Round relative to others, the higher % of matching funds they receive.
This is the power of coordinating Lunarpunk communities in creating positive sum funding gains, while also leveraging Gitcoin as a platform for why privacy matters.
A few statistics to keep in mind as we head into the remainder of 2024:
-Since launching its Grants Program in 2019, Gitcoin has distributed $56,000,000 in funding to 3,715 projects (2).
-According to Vitalik: “Gitcoin Grants is establishing itself as a significant pillar of the Ethereum ecosystem that more and more projects are relying on for some or all of their support.”
-During Gitcoin Grants 19 this past November, the matching pool for Web3 Open Source Software was $200,000.
The other Round I think DarkFi and LunarDAO would fit is Web3 Community & Education, which also had a $200,000 matching pool last round.
(b) Memetic Warfare (3)
MetaCulture is a path for revitalizing Cult DAO as a perpetual motion funding machine with the memetics to effectively communicate Lunarpunk values at scale.
As communities which share an appreciation for OSS, privacy, and digital sovereignty, our mutual goal should be catalyzing a cultural paradigm shift away from the strangely inverted narrative that, if you are innocent, then you shouldn’t be afraid of being surveilled. For Cult, Moros, DarkFi and LunarDAO, Gitcoin is a hub of passionate, brilliant, and aligned individuals that is open for helping transmit our message that anonymity not only isn’t scary, but should be a normalized default and easily available option for digital communities.
As Phil Zimmerman said in the ’90s, “Privacy is as apple pie as the Constitution.” It takes a massive psyop for generations of people to believe the opposite. MetaCulture activates the value alignment between Solarpunk and Lunarpunk communities, including funding DAOs, in order to create positive sum value for all parties involved.
(1) https://www.wtfisqf.com/
(2) https://www.gitcoin.co/program
(3) https://dark.fi/insights/memetic-warfare.html
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Ethereum Donation Address: 0xaa7bDc1aBE517a07e0Aab475789E63fc385f08f0
Gitcoin is Ethereum’s most known and well-capitalized grantmaking hub. It distributes funds through Quadratic Funding (1), an algorithm which assigns funds to projects from a matching pool based on how many donations they received relative to others, rather than the amount any given donor gives.
So, the more donors (which pass the sybil criteria) a project has within a Round relative to others, the higher % of matching funds they receive.
This is the power of coordinating Lunarpunk communities in creating positive sum funding gains, while also leveraging Gitcoin as a platform for why privacy matters.
A few statistics to keep in mind as we head into the remainder of 2024:
-Since launching its Grants Program in 2019, Gitcoin has distributed $56,000,000 in funding to 3,715 projects (2).
-According to Vitalik: “Gitcoin Grants is establishing itself as a significant pillar of the Ethereum ecosystem that more and more projects are relying on for some or all of their support.”
-During Gitcoin Grants 19 this past November, the matching pool for Web3 Open Source Software was $200,000.
The other Round I think DarkFi and LunarDAO would fit is Web3 Community & Education, which also had a $200,000 matching pool last round.
(b) Memetic Warfare (3)
MetaCulture is a path for revitalizing Cult DAO as a perpetual motion funding machine with the memetics to effectively communicate Lunarpunk values at scale.
As communities which share an appreciation for OSS, privacy, and digital sovereignty, our mutual goal should be catalyzing a cultural paradigm shift away from the strangely inverted narrative that, if you are innocent, then you shouldn’t be afraid of being surveilled. For Cult, Moros, DarkFi and LunarDAO, Gitcoin is a hub of passionate, brilliant, and aligned individuals that is open for helping transmit our message that anonymity not only isn’t scary, but should be a normalized default and easily available option for digital communities.
As Phil Zimmerman said in the ’90s, “Privacy is as apple pie as the Constitution.” It takes a massive psyop for generations of people to believe the opposite. MetaCulture activates the value alignment between Solarpunk and Lunarpunk communities, including funding DAOs, in order to create positive sum value for all parties involved.
(1) https://www.wtfisqf.com/
(2) https://www.gitcoin.co/program
(3) https://dark.fi/insights/memetic-warfare.html
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Ethereum Donation Address: 0xaa7bDc1aBE517a07e0Aab475789E63fc385f08f0
MetaCulture
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