Last updated 2 years ago
A2T: Alternative to Tyranny
Problem
Authoritarians use wargame simulations to refine their agenda strategies however decentralization advocates do not.
Solution
Create an open source decentralized wargame simulator with community developed modules for specific scenarios.
Total to date
This is the total amount allocated to A2T: Alternative to Tyranny.
About this idea
Create an open source decentralized wargame simulator with community developed modules for specific scenarios.
DAO Coders Inc is an experienced team of Blockchain developers, Plutus pioneers, Veteran Community Advisors and Solutions Analysts that was incorporated after previous round funding for several DAO-NET suite proposals.
[IMPACT]
Alternative to Tyranny (A2T) is a modular decentralized simulation game in which players develop and test strategies to thwart authoritarian control, censorship, misinformation and surveillance while developing decentralized alternative solutions to global issues like climate change, war and poverty. Players earn Freedom tokens through game play or purchases which sponsor the development of expansion modules for the game.
Initial core game play consists of developing and/or supporting ideas for further game development and marketing however specific A2T modules proposals for expanded game play are also in this funding round, see the proposals A2T: 5th Gen Info War Simulator, A2T: Carbon Market and A2T: Secession.
At its core, A2T is a variant of the DAO-NET: Development Funder smart contract that is specialized for game play and which produces Freedom tokens instead of DAO tokens. The relationship between A2T and DAO-NET is that the former is a test environment for ideas that are wargamed in a simulation environment for possible implementation strategies while the latter is intended for actual implementations.
A2T is an open source smart contract that facilitates a three way trade to fund game development proposals through the purchase of tokens. The three sides of the trade are Proposers, Players and Purchasers. Like the Development Funder solution there are two types of tokens called Popular tokens and Freedom tokens.
Proposers submit game development proposal ideas for funding similar to how Project Catalyst proposers submit ideas in Ideascale. Key differences from Project Catalyst are that proposal funding requests are directly in ADA amounts instead of USD equivalent and are limited to 10,000 ADA at a time. These differences are due to the way the funding process works and the desire for rapid frequent low risk funding instead of the slower larger funding process in Project Catalyst. Larger projects can be funded by breaking them down into funding requests for multiple smaller sprints.
Players receive daily tokens, called Populars, that can only be used to assign support for one or more game development proposals. The Proposal budget is divided by the number of Popular tokens it has received to give a Freedom token purchase price. The popularity of a Proposal is indicated by the more Popular tokens it receives. More popular Proposals are more likely to be funded since they result in a cheaper Freedom token purchase price.
Purchasers are players looking to purchase additional Freedom tokens. Purchasers have a range of Freedom token prices based upon the popularity of each Proposal. Purchasers place a bid on Freedom tokens at a specific Freedom token price for a specific proposal. If the popularity of a proposal rises to the point that the Freedom token price drops to bid price point or lower and there are sufficient bids to fund the entire Proposal budget then the A2T smart contract executes the trade.
The three way trade works as follows. The ADA from the Purchasers is transferred to the Proposers to fully fund their budget. The Popular tokens are burnt and 2 Freedom tokens are created for each Popular token burnt. The Players receive 1 Freedom token for each Popular token they assigned to the Proposal. The Purchaser receive 1 Freedom token for each multiple of the Freedom token price that they bid (for instance if the final purchase price was 2 ADA per Freedom token and the purchaser bid 10 ADA then they would receive 5 Freedom tokens). T
The value proposition of Freedom tokens is that they will be used for internal A2T game play. The utility and value of Freedom tokens will be continually improved as more game modules are added to A2T.
The main impacts to each user group are:
- Proposers can receive funding for their game development projects in days instead of months under Project Catalyst
- Players are incentivized to participate in the funding process by earning Freedom tokens that can be used for in game transactions
- Purchasers can purchase Freedom tokens at free market prices while funding proposals that they support.
A2T is a decentralized blockchain gaming application that should drive mass adoption of Cardano. While the original intention of A2T is to develop wargame simulation modules that provide alternative solutions to authoritarian responses to global crises, the open source community nature of the platform allows for funding for other blockchain gaming applications.
- In addition to increasing the total users and number of games, A2T is a play-to-earn application and the value amount generated by gamers will be tracked.
- The number and value of Popular and Freedom tokens which are specific to gaming can be measured.
- The number of content creators and new games created through A2T will be tracked.
All of the above Challenge KPIs will be communicated through a publicly available dashboard that will be updated at a minimum of daily.
The main risk for successful project delivery, due to the complexity of the smart contract, is the possibility of a security vulnerability in the code. To mitigate the risk, the smart contract will undergo an accredited third party security audit.
Post delivery, there is the risk that the core A2T game without any additional modules will not be compelling enough to drive significant gaming interest. The strategy to mitigate this risk includes:
- Submitting an initial A2T modules in this funding round A2T: 5th Gen Info War Simulator.
- DAO Coders intends to launch a Mission Driven Stake Pool in May to help fund its operations including additional A2T modules
- Longer term solutions include a merchandising campaign (see the Merchandise Store project) to fund additional A2T expansion
[FEASIBILITY]
May 2022
- Prototype game development proposal submission process
- Prototype Popular token minting, voting process
June 2022
- Prototype free market proposal funding process
July 2022
- Prototype Popular Token burning/Freedom token minting process
August 2022
- Third Party Smart Contract Audits
September 2022
- Test A2T process on Testnet
October 2022
- Launch A2T on Mainnet
2 Plutus Developers ($4000/month):$48,000
Third Party Smart Contract Audit: $10,000
Product Manager ($1,000/month): $6,000
Total: $64,000
Product Manager
- have a holistic understanding of the DAO-NET suite of proposals
- experienced in managing multidisciplinary teams in up to a dozen projects simultaneously
- ability to articulate and fluently translate between business and technical requirements
- able to manage large complex budgets
- experienced in hiring consultants and third party contract negotiations
Lead Developer
- Full stack developer experience
- Plutus development, especially algorithmic DAO smart contract primitive
- Define technical requirements
- Integrate multiple software components into a larger solution
Plutus Developers
- Full stack developer experience
- Plutus development of smart contracts, Plutus Pioneer preferred
Team
Product Manager: Dwayne Collard - 20 years+ IT Consultant, Solutions Analyst, IT Manager, Veteran Community Advisor https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwayne-collard/
Lead Developer: Jude Ben - 9 years+ Software Development , Plutus Smart Contract Development , Cloud and Infrastructure Engineer https://www.linkedin.com/in/judeebene/
Plutus Developers: As part of previous DAO-NET funding, DAO Coders has been building a small pool of, currently 3, contractors. This work will be done by new contractors that will be added to that pool.
[AUDITABILITY]
Development progress will be tracked using an agile methodology and weekly team meetings. Specific quantitative indicators to be tracked will be Total Number of Pull requests in Github, Total Numbers of Github commits and the Total Number of Errors Fixed.
Success Criteria
- Proposers are able to submit game development proposals with budgets to the platform (for the initial minimal viable product this is likely to be simply a link to a proposal or possibly to an Ideascale proposal).
- Voters receive daily Popular tokens which they can assign to proposals
- Purchasers are able to see real time market pricing and interest for Freedom tokens per game development proposal and submit bids accordingly.
- Smart contract will execute the Popular Token burning, Freedom Token creation and Proposal funding process automatically when the pricing conditions are met.
- Relevant smart contracts successfully pass security audits from a credible third party
This proposal is a member of the A2T suite of proposals that are new in Fund 8.
In Fund 8, DAO Coders Inc has submitted 2 categories of proposals Alternative to Tyranny (A2T) proposals which are decentralized wargame simulator modules for testing decentralized idea implementations against probable authoritarian responses and DAO-NET proposals which are real world implementations that can be implemented immediately.
A2T and DAO-NET share a lot of base smart contract code and are meant to be interoperable to the largest degree and conceptually share similar designs. As new features are added in either suite then the transfer to the other suite of those improvements should be straight forward however since each suite is designed to be independently community run, after launch, this easy interoperability may diverge over time.
In Fund 7, the following DAO-NET suite of proposals were funded: DAO-NET: DAO Deployment Platform, DAO-NET: Legal Defense DAO, DAO-NET: Auditor DAO and DAO-NET: Multilingual Translation.
In Fund 7, there were a total of 8 other DAO-NET proposals that were approved but not funded.
All of the DAO-NET suite of proposals are interrelated but each proposal in Fund 7 could be standalone funded. The core DAO smart contract coding was funded with the DAO-NET: DAO Deployment Platform project which means that this work no longer needs to be contingency funded in Fund 8.
DAOs are a paradigm evolution in how societies organize themselves and the DAO-NET vision is to systematically progress towards that evolution by breaking the larger vision down into small incremental steps with each proposal. As part of that vision all DAO Coder Inc intellectual property is intended to be freely shared with the world so that any insights can be duplicated in other experiments to rapidly advance decentralized governance therefore:
- All software developed as part of this proposal will be Open Source under Apache License, version 2.0
- All documentation will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
In Fund 8, DAO Coders has submitted the following proposals:
Team
DAO Coders Inc is an experienced team of Blockchain developers, Plutus pioneers, Veteran Community Advisors and Solutions Analysts that was incorporated after previous round funding for several DAO-NET suite proposals.
