DAM x PUSH Grant Proposal
Project Name: Decentralized Arcade Machine (DAM)
Email: roshaan@umbrellachain.com
About You:
Roshaan Khan:
I am the founder of DAM and have been in the blockchain space professionally for about 4 years, but have been involved as an investor and supporter for about 6 years. My background is as a Technical Product Manager in web3 for major L1s, but also moonlit as a consultant helping startups however I can. After spending my first couple of years in the industry helping nonprofits, funds, and incubators through education and documentation. During this phase, I wrote the original whitepaper for the Government Blockchain Association (GBA). Shortly after I joined Block.One, the creators of the EOS blockchain and EOSIO VM, as a TPM. Here I published my first piece of research in the blockchain industry detailing privacy in public blockchain technologies from an enterprise perspective. You can find that here.
Near the end of my stint at Block.One I began consulting a few projects specifically on economic and tokenomic system design as well as overall web3 product strategy. Then I joined NEM, a chain from 2014 derived from Bitcoin and one of the grandfathers of the blockchain space. They started a new chain named Symbol for which I architected and led the development of Garush, a fully onchain NFT system for encoding NFTs onchain and creating a censorship-resistant marketplace for these onchain assets. I enjoyed my role at NEM, but they were undergoing some organizational changes that would’ve changed my role, so we amiably split paths at the start of 2022.
During the last few years, I have been tinkering with close friends on various products in the space. From DeFi to NFTs to Infrastructure and Dev Tooling. While doing so we built on almost every major L1/L2 in the industry and learned of the shortcomings. Having a full career product managing the advancement of L1s we saw glaring issues in the options available to developers and began work on what is now known as Umbrella Labs. We are building various pieces of technology that focus on easing the end-user and developer experiences within web3.
Finally, we went to Eth-SF on November 4th and met the PUSH team. We pitched our vision for DAM and what we were trying to build. As hardcore gamers ourselves we felt there was a glaring disconnect between how web3 games are built and how gamers actually game. We were met with great support from their team, and they recommended we apply for grants to push our hackathon project to the next level. Now here we are with this proposal!
Twitter: @khanondrum
Discord: khanondrum#2202
Other Team Members:
Jimmy Nagles - Front-end engineer with a passion for games and web3. He’s been actively contributing to the industry since 2020, having worked on NFT projects and Crypto projects alike.
Shadman Hossain - A seasoned blockchain engineer and solution architect. He’s run blockchain initiatives at some of the biggest US federal contractors in the world.
Project TL:DR
DAM lets devs focus on making good games by offering an “on-switch” for game devs to activate web3 features. DAM uses web3 to power Collectibles, a Metaverse Marketplace, and eSports as a Service through a novel Proof of Victory mechanism.
Proposal Category
Primary Category: Gaming
Secondary Categories: NFT, DAO, Tooling
Project Overview
Building Good Games Is Hard. The average AAA game takes about four years to develop, with a minimum cost of over $80 million. It’s just as hard to build a successful web3 application. In 2021, VCs invested ~$30 billion across 1,278 web3 deals. Making the average raise $23.5M with expectations of needing more.
DAM lets devs focus on making good games.
Connect your game’s APIs to DAM to enable:
- “win2earn” contracts that act as PVP lobbies for users. Put your money where your mouth is and test your skills against other players with your proof of victory stamped on-chain for a global leaderboard and bonus prizes.
- Integration into DAM’s homepage - a metaverse game marketplace (think Steam) where you can tap a community of gamers.
- Enable onchain collectibles and currencies for your games through the DAM Marketplace.
The architecture diagrams are complete, and we know exactly what to build and have clarity on how to build most of it. The biggest lift will be the web2 aspect of creating an API system for games to connect to and relay in-game information to spin up PVP contracts and decide on winners. The Marketplace and NFT features are things our team has done before, so we’re confident that they will not be too difficult.
During the hackathon, we integrated PUSH as a chat mechanism and are using the Skale blockchain to offer gasless environments for both players and game developers. We also have a full business model (fee on PVP Contracts and marketplace) and a utility token ($DAM) that’s used to secure the Decentralized Arcade Machine.
We believe that with a $500k budget (and devs onboarded from day 1) we could get to a fully functioning product within 6 months. We have support from the internal Skale team, so the help of their solution engineers and community is a key factor in our ability to deliver quickly.
Value Proposition to Push Protocol
PUSH is used in two major ways within the DAM ecosystem. For the Eth-SF hackathon, we implemented the wallet-to-wallet chat functionality that’s visible in our Github. We want to use PUSH to create chat lobbies between players before, after, and during matches. Furthermore, this chat function allows developers not to have to worry about creating social functions within their application and can let us handle it through PUSH.
Additionally, we want to utilize PUSH to deliver notifications to users when Collectibles are sold/bought, when games are won/lost, when games begin/end, and when users receive a challenge from another player. Creating a robust notification system is key to a seamless gaming experience, and we believe PUSH is the best way to accomplish this.
Lastly, there are a plethora of game developers utilizing PUSH in their stack. We believe we can help these games reach a larger audience and have more robust features. Consequently supporting the PUSH ecosystem of developers with an easy-to-use tool.
Funding Requested
148,148 PUSH @ $0.27 ($40k USD)
Milestones
Phase 1: 3 Months
- Create PVP smart contract logic
Smart contract system that handles multiple players’ inbound payments and then sends a win2earn prize to the winning address based on an off-chain signal.
Logic Includes:
- Setting up a PVP lobby in-game creates contract on-chain.
- Variable “Lobby SIze” which is the number of players allowed in the match.
- Variable “Buy In” which is the amount players must input to contract to play.
- Contract reads game state to determine who was the winner.
- Contract pays out the winner of the match after deducting the platform fee.
- Contract records “proof-of-victory” on-chain for DAM to query.
- Publish a multiplayer version of Flappy Bird connected to DAM as a proof of concept
- Simple game that lets 2-10 players play flappy bird. The player who gets the furthest wins the pot.
- Implement a PUSH notification system for PVP Contract
- Notifications to winners and losers involved in a competitive match. Includes the amount of crypto that was spent and how much (if any) was won.
Future Phases (these are not included as deliverables in the current funding round)
- Create API for web2 games to easily implement PVP contracts. The current solution is more web3 friendly.
- Create an NFT marketplace for in-game assets with PUSH notifications
- Implement a PUSH chat lobby for players that join a game
- Design Metaverse experience in Unity
Wallet Address
0xD3972d92ef96e745526Ee368780879B5bBD7b074
Relevant Links & Attachments
It says new users can only put 1 link per post. Since my email took that link, I’ll share the deck and other links in a comment below. Sorry about the inconvenience!
Referral
The PUSH team encouraged us to submit a grant proposal. Jun Gong and John Snow on Telegram were our main points of contact at the hackathon DAM was born at and afterward. We also spoke to other members of the team who were supportive such as Jaf, Richa, Pranshu, and Madeline.
