Creativity & Growth - Sandstorm Creator platform

by 0x8958bdbeeeeb1a0e3eeec3306e7fc07ca3edd7d8 (SandStormco)

Should the following $120,000 grant in the Platform category be approved?

Abstract

Sandstorm is a talent marketplace that puts creativity first. Creators are the people who make UGC platforms magical, and we are here to support them.

Our platform allows independent artists & studios to create profiles and build their portfolios, get hired by top level brands / agencies & gain more visibility across all types of virtual worlds.

With this project, our goal is to use the experience of all the campaigns we did so far to innovate & grow the creative input in Decentraland. Our last campaign generated more than 200 unique assets, scenes & wearables by dozens of creators.

By leading with creativity, we aim to onboard, educate & fund new creators while providing opportunities to already existing creators in the space.

Grant size

120,000 USD in DAI

Project duration

6 months

Beneficiary address

0x77BD4E9BB7094F92fb93b08cF5C368503CCd6c41

Email address

oscom@sandstorm.co

Description

The Sandstorm platform has 4 main live features actively used by 15+ Virtual world platforms:

• Contests
• Proposals
• Analytics
• Server hosting service

Website: app.sandstorm.co

This project will be concentrated around using Contests & Proposals

Here is how it works:

• 1 "project round" has 1 theme and lasts a month
• On launch of the project round, 1 proposal with a budget of 18000$ (total budget of the project round) is initiated.
• Creators & Studios will be able to apply for the project round with IDEAS & PROJECT CONCEPTS, as well as the amount they want to be compensated for the work. It is expected that creators provide in depth descriptions as to why they should be funded.
• Each Creator / Studio will be able to do 1 request, and each funding request can be of a maximum of 2000$ to help them realize their idea.
• Simultaneously, an open contest will be launched for people who want to participate without requesting funding OR creators who want to produce more than 1 project. That contest will last over the course of a month and only grant extra visibility.

Note: Sandstorm being a US company, following US regulations & laws, we are required to KYC users in order to issue monetary compensations.

This means that per round, a minimum of 9 projects will be produced. Each project having its own scope & being able to consist of 1 more extensive scene OR a full suite of wearables OR a full suite of emotes OR a full suite of assets, it is to be expected that more than 500 individual assets will be produced by over 45 unique designers / studios over the timeline of this campaign.

Each project will be individually marketed on release by the creators & Sandstorm. Sandstorm will additionally leverage their network to put creators in touch with event hosts & production teams - this will help further content production down the line, outside of the scope of this initiative.

Within the proposal description, there will be included:

• The overall THEME of the project round
• Technical expectations (Decentraland guidelines)
• Description of the above
• An expected Delivery Deadline

Through our management infrastructure, we will handle oversight of projects & make sure all creators deliver on time. Example of a Virtual World successfully leveraging Sandstorm as production & creative partner: https://twitter.com/OfficialTCGCoin

In the Budget rundown, we added example themes that could be tied to a Round of initiatives.

In addendum: If this goes through, we will provide our Streaming hosting infrastructure for free to the DCL Facilitation Squad for them to host their Townhalls, workshops & events in world.

We @ the Sandstorm team hope that you are as excited about this initiative as we are. Time to get creative in Decentraland!

Roadmap and milestones

I. Preparation:

Content planing & preparation

II. Execution:

Month #1: Project round 1 launched, creators hired, productions initiated Month #2: Project round 2 launched, creators hired, productions initiated Month #3: Project round 3 launched, creators hired, productions initiated (All creators / Studios completed Round 1) Month #4: Project round 4 launched, creators hired, productions initiated (All creators / Studios completed Round 2) Month #5: Project round 5 launched, creators hired, productions initiated (All creators / Studios completed Round 3) Month #6: Project round 6 launched, creators hired, productions initiated (All creators / Studios completed Round 4)

Note: Depending on production speed of designers, there might be an Add-on of 1-2 months until Rounds 4 & 5 are fully completed. In that case, the Month 1-4 designs will already be open-sourced.

III. Completion:

Collect all productions, reorganize them & open source to the Decentraland community

This proposal is summarized due to technical limitations. To view it complete and vote on it, visit the DCL DAO Governance dApp