Draft Proposal: XIP#7 Builder grant request for HYYPE, an NFTX ecosystem project

[0xchop]

Hey all!

Sharing this Builder Grant Request I’ve been working on together with the Hyype team for the past weeks, which I’m very excited to share to the community now!

Please read through the entire proposal and add additional comments/questions in the comments below.

Authors

ChopChop

Glossary

NFTX Ecosystem

Summary

This proposal is intended to give out a builder grant for the founder squad working on Hyype, an NFT social platform for people connecting with each other, which uses NFTs as the main medium or content. The exact terms of the grant and the team’s roadmap are listed under specifications.

Hyype will function as its own DAO with its own governance token, which will be mainly (60%) distributed to NFTX token holders.

Rationale

NFTX is growing rapidly, becoming the number one platform and protocol for launching NFT index funds. With product market fit proven on NFTXs main use case, we are now entering an expansion phase where entering additional verticals grows our lead further. Examples of these are active collaborating with projects like PieDAO and Indexed Finance, two Index Fund providers who will include NFTX-based funds (and/or our governance token) in NFT Metaverse offerings, for investors to gain broad exposure to the space.

While these collaborations are key to growth, we’ve also noted that there are large gaps to fill in the (social) discoverability of NFTs. This is where Hyype comes in.

Hyype is a social discovery platform aimed at people who collect arts and collectibles in the form of NFTs. Built for individuals that want to be recognised and seen by their peers in the community. People that want to discover new work they may want to collect and want to see new trends (items which other collectors might have started collecting).

Hyype is currently in its inception phase and its team consists of very early backers of NFTX. They have reached out to become a NFTX ecosystem DAO through receiving a builder grant, meaning that they will allocate 60% of their DAO governance tokens to NFTX holders post token generation event.

Effect

Opportunity

• Clearing a builder grant for an end user product that aims at the social aspects of NFTs broadens the NFTX ecosystem to become more generalistically applicable, opening additional growth opportunities.
• By proposing a builder grant versus building out the idea inhouse, the current core squads remain focused on building out the NFT creator and investor focused use cases, ensuring we’re not spreading resources too thin.

Risk

• While utilization/integration of the NFTX protocol is slated for Hyype, it will not be part of the MVP. This may cause little confusion upon launch, meaning communication around this has to be crystal clear.

Specifications

The builder grant secures 12 weeks (3 months) of building out the MVP. The roadmap and expected output of this 12 week sprint looks accordingly:

• MVP - end of week 6.
• Alpha Launch - end of week 12.
• Beta Launch - introduction of protocol
• Token Launch - after protocol is live.

Tokenomics of Hyype will be distributed accordingly post-token generation event:

• 60% - Distributed to NFTX holders through a mix of distribution methods
• 15% - Founder Squad (4 year linear vesting)
• 25% - HYYPE DAO treasury

Funding request - Yes - Implementation Requires Funding

• In order to bootstrap the Hyype project, we’d like to offer them the following builder grant, for which funds are required from the DAO treasury: 100000 USDC to pursue the above-mentioned roadmap.

These funds are to be paid upfront after the vote passes.

Communication

• Discord: https://discord.gg/xcJkxMXSR8

Proposed points of discussion.

• Further questions / in depth on what Hyype is

Quorum (For forum)

• Minimum Quorum: At least 5 votes
• Passing Threshold: More than 50% must vote in agreement for the XIP to Pass. For changes to the NFTX contract, more than 70% must vote in agreement for the XIP to pass.

Proceed with proposal

• Yes
• No

[Oranges]

Quite a different and interesting proposal.

A few thoughts / questions:

• Does the NFTX treasury get a good chunk of the Hyype token distribution for NFTX holders (As the treasury holds a lot of NFTX)? The idea here is that the airdrop to NFTX holders will pay for a part or all of the grant.

• If the NFTX integration is not part of the MVP, are there any guarantees that the Hyype team can give to make sure that an integration happens?

[0xchop]

Looped these questions back to the team. Most are based in west-coast US timezone!

[quag]

Love the concept of building out the ecosystem - and the idea of hyype.

Is there a spec or outline of what an MVP launch is? (And the difference between that and alpha?) Or how we can measure success/performance/milestones?

Is the 100,000 USDC grant the only funding the project is receiving? i.e., is that enough to acquire the resource required for the initial timeline?

[0xNick]

It’s hard to overestimate the size of this market in 5 years. A giant opportunity for NFTX if the Hyype can ship to that schedule.

Is it possible to share details of the full team involved?

[supriyo]

Hey Nick,

Thank you for all the support! That timeline we picked is indeed pretty aggressive, but to that effect - holding our feet to the fire is a great way to impose self-accountability to keep up with the pace of space and how we want to get the experience out to the users.

A bit about my background:

Hi all,
My name is Supriyo and I have been the tech space for the last 10 years or so. I come from a computer science background and then took a choice to pursue Product Mgmt and User Experience as full-time gig. In my current role, I lead the frontend design team for alexa smart home. Previously have done similar roles for other tech unicorns in US and Asia. In my free time, I am working to build Hyype. I have been in the decentralised tech space since 2015-2016 (engaging with communities using my alt account )

Rest of the team members (those who attended the NFTX gov call on April 7, 2021 have more info ) are early builders and developers from the open concourse community who built Defi pulse. We are banding together build the MVP and get something to market fairly soon.

[supriyo]

Hey quag. Great questions -

1. At a very high-level, spec is still being defined at a granular level on individual feature-sets. But for the MVP the notion is to launch a fairly customizable profile experience which enables you to showcase your prized NFTs . and in Alpha we would want to build a robust social layer on top of the MVP. The staggered approach would let us iterate faster and also listen to users early on for feedback.

2. 100k USDC grant enables us to bootstrap and get us to the beta for Hyype. This is the only grant likely we will be taking up (if the proposal goes through). In future, we would look into raising more funds / capital (have not decided on the methology) yet which would allow us to bring folks in full-time to work on continued development with more firepower.

[TheoRochaix]

I like it !

It looks like an ambitious project and 60% for NFTX holders is cool. I am down with this proposal.
NFTX still paving the way of what decentralization can look like.

How is the team composed @supriyo ?

[supriyo]

Hi Theo,

So the team currently has -
me - for the product, UX and the project management side of things.
Roni and Arman - working on the back-end and the infrastructure surrounding the Hyype core product.

Actively recruiting / looking for -
Protocol Engineer (1)
Front-end Engineer (1) [I know enough to be dangerous so i am the backup plan on that one]

We have several folks who have been interested in helping out on marketing and getting the word out so really humbled by the support we have received so far even being low-key about this.

If you have any referrals you would want to make who could help us out on the open gaps / roles then more than happy to chat more!

[scott_l]

@quag

Is the 100,000 USDC grant the only funding the project is receiving? i.e., is that enough to acquire the resource required for the initial timeline?

that is just intended to go for the initial build out phase. we do not plan to ask to nftx dao for a second grant. if we build something people want, i think the needed resources will be acquireable.

[scott_l]

@Oranges

If the NFTX integration is not part of the MVP, are there any guarantees that the Hyype team can give to make sure that an integration happens?

we plan to take a user-first approach (rather than prioritizing nftx usage) and do not plan to make any explicit commitments on where when or how nftx will be integrated.

i think nftx is a useful protocol for nft owners, so i speculate that the most likely result is that nftx will make sense as a way to add value for users, but how that happens will be driven by what is best for hyype, not nftx.

[scott_l]

@Oranges

Does the NFTX treasury get a good chunk of the Hyype token distribution for NFTX holders (As the treasury holds a lot of NFTX)? The idea here is that the airdrop to NFTX holders will pay for a part or all of the grant.

we plan to exclude the NFTX treasury from the drop because including it would make the NFTX DAO the controlling voter in governance. we seek maximize economic alignment/overlap, but still achieve a good distribution that will create the necessary preconditions for good governance.

[Qsix]

@scott_l

i think nftx is a useful protocol for nft owners, so i speculate that the most likely result is that nftx will make sense as a way to add value for users, but how that happens will be driven by what is best for hyype, not nftx.

It would be good to know that Hyype is thinking a bit more about how to build a symbiotic relationship with NFTX. Apes Together Strong.

[0xchop]

Proposal is now live on snapshot for the upcoming 48 hours!

https://snapshot.vote/#/nftx.eth/proposal/QmS6viaGmNiGctihFeQGY6BFuuDPHLNKgSKtDQYrSgaVMV

[0xchop]

Hey all!

Wanted to give you all an update on this grant request, as some time has passed since it cleared the governance vote on Snapshot. Drafted an official response on it together with the Hyype team to make sure everything is communicated clear & transparently:

NFTX and Hyype have decided to not pursue the grant offer made by the NFTX governance vote.

Hyype has no immediate plans to issue a token, and NFTX is focused on shipping v2 of its protocol.

NFTX and Hyype plan to continue to work together as partners to push the NFT space forward:

• Hyype and NFTX plan to explore directly integrating NFTX v2 vaults into the Hyype user experience.
• Hyype plans to make its NFT metadata API available to the NFTX consumer products squad to assist NFTX in crafting.

NFTs have entered a critical phase as the first mainstream hype wave has past, and both teams look forward to grinding together as we seek the mainstream adoption of NFTs we believe is on the horizon.

Alex Gausman (NFTX)
ChopChop (NFTX)
Supriyo Roy (Hyype)
Scott Lewis (Hyype)

[gaus]

I approve this message

[Cryptoseeker]

Definitely! As a organization to grow strong, great appreciation and recognition to everyone whom hold hands to make it possible! Kudos Guys!