CityDAO Community Roundup: physical-world governance experiments here we come!

November 9th, 2021

The amount of enthusiasm around CityDAO to build and explore the frontiers of technology and land / governance this past month has been unbelievable. I’m in awe of the quality of talent this DAO is attracting. Time for an update - grab a ☕️ and dive in! 🎉

Table of Contents

CityDAO so far
News & Updates
Shoutouts & Showcases
Overheard in CityDAO
DAO industry news
Memes to go

What is CityDAO?

The CityDAO community is made up of ambitious and HIGHLY curious people exploring and building at the frontier of technology, governance experiments and physical land.

The vision of CityDAO is to build the city of the future on the Ethereum blockchain by experimenting with tokenizing land, rights, and governance. 🏙

🔈CityDAO so far

First, let’s do a quick recap of the CityDAO adventure so far:

Month 1: July - laying the groundwork

July 1 - DAOs can legally be recognized as an LLC in Wyoming
July 2 - CityDAO starts (Scott’s infamous tweet)
July 7 - First community call
July 15 - CityDAO Discord membership crosses 1000 people
July 23 - CityDAO officially registered as an LLC in Wyoming
July 28 - CityDAO gets voted in on Mirror’s $WRITE RACE

Month 2: August - bolstering the treasury

August 8 - The First Citizen NFT sells for 6.52 ETH
August 11 - Release Founding Citizen NFTs
August 12 - CityDAO treasury passes $30k
August 20 - CityDAO treasury passes $100k
August 25 - Founding Citizen NFT sells for 10 ETH live in a community call
August 25 - CityDAO treasury passes $250k
August 26 - Connect w/ real estate agent in Wyoming to help with land purchase

Month 3: September - voting on land acquisition

September 08 - CityDAO forum is added to aid governance discussions
September 15 - Dev & Design team demo the parcel viewer
September 21 - CityDAO citizens vote on first parcel purchase
September 27 - Citizens vote to make offer on “Parcel 6” (40 acres)
September 28 - CityDAO makes an offer on real land
September 28 - Offer accepted, land purchase process begins

Month 4: October - Vitalik stops by & we close the land parcel deal

October 06 - Vitalik Buterin stops by CityDAO to ask questions
October 07 - CityDAO flag put up on land owned by a DAO
October 14 - The DAO figures out how to buy land with a treasury in ETH 😂
October 23 - CityDAO Citizen NFT minter released
October 25 - Funds wired for land purchase
October 29 - Land parcel deal officially completed

🔈News & Updates

🗞 So… this happened:

Huge thanks to Vitalik for including us in his Crypto Cities blog post. I think the following tweet sums up how I felt seeing that:

“It’s so amazing to see how much he is still involved with communities.”

p.s. live footage of the CityDAO discord after Vitalik’s blog post dropped 😂 :

🗞 The CityDAO land purchase officially closed on October 29th.

Some historic vibes in this tweet. 👇

🗞 Independent smart contract released

MASSIVE shout-out to @odyslam who has worked tirelessly to make this a reality after CityDAO was de-listed from OpenSea in September. For more info on what happened there see the September CityDAO roundup (linked at the bottom of this article).

We’re working on the best way to get everyone moved over to the new smart contract. For people on the OpenSea contract, you’re all good and no need to do anything at this point (I’m still in this situation myself). We’ll announce to everyone when we have a robust transfer plan in place. :) Thanks in advance for your patience. 🙏

🗞 Parcel Viewer product update!

We're working on algorithmically generating the plots now that we have land purchased. Any volunteers that want to help out with navigating how to plot out land, DM @greg in the CityDAO Discord server or let him know in the #dev channel.

Here’s the most recent Loom update of the project.

🗞 CityDAO NFT minter frontend!

Huge shout-out to @Bpetes, @odyslam, and @Blackeagle who have helped with the frontend of the CityDAO NFT minter.

Also, thank you to all the citizens and community members who have provided wonderful feedback. We live for continuous improvement!

For anyone who wants to get a Citizen NFT, you can do so here:

(make sure to also join the Discord so you can get involved and meet other citizens)

🖼 Community Shout-outs & Showcases

🌆 Check out this audiovisual remix of the citizen token @yiction made!!

Here is a link to Yiction’s post with the audiovisual remix. Note: you need to be in CityDAO’s discord to navigate to the url.

🌆 Love this boost of Vitalik’s post by CityDAO citizen @armstrong! 😀

🌆 Check out this secret door at a build_hub coworking space

@angelo, a CityDAO community member and the Build__ instigator (A really cool co-working DAO):

One of our first build_hubs in Coeur d'Alene Idaho has an underground lair/bar/cigar lounge that uses the same fob as you use for coworking.

🌆 YES!!! Congratulations to friend of CityDAO (and early core member who was pivotal in helping us build momentum ❤️ ) @Rlamis on the launch of CommonLands!

🌆 Huge shout-out to @emmy for firing up a project like this!

Also, I highly recommend giving @emmy a twitter follow. She’s continuously thinking in public and bringing forth refreshing ideas, thoughts, observations, etc. 💯

As an aside, @alexthims is also into 3D modelling, check out some of his work below 🔥

🌆 Round of applause to @bpetes and the BanklessDAO team behind the DEGEN bot for POAPs!

We used to handle POAPs in a different way and it was SUCH a pain. The wonderfully industrious folks at BanklessDAO created a bot called DEGEN which makes it so much easier.

Big thanks to @Bpetes who is one of the many people who are in both the CityDAO and Bankless communities. He got us on the beta test list. :)

DAO<>DAO collaboration is a beautiful thing!

🌆 Massive thanks to @casey for this and his continued work creating the weekly CityDAO community POAP images 🙏

🌆 Shout-out to the discussion in CityDAO on the pros & cons of purchasing Kanye’s 3000k+ acre Wyoming ranch!

The channel has some interesting perspectives from various people. Definitely worth a read and if you have thoughts, please add!

🌆 @JAKE dropping gemstone pod episodes as usual!

Also, highly recommend checking out this playlist of Pod of Jake episodes with people working on city-building projects:

*From Nate’s intro:*Now doing Offline.vc and where we have invested / participated in several Web3 projects. Bonus Points I own a 50 acre ranch in Wilson, WY.

🌆 For anyone who sees this before November 9th, @bhaumik (cityDAO member) will be hosting an AMA with former ESPN journalist in the Krause House DAO Discord 🏀

More details here:

🌆 Check out this neat project from @shawn - a tool to mint quotes as an NFT!

📰 DAO ecosystem news

🔥 PleasrDAO purchases the one of a kind Wu-tang Clan album from the US government for 4 million!

The web3 and hip-hop world rejoice!

RZA talking about the purchase. As someone who has followed this album since the first auction, this was so cool to hear.

🔥 I’m so damned bullish on Mirror!

Introducing the Mirror Reflection Awards 🔥

In August, Mirror airdropped $WRITE tokens to the community based on their contributions to Mirror. Each recipient was able to share the tokens with people in their network and help them start publishing and enjoy the Mirror toolkit. Many of these new members have gone on to create valuable projects and build their own vibrant communities, raising awareness around Mirror and creating more value within our ecosystem.

In many cases, it’s hard to know who will provide incredible value to our community until they start contributing. We must reflect as a community on contributions and retroactively reward those who build alongside us. We would like your help to find and reward those actively contributing to the Mirror ecosystem.

🔥 Proof of Humanity gets a boost from Vitalik!

Proof of Humanity DAO:

Sybil-resistant registry of Humans using social verification + @Kleros_io courts. Streaming $UBI & building a decentralized democracy!

🔥 Crypto, Culture & Society continues to be on fire with great updates!

Highly recommend checking them out if you haven’t already. Learning DAOs FTW! 🙌

A learning DAO exploring the impact of crypto on culture and society.

🔥 Krause House’s new onboarding flow is wonderful!

For everyone involved in DAOs, you know how important onboarding can be. Krause House DAO has a done a fantastic job. Huge shout-out to @mario lopes and @eli for coordinating a team to design this flow! I’m proud to have been able to contribute, even if only a little bit. :)

If you’re interested in learning more about Krause House, check out their Flight Paper here.

🔥 Founding Citizens @nicovalencia & @katy’s IndieDAO update: next round of applications are open! 🎊

🔥 DeveloperDAO looks like it has promise! 👀

Build web3 with friends

🎤 Overheard in CityDAO

Random lines taken out of context from the CityDAO community

Hi all! Vitalik from ethereum here. Very excited about physical-world governance experiments in general and hope that great things can come out of citydao!

By day I am a real estate executive at a global multifamily firm. I manage a multibillion-dollar portfolio. I have had 20k units under direct management throughout Southern California, Northern California, AZ, and Colorado. I would like to be a member of the DAO and use my extensive experience to help effectively monetize Real ventures.

we're all learning so much here, really appreciate the commitment to hearing everyone's voice but also making shit happen

I have an amazing Bengal cat

Background / Experience: CEO at Coinbase

A well-oiled DAO relies on a reasonable idea/output ratio to make progress. Agree here with the leadership team that any objections need to be met with a proper proposal in the forum and ideally an owner to execute that proposal if voted in favor of.

How will proof of human align with NFTs and voting rights?

Background / Experience: Founder of Aragon, took DAOs to $1bn AUM

Do you think this s is a purely digital community that develops/invests in dispersed real estate assets, or a DAO that is governance infrastructure to build a tangible, place based communities (a town, a neighborhood, and innovation district, where being a citizen is your passport to have agency within it). These have similar qualities but are very different goals

you mean the snapshot platform? we use it

CityDAO makes an offer on real land? Cant believe it. Lets rock!

I'm living in Nonce, which is crypto community based on Seoul!

The lesson of Project 1 for me was to compartmentalize complexity and ship results fast. So I think we could have a roadmap that does something like: P1 Buy something. P2 Get yield on something. P3 Have a citizen managed thing. P4 Manage something with a tangible sense of community (hub). P5 Build a community from scratch.... and so on, for example

free parking for citizens

To me the main point of CityDAO is trying to merge IRL legal systems and blockchain so the host countries legal system would have to evaluated.

I'd like to see how real world land management can happen through a DAO and a decentralized governance system.

cody is nice still, i'm a fan

I am the one of the first e-Residents of Estonia in China, and helped the e-Resident community built up the early ecosystem.

Hi ALL, Founding Citizen here comes

I have family in Casper, so that also attracted me to this project. I am ready to participate in any way possible and have a background in PR, government, design and some development. Let me know what I can do to help!

I believe with more people jumping onto the metaverse, there is more need than ever to connect the physical universe with the metaverse, with awareness of the environment and good intentions 🌱

I build guitars, cure meats, ride motorcycles, do woodworking and leatherworking, code, do graphics and 3D design, and literally anything else I can learn or tinker with.

how can we understand the binding between smart contracts and actual laws

I think profit from CityDAO properties should be used to fund buying land so we can build a city to make our land use decisions, not just owning fragmented properties. Is that in line with CityDAO?

Gig RVs owed by the DAO dispersed in areas across the nation!

excited to join this revolutionary initiative

Background in legal advisory business, my firm licensed 70+ crypto exchanges, including some of the best known players in Europe. Sold the legal business in summer 2021, and now full time in crypto.

There's a new channel for UI/UX join us in there if you'd like to help with that

Does anyone know the geographic boundaries (i.e., coordinates) of the parcel that was purchased?

Index Coop is grappling with some of these issues and in general my observation is that DAOs need to accept that hierarchy isn’t always the same as bureaucracy. It may be useful to chart out the various functions, create working groups with budgets (use Snapshot to approve?), and then have WGs execute relatively autonomously. Each WG could report monthly on progress to some sort of leadership council.

If anything, let's buy/build an algae farm that sequesters carbon

I would like to start creating networks of people to start businesses in CityDAO so that we have a flourishing business sector even before we break ground

the whole point of a digital city is that we can be a community even before the land. The land is good but, if this succeeds we can have people join us digitially even if they aren't here physically.

I biked (bicycle) almost 800 miles from Salt Lake City, UT to Santa Monica, CA in the heat of June this past summer. It was extremely difficult, but I loved every moment.

I know someone who has worked with Kanye's camp (he lived on the Wyoming ranch for a bit)

love this yea, Metafactory did a real world merch booth an MCon at an art gallery and it was a hit. in person physical purchases with attached metaverse wearable NFTs

I would like to advise CityDAO on collaborative architectural strategies around concurrent BIM modeling.

I have played in Google Map for more than 100 hours.

Is there interest and support amongst the community to start a community run YouTube channel/podcast on this project? I host a non-related podcast series, and would be happy to volunteer some of my time to host the interviews, organize the questions, post to the channel etc.