Grant Request by CherubsDAO

Submission Date
December 8, 2021

Project Links

Website: https://cherubsdao.com
Website: https://cherubimlabs.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cherubsdao
Instagram: Login • Instagram

Project Description

We are building an NFT governed community where you can be the difference for the causes & charities you believe in. One Cherub at a time. Amplify your voice by joining a community of like-minded everyday extraordinary people seeking to change the world.

CherubsDAO flips the traditional world of cause-based funding on its head - away from centralized funding authorities like governmental agencies & mega billionaire foundations to grassroots pools of people and capital within a fun NFT community. Research into the microbiome as a potential Autism mitigator / cure, research and trials on using psychedelics as a PTSD cure for military veterans, research into anything other than the amyloid hypothesis for Alzheimer’s … all of these promising pathways were starved of funding from centralized sources due to ‘lack of scientific evidence’ or other reasons, yet all of these have promising pathways today because of advocates working against the grain to scrape up funding. CherubsDAO can empower these everyday extraordinary people to amplify their voice and capital pool across causes of any kind that suffer from the same constraints.

Our Mission

Connecting people to the causes and charities they believe in through an open global network & NFTs that put the power of change in the hands that matter most - yours.

The Causes

  • All Causes (any cause supported by the CherubsDAO)
  • Climate
  • Crypto Advocacy
  • Curing Disease
  • Education
  • Inclusion & Equality
  • Poverty & Hunger

What is CherubsDAO?

The CherubsDAO is an NFT governed social impact investment community with a mission to grant and invest in causes that matter to the CherubsDAO members. Implemented based on the successful NounsDAO distribution mechanism, every day a new Cherub NFT (a “Cherub”) is born and auctioned to the highest bidder. Cherub sale proceeds fund the CherubsDAO treasury. Each Cherub has one vote over how the treasury may be used in support of the CherubsDAO mission on all proposals, and has the right to initiate proposals. Seven macro causes have been identified for the CherubsDAO mission, but the CherubsDAO community will ultimately determine which causes and specific projects get funded and how the treasury is managed. The CherubsDAO can make grants to projects that propagate Cherubs, make grants to specific causes and projects, or even make for-profit investments in promising cause based entities (e.g. alternative therapeutics development).

The CherubsDAO is wrapped by a Swiss Association structure to provide its members with liability protection, an ability to enter into contracts for investments and partnerships as necessary, and to pay taxes. The CherubsDAO will be able to nominate Cherub NFT owners to positions on the Association’s assembly and board. The CherubsDAO Association assembly and board are instructed via the articles to carry out all on-chain governance and funding proposals made by the Cherub NFT Community unless the proposal is considered illegal or unethical (e.g. insider funding).

All governance will be done on-chain through a fork of the Compound Governance system.

What are Cherubs?

The Cherubs are fun, generative NFTs, deployed fully on-chain forever. Cherubs are generated randomly based on block hashes and the set of attributes available in Cherub art. There are no ‘if’ statements or other rules governing Cherub trait scarcity, which makes all Cherubs equally rare.

Cherubs are stored directly on chain and do not utilize pointers to other networks such as IPFS. This is possible because Cherub parts are compressed and stored on-chain using a custom run-length encoding (RLE), which is a form of lossless compression.

The compressed parts are efficiently converted into a single base64 encoded SVG image on-chain. To accomplish this, each part is decoded into an intermediate format before being converted into a series of SVG rects using batched, on-chain string concatenation. Once the entire SVG has been generated, it is base64 encoded.

Each Cherub owner will be able to ‘color’ their Cherub with the cause that matters most to them. Cherub owners can go to the Gallery on the CherubsDAO website and change their cause, which will modify the background and cause icon that is attached to their Cherub. In doing so, the change is provably recorded on-chain and thus is a DNA change to the Cherub NFT. By attaching a cause to their Cherub, the Cherub owner is signaling their desire to the CherubsDAO community to direct funding to opportunities in this cause category and may use their Cherub to signal their interest in this cause to social media communities. Cherub owners may change the cause attached to their Cherub at any time and may do so to signal to cause giving seasons or for any other personal reason.

What are the Daily Auctions?

The Cherub Auction Contract will act as a self-sufficient Cherub generation and distribution mechanism, auctioning one Cherub every 24 hours, forever. 80% of auction proceeds (ETH) are automatically deposited in the CherubsDAO treasury (cherubsdao.eth), where they are governed by Cherub owners. 20% of auction proceeds (ETH) are automatically deposited in the Cherubim Labs Operational treasury (cherubim.eth) to be used to reimburse CherubsDAO development costs and cover ongoing operating expenses, and to fund new projects in “Crypto for Causes”. Cherubim Labs will also continue to sponsor the CherubsDAO. After 30 months the CherubsDAO can vote to reduce or eliminate the 20% distribution to Cherubim Labs.

Each time an auction is settled, the settlement transaction will also cause a new Cherub to be minted and a new 24 hour auction to begin. While settlement is most heavily incentivized for the winning bidder, it can be triggered by anyone, allowing the system to trustlessly auction Cherubs as long as the chain is operational and there are interested bidders.

Who Created CherubsDAO?
Brian Magierski is the founder of Cherubim Labs AG, the sponsor of CherubsDAO. Brian is a serial software entrepreneur, Crypto Asset enthusiast, and father to a daughter with Down syndrome. Brian’s charitable work includes donating to and serving on boards of entities dedicated to inclusion education. His passion for grassroots philanthropy is inspired by the urgent need for alternative funding options to cure serious illnesses without good solutions today that affect people with Down syndrome - including Alzheimer’s disease, Type-1 Diabetes, and Leukemia. Centralized funding from governmental entities and mega-billionaire foundations have left many research pathways unexplored. With crypto native philanthropic financial rails, Brian believes that causes of all kinds can find new sources of funding from grassroots movements and the energy of Crypto Assets. Cherubim Labs was formed to pioneer “Crypto for Causes” and Cherub NFTs are the first step in the journey!

Cherubim Labs has teamed up with veteran smart contract developers & entrepreneurs Validity Labs in the development of CherubsDAO and necessary modifications to the codebases from NounsDAO and Compound Governance.

CherubsDAO is being handed over to the community of Cherub owners.

Amount requested
40,000 USD

Milestones

1st Milestone: <Deploy smart contract on Rinkeby week of 13-December-2021> <$0>

2nd Milestone: <Community growth & marketing> <Fund two Community managers to promote, grow and foster the CherubsDAO community & discord to hit 500 members ASAP, on track for 2,000 Cherub NFT owners in Y1, and 5,000+ Discord participants in Y1. Funding needed for December 2021, January, February and early March 2022. $25,000 for 2 community managers for 3 months and $5,000 for social media marketing> <$30,000>

3rd Milestone: <Deploy and conduct first daily live auction on Polygon PoS Chain by 31-December-2021 or ASAP thereafter> <$10,000.00>

1 Like

Thanks for posting our Grant Request to the forum @mikhailbaynes ! Here are a few updates to the application:

  • TestNet is now live on Ethereum Rinkeby https://testnet.cherubsdao.com - we are eager to have people try it out and send us feedback. We can provide Rinkeby ETH to people who need it.
  • Feedback can be delivered in our Discord (Cherubs DAO)
  • Our team is highly supportive of live deployment on Polygon PoS Chain. We can achieve a milestone of being live by 15-January-2022
  • We have further details on the plan to spend the marketing funds requested which will be focused solely on driving users to our Cherubs DAO deployment on Polygon PoS Chain (which will be our only live deployment) and can provide details directly upon request
  • Marketing funds would be deployed to promote to the existing Polygon community and to attract new users interested in CherubsDAO from outside the existing Polygon user community.
  • We will use marketing funds to recruit users prior to the first live auctions and throughout the first few months of the live auctions.

We look forward to your further consideration and any responsive feedback or questions.

1 Like

Grant Request Status

Allocated to the team

Here are a few more updates from the Cherubs DAO team.

  • Successfully conducted 57 Cherub NFT auctions on Rinkeby TestNet. Overall community feedback has been positive. Code is working as expected. Technology is ready to go.

  • Our Development team has begun scoping the migration to Polygon PoS chain and work will begin soon.

  • Focusing on causes related to Education Inclusion and Longevity / Medical research tied to neurological conditions and brain health. Have material traction developing with foundations and nonprofits which have high profile communities and some with active NFT participants already.

  • Established linkages with other DAOs whose members are joining the Cherubs DAO Discord and providing positive feedback on our model.

2 Likes

In response to further information provided by the Polygon DAO, we are amending our grant request per below.

We are seeking a grant from the Polygon DAO in the amount of $10,000. With this grant, we will migrate the Cherubs DAO app to run on the Polygon PoS Chain, and promote this fact to our community and in our additional community growth efforts

We will commit to the following milestones:

  1. Migrate Cherubs DAO from Ethereum to Polygon PoS Chain. Our milestone for this will be a live deployment on Mumbai TestNet by 31-January. Our team is working on the following to support this milestone:
  • Configuration of the smart contracts development environment.
  • Deploy and test smart-contracts on Mumbai network.
  • Configuration of the front-end application to use the deployed smart-contracts on Polygon network.
  • Replace Etherscan Gas Station with the respective API for Polygon.
  • Deploy and test the front-end application connected to Polygon blockchain.
  1. Continued community building, emphasizing the switch to the Polygon chain
  • publish 3 additional podcasts / YouTube videos or project reviews over the next 4-6 weeks
  • continued promotion on Twitter and incentives to join the Discord community
  • promotion to our community of the Cherubs DAO TestNet running on Mumbai (31-Jan to 15-Feb) and launching on Polygon chain

Thanks for the additional consideration. We are eager to join the Polygon community.

1 Like