In the spirit of keeping momentum on interesting projects, we hereby propose CIP-101 The Billboard Parcel. This proposal authorizes the Project Team (defined below) to buy or rent a digital billboard for up to $200k (market dependent).
Where: In/near major city, or between a major airport and a major city
Primary One: Purchase a stationary digital billboard
Why: This is an appropriate project for a bear-market context - a low-cost acquisition with immediate potential for revenue generation. Potential uses and benefits include:
Low cost of execution
Meaningful opportunity for community engagement
Great opportunity for Public Goods experimentation with mechanism design implementations like Harberger taxes, periodic auctions and quadratic fees.
Revenue - can rent the billboard commercially during certain months (high-traffic)
Hype and marketing
Community access (Citizens might upload content in low-traffic times) and a
Good medium for PR and attention
Puts us in a position to offer something to other DAOs/web3 players, and reasons to talk to bigger players like Coinbase or Bankless, etc. (i.e. the potential for partnerships and/or ad timespace revenue possibilities)
Hopefully captures Vitalikās attention (and other key crypto/web3 influencers) - Vitalik has written about a quadratic approach for advertising and has specifically mentioned billboards. This is an opportunity to focus on a project Vitalik cares about.
Something Vitalik might find interesting: Experimenting with Harberger-type periodic auctions on quadratic fees with a sort of built-in QR Code voting mechanism for bypassers.
Project Team: Alex, Scott, Josh, Ben, Zeno
ā Reward upon completion: $2000 + 2 NFTs each
Upon Snapshot approval, this proposal authorizes up to $200k from the treasury to be offramped once the Project Team has agreed on a billboard and flushed out other material considerations relating to its location, acquisition strategy, experimentation design, and revenue considerations.
Iād like to know a little more about how this is a revenue stream besides CityDAO renting out a billboard to the highest bidder. That seems like somewhat unrelated to our mission. Quadratic advertising is very interesting, though. Is it possible to elaborate on how this could be used for quadratic advertising? Iām not sure how Harberger taxes fits in here, though. Who is paying taxes on billboard time?
At face value, the statement doesnāt actually mean anything. Can you forward the exact text?
If taken literally, this would likely depress the billboards competitiveness[1] and significantly increase the odds it incurs an operating loss.
amongst other reasons because competitors leverage third parties to aggregate demand (lowering their cac) and these only support standard auction models i.e. we would need to build out a bespoke customer acquisition stack and amortize these costs into the lease price (or have the DAO subsidize them)
Same questions for meā¦ Iād like to have some understanding of potential revenue associated with a $200k purchase before I support this idea, which is fun in theory, but seems a bit off-mission and expensive at the cost of ~10% of our treasury. $200k buys you a billboard where? On a highway in Nebraska? In LA? And what is the associated revenue potential?
With regards to the critisism of āthis is not landā - CityDAO is experimenting with pyshical ownership of property in real life, and for me this certaintly provides a very cool expirement with property ownership, which can generate real income and provide great ROI in marketing terms for the DAO. So I feel it is within our mandate.
I would add a question - how do we make sure that inappropriate content doesnāt get on the billboard (violence etc.) and we cooeprate with local rules?
There should be some kind of mechanism that makes sure not everything can go on the billboard (commitee?) and makes sure everything that is posted is responsible.
I like this proposal and have same questions as Gugz & David.
Specifically:
Are there specific examples of digital billboards that can be purchased for under $200k in desirable locations?
Whats the financial model that shows how much this will add / drain to / from treasury?
What funding is needed to actually run the experiments suggested? I imagine that the purchase of the billboard will just be the first step.
I would vote that the above questions get answered before authorizing the $200k from the treasury but it seems like those questions could get answered pretty quickly.
It would be good to have some more details with how we would use harbeger, or QF, or whatever, and how exactly we would get revenue, but overall I like it. The Vitalik points are big! canāt deny that. So its a yes from me.
Why cant the MAJORITY of this project be about ādesigningā the revenue and Harberger mechanisms? That is what is meant by āhaving a project the community can rally aroundā. People show up and just criticize what is written instead of suggesting solutions and its growing old to those of us who have stuck it out this long with CityDAO.
A lot of the people here gripe more about revenue than large corporations, and ārevenueā has become a catch-all method for people to block ideas without needing to think through bigger issues, like whether its the right fit for CityDAO or whether theyād want to participate. People just come out, criticize revenue, and sit back blocking. Highly recommend we get away from that mentality.
CityDAO was not created to generate revenue, and while I recognize its an important aspect of sustainability, its not the main aspect nor should it be the primary consideration. Kinda sick of hearing about revenue-revenue-revenue, especially when the only proposal that has passed lately (Big Parcel) ALSO does not have any revenue model.
to be clear, @will would assist the project team as designer of Harberger and experimental mechanics @ScottA
Vitalik also volunteered a revenue model: charge a higher percentage where the ad gets more downvotes. If its a shitty ad, we charge 80% of the āfeeā. If people LOVE the ad, maybe only 5%
Anyway, I fail to see the need for all the FUD. The idea with a project is that we can empower and engage people to help CityDAO solve the questions you are all asking. And as far as the āduhā moment for revenue - outside of the interesting experiments we can run - lets keep the obvious in mind: if billboards were not profitable in and of themselves, why do we see so many of them?