CIP-184: Grant to Tern (travel with friends)

Proposals (CIPs)
1

People are increasingly connected to one another online, which has led to a rise in the number of virtual friendships. These friendships can bring people together from all over the world, regardless of geographical boundaries or cultural differences. As these virtual friendships grow and develop, they often lead to in-person meetings and real-world connections. This trend has become so prevalent that it is now common for people to travel to meet their internet friends or attend conferences with them.

CityDAO is about physical places. What we have is physical land and a globally distributed population. Considering physical land and property solely as assets on a balance sheet limits our appreciation of their true worth and they go underutilized. Spending more time in real places is an undercurrent of many CityDAO proposals.

Opposed to reddit, twitter, and other generalized platforms, DAOs tend to create more meaningful connections over time and we trend towards wanting to meet these new found friends in real places, whether it’s for a weekend getaway or a conference of shared interests.

If you subscribe to the concepts of the network state, increasing mobility of participants is essential for enhancing individual autonomy and bridging the gap from digital community to physical nodes.

Previous CityDAO Proposals that involve travel:

Other Needs for travel coordination:

  • Other DAOs that hold events and prioritize real gathers (cabin, fwb, poolsuite, links, etc)
  • Crypto Conferences (ETHDenver, ETHLisbon, ETH[enter city name here], ConsenSys, etc)
  • Informal social groups that form from all the above

Challenges

  • Getting people to commit to a trip (”are we really doing this?”)
  • Confidence of being repaid for the person booking the accommodations. Reserving accommodations makes a trip ‘real’ and keeps the rest of the planning in motion.
  • Organizing places to stay so that they’re visible to everyone (usually ends up in couple spreadsheets, links etc)
  • Visibility of communal costs per individual
  • Gated access for online groups/communities/DAOs

Solution:

A web app that streamlines the process of planning and organizing accommodations for group trips, enabling internet friends to get together more often in real places and create memorable connections.

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What does CityDAO get:

  • A project funded by CityDAO created by Citizens, to be used by Citizens and future CityDAO projects.
  • In the event the project continues past the MVP stage, Citizen NFTs could be used to grant premium services, which are yet to be decided.
  • CityDAO Citizens will be the first asked to be volunteers and testers during development.

The team

:man_mage:t3: PM and Web Development (alex)

:duck: Web Development (tippi, …)

:open_book: Postgres and Database policies (pending)

:brain: Smart Contract Research (pending)

:art: Design (avotoast)

:older_woman: Senior Full-stack Consultant/Security Review/Best Practices (pending)

Budget

Total: 9,800 USDC

Budget Breakdown: Budget Breakdown

Project Safe Address: (will be included before any snapshot vote)

What’s excluded from the scope of work for the MVP:

  • Custom smart contracts and auditing (first is understanding all the requirements and if there are contracts already made that we could use)

Terms: Upon a successful snapshot vote in accordance with CityDAO governance, grant funds shall be delivered to the Project Safe Address identified in the Snapshot vote within 7 days from the CityDAO Treasury Address [0x60e7343205C9C88788a22C40030d35f9370d302D]. A W-9 and EIN for Tern (incorporated name subject to change) will be delivered to CityDAO for tax purposes following a successful vote and sufficient time for the incorporation process. Any funds sent to the project safe address is considered a grant. The project team makes no promises of profit to CityDAO and is not anticipating to distribute any future profits to CityDAO. Funds shall be spent to further the project and their expenditure is at the sole discretion of the project team, distribution may deviate from the description in this proposal. There is no contemplation of any Tern token.
Language may be revised between the original posting on Discourse and the final posting on Snapshot.

Progress Updates

Updates to occur every two weeks and will be available in Tern’s notion, links to be shared in CityDAO’s discord channels. The project team will also do their best to be available to answer questions from the community on an ongoing basis. It’s anticipated that substantial completion of an MVP could be about 3 months time.

Progress Template

Github

The project repo will be private while in production. If the project fails to advance to the next stage or the effort is ended, the github repo will be made public.

What does success look like

  • The successful use for coordinating at least one trip among internet friends using the MVP.

Resources

Website here (in progress)
Figma Prototype here
Notion doc here

The project animal is the Arctic Tern. These animals travel together the furthest of any bird, flying from pole to pole.

21 Likes
2

I am supportive of this, but I think you should connect with @quantumdoll1 to make sure you’re not duplicating efforts with the product he ran through grants.

3

I agree. The rallying cry of “put land on chain” seems ineffectual when there is little reason to go to the land. I also agree with the sentiment that it’s harder than it appears to be to plan get-togethers with a group. The size and geographic disparity of DAOs compounds that. I remember when Nico put together the meetup for ETHNYC and it was so great to meet strangers at a bar with a “CityDAO” table.

I think it’s a good project team and the name Tern is really nice (strongly prefer that over jetstream, which reminds me a budget airline). I had two questions. The first is about the purpose of the vault. Is that a multisig where the travel partners put funds for the trip? The second is what the functionality of the app would be. There are already apps like booking.com and airbnb, so does this app function kind of like a bulletin board to “choose a reasonable place and see who wants to get together”? The website was good looking but didn’t really give me a clear sense of what it’s like to use the app.

2 Likes
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  1. Correct, the idea is the vault where participants put funds. This does two things, gives the person booking an accommodation confidence they’ll be repaid, so stays get booked faster. Ideally there is more functionality than a standard multisig, some user research would help here, this is part of the smart contract research section as well. I think one txn disbursement back to all contributors would be nice, trip isn’t happening, everyone gets their money back. An individual rage quit feature would be good, someone says, I can’t do this trip anymore, i rage quit and pull only the money i put in without consensus of the group.

  2. Correct, it’s more of a bulletin board, command center type place. Source your stays from airbnb, booking.com, vrbo, an uncle’s cabin, wherever. I am admittedly not the greatest marketer, the site, which will be a form of building in public with live updates along the way, was a way for me to put a little bit of structure to the idea so if/when i can fold some others into the project we are off and running. It has web3 authentication and a basic database attached, and in doing so helped me map out the true feasibility of delivering on this idea.
    The Figma Prototype is closer to what it might feel like to use, but after some preliminary discussion we might reduce the number of unnecessary features and flows for an MVP. I’m also hoping this proposal process lends some discovery to the features people are actually interested in. I’ve had 3 separate experiences staying in shared housing on trips this is catered for, so pulling on my own experiences for now, but lots of discussion to have.

3 Likes
5

Full support here. Getting people together is a solid goal and this project is just fun, which we need.

let me know if you need anything in the SQL and database policy department. I do have experience in the area.

4 Likes
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This proposal aims to solve real problems for real people in and outside of DAOs.
As a traveller, this just make sense. As a DAO guy, fund this and then its our Tern to shine.

I’m Tippi Fifestarr and I approve this message hard af.

5 Likes
7

This is the way.

1 Like
8

Full support here. It’s worth noting that Cabin just released a website with a similar functionality and seem to be leading the forefront on IRL gathering points. What I like about this concept is it could be built to appeal to other DAOs rather than each DAO building their entirely separate web app. CityDAO has often talked about building the tooling that other DAOs can use- this could be a great example!

Would also love to lend a hand with the design/web development angle if need be!

2 Likes
9

Nice, totally agree about composability and the Cabin site is pretty good, but from what I’ve seen it’s focused entirely on Cabin’s “neighborhoods” and their “users”. Tern is for everyone who knows each other online and want to get together. As it grows, being able to plug into Cabin’s network, non-residential bookings (such as plugging into a CityDAO coworking space or meeting space) or a BnBDAO seems like the way to go.

Tern’s solution is just about getting a group together for IRL meetups, and using crypto to make it easier and good UX to make it smarter and faster.

One way you can help us make this happen is to tell your cityDAO friends to give this a like, and reach out to Alex and I on Discord :hugs:

1 Like
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Forgot to reply directly ^^

11

Just making a note since we discussed this elsewhere. Thanks for mentioning this, I connected with quantomdoll1 and it appears his project is not directly related to this proposal (more geo-mapped community perks and augmented reality) and is also on pause.

1 Like
12

Looks good. Nicely written. :+1:

1 Like
13

This is the way.

1 Like
14

Hi @alexthims, I think this is a great idea. I’d like to apply for the Smart Contract Research position. I’ve worked on a few CityDAO projects including the Discord-Discourse-Sync-BOT with @lyons800 and @slyRacoon23, and the first CityDAO Academic Conference with the Education Guild. Let me know if you have any questions for me!

2 Likes
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@alexthims I can voice a vouch for Wil, that through his dedication we have a Sadcoin deployed on Optimism Goerli. He can explain the pros and cons of several networks, and if you give him a clear task he will not rest until the mission is complete. He is capable of tasking himself with tasks as well.

1 Like