CIP-185: Voxel Populi (Parcel Blanca Monument)

[bitTorin]

TLDR

The proposal is for a physical monument linking URL to IRL on CityDAO’s Baby Parcel in Blanca, Colorado as a part of the Blancanvas project. The ‘voxel populi’ sculpture would be a forum of blocks arranged in a QR code scannable from the air. The funding of the blocks, via an NFT sale, will grant users the digital rights to place metaverse content on the surrounding subdivided portions of the parcel. Visitors to the site would experience this content via AR/XR.

This proposal is to kick off the project and fund Phase 1, the design phase. Phases 2 & 3 would be created as separate CIP’s to see the full execution of the monument depending on the outcome of this first phase.

The goal is to fund the entire construction of the monument via the NFT sale for individual voxels. An estimated cost could be $100,000 for the monument that funded by the sale of 400 NFTs at $250 each.

Motivation

‘Voxel populi’ is a play on ‘Vox populi’, which is a Latin phrase that translates to “voice of the people.” A voxel is a volumetric pixel that represents a value or element in a 3D space. CityDAO wants to build the ‘city of the future’. Voxel Populi serves this mission by being an IRL monument of origin that is characteristic of cities, linking to the metaverse, and representing a new era of collectivism.

Design

IRL: Concrete blocks of varying heights, creates a physical forum conducive for gathering

URL: Web based experience where users can interact with the digital playground supplied referenced by the QR code. Further research will define which platform is best for users to engage this content.

IRL → URL: Through advancements in spatial computing, visitors will be able to experience the same metaverse environment at the physical monument. Various tech stacks are being explored and this will get further defined during Phase 1.

Project Leads

bitTorin - Award winning Architect, front-end software developer; creator of 0be1isk

Melior - Engineer by degree, developer by practice; Project Manager, Communicator, Designer

Overall Project Timeline - Est. 8 months

Phase 1 - Design

Timeline - 4 weeks

• Finalize the architectural design
  • Consult with a structural engineer
• Source viable construction partners and materials
• Outreach to the Costilla County Planning and Zoning Department
• Determine total construction estimate
• Research various tech stacks for viable AR/metaverse experiences
• Estimate technical development costs for build out, funded to be requested in additional CIPs

Phase 2 - Marketing

Timeline - 6 weeks

• Outreach to DAOs for partnerships, anchoring tenants
• NFT sale of individual parcel ‘voxels’
• Purchasing a voxel grants that NFT holder the right to display any 3d file on their parcel (e.g. Decentraland)
• Goal is to crowdfund the entire construction cost of the physical monument to reduce the burden on the CityDAO treasury

Phase 3 - BUIDL

Timeline - 12-18 weeks

• Construction of physical monument
• Build out of web application/metaverse experience

Grand Opening - ETHDenver ‘24

• Just a few hours south of Denver, CityDAO could organize a grand opening party that brings people together IRL.

Compensation

Phase 1

• bitTorin- $9,999

• meilor- previously funded by grant

Phase 2 - TBD

Phase 3 - TBD

Touchpoints

For the duration of the project, the team will host weekly check-in meetings with the CityDAO community on Tuesday’s at 12pm CST/CDT.

Legality

To ensure high-quality standards are met the architectural design and coordination with engineers and contractors will be completed through bitTorin’s, studio o.a.e LLC.

[scottfits]

cool concept!! let’s do it. I also think we could at least consider doing this on Parcel 0 since it’s sitting empty and more of our flagship property. I’m game for either

[Da3vid]

@bitTorin

‘Voxel populi’ is a play on ‘Vox populi’, which is a Latin phrase that translates to “voice of the people.”

I love the idea of a monument of origin (and the name you chose). This would benefit CityDAO and would also be a great opportunity for an opening party where more people could learn about Parcel Blanca. Also, I appreciated the reasonable timeline.

[mdnatx]

This is really cool! I love the incorporation of a physical QR-code and the play on words.

I saw comp in the proposal, but how much are the materials? Or is this proposal just for Phase 1 to determine the costs of getting it done?

[bitTorin]

Correct, this proposal is to get the project kicked off and hone in on a fully-fleshed out design, material sourcing, and tech build-out strategy. The cost of the monument could scale quadratically depending on how large or small we want it to be, so hard to put an estimate on it. Though I’m curious if there is a target budget that people would be comfortable with.

An example breakdown of pricing could be as such:
500 Cubic Yards of concrete needed to create the monument
$120-172 national average price (Let’s use $150 for an estimate)
500X$150= $75,000.

Pricing will depend on the depth of the footers/foundation plus the cost of rebar and formwork to create the cube shapes. There could also be cost savings depending on if the voxels could be manufactured off-site and craned into place. Again, at this stage there are a lot of unknown variables that would be worked through in this first phase to give more accurate pricing.

However, its also worth noting that the intent is to offset the cost as much as possible via an NFT sale. So if that construction cost was $75,000 and the DAO treasury covered 20% then the remaining $60,000 could be crowdfunded via NFT sales of 400 “voxels”. Each NFT would cost $150 (<.1 ETH).

Or the construction cost could be $100,000 and we sell the 400 NFTs at $250 each (<.15 ETH) with no impact on the DAO treasury. Lots of options/variable in play.

There is not one prescriptive path forward and those within the community that want to weigh in on these finer details will absolutely have the chance to be apart of the discussion during Phase 1.

Hope this answers the question but also happy to provide more detail if need be!

[quantumdoll1]

I like the idea, but I think that the name of CIP is misleading since the budget for this CIP is only compensation for the design/research work, not building the monument; so, in fact, the result of this CIP is a project/design, not the monument.

I think we should know what’s the exact cost of the whole monument and the metaverse experience.

[bitTorin]

I’ve amended the TLDR section to include a more comprehensive breakdown at the top to avoid any concerns of this proposal being misleading.

It’s a bit difficult to know the full cost of the monument without going through the design phase to coordinate with structural engineers and contractors to determine what is viable on the site. I provided some example pricing breakdowns above. What is your opinion on that example pricing @quantumdoll1?

[Nick123]

Love seeing this CIP up here, I support it. Makes sense to spend some money to refine a cost estimate. I was bummed when the last monument building one fizzled out so I’m glad this is back! Also really liking the evolution to include the AR component to help fund it. That’s cool too.

Quick question - does this version include the cell tower in the original Obelisk design (love the VR tool!). I really liked that part of it, both for the symbolism, but also for internet access and potential for revenue.

One thought on the scale of this… scaling this up or down in size based on interest is sort of interesting, but I think I’d rather have the voxels be sized in a way that they are useful for humans to sit on. So I’d be ok with you telling us that they have to be X size and thats what we are going with.

[bitTorin]

For the concrete voxels, a comfortable size would be between 18" and 24" wide. Any less and it wouldn’t be a comfortable place to sit. One area where this can scale up or down is on the actual QR size. Depending on the version of QR used, we could reduce or increase the number of voxels within the monument. The limiting factor for this is dependent on where the the QR needs to link to and the length of characters in the URL.

As for the obelisk/cell tower concept- that is omitted from this proposal. I’d love to build that as well (perhaps adjacently to this monument?) but we would need to execute on a smaller scale build as a DAO before scaling up to something as challenging as that idea.

[Blackacres]

I like the concept! Especially it’s use of DAO owned land. Giving use to assets that the DAO owns.