Dear CityDAO Members,

I hope this message finds you well. We have actively participated in a very important voting process over the past week, and it is clear that CIP212 has received overwhelming support from all of us. Immediately after the official results are announced (15.05.2024), the following projects mentioned below should be terminated, and the funds allocated should be returned to the CityDAO treasury and, naturally, to the citizens of CityDAO.

Termination of the 3-Year Sponsorship Agreement for the RTM Project: The RTM project, which includes a three-year sponsorship agreement, should be terminated. (Approximately $10K)

Since the CityDAO hack, we have not been able to find transparent information on the progress of the project from the date we regained control of Discord until now.

Recovery of Funds Allocated to the t0wn Project: The funds allocated to the t0wn project should be recovered. (Approximately $70K)

The project Discord has been a platform where people greet each other since 04.07.2023. Additionally, the project’s X (Twitter) account posted its first and last tweet on 08.05.2023 and has shown no performance since then.

https://discord.com/invite/M2m3qCh3 https://twitter.com/T0WNorg/status/1633250591454396417

Therefore, all “unspent” funds allocated to the projects mentioned above should be returned to the treasury and, as specified in CIP212, returned to CityDAO citizens. Additionally, if these reimbursements are not made, a lawyer will be retained on behalf of CityDAO to pursue the necessary legal processes, and investigations will be promptly initiated.

Project Budget: $20,000: Legal payments will only be made if necessary. All required payments will be shared under this forum.

NOTE : Proposal owner DO NOT ask one single cent of the budget for himself. The budget will ONLY be used for legal processes IF needed. The remaining part of the budget will be returned to the treasury without being touched.

Best regards, sbalderson

Update : Adjusted the language as “unspent” funds. Update : Adjusted the language for budget in the NOTE section.

Summary:

With the departure of myself and David, who have historically kept the DAO in compliance, paid taxes, and maintained the off ramps, I believe now is the time to return the CityDAO Treasury funds to Citizens pro-rata.

After failing to pass 7+ proposals 4, I see no path forward for us to agree on a reasonable way to spend the money, and keeping millions of dollars in a multisig leaves it vulnerable especially over a long period of time with multisig members cycling in and out.

I will be leaving the multisig, closing the bank accounts, off ramps, and CityDAO social media accounts, discontinuing to pay taxes our properties, and completely removing myself out of the operation of the DAO.

The most responsible path forward is to return the funds to the Citizens who contributed them.

The claim will be about $320 per NFT according to my napkin math from this post 10, but that is heavily dependent on ETH fluctuations.

Implementation:

Upon passage of the CIP, any Citizen may volunteer to be a part of the Return of Funds Task Force. They will decide on an implementation mechanism and have a budget of $3,000 to develop and audit a smart contract as necessary and pay legal fees for any research needed into dissolution.

The most likely scenarios are either an airdrop to return the funds or a smart contract that lets Citizens claim their share of funds are options.

TImeline:

Upon passage of the CIP, the Return of Funds task force will convene and develop a mechanism to return funds and initiate the process within 30 days.

This CIP belongs to privatenf, sent to snapshot by simplepixellife

CIP Author

I’m an academician at a university in Türkiye who met CityDAO about a year ago. I met CityDAO because of my master’s thesis on DAOs. In my thesis, I analyzed the legal qualifications of DAOs. I first received Citizen NFT in CityDAO, where I participated as an observer to see how DAOs work technically and to be involved in this process, and then I started to actively participate in the work in the Turkish community. With this CIP, I would like to spread the name of CityDAO with my thesis on DAOs in Turkish. In fact, this proposal first came to me from @simpelpixellife, another CityDAO citizen.

Short Summary of CIP

This CIP has been prepared to encourage CityDAO to sponsor my master thesis titled “The Legal Nature of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) on Blockchain Technology”. If this sponsorship offer is accepted, it is thought that CityDAO will spread the name of CityDAO among both Turkish academics and the Turkish blockchain ecosystem as a result of the gift of the book to leading academics and Web3 developers in the field, and thus the participation of people with high intellectual knowledge in our community will be ensured. The requested fee for this purpose is 3.500$ in total.

How CityDAO will benefit?

In the first phase with this CIP, when my thesis is published as a book, we want to show in Türkiye that CityDAO contributed to this book. CityDAO has found its place in many places in the book. When examples were given in the explanation of the subject, these examples were given through CityDAO.

In addition, CityDAO’s logo and the phrase “with CityDAO contributions” will be printed on the back cover of the book. If the text is prepared, we will add this short text written by CityDAO to the back cover of the book or as a preface.

After the book is printed, it will be sent to the competent people in the blockchain and crypto ecosystem in Türkiye. In this way, CityDAO will be followed with more interest by the Turkish ecosystem and scientists, and the intellectual accumulation of our community will also develop.

If CIP is accepted, the following people and communities can be given as examples of the people in the ecosystem to whom the book will be gifted:

-İsmail Hakkı Polat (https://tr.linkedin.com/in/ismailhpolat)

-İTU Blockchain (https://www.itublockchain.com/)

-ODTU Blockchain (https://tr.linkedin.com/company/odtublockchain)

-Devrim Danyal (https://tr.linkedin.com/in/devrimdanyal)

-Hale Cide Demir (https://tr.linkedin.com/in/halecidedemir)

As a result, if this CIP is accepted and fulfilled, a CIP will be prepared again for the second phase. In the second phase, the book published in Turkish will be translated into English and published by a major publishing house in Europe or the USA under the sponsorship of CityDAO.

Purpose of the CIP

With this CIP, it is aimed that this book will contribute to build the Web3 city of the future within the scope of the vision of education guild and CityDAO universities, which are the activities of CityDAO. If this CIP is realized, a comprehensive scientific work on DAOs will be the first and only one in Türkiye. This is because there is no specific work on DAOs in Turkish law. This book is written in a simple manner to provide basic information on DAOs to people who are not competent in the field of law. Moreover, the book is quite comprehensive in terms of its volume.

One of the main objectives of CIP is to popularize the name CityDAO in Türkiye if the name CityDAO is mentioned together with such a work.

CIP’s expenses

For the first stage I have described above, no money will be paid for publishing the book. In Türkiye, publishing houses do not charge for the first printing of the book, they print the book for free in exchange for publishing rights.

In the first phase, the author will only need a budget of 2,500 dollars for sponsorship and 1,000 dollars for the purchase and delivery of the book from the publisher to important people in the ecosystem.

Process

If the CIP is accepted, the sponsored book will be printed within 1 month at the latest from the date of acceptance.

After the printing, gift books will be purchased from the publishing house and delivery will be made to the people to whom they will be sent.

All expenses will be documented.

Risk factor

The potential risks are actually quite small. Because the book will be published with or without CityDAO sponsorship. In addition, the publisher will not be given the right to publish the book in English. This right will remain with the author. Therefore, the publishing house will not be able to create problems for the printing in the second phase.

Additional information and Links

The thesis version of the book is included in the thesis database of the Council of Higher Education, which is the guiding institution of the universities of the Republic of Türkiye.

Click on the link https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/ for the thesis. Then enter " Blokzincir teknolojisi ile gerçekleştirilen merkeziyetsiz otonom organizasyonların (Dao’ların) hukuki niteliği " in the “enter search term” section. Click on the pdf image of the result.

This is my Linkedln profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salih-karadeniz-3691b122a?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app

I propose we start the world’s first crowdfunded compute cluster in Wyoming to take part in the AI revolution and earn income for the DAO.

TLDR

It’s time to do something big to bring CityDAO back to the forefront of the conversation and bring new life and energy to the DAO, and we are uniquely positioned to pull off building a large cluster of GPUs in Wyoming.

We have capital, land, and a Wyoming-based legal entity. And at ~6 cents per kWh, Wyoming has just about the cheapest electricity in the states, making it the perfect place to do this.

Budget:

Total proposed budget: $600,000 USD

• $500,000 - Purchase 300 Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090s (and potentially other GPU types)
• $70,000 - Servers, equipment, other setup costs
• $30,000 - Legal and misc expenses

Business Model

I believe this could generate about $30k / mo for the DAO treasury. Here is the full breakdown of the unit economics 27.

Upon passage of this proposal, Scott will lead implementation of the effort, setting up a fund with CityDAO LLC as the main limited partner and Scott (and potentially others at his discretion) as a General Partner. The DAO will spend $600k for shares in the new fund, and be paid quarterly dividends from the operation of the GPUs. The fund will have a standard 2/20 management fee model. The GPUs will earn revenue by being put on Runpod or a similar service.

Benefits to CityDAO

• A consistent income source for the treasury. These GPUs have an estimated payback period of 12 months and after that generate mainly profit.
• Status and reputation - the first cluster will be called the CityDAO Compute Cluster, and as the first crowdfunded compute cluster will be a hit on Twitter and a real contribution to the AI and crypto communities.
• Compute - having a bunch of compute is cool - we can let citizens use it at a discount and even train our own models on it.

Benefits to Citizens

• Access to a CityDAO Compute Cloud shared server Citizens can use to do things like host websites, run code, etc.
• Potential for discounted or free compute allocation (depends on the economics and will be considered depending on how fast the GPUs are paying off)

Why should we do this?

• Timing - This is the perfect time to start the world’s first crowdfunded GPU cluster.
• New energy and purpose - CityDAO needs an ambitious new project to rally around. The DAO can build tooling and projects around the cluster. Maybe we can all go to Wyoming and visit!
• Wyoming connections - We are uniquely already set up to operate in WY and I recently got connected with a Wyoming-based datacenter with just about the cheapest electricity anywhere - 6 cents per kWh that set up all the infrastructure to run GPUs.
• Future of AI - Demand for compute is projected to increase a lot over the next decade.

Risks

• I want to be transparent that it’s hard to predict the future and demand for compute or our specific GPU type could decrease.
• One reason 4090s are so appealing is they are underpriced in the market because Nvidia’s terms of service require they be used by consumers, not in data centers. One large risk here is that they somehow start enforcing this provision.
• AI may be in a bit of a bubble and demand for compute could decrease.

Updates - 2/13/24

• I’m lowering the ask to $600k - still enough to start up the cluster and run the experiment and a much smaller percent of the DAO treasury
• At the time the cluster goes live, Citizens will each get a free CityDAO Compute NFT to commemorate the moment.

Updates - 3/5/24

• Location: Upon passage, we will do a search for the best data center with the cheapest electricity pricing instead of being tied to Wyoming. For example, states like Texas and Arizona might be better since they have more data center infrastructure already built out.
• Marketing reel: We will take videos and create a marketing reel documenting the process to post on Discord and Twitter

Update - 3/8/24

• Added Risks section
• Added Citizen Benefits section
• Diversify beyond 4090s and purchase other GPU types