0x9841…4743

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

Overview

This CIP seeks to reimburse MemeBrains for 2,014.65 USDC of expenses he incurred while establishing a CityDAO presence at ETH Toronto earlier this year, August 2023.

Here is the One-Page Summary Report for CityDAO at ETH Toronto (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kYP4WRE-k6dijiegOvPmntxfynWpMzPkOCGSu1nKYmM/edit) including details on the DAO panel with 100+ attendees, the Bankless DAO after-party collaboration with 75+ attendees, the CityDAO event banner, event badge minting, video interviews with attendees and other photos/videos for social media sharing and branding purposes, and more.

Here is the Master Folder for all ETH Toronto event files 2 including photos, videos, budgeting etc. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16a13CAaDaEkSKWTQq9rDYuen9BoSZmsm?usp=sharing

Here is the Costs Detail Breakdown (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iquuxOrWS6pI_xtQ2yXSVBGfMPmsSvuxRdDTqtA85c0/edit#gid=0) for the 2,014.65 USDC of expenses sought to be reimbursed. Note that the expenses sought to be reimbursed from this CIP are for physical out-of-pocket expenses only. None of the funds requested for in this CIP are for his personal time as this was a volunteer based initiative.

Background

CityDAO has participated at numerous major events in the past such as Permissionless, ETH Denver, DCentral, and more. Participating at these events provides benefits such as; potential recruitment of new contributors, credibility in the ecosystem, IRL meeting points for CityDAO Citizens to get to know each other better, in-person meeting and strategy sessions for Citizens, social media content, and more.

MemeBrains used to have a small event production company from his early entrepreneurial career and produced approx 12 events for the Toronto small-business community ranging from 50ppl - 500ppl in size. He volunteered himself to carry out this initiative for CityDAO.

TLDR

The Institute for Research and Theory Methodologies (RTM) is an American non-profit organization (501c3) founded in 2021 to help promote research and scholarship. This proposal seeks $9,990 for a three-year sponsorship for RTM to create a Research Hub and the world’s first peer-reviewed, open access DAO-related journal (official name TBD). As a sponor, the benefit to CityDAO could be enormous – leading scholars, government think tanks and research institutions with huge communities around the world would be introduced to CityDAO. RTM will create and run the journal. We will benefit from its marketing and advertising CityDAO.

How would this benefit CityDAO?

Simply put, this is the best form of marketing that CityDAO could possibly ask for when it comes to recruiting researchers and institutions. Establishing CityDAO as a sponsor for scholarship on DAOs opens us up to an enormous potential group of citizens and participants that we could not possibly find within the web3 ecosystem. The people reached by this project will be highly-educated adults and industry leaders, those with the funds and the understanding to make real contributions to CityDAO rather than those who are just motivated by the NFT prices and the hope of a quick profit. In addition, we can be assured of quality because this journal is being run by RTM, a group of well-published scholars and academic professors with over twenty years’ experience.

What is a Peer-Reviewed Journal?

In the world of legitimate academic research, only peer-reviewed journals matter. This is a harsh but true statement. DAOs operate in a world of blogs, mirror articles, YouTube videos, Twitter posts and various centralized servers. While they serve a purpose, none of these have true validity in the world of scholarship, research and government funding. A peer-reviewed journal is the gold standard.

Peer-reviewed journals publish studies that have been reviewed by academics, in order to create a body of knowledge that is accepted by professors, universities, and institutions around the world. While web3 has produced an endless waterfall of information, very little of it has been rigorously studied and published. As one of the most legitimate DAOs in existence, CityDAO is perfectly poised to sponsor a journal on DAOs. While there are very few journals devoted to blockchain and AI, there is nothing yet devoted to DAOs.

It is extremely complicated, bureaucratic, and time-consuming to create a peer-reviewed journal. It is similar to creating a university; it cannot be done by the average person, which is why this is such a tremendous opportunity. I have worked with RTM for over a year on DAO-related research and this opportunity would put us in contact with many of the most highly placed individuals who are studying DAOs. It would put CityDAO’s name into the minds of highly funded government and research institutions around the world.

But this isn’t web3, is it?

Much of the initial hype and notoriety regarding CityDAO was due to a single blogpost by Vitalik Buterin and the subsequent purchase of citizenship NFTs by a few celebrities. This was followed by news stories in traditional media sources, such as the Wall Street Journal, and a TED talk by CityDAO’s founder.

Since then, despite two years of development, working on various projects, hosting events and contests, participating in conferences, teaching university courses, maintaining partnerships and collaborations, running a consistent podcast, publishing twitter posts and monthly newspapers, nothing has significantly drawn people to CityDAO. Our community has not strengthened. Our Discord server is not an exciting place.

The bear market could be blamed, and may have contributed, but a possible issue is that we have only targeted the web3 community. In web3, while some people care about ideals such as decentralization, transparency and disrupting traditional paradigms, many people only care about NFT prices. However, a focus on price without value will never flourish.

One thing we have learned is that people must be attracted to our ideas and to our community, or else no one will want to join or participate, whether we buy one office or twenty. RTM is presenting an opportunity to join forces with researchers from around the world who study DAOs, each of whom brings with them a wide audience. This is a one-time opportunity.

Background to RTM

The Institute for Research and Theory Methodologies (RTM) was founded in 2021 by Dr. Kara Vander Linden, who has been a research professor for 20 years, working at Saybrook University in California for almost 12 years. The purpose of her organization is to train, mentor, support and connect students, faculty and researchers worldwide. As a relatively new organization, RTM is willing to partner with a smaller organization like CityDAO to focus on research about the DAO space. I have personally worked with RTM and Kara for over a year (unpaid), and have found the organization to be well-organized and run.

How would the funds be used?

Journal Fees: $1500 per year. For three years, that would be $4500. Operating Costs: $1000 per year. For three years, that would be $3000. Honorariums: (given to Editor-in-Chief, Assistant Editors, Copy Editors) $2990

Given that this is funding for a three-year project, this project may seek funding from other sources in addition to CityDAO.

If this passes, the funds will be transferred into a 3/5 multisig wallet controlled by two members of CityDAO and three members of RTM. All expenditures will be documented.

Schedule

From the time of this CIP passing, it will take approximately 6 months to get the research hub and journal platform set up, establish an ISBN number for the journal, handle administration, recruit and train peer reviewers. Then a call for articles will be put out, which will go through the peer review process. It would be approximately one year before the first edition is published, which will be properly ranked as an official academic journal. These steps are critical for the long-term success of this project.