Introducing VroomWay’s NikkiFuego & CKBubbles

Decentraland has unlimited potential of creative possibilities. It’s an experiment of coordination, ingenuity, hard work and play! This creator series is a spotlight featuring Decentraland DAO grantees; showcasing their journey in entirety -  from the concept’s inception to making the dream a reality.

For our inaugural feature we have interviewed two members from the Vroomway team: Wearable Creating extraordinaire NikkiFuego - Founder of Vroomway; and **CKBubbles - Head of PR and Marketing for Vroomway.

Our conversation ranged across the spectrum of Vroomway’s origin story, team-building, proposal writing, and community outreach. These two trailblazers candidly shared their insights, tips and challenges encountered along the way as they went from a grant applicant to successful DAO-funded project.

I would say that my journey as a grantee has taught me to never give up. So many times we aren’t given real opportunities to shine. The community gave us that chance and I am eternally grateful for it! I have learned so much about myself and my team. There really isn’t anything that we can’t achieve as a community - NikkiFuego

Be sure to buckle up, and join us as we dive down Vroomways rabbit hole super charged with a full tank of fuel! Watch the full interview here:

We hope our new interview series inspires you to start engaging and becoming a more active member of our Decentraland DAO community. Join us to help build the future of Decentraland!

To learn more about Vroomway check out their proposal here https://governance.decentraland.org/proposal/?id=9b0c5c80-c4eb-11ec-86b8-5dac6b550fc4

Vroomway Discord → https://discord.gg/s5z8qAuNsp

Vroomway website → https://www.vroomway.io/

Voting Power (VP) Distribution and Delegation

Decentraland DAO is driven by voting power, commonly referred to as VP. There is currently a total of 69.8M active VP in the Decentraland ecosystem, distributed across over 3,125 unique wallets (DAO Transparency Report Dashboard - 9/19/2022). VP is accrued through LAND ownership (1 LAND = 2,000 VP), MANA holdings (1 MANA = 1 VP), Name ownership (1 Name = 100 VP), and via delegation from other Decentraland community Members. VP will also be attached to Layer 1 wearables from legacy Decentraland wearable collections. Because the Decentraland ecosystem is dynamic - LAND is bought and sold; MANA changes hands through the DCL marketplace and via central exchanges; and new people join the platform, purchasing their names - the amount of VP active in the DAO is consistently changing.

Despite VP fluidity, there have been a number of proposals since inception of the DAO in 2020 that have raised concern with the notion of VP distribution and over-concentration of VP amongst a small minority of wallets. In other words, there is a cohort of community members concerned with what they refer to as “whales,” whom can exert unchecked influence over the DAO and thereby threaten the integrity of fair and/or representative governance. In recent months there has been particular concern that whale voting can be used to unduly appropriate funds from the DAO through both the established Grants Framework and three staged Governance Process.

Research conducted by community members in the VP Distribution and Whale Votes Working Groups - which were established to flush out community perspectives and build consensus on this issue - indicate that 80% of active VP is controlled by 3% of active wallets. Data from the DAO Transparency Dashboard similarly depicts the holder counts significantly decreasing as concentration of VP increases.

While the Decentraland Community discusses potential pathways to address this issue in working groups, and within Core Units of the DAO (i.e. dApps Squad, Grant Support Squad and DAO Facilitation Team) there is key existing pathway for expanding VP distribution in the DAO: Voting Power Delegation!

• For those who are unaware, there is an Open Call for DAO Delegates for “active members of the Decentraland community that would like to participate in the governance process,” however, may not have significant VP of their own.

• Other than filling out the application, which will in the future be displayed on your Delegate Profile, this role does not require any inputs other than your participation in the DAO’s governance process.

• Delegation is non-custodial and fully reversible if you are the VP owner, and if you as the delegator vote in the same vote as your selected delegate, the VP owner’s vote will take precedent.

• To become a Delegate please visit the Call for Applicants and respond to the forum post.

• To become a Delegator you can do so by visiting your Voting Power profile page in the Decentraland DAO Governance Portal.

As of September 19, 2022 - 13.8M VP is actively delegated across 44 community delegates. While small compared to the total number of active wallets in the DAO, which is over 2,000, this does equate to almost 20% of historically active VP.

Delegation itself is not without controversy, and when this pathway was first proposed, there was heated debate surrounding its potential to produce the very issue it aims to combat, VP concentration. According to Matimio, DAO Facilitation Team Lead:

This brings us back to a core feature of any governance system: culture! Any and all governance systems can be used for nefarious or exploitative ends. What defines governance outcomes more than any structure is the culture of the community that uses it. Thus far in the debate over VP the culture of Decentraland continues to shine, and I am confident we will come to a long-lasting and equitable solution.

Have you applied for delegation? We’d love to hear your feedback on how the process went for you. Please tag @DAO Facilitator in the Decentraland DAO Discord to share your experience and for a chance to have your delegate profile highlighted on the Decentraland DAO Twitter Account.

The Role of a DAO Facilitator

Who are the DAO Facilitators? First and foremost we are members of the Decentraland Community who care deeply about safeguarding the interests of both fellow community members and the platform in which we "live".

Officially, we are technocrats. Our primary vested interest is in the "facilitation" of robust, effective, and efficient governance, and ensuring the voice of the community is heard. We see ourselves as socio-technical engineers, responsible for aligning social and technological systems toward the betterment of the Decentraland community in particular, and the broader metaverse space as a whole.

But who is the Decentraland community, and do they have one voice that can in fact, be represented!? The answer is, of course, no. Decentraland is not a monolithic entity in any form. It is comprised of overlapping and often competing interests, identities, stakeholder groupings and even fiscal foundations. We firmly believe, however, that we all share a common goal of building the metaverse/web3/NFT space, and creating new pathways for social, technological, artistic and even economic, political and jurisprudential development, through our collective engagement with Decentraland.

Many of you will have already heard me (Matimio) speak on the philosophy of DAO, either "in person” or in my previous DAO facilitator proposals (Link 1, Link 2); however, I would like to share it once more here in this introductory facilitators' note.

Decentralization, in my opinion, is both an ethos and a system (much like Democracy itself). Decentralized governance structures absent a commitment to decentralization will produce the same asymmetric power distributions as centralized systems. Similarly, decentralized structures are not created in a vacuum and an ethical commitment to decentralization is the first step toward transformation of existing centralized systems. While it may not be possible to fully decouple ourselves from the centralized systems that organize our world; it is possible to use the opportunity for decentralization presented by blockchain technology to expand our conceptions of what is possible and change the way that we imagine politics.

Thus what we are all a part of here in the Decentraland Community in general and the Decentraland DAO in particular, is larger than our subsector of the metaverse. The issues we tackle and examples we set in the formation of our governance system are a testament to what is possible in the emergent network era.

Stay Connected with Decentraland DAO!

• Join the Decentraland DAO Discord: https://discord.gg/ZdzKgYE5Q3

• Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DecentralandDAO

• Subscribe to our new YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyGb2hdC-wpnmYqckQ1rPdg/about

The Decentraland DAO Community Pulse Report was prepared by the DAO Facilitation Team: @Matimio, @Fractilians, @Jetty