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Igniting the Kusamaverse

Odyssey
Odyssey Hackathon

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We are excited to announce that the Kusama Treasury approved our proposal to ignite the Kusamaverse. The Kusamaverse is a real-time and persistent 3D home for the Kusama ecosystem, where utilities, communities and activities come alive, come together and thrive. Enabling a new way for users to navigate, connect and contribute to and benefit from the Kusama ecosystem. Our goal is to increase the user base of Kusama significantly. To turn the Kusama User Experience into an inspiring, social and rewarding world where we are connected, where we are co-creating and where we are able to unlock our superpowers and the potential of Web3.

This is an invitation to get involved and contribute to a global digital society where change agents feel empowered to take back control, spark innovation and disrupt the status quo.

Please find the full proposal below for the details on this endeavour.

How to get involved?

In the coming months we will work closely with the Kusama community. We are looking for:

  1. Tech experts with deep knowledge of Kusama’s inner workings
  2. Artists that want to provide input on what the Kusamaverse could look, feel and sound like
  3. People/ teams that run parachains (both pre- and post auction)
  4. People that run validator nodes
  5. Digital artists involved into collaborative art projects
  6. Kusama ambassadors and event organizers
  7. People with crazy ideas. Honestly you can’t go crazy enough.

Contact us on Discord.

Proposal: Kusama Spending Proposal — Odyssey Momentum

Proponent: EytwZpYLbUf9XYdgXWs8SEV2gyfDHM2XXwv8wVNFtH3bBcA (Consider using the identity module on your address before submission of proposal, this allows more certainty on the voting process)

Date: 25.01.2022

Requested KSM: 97.580 USD, to be calculated/converted to KSM using the 30day avg tool on the day of on-chain submission.

Short description: Building the Kusamaverse, a real-time and persistent 3D home for the Kusama ecosystem. Where the Kusama community can gather, engage into on-chain and off-chain activities, tailored to collective value creation, and can build their own social network economy. Where activities like staking, parachain auctions, as well as gatherings, hackathons are directly accessible as a shared experience in the metaverse. Enabling a new way for users to navigate, connect and contribute to and benefit from the Kusama ecosystem.

The Kusamaverse

“We need a mechanism that puts more focus on making it user friendly, make it as easy as possible for the most uneducated new entrants — @DonnieBigBags, during the PolkaOscars, dec 2021

You can’t change a system unless you transform consciousness. You can’t transform consciousness unless you make a system see and sense itself — Otto Scharmer”

We aim to enable the Kusama super-organism to grow to a higher level of consciousness effectiveness and value-output. Our goal is to enable individual users, teams and the entire ecosystem to unleash their collaborative superpowers in a shared metaverse experience that is built and owned by the community.

We are building the Kusamaverse. An interconnected home for the Kusama ecosystem, where the superpowers of the Kusama infrastructure, its parachains and the entire community are easily accessible for everyone.

Where you can host and participate in a plethora of on- and off-chain initiatives and activities in an interconnected, artistic, social 3-dimensional environment.

Turning on-chain activities like staking, parachain auctions and governance into a shared experience and turning off-chain activities like gatherings, grants programs, hackathons and even policy making into an ongoing online festival for everyone to participate, contribute and benefit.

The goal of the Kusamaverse is to raise the tide for all boats, and increase the user base significantly.

Contributing to the Kusama-vision

Kusama is an experimental development environment for teams who want to move fast and innovate, or prepare for deployment on Polkadot. The Kusamaverse will facilitate and boost exactly that, both for off-chain activities (like meetups, incubation of initiatives, policy making) and on-chain activities (like staking, crowd-loans, voting).

In the current situation, there are limitations to what the Kusama community with its current UX can do. The focus of the current applications, mainly polkadot.js, are on on-chain activities, for technically sound individuals using a complex, very detailed, dashboard. In general, there is lots and lots of information to absorb, and most of the time people don’t even know why certain information is there as it has no context to them. Nor is it a social process where you can meet and learn from each other, or is the process inviting to non-technical participants.

Staking, other on-chain activities and off-chain activities should and could be an attractive and fulfilling experience for a wide(r) audience.

Momentum vision on development of open, public multi-chain crypto-economic-ecosystems

1. Context of the proposal: we aim to have as much context as possible to understand how a proposal came to the proponent’s mind, Please include here:

A. Any points discussed in advance in any channel related to the proposal and background research for your project:

The idea for this proposal came to mind when discussing the current experience of Kusama token holders in both finding their way in the Kusama ecosystem and their staking experience. They foresee much more users and more diverse users coming into the Kusama ecosystem and as such a user and value experience that fits a much bigger user base. The idea for this project was further discussed with Kusama token holders, their input is incorporated in the project and its approach.

B. Background of the Proponent, Team credentials:

Since 2013, Odyssey has been active in the, as we call it in 2022, Web3-space. We have been involved and supporting Polkadot and Kusama right from the start in 2016, by giving it a platform at our conferences and enabling over 350 teams to build during our hackathons, with Polkadot experts from Parity on-site giving workshops and assisting builders. There are more informal examples of our involvement as well: one of our current team members put Polkadot on the interoperability agenda of ISO.

We organized Europe’s biggest blockchain hackathon and multi-stakeholder incubator, with over 100 clients like the European Commission, Dell, KLM, VMware, IUCN, Vattenfall, Engie and several Dutch Ministries. When COVID hit, we developed the first version of Momentum, as a 3D online mass collaboration arena, to host our annual hackathon with 2500 participants. The prototype of this 3d world premiered at the Odyssey Momentum Hackathon, Nov 2020, with 1600 participants collaborating on 21 hackathon challenges, logged in simultaneously, in one massively multiplayer 3d environment. Aftermovie.

20 months after this prototype, Odyssey.org now is a digital native foundation established in The Netherlands, with a live product (Momentum, in its Alpha-version) used by several thousand users in multiple 3d worlds that are in production. Anyone can freely experiment and start their initiative in our alpha world: momentum.odyssey.org. Our ‘Kusamaverse project’ for instance you can find here. We are heads down developing Momentum (for which we raised $4.6M of seed funding in Q3 2021) to facilitate shared value creating experiences in 3D worlds created and connected by the users in a p2p social network owned by the users through a native crypto economic infrastructure.

We are building a Proof of Attendance token on Moonbeam, to be launched in February. This can be used in two ways: 1) Distribute POAP token at an online event in Momentum worlds, and 2) distribute POAP to participants of past events, through a process in which an admin can assess proof of attendance and issue the tokens manually to each user.

C. Their motivation (including any conflict of interests or association to any governing bodies)

Kusama is the place where crazy ideas can be turned into reality.

We are building an open source web3 metaverse stack enabling online 3D worlds tailored to collaboration. We aim to unlock collaborative superpowers in an open social network self-owned and self-governed by users, to all freely shape our future together, and own it too.

Kusama is a living platform built for change agents to take back control, spark innovation and disrupt the status quo. This fully resonates with us and why we are building Momentum. We feel Kusama can and will be used by many millions.

The Kusamaverse, co-created with our vision and stack for an open source, self owned, collaborative metaverse, will significantly contribute to the next stage of growth and depth of the Kusama ecosystem. It would enable any Kusama token-holder to truly benefit from the full Kusama infrastructure, it’s parachains and dApps, as well as its community, including both its on-chain and off-chain opportunities and activities.

Beyond this first ‘Kusamaverse’ project, we aim to unlock the exciting work being done on the parachain level and much much more. Below is our long term vision/architecture.

More on our mission and vision and roadmap.

D. Any known backups already behind the solution (known token holders, organizations or collectives building on Kusama Network or participating in its governance mechanism in any way):

Among our long time partners is Grid Singularity. One of our Momentum development partners is the Sovereign Nature Initiative, who co-created with us its own Momentum World, currently live for anyone to visit and participate in for example the SNI Hackathon, 4–6 Feb 2022. The Polkadot Council recently decided to extend a grant (Motion 425) for funding the prizes of this hackathon.

Sovereign Nature Initiative World — sni.odyssey.org

2. Problem statement: what problem is this proposal trying to solve? Make it as granular as possible to allow token holders to understand the logic behind it.

The Kusama ecosystem is currently trapped in the flat web.

Information, people and activities are separated.

  • The Polkadot.js.org and polkadot.polkassembly.io dashboards (UX/ UI) that are available for on-chain activity are generally quite overwhelming, even more so to users without a technical background.
  • On-chain activities like staking, voting, treasury submissions etc. are difficult to grasp and understand for people without a technical background.
  • The social network and its members are scattered, multiple chat-systems like Discord, Matrix, and Riot in use. Therefore hard to see: what are all the initiatives? Who is working on what? How can I participate, contribute, benefit?
  • The off-chain activities, like proposals to contribute to Kusama or a parachain, are scattered, not connected to on-chain activities and therefore sub-optimally supported. There is not one single place to make your initiative known to the ecosystem and immediately start collaborating.
  • It is not easy to inform the community on proposals or any other governance activities.

This is a problem as it drastically limits the growth of Kusama.

  • The coordination of the ecosystem will become exponentially more complex with more people joining.
  • The enablement of new Kusama users will be more and more focussed on non-technical people.
  • Without one single environment, serving as a social network, and in it the integration of tools to act on Kusama, the coordination and enablement of users of Kusama will be sub-optimal.

3. Proposal Objective/solutions to point 2: What is the goal of the proposal? What does ‘success’ look like? Explain what your solution is, after taking into consideration the context and the problem. Make sure to consider all points included in the problem statement to ensure a complete and balanced proposal, and try to be as granular as possible.

The goal is to boost the activity of users and grow the number of users, by bringing together information, people and activities

The Kusamaverse

  • is able to host the on-chain and off-chain activities of the Kusama ecosystem.
  • enables ecosystem members to engage in these activities, together.

Our solution

Momentum enables the Kusama user to do everything they currently can do, both on-chain and off-chain, and more, in one place. It is a real-time and persistent 3D world, where Kusama ecosystem members can host on-chain and off-chain initiatives. This world provides insight in all activities, enabling ecosystem members to navigate and instantly contribute.

One shared environment

A home for the Kusama ecosystem where everyone AND everything can get together -> a social network that is live, spatial, persistent, for co-creation, funding, supporting and building the next operating system for our society.

Activities visualised and easy to on-board and contribute to

On-chain activity (staking & governance & parachain auctions)

  • Example: the validator node activity, track record and uptime/health is represented visually in the 3D world you are flying in.
  • Example: you can fly around in this world and interact, so actually go into a validator node’s own space, learn of their track record, have a conversation and stake.

Off-chain activity (announcements, events, programs, community building & participation, following trending activities, educational processes, own studio, collaboration and builder spots for initiatives.

  • Example: an ambassador can host an interactive event. You can fly by, drop in, and instantly learn how to do the first small actions like staking or contribute your knowledge.
  • Example: a governance coordinator can be in the Kusamaverse all day. He can be approached for advice on a proposal, he can review proposals and instantly connect to the initiator, he can host a council meeting, and actually vote in this space, just like any other token holder.

Future potential
The Kusamaverse (world) could grow into a constellation, with gateways to all parachains, all having their own 3d world, built and tailored by their own respective ecosystems.

What success would look like

  • Kusama ecosystem members are able to interact on-chain the same way you do on apps, but in the metaverse.
  • They are able to initiate and contribute to off-chain activities much easier, with more overview and reach.

This leads to a bigger, more diverse and more active community. Growing participation, growing demand: the power and beauty of Kusama to many (many) more people.

Getting non-Kusama token holders buy-in.

Getting non-stakers to stake.

Getting better staking and navigating experience for active stakers.

Get a better rating for Kusama.

Who does this solution help? Specify which stakeholder will benefit or is being benefited at the moment by the solution, if any.

Every (potential) Kusama token holder benefits, from experienced stakers (better navigation and clearer insights in potential initiatives) to someone new to Kusama or even crypto (The Kusamaverse will be as easy to enter as clicking on a Zoom-link or playing Minecraft)

Milestones and tasks to include: Please provide a list of milestone deliverables. This list should closely reflect the list of deliverables agreed by your team to reach the solution, along with resources needed for development and timelines. If your project includes any technical development, each item in the list should include a link to the deliverable itself:

Each milestone delivers independent value to Kusama. In other words, after the first milestone Kusama has a functioning Kusamaverse with staking functionality open to the public to use. In further milestones important features like voting and such are built.

After each milestone we will evaluate to adapt the next milestone(s) based on our learnings, to convert into a new proposal for the council. The current proposal is for milestone 1. Milestone 2–4 we included to give a look into our future thinking and concrete plans.

Subsequent milestones (2–4) are further down in this document, in the same table/format, without the granularity, as they are subject to change due to learnings in the first milestone. The on-chain submission of the project covers only milestone 1.

User stories Milestone 1

  • As a user I want to have a 3D representation of the Kusama network, because I want to see the different types of nodes in one clear visual
  • As a user I want to have a real-time visual representation of transactions on the Kusama network, because it provides insight in the activity of the network
  • As a user I want to see the details of a transaction
  • As a user I want to stake in validator nodes directly from the Kusamaverse, because it provides a more accessible user experience
  • As a user I want to have a community agenda in the Kusamaverse, because I want to know about and participate in the virtual community gatherings -> For virtual gatherings we have the following ingredients already available: spaces + location links + stage mode.
  • As a validator node I want to design my space with information and graphics, because I want to give useful information to potential stakers.
  • As a validator I want to claim my validator node in the Kusamaverse because ownership needs to be proven before alterations to the space are allowed
  • As a validator node I want to have an informative dashboard, because this can make people decide to stake in Kusama

# Estimates 1B — Kusama relay chain visualised

### Phase I — Design (208hrs):

**Analyse Kusama & parachain data topologies**

When making a uniform 3d representation of a set of blockchain networks that are based on different protocols, we need to have a common understanding of what a network is, what a node is etc. With this activity we will look at the topologies of different blockchain networks and create a coherent picture.

Estimated effort: 48 hours (2 fte, 3 days)

**Analyse Kusama & parachain interfaces and clients**

In order to retrieve data and activities from a network we first need to understand how we can interact with these networks. This activity will result in an overview of Kusama and relevant parachains with detailed information on how to interact with them, i.e. what client to use and what (group of) functions in the client is relevant for our use case. For particular clients this might include creating a small PoC in order to reduce risk in the design phase. An example of a client is gossamer for Polkadot.

Estimated effort: 80 hours (2 fte, 5 days)

**Create a generic data model and solution design**

Based on the analysis we should know how we retrieve data and what that data looks like for a variety of blockchain networks. In this activity we will create a data model that allows us to translate and store the input data from the blockchain in a schema that allows us to make a uniform 3d representation of the network and its events. Next to that we will create a solution design specification that translates the requirements into an end-to-end solution including a component architecture and clear approach with epics, user stories and tasks.

Estimated effort: 80 hours (2 fte, 5 days)

### Phase II — Build (376 hrs)

Based on existing knowledge and preliminary research we can make a draft high-level solution design in which we identify a number of components with their core function. In this section we describe their core function.

**Implement chain listener interface**

Develop an interface that allows for implementations for Kusama and other parachains based on the generic data model. Functionally the chain listener will listen for events and changes in the network, and store these in a database.

Estimated effort: 40 hours (1fte, 5 days)

**Implement Kusama chain listener**

Implement the chain listener interface specifically for the Kusama chain to capture and store Kusama events and network changes.

Estimated effort: 120 hours (1fte, 15 days)

**Implement chain listener manager & provider**

In order to listen for different networks in a scalable manner with the certainty of not missing any events the individual listeners require to be managed; next to that, the chain listener should allow for changes in configuration and listeners at run-time via a provider.

Estimated effort: 56 hours (1fte, 7 days)

**Create reflector service**

Once network activity data is captured and persisted it should be immediately exposed to the Kusamaverse. The reflector service will provide a stream of events that the front-end can pick up.

Estimated effort: 80 hours (1fte, 10 days)

**Unforeseen and overhead**

Deployment, configuration, code clean-up and other overhead activities.

Estimated effort: 80 hours (30%)

### Phase III — Test (96 hours)

**Benchmark**

Test the performance of the solution in different scenarios and tweak where necessary.

Estimated effort: 24 hours (1 fte, 3 days)

**Test the chain listener in different scenarios**

Perform user acceptance tests and find edge cases that lead to undesired or unexpected behaviour.

Estimated effort: 24 hours (1 fte, 3 days)

**Open source review, documentation & improvements**

Perform a code review with a ‘fresh’ pair of eyes to ensure that the community can make the best possible use of the solution, and has the required guidelines to get started.

Estimated effort: 24 hours (1 fte, 3 days)

**Unforeseen and overhead**

Test set-up and overhead activities.

Estimated effort: 24 hours (30%)

This project is a long term endeavor to, step-by-step, co-create the metaverse for Kusama, optimised for value output and creation. This will also provide vital input to develop the open source Momentum stack. We are not just creating this for the Kusama community, but first and foremost with the community. That’s why our price per hour is near cost price, set at $ 70 US Dollar.

Our approach

We co-create the Kusamaverse with the Kusama-ecosystem. The input from all possible POVs is key for developing the Kusamaverse. We have a track record and proven workshop methodology in place, developed and tested when developing worlds in the past year, optimized for working with communities and ecosystems to develop their own 3D world. Principles in this methodology:

  • We develop the 3D world using (our own, Alpha) 3D world. This way, all involved can grasp the potential, instead of talking about it you are in it. Find this Kusamaverse project space here.
  • It is an iterative process: input and moodboard/ first sketches/feedback/sketches/ first 3d sketches/feedback/3d models/feedback/first fly around/feedback/features working/feedback/1.0 version done.
  • Every new iteration is announced publicly on relevant Kusama-community hubs like Discord, so everyone can give their input.
  • All Kusama ecosystem members are able to contribute to the design of the world, both in design input sessions and a-synchronous through a public moodboard.
  • At least one session with representatives from the Kusama Council — strategic level input.
  • Overall, next to the 3D world design input described above, input from the entire community we will gather on:
  • Features and functionalities
  • Staking process
  • Current and aspiring community workflows — how does the community (inter)act in the Kusamaverse?

We use sessions, chats and public whiteboards for everyone to bring in their ideas for this.

Sketches…

This artist impression was made purely for this proposal, to give an idea of how a Kusamaverse could look.

The end result could be very different. Part of this project is a series of sessions and feedback sessions where the Kusama-ecosystem is invited to provide input and feedback to our artists for the design of the Kusamaverse.

Find our full concept/impression sketches on this Miro-board.

The Kusamaverse

We have added a couple of impressions of ‘other’ 3D worlds we have created, just to show what is possible (anything:)

Dutch Government World (Ministry of the Interior) — watwerktvoorons.odyssey.org

Vattenfall (European Energy Corporate) World — in development: https://happyship.com/MOMVAT/

5. If you have seen similar proposals before: why is yours different?

We have not come across any similar proposition. We have found several initiatives that could, to a certain extent, be considered in the same field.

Tools that already exist

The biggest difference with our proposition. Momentum provides:

  • On-chain activities (like staking, parachain auctions), beyond visualisation. This can be expanded from staking, to parachain auctions, DApp activity, DAO development, DeFi activities.
  • Connected off-chain activities. Be able to host gatherings, hackathons, incubators in the same 3D environment.
  • MMO experience of all activities. Staking and parachain auctions live as a social experience with thousands of users in the same space.
  • Social networking, direct user to user communications, community building.
  • Tailored 3D world(s) for Kusama, and connected worlds can be built by the community with the Momentum SDK + world builder.

5. Payment conditions: please specify any special conditions regarding the payment of this proposal. If approved without specification regarding payment, the payment will be executed to the proponent’s address.

We are happy to go with the standard way of paying out the milestone in full and reporting back on the sub milestones. As we understood this is the standard way of working/payment conditions.

6. Comments, Qs&As: Include here any public relevant information, questions and the respective answers covered on any of the communications channels pertinent to this proposal up to date.

7. We’d love to hear about how you got to know about the Kusama on-chain treasury: let us know, in a few sentences, how did you become familiar with the spending mechanism and the on-chain treasury?

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Odyssey
Odyssey Hackathon

Written by Odyssey

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The place where our imaginations meet to create together, connect, and tokenise adventures, quests, and journeys. Odyssey is developed on Web3 technology.