Overview

ExploreDAO pushes individuals and members to explore the world around them. Take a break from the endless pit of the metaverse and VR, go explore the real-world. How do we get more people to wander around, travel and explore? I think Pokemon Go established an excellent foundation for that. Incentivize people to go about in the world and collect items with varying rarity along the way.

Objective

Derived from the simple premise. Everything is tending toward individuals becoming encapsulated in the metaverse and VR rather than their real-life surroundings and environment. There is nothing inherently wrong with the metaverse, but it should be utilized in moderation. How can we go about incentivizing users to have an equal split between their virtual and real living? Perhaps by providing a linkage from the metaverse to real life and vice-versa by allowing people to collect NFTs that are location-specific and then providing them with usage in the metaverse.

What next?

I have already got initial feedback and early interest by a handful of people. I think it’s only fitting to expand this from a personal side project of mine with full control to DAO where the community builds, expands and controls the fate of this idea. At the time of this writing, I have hacked together a rough IOS app that connects to a device over bluetooth. Not to go into the minutia of the system, the device connects with a user’s device and generates a bit of information that is then sent to a server and an NFT is selected and sent to the user’s wallet.

Interested in becoming a core member to build out ExploreDAO? Shoot me a DM on twitter @omarnwaked. Would love to talk to you. I am looking for talented people to fill the following roles as they are instrumental to building out a solid foundation for everything that will be soon to come.

Roles:

• Artists

• Community Manager(s)

  • Emphasis on community building, marketing and discord related skills

• Engineer(s)/Developer(s)

  • WebApps

  • Smart contracts

• Product/Project Managers

Final

Interested in being an early user? Join our community discord to stay up-to date and have your voice heard.

https://discord.gg/vsyBaWQBCC

Want to know about my background and experience personally?

Here is my LinkedIn ( https://linkedin.com/in/omarwaked ), feel free to send me a message, connect, bounce ideas off of me, etc. Always love to talk about ideas and meet new people :)

Omar (onmeta.eth)

Preface

Quick definition: Web3 “…is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web that incorporates decentralization based on blockchains” - Wikipedia

Web3 has been a massive topic of 2021. With its foundation on the blockchain and applications such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), 2021 has seen a surge in new projects that take advantage of such technology and catalyze its usage and subsequently its impact and reach.

Background

I will be utilizing one specific project that I happen to be part of and love dearly. The Non-Fungible Olive Garden (NFOG) project started in December of 2021 with the simple idea of producing NFTs of Olive Garden franchise locations on the blockchain. There are 880 NFOG franchise NFTs and accompanied by another set of NFTs based on the breadsticks that are famously offered by Olive Garden, and it true fashion, there is no limit to the supply of breadstick NFTs, if you are interested in owning a breadstick NFT, you can mint one on the NFOG website.

On December 29th, 2021, Darden, the parent company that holds the Olive Garden company issued a take down request to OpenSea, the platform that allows individuals to browse and purchase NFTs. On December 30th, 2021, OpenSea removed the NFOG collections off of their platform but the blockchain is not tied to any given platform, the owners of the NFOG NFTs have retained their assets and other platforms such as Zora display the collection of the NFOG NFTs which can be found here:

https://zora.co/collections/0xfEe84e716845ec7423c863fc72881804F8BD8441

The statement issued by Darden and the response sent by the NFOG core team can be found in this tweet:

https://twitter.com/NFOGtweets/status/1476742404631789571?s=20

Discourse

We could neglect this whole scenario all together and dismiss it as a simple meme project that eventually faced the inevitable shutdown that any other project of similar background and agenda would face. While that is certainly true, I believe there is an interesting take and learning that we can derive from this situation. There are multiple avenues we can dive deeper into and project trends, impact and importance of such event has on the cross-section and flow from web2 to web3. I will only focus on the link between corporations and web3 for this blog.

The event that unfolded is not uncommon. History is filled with such examples of corporations opting to hinder meme projects or just projects in general, ran by individuals and or communities that utilize aspects of their business, whether it be their slogan, logo, etc. rather than working alongside them to increase their reach and impact. While it is certainly understandable why some corporations would go full force in stopping such projects that negatively impact their brand and reputation, it does not make much sense in the context of projects that preach loyalty,“inspiration”, or “love” for such corporation. In its essence, what they are actually doing is eliminating a source of free advertisement and marketing and opting to stick with the more traditional route of buying ads, etc.

The underlying issue that I am most fixated on is not that the corporations are essentially putting and end to some of the most effective advertisement and marketing they can attain, rather, I am more interested in examining the lost opportunity these corporations face. Here is a prime example of an opportunity Darden could have utilized to engage with the web3 community, expand their reach, and most importantly, utilize the NFOG community to establish its own foundation in web3 with an already existing community of individuals.

How could this have played out differently? Well, there is no certainty in what would have occurred, I can’t help but think that had Darden worked on supporting the NFOG meme project and its community, there would have been avenues for Darden to utilize aspects of web3 and its community to strengthen its brand and reputation with individuals, opening the possibility to create new incentives that rely on the technology and uniqueness that web3 provides to increase their sales, revenue, etc. This would have been a prime opportunity for Darden to be a starting point for non-web3 users get their first experience into owning an NFT, experiencing and interacting with the blockchain, etc.

With the decentralization that the blockchain provides, the scenario that the NFOG faced only strengthen’s its importance and its appeal to individuals. Had the NFOG NFTs been launched on centralized platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, Darden would have successfully wiped out and prevented future usage of the NFOG NFTs without a problem. The beauty of having the NFOG NFTs launched on the blockchain allowed the NFOG community to retain their art and carry on without worrying about how to go about re-listing the art and keeping the community intact. OpenSea might have removed the ability to individuals to find and view the NFOG NFTs but they will never be able to remove it from the blockchain and neither can Darden. The outcome of this event (and the time of this writing) appears to be a strong favoritism and benefit for the NFOG community and project as a whole. It is evident that people on Twitter are certainly engaging and talking about NFOG more than the previous weeks of its existence, its discord users are more active and interacting with one another more and this seems to be

This very topic ties into more extreme cases where the blockchain safeguards important work in the case that governments exercise their power to conceal the work and prevent it from being accessed by others. I will not go into length about this issue on this blog, rather I will save it for a future blog that I can thoroughly examine this particular issue.

Final thoughts

Corporations that fail to embrace the memes, community of fans and free publicity that these web3 projects offer will eventually find themselves losing out on a massive opportunity to leverage such community or project and build a foothold into the web3 revolution. While web3 is providing creators with the opportunity to own their content and not fear the dependency on centralized platforms to extend their reach, corporations also have the ability to utilize the communities and meme projects that spur up, providing them with additional support or partnerships to extend their reach which results in additional business and revenue for said corporation.

I will note that there are instances where there might be a project that is built upon the malicious intent to harm a company and destroy its reputation. That topic lends itself to a separate discussion but irregardless of the intent of such project or organization, it would be a wise move by the corporations to find ways to leverage the use of these projects and establish their foundation in the web3 era.

ps. I am the proud owner of the Grand Prairie NFOG franchise and breadstick #319

https://zora.co/collections/0xfEe84e716845ec7423c863fc72881804F8BD8441/135

https://zora.co/collections/0xfd90CC48cc8DA11ffEb36BB76c9b4Bb91Ca51904/319

As always, if you find any errors or gaps in logic or otherwise, please provide me with feedback and engage me in discourse through my twitter account @omarnwaked.

Many thanks from your friendly snowman lookalike :)

https://twitter.com/omarnwaked

You can view the apps I’ve developed and published on the Apple App Store here. All but one of the games I’ve developed have been long removed as I had no interest nor time to maintain them. Now, to the primary reason for this blog.

Lessons I’ve learned:

1. The time and effort it will take to develop an app can easily be underrated.

2. While a single person can develop the app from scratch, it will take longer to launch, and harder to maintain.

3. Ideas are not patentable (for better or worse). Apple does enforce a copy-cat policy for apps, meaning that if there are apps that blatantly copy another existing app, the app will be rejected. Do your research on which apps already exist and how yours is different.

4. Larger, more established software development firms utilize click-farms to bring down smaller apps with growing traction. I’ve learned this one the hard way. One app that I have published was getting significant downloads and engagement time. There are software products that track such information provide it to these larger software development companies for a small fee. These development firms take the data and quickly turn around a similar product to capture the new user influx and to slow down your growth, they will set up click-farms targeted at your product.

   1. Click-farms are essentially a large number of devices that run a script (or it could be done manually) that download an app and never open it. Apple tracks these metrics and uses it to determine how popular the app is and thus, the app gets ranked on their trending charts accordingly. You are heavily penalized for downloads that do not open the app, thus your app’s ranking falls off the chart. Dirty move? Sure. Was I surprised? I was initially, to be completely honest. I never thought of such tactic being put to use. Do I think it’s wrong? I am not one to say, but if you need to rely on “dirty warfare” to beat such competitor, you have this tactic in your arsenal.

5. Beware of spikes in advertisement revenues, it usually is a competitor trying to frame you for faking advertisement clicks and impressions which results in audits and termination from the advertisement platforms.

   1. This is also a dirty move. Is it common? Absolutely. It is simply one of the common tactics that work. Should you apply such tactic to a competitor of yours? I am not one to tell you what to do. Morals are subjective.

   As always, if you do find any errors or gaps in logic or otherwise, please provide me with feedback and engage me in discourse through my twitter account @omarnwaked

   Many thanks from your friendly snowman lookalike :)

I’ve recently met with a mentor of mine that has experience in healthcare

Publication of personal information

Before we get into the implications that blockchain will have on healthcare, I want to explore a tangential scenario that we can analyze in detail.

Establishing focus for this blog

While there are many areas that can be analyzed regard this issue, I will only focus on the mental health implications as its impact is of greater magnitude.

As always, if you do find any errors or gaps in logic or otherwise, please provide me with feedback and engage me in discourse through my twitter account @omarnwaked

Many thanks from your friendly snowman lookalike :)

Writing is not necessarily a strong suit of mine and I often find it hard to convey my thoughts and ideas in a coherent manner. To address this problem, I have created a block of time within my daily schedule that forces me to covert my current thoughts and ideas into words on paper.

Background

I started Raedam (raedam.co) my sophomore year at Portland State University (PSU). Raedam’s mission was predicated on the belief that the parking industry’s archaic methodologies and systems could be updated to benefit individuals and cities. With today’s technologies, one might ask, why is it necessary to rely on outdated count boards or roam around looking for open parking spaces? If you ever inquired about the previous question, I am here to offer you some insights.

Why I started Raedam

In any given situation, my mind defaults to seeing my surroundings as systems. As such, I always find myself looking for ways to simplify these systems to produce a more efficient and enjoyable process. As PSU is located in downtown Portland, Oregon, it wouldn’t take too much thought or imagination to visualize that parking is quite scarce and people’s patience is even more so.

Understanding the parking industry

Parking, in the context of populous cities, is more often than not under the control of local governance. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the parking in any given city is often located on the street and not in parking structures. As such, the governance of such spaces are under the authority of the city. While it may seem to substantially worse dealing with government entities to deploy and adopt new technology, I have come to find out that trying to work with the small number of companies that own the majority of parking spaces and facilities in the USA that are not owned or operated by government entities are not any better.

The companies that own the parking real-estate and manage them are not incentivized at any point to providing a better system for themselves or their customers as the demand for parking will always be high and the supply will always be low (speaking of the average supply-demand equilibrium in populous cities). Can’t find parking in this facility? That’s neat, how about you try to visit one of the other fifteen facilities within a few blocks that we also happen to own?

Primary point of failure

With the surface-level information provided, you can possibly identify that primary point of failure that took me just under three years to understand. Despite having many mentors and advisors throughout my journey running Raedam (most of which have repeatedly warned of my this exact problem), I insisted on executing on strategic plans that were not based on how the market actually worked. Rather, I was executing on how I thought the market should work.

Learnings

Throughout my entire journey running Raedam, I have met with advisors and mentors to obtain feedback on all aspects of Raedam. I was very fortunate to have these mentors and advisors that have their own journeys, both of success and failure. Their expertise and wisdom provided me with all the necessary resources and connections to stress-testing my ideas and assumptions on everything from business to product and everything in between. In retrospect, I really did not utilize their wisdom and knowledge to the full capacity and that lended me some difficult and costly mistakes that could have been avoided all-together.

It’s cliche, you’ve probably heard this so many times that you’ve lost track of it, but really find and engage with mentors and advisors that have experience in what you are trying to do. They will save you so much time from making the same exact mistakes they have encountered in their own adventures, and time is the most scarce component of it all.

That being said, I don’t have much regret for making those mistakes. As I am working on a new startup currently, I have those mistakes engrained in my head and had I not experienced them first-hand, I couldn’t really say if I would’ve made them again on the second venture. Of course I am still in the early stages of this venture and there is much to be done, but the traction we’ve attained in the past three weeks of this new venture seems crazy to me. Not to deviate from Raedam too much, I will create a future blog post with our progress and learnings from the new venture.

Final thoughts

1. It’s not worth your time trying to make change in any aspect that requires government approval or contracts to any large extent. This especially is true as a small startup, and one without prior success to help vouch for your ability to deliver on your ideas.

2. A Startup really does require your full-time. You can’t expect to succeed in building a company without providing it with the proper attention and effort. This claim especially holds true when your startup is trying to build out a hardware and a software product that also happened to be B2B2C. It’s too complicated.

3. Avoid hardware at all costs. As much as it is fun to touch and hold a tangible item you built from scratch, the associated pain is not worth it.

4. Listen to your mentors and advisors, chances are they have experienced the same problems you are going through and they are providing you with a cheap ticket to avoiding massive pain and loss :) (That is not to say that you should not think for yourself, to the contrary, please don’t take or act upon advice without conducting your own research and thinking it through yourself)

PS

This is my first blog post. It will not be polished nor succinct, so if you do find any errors or gaps in logic please provide me with feedback and engage me in discourse through my twitter account @omarnwaked

Many thanks from your friendly snowman lookalike :)