The MetaCartel community started during the September of 2018 as a technical working group around meta transaction technologies, a solution that allows users to interact with decentralized applications on the Ethereum Blockchain without the need to own Ether. This working group consisted of participants from a range of projects including Universal Logins, Gnosis, Status.im, ChronoLogic, SpankChain, Shipl, ENS, Argent, and ETHWorks — all of which, coordinated together through online video calls and offline workshops to standardise technical specifications and solve cryptoeconomic research problems surrounding meta transactions (Github: Harbour MVP). In late 2018, TabooKey make a key research breakthrough to the relay collision problem (EIP-1613). MetaCartel’s community then came together to build the Gas Station Network, a decentralized network of gas relay nodes. This project later spun out from the community as the Gas Station Network Alliance.

As this spin-out happened in early 2019, MetaCartel evolved into a community focused around driving UX innovations and discovering new crypto use-cases on the Ethereum application layer. During February and March of 2019, the community worked on plans of launching of a DApp incubator. In early April, these plans transformed into the idea of MetaCartel DAO and would become known as the first fork of Moloch DAO. It’s purpose was to setup an ecosystem grant fund that would drive experimentation around crypto use cases and cryptonative business models.

MetaCartel DAO’s smart contracts were deployed to the Ethereum mainnet on the 5th of June with initial backers including Matic Network, NuCypher, SpankChain, Gnosis, AdEx, The Graph, Abridged, Odyssey and Giveth, along with 10+ other individual contributors. From the start of the DAO in July, the DAO has since raised over 1,100+ ETH and deployed $44,450 to over 13 projects, with experiments including NFT conference ticketing, DAO reputation systems, DeFi based business models for DApps, and DAOs for coordinating meatspace events. With now over 60+ DAO participants, and over 800+ community members, we are taking what we have learned from launching DApp experiments and DAOs to launch MetaCartel Ventures. Incubated by the SpankHouse, MetaCartel Ventures aims to be a project that aims to deepen MetaCartel’s existing commitment to furthering the progress within the Ethereum DApp ecosystem and Web 3.

MetaCartel’s positioning

MetaCartel’s community is in a unique position to facilitate MCV.

Community

Since inception, MetaCartel has emphasized the importance of community and has spent significant effort on community building, content creation and ecosystem knowledge sharing. Since its inception, it has:

• Held over 30+ online virtual community calls around technical research problems, working group agendas and development topics.
• Held over 20+ offline meetups all around the world across most of Ethereum’s major community conferences in cities such as: SF, Berlin, Prague, Denver, Paris, NYC, Osaka.
• Recorded and hosted over 26+ weekly podcast episodes with the creator of DApps (Wizard of DApps), including the release of over weekly 30+ newsletter editions.
• Held its first Demo Day conference during Berlin Blockchain Week 2019 focused exclusively on DApps, which over 200 of its community members attended.

Grants DAO

In July 2019, the MetaCartel launched the Ethereum community’s first ever DApp focused grant program focused on funding and supporting the launch of minimum viable DApps and furthering experimentation of new crypto use-cases and cryptonative business models. It has since:

• Provided grant funding and support to over 13 projects, that range from: NFT conference ticketing (Mintbase), DAO Infrastructure (PocketMoloch, DAOHaus), DAO reputation systems (Pepper4D), DeFi based business models (rDAI), Smart contract automation (Gelato Finance), and Events sponsorship coordination DAOs (Orochi DAO)
• The operators of MetaCartel provides assistance and support alongside grants to projects in sourcing initial pilots opportunities as well as initial customers and partners.

(written december 2019)

With its current efforts to support such projects, MetaCartel Ventures is in a unique vantage point to identify as well as attract high potential investment opportunities at the earliest stages.

“Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible” —Francis of Assisi