Build on ZAOstock.

For the ZABAL Gamez builder battle of 29 to 30 August, and anyone else who wants to build something the festival can use on 3 October.

UPDATED 2026-09-30. Money has moved on since this brief: support is $1 / $20 / $50 by card on zaostock.com/tickets, crypto through Giveth. There is no PayPal, no /donate page and no "Pro Ticket" any more, and no tier promises a 1:1 or a credit on the site.

UPDATED 2026-09-19. The builder battle itself is over; the brief stays up for anyone still building. Set times are on zaostock.com/program. The facts table below is current; anything above it that still reads as a live battle window is the August brief.

ZAOstock is a free, one-day, artist-built music festival on Franklin Street in downtown Ellsworth, Maine, Saturday 3 October 2026. Seven acts played the parklet stage, music from noon until the street clears at six; Black Moon Public House next door hosts its own evening after that. Produced by ZAO Festivals, the events arm of The ZAO. Everything below is real, on disk, and yours to build on.

The loop: build, then call Zaal

You do not need to wait for the closing Space. When you have something to show, at any hour, reach Zaal directly. He opens a Space on the WaveWarZ X account and puts the stream up at zabalgamez.com/live so you can share it live. Extra Spaces can appear at any hour of the battle. Ship in the open; show early; show twice.

• Battle: 24 hours, noon Saturday to noon Sunday, ET. Opening Space in the first hour, closing Space in the last hour, both on the WaveWarZ X account (links posted when they are created).
• Watch: https://zabalgamez.com/live
• The battle itself trades at https://wavewarz.com
• Format, judging signals and prizes: https://zabalgamez.com/august

Five things the festival needs

Pick one. Each track lists what already exists, what is missing, and where your build plugs in. None of them is a toy: the thing you build is what runs on 3 October if it works.

1. Organization: help the crew run the day

What exists:

• A team dashboard at https://zaostock.com/team (4-letter code login for the organizing team): members, todos, volunteers, RSVPs, sponsors, notes, activity, budget.
• Eight "circles" (workgroups anyone can join) at https://zaostock.com/circles. The page exists; its API is failing in production today (a database mismatch, being fixed).
• Public intake forms that already write to the dashboard: volunteer sign-up (https://zaostock.com/apply), musician submissions (the page is gone, removed 2026-09-01 - the POST /api/musicians/submit route below still exists but nothing on the site calls it), ideas (https://zaostock.com/suggest), and the artist rider (https://zaostock.com/musicians/rider).
• The run of show in five-minute rows, the production plan, the AV spec and the livestream chain, all in the public repo under docs/plans/ and docs/av/.

What is missing: a day-of view. Stage manager, MC, crews and volunteers each need one screen that says what is happening now, what is next, who is where, and what changed. Today that lives in a markdown table.

Build: a run-of-show board (phone first) that reads the five-minute grid, shows now / next / who, lets the stage manager mark a slot started, late or done, and pushes the change to everyone on it. Bonus: a volunteer check-in that writes back to the dashboard's volunteers table.

2. Ticketing with Unlock Protocol

What exists:

• RSVP is free and runs on Luma: https://ticket.zaostock.com (redirects to the Luma event).
• Support tiers: $1 / $20 / $50 by card on https://zaostock.com/tickets (Stripe), and crypto through Giveth. (Until 29 Sep this was a $50 "Pro Ticket" on /donate via PayPal or Giveth; see the note at the top.)
• The ZAO's standing decision (7 August 2026): Unlock Protocol on Base is the membership rail. The money door stays ZAO-owned; no platform takes a cut between The ZAO and its people. Unlock's DAO team is in the weekly ZAO room.

What is missing: an onchain ticket. Nothing on Unlock exists for ZAOstock yet.

Build: an Unlock lock on Base for the Pro Ticket (and, if you like, a free key for the plain RSVP as proof of attendance), a checkout that lands on the donate page, and a key-holder view: your name on the credit list, your perks, your day-of QR. Keep the festival page words plain: "Pro Ticket", "your ticket", never the protocol's name on the attendee-facing surface.

3. Decentraland, with Quan

What exists:

• Quan is the Decentraland contact.
• An open item on The ZAO's board: scan the Franklin Street parklet (LiDAR), export a GLB, and stand it up in Decentraland. The "Decentraland x COC x ZAO" Space has been queued since mid-August and not yet held.
• The livestream chain for 3 October is specified in the repo (docs/av/livestream-chain-2026-10-03.md): one stream, outdoors until six, indoors after.

What is missing: any ZAOstock presence in Decentraland.

Build: a Decentraland scene of the parklet stage that plays the 3 October stream on the big screen, carries the partner banner and the mark, and gives the online 1,000 a place to stand together. The mark and the partner logos are in the press kit below.

4. A WaveWarZ front end for the event

What exists:

• WaveWarZ runs online all year. It is NOT on the 3 October programme (Zaal, 2026-09-07): the four-to-six window it held is now LyonsDen and Tom Fellenz, and the battlers and the on-mic role went with it. WaveWarZ remains a ZAOstock partner, and its first live battle did happen at ZAO-CHELLA in December 2024.
• Public stats: GET https://wavewarz.info/api/public/stats returns volume, liveBattle, artistPayouts, traderClaims and battles totals (1,573 battles as of 24 September 2026; it climbs - 45 in the twelve days before that pull - so re-pull it rather than quoting this line). The battle site is https://wavewarz.com.
• The program page: https://zaostock.com/program.

What is missing: the in-person layer. Two hundred people on a street cannot vote on wavewarz.com from a phone in the sun without help, and the stage has no screen output.

Build: a ZAOstock-skinned battle view in two sizes: a big-screen mode (bracket, who is on, live vote, the result) and a phone mode (one tap to vote, one tap to the live battle). It is for WaveWarZ online, not for the 3 October stage. Use the identity at https://zaostock.com/brand so it reads as the same event.

5. A collaboration and bounty board on POIDH

What exists:

• poidhz, The ZAO's POIDH bounty operation: https://github.com/bettercallzaal/poidhz (public; rounds, judging pages, leaderboard, a fork-ready org.config.json). Iman runs the rounds.
• The last round ran on WaveWarZ Twitch clips, https://poidh.xyz/base/bounty/1330, and closed on Sunday 30 August, winner by POIDH consensus vote. Nothing is open right now.
• The ZAO's payout path for contributors is x402 over POIDH (same 7 August decision as track 2).
• Volunteer roles for 3 October: setup, check-in, stage crew, content, teardown (https://zaostock.com/apply).

What is missing: a board where festival tasks are bounties with proof. Today tasks live in the team dashboard and get done by whoever is asked.

Build: a ZAOstock collaboration board on POIDH: each open task (a photo set of every partner's storefront, a clip of each set, the parklet scan, signage) is a bounty with a photo-proof close, a leaderboard of who did what, and a link back into the dashboard so the crew sees it. Fork poidhz; do not start from zero.

Facts you can use (all public)

Where to read more: https://zaostock.com/llms.txt (the whole site in one text file), https://zaostock.com/program, https://zaostock.com/partners, https://zaostock.com/press, https://zaostock.com/sponsor.

Code, data and assets

• Site repo, public: https://github.com/ZAODEVZ/ZAOstock (Next.js 16, React 19, Tailwind 4, Supabase). Facts live in src/content/festival.ts and src/content/site.ts; the design system is DESIGN.md; brand tokens in docs/brand/.
• Public API today: GET /api/events and GET /api/events/zaostock-2026/lineup (both degraded while the production database is repointed; the lineup falls back to a committed list). Forms: POST /api/apply, POST /api/musicians/submit, POST /api/suggestions, POST /api/events/rsvp.
• Press kit and every partner logo as PNG: https://zaostock.com/press. The 2026 badge is retired: the mark is the moose, by attabotty.
• Identity: marks, colours, type and the rules are at https://zaostock.com/brand, which is the one source and stays current. Credit the colour and type system to Samantha "Candy", CandyToyBox, and the moose to attabotty.
• WaveWarZ public stats: https://wavewarz.info/api/public/stats
• POIDH: https://poidh.xyz and the poidhz repo above.

Rules for anything you ship publicly

1. Names: the seven acts in the facts table are public and no one else is. The repo carries planning documents with other names, including people no longer involved; those are not public copy. Do not print them.
2. No prices, tiers or sponsor numbers anywhere; packages are on request. No "tax-deductible", no fiscal sponsor claim: ZAOstock has neither.
3. Partners are the ones listed above and no one else, however friendly the conversation.
4. Attendee-facing words lead with the music. Your tool can run on Base; the festival page does not say so.
5. Spellings: ZAOstock, ZAOville, WaveWarZ, ZABAL Gamez, The ZAO, COC Concertz, ZAO-PALOOZA, ZAO-CHELLA, BetterCallZaal, LyonsDen, DCoop, Tom Fellenz.
6. No emojis and no em dashes in copy that ships on ZAOstock surfaces.

How to hand it back

Open a pull request to the site repo, or link your own repo and a live URL. Then reach Zaal: he opens the Space, you show it on the stream, and if it runs, it runs on 3 October.