Breaking Down BANK Tokenomics | BanklessDAO Weekly Rollup
Catch Up With What Happened This Week in BanklessDAO
Dear Bankless Nation 🏴,
Evolution requires change. As BanklessDAO evolves into a truly decentralized organization, we must rework our processes to ensure we are setting a high standard and continually refining the way we work. Revamping the community call, realigning governance, and emphasizing revenue-generating ideas are just some of the steps we are taking to forge ahead.
Many of our projects have progressed: we now have smoother newcomer onboarding sessions, kickass MetaFactory merch drops, a Podcast Hatchery trailer going live, the Bankless Academy Beta launch, the inaugural DAO Heat contest, and weekly yoga sessions! In this week’s Rollup, we highlight some of these exciting new projects.
Also, take a moment to read the Contributor Care section which provides some tips on how to communicate effectively without getting stressed. And don’t forget our OpSec section—this week covers fake Discord gifts.
We took bDAO from 0 to 1. Now let’s go from 1 to 100. bDAO strong!
Contributors: Cheetah, teeLEROO, theconfusedcoin, tigress, borisSchickedanz.eth, BogDragonov, d0wnlore, Thalia_M, siddhearta, hirokennelly.eth, Dippudo, Trewkat, EthHunter, tomahawk
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🙏 Thanks to our sponsor:
🗓 Weekly Recap
BanklessDAO Weekly NFT Showcase 🔥
🧑🎨 Artists: Crypto Bushi & Sinjun
🏦 Auction Type: Open Edition
💰 Price: 0.028 ETH
Resident bDAO artists Crypto Bushi and Sinjun, along with clothing designer and all-around fashionista Kouros and footwear designer ARNLD, present RABBITHOLE.exe....an animated short visualizing “the fall down the rabbit hole.” Part anti-corporate manifesto, part visual and audio feast, strap in and get ready for the most revealing 59 seconds in NFT history.
Community Highlights
🤓 Governance, Reconsidered
Governance is one of the primary challenges to be addressed in Season 3, and already we are feeling the weight of a broken system. At the end of Season 2, the DAO passed the Firming Up Governance snapshot proposal in an effort to establish quorum and voting requirements. The proposal passed with a significant majority (99% or 16M BANK for; 147K BANK against), establishing the following quorum limits:
According to this proposal, quorum limits for governance proposals will require 63 votes on the Forums with >71.6% or majority votes, and at least 36.84M BANK with >77.76% or majority votes on snapshot. The intention behind the quorum requirements are to establish legitimacy and validity, i.e. to prevent proposals from being shuttled through the voting process without a significant number of contributors voting on the proposal. In general, quorum requirements are a healthy procedural requirement, but as we entered Season 3 with newly established quorum limits we have immediately hit a roadblock.
The Governance Solutions Engineer Program (GSE) was proposed by frogmonkee to establish a working group to solve some of the major problems the DAO is currently facing in relation to strategic prioritization and contributor incentives. This proposal went to snapshot on January 20 and has not met the quorum limits established in the Firming Up Governance snapshot. The final results of the GSE snapshot totaled 26.9M BANK, with 23M for and 3.9M against, falling significantly short of the required 36.84M BANK quorum threshold.
So what do we do?
There has been significant discussion about the path forward in the #governance channel. Much of the debate is centered on whether or not the quorum threshold was valid in the first place. There is also debate around the Firming Up Governance proposal not meeting its own voting requirements, as there was only 16M BANK in favour. However, it is fair to argue that since the proposal itself established those precedents i.e. there was no established quorum, it would have only required a majority vote to be approved.
Another issue to consider is the question of the GSE proposal itself. The primary author and advocate, frogmonkee, has chosen to step down from his roles within the DAO for personal reasons. The votes cast and the elections held as part of the GSE proposal showed a significant majority vote (20.6%) for frogmonkee to assume a role in the program. If we decide to proceed with the GSE program despite not meeting quorum requirements, how will the votes that were cast for frogmonkee be handled? Are they null and void? Will the next top five candidates simply be given the position? How does frogmonkee’s withdrawal affect voting patterns for elected roles in the program? These are not easy questions to answer.
The GSE proposal was designed to address these types of challenges, but we need to resolve the significant issue of quorum threshold before we can move forward. How we choose to navigate the next few days and weeks are important. Samanthaj brought to light a few nuances to consider as we vote on the best way forward:
How do we maintain trust in our contributors and the legitimacy of our governance processes?
How do we solve the medium and long-term problems facing the DAO?
What do we do with the GSE program in the absence of its drafter and the individual who received the most votes? In other words, how do we determine who the fifth person will be?
How do we move forward without setting a precedent that will hurt us in future?
There will likely be two polls to determine our next steps: 1) What to do with the GSE Program, and 2) What to do about the quorum requirement. Look out for these over the next few days.
Governance is everybody’s responsibility. Make sure to join in the discussion, cast your vote, and make your voice heard.
🔥 DAO Heat
Get your creative juices flowing as DAO Heat kicks off on Monday! Stay tuned for updates on Discord about the theme and format of the contest. Join the AMA launch party scheduled on Tuesday at 1:00 pm Eastern in the Writers Room voice channel. We hope to see you all there!
👕 MetaFactory Drop
Get ready for some epic merchandise as MetaFactory is back with one of their best collections to date. Trend-setting hoodies and diamond hand t-shirts are just some of the dope products that are going to be released soon. Watch this space keenly as these are going to fly off the rack!
What’s New
🧠 Crypto Sapiens Podcast
This week, Humpty sits down with Joel Lin, contributor at CitaDAO, to learn about the DeFi Real Estate ecosystem. They explore CitaDAO and its mission to not only tokenize real estate, but build the Ethereum of Real Estate.
✍️ BanklessDAO Writers
💰 BANK Balancer Pool is Live on Polygon
Ever thought about how you can put all that BANK sitting in your MetaMask wallet to work? Think no more! The BANK 80/20 Balancer pool is live on the Polygon Network allowing you to get yield on that hard earned BANK. Create an LP token here and start earning rewards!
Get Involved
🥊 Fight Club Fireside Chat
On Wednesday, Fight Club hosted its first fireside chat, which forms part of the Venture DAO Education program organized jointly with FTW.DAO. It was great to host Jin Kang from Global Coin Research, Medha Kothari from Komorebi Collective, and pilkster from Fight Club. The key takeaway is that Venture DAOs will take away a large chunk of investment from traditional VC funds because of their efficiency and ability to support founders. The next session is on Thursday 3 February and we will focus on VC Deal Terms. If you want to learn more, please sign up for next week’s session or join the weekly Fight Club calls on Wednesdays at 1pm PTD.
🙏 Sponsor: Balancer.fi — Automated Portfolio Manager and Trading Platform.
Breaking Down BANK Tokenomics
Author: EthHunter
History
Social tokens are the foundation of the Creator Economy.
Every story has a beginning, and Bankless is no different. Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman launched the Bankless podcast in March 2020. The first episode was on leveraging the revolution in Internet money and internet finance to benefit you as an individual.
Since then, Ryan and David have recorded hundreds of hours about some of the most interesting topics happening in crypto now and coming in the future in Ethereum. Keeping us up to speed with the Weekly Rollups and informing us as to the State of the Nation. We all have at least heard one podcast of our fearless, dare I say ultra bullish, Ethereum cryptonative forefathers.
One day it dawned on the duo….. And the idea was formed……..
“The bankless movement is now larger than any single entity, newsletter, podcast, or person to contain. It needs an internet scale organization to achieve its goals.
So the bankless community is launching a DAO.
This is scalability for the bankless movement.
This is the world’s first media & culture DAO for crypto.
This is the BanklessDAO”
The BANK Airdrop
We all love airdrops!
Depending on your interaction with this newly created project, you may have been eligible to receive an airdrop of the DAO’s native governance token, BANK. The initial distribution of the token was offered to anyone holding the HQ’s Bankless Substack premium subscriber badges, and wallets that donated to the Bankless Gitcoin Grants. There were even some allocated to rare early Bankless merch holders!
The growth and progress that the DAO has made from the start has distributed the BANK token across thousands of wallets! Forefront did a midyear study of social DAOs and found the BANK token was the most widely held token of the group (now 4370 wallets and counting). This is a great indication of BANK token demand and also sheds some light on just how prominent the DAO already is in the space. Having a larger holder base than well known tokens FWB or WHALE is a bullish spot to be in, to say the least.
From the humble beginnings of Season 0, the number of wallets has doubled and the number of holders is climbing steadily as we grow.
(probably nothing)
Now What? (What Role Does BANK Play?)
What social tokens enable is a Web3 future, where creators and communities can organize independent of any particular platform and capture the value they create. Here in the bDAO, the BANK token is used in a few key ways.
The DAO is separated into membership levels within the Discord dependent on the amount of BANK held in your wallet. These values have not changed since Genesis but recently there have been proposals to reduce the Level 1 member requirement.
Level 1 = 35,000 BANK
Level 2 = 35,000 BANK and be voted in as an “Active Contributor”
Level 3 = Whale 150,000 BANK
Level 4 = Liquidity Provider 250 Uniswap V2 BANK/ETH LP tokens or 1500 BPT
35K BANK is the threshold for membership and opens up access to the full Discord server. The biggest advantage of membership is that you are an official part of the community! But there are other perks as well:
Exclusive alpha and liquidity provision incentive opportunities
POAP raffles and other giveaways
bDAO poker tournaments
Pre-mint and whitelisting opportunities for certain NFT projects
Crypto Sapiens podcast live audience participation opportunities
Bankless Rocket League tournament
BanklessDAO Dungeons and Dragons games
Members only interviews and AMAs from the Web3 community
In truth, we should always be looking to expand this list of opportunities and continue the momentum to build increasing utility into the BANK token. It’s about aligning incentives so that more and more people will hold BANK!
Level 2, or “L2” is a nominated position and a social signal of recognition. Once L1 is reached, your peers can nominate you to L2 status to signify that you are a significant, active contributor .
Level 3 just means the user has a larger amount of BANK and subsequently a larger voting power, and Level 4 is attained by providing significant liquidity for BANK on the exchange market. One can attain L3 and L4 without first becoming an L2!
The beauty of contributing at BanklessDAO is that there are a multitude of ways to acquire BANK. This allows people that contribute to the culture, daily activities, and projects to be compensated for their work. There are:
Bounties: Ways that we set values for tasks done within the DAO
Coordinape: Monthly or seasonally run. Community allocates tokens to the circle of people they work with daily
Role Holders: Paid a “salary” based on their role paid seasonally.
Inside the DAO, we have a strong tipping culture, where one can easily send small amounts of BANK to say thanks using Collab.Land. Some common reasons for tipping are:
Providing a link or feedback to a post
Rewarding a new member who jumps in
Making something useful for the group (meeting notes, lists, templates, art, schedule)
Signifying that you appreciate their viewpoint or voice on a topic
Just because it is fun to share, and it brightens someone's day.
How to Use BANK Once You Have It
The big question on everyone's mind is how do we use our BANK to make some juicy YIELD! As the bDAO is a fairly new community, it has taken time to grow and to implement strategies to grow our ecosystem in a safe and measured way.
It isn't just about watching the “number go up”, but also about having token liquidity and a stable treasury that will serve the DAO well into the future.
The ways in which we can use BANK are increasing as we go. Here are a few you can utilize now, and then some that we can look forward to happening in the near future!
Liquidity Providing (LP)
In order for holders to get into and out of the BANK token, there needs to be a place where you can buy and sell it. Automated Market Makers (AMMs) are that place.
These are decentralized exchange protocols built on Ethereum and use code to generate the price of something instead of an order book like in traditional systems.
Think Money Robots
In order for there to be anything to buy and sell, liquidity needs to be provided to the AMM by users depositing tokens into a liquidity pool. To dive a bit deeper into AMMs, read a great overview by Fernando Martinelli at Balancer Labs.
One risk when adding liquidity to an AMM is that of impermanent loss. When the assets in the liquidity pair are volatile in relation to each other, and the exchange rate goes up or down, the ratio of assets within the pool can change. As the price changes externally, an arbitrage opportunity will incentivize traders to deposit the declining asset to the AMM and withdraw the appreciating one until the AMM rate adjusts to match the external rate. This results in a different ratio of tokens and a position that is worth less than the value you originally deposited.
To further understand the topic, please watch a highly recommended video by WhiteboardCrypto making this complex topic easier to grasp with examples and drawings.
Balancer
Balancer is a next level AMM protocol built on Ethereum, and this one has a twist!
Like mentioned before, AMMs rely on liquidity pools in order to trade from one asset to the next. This has normally been done in a 50/50 weighting with only two tokens in the pool to allow that pair of tokens to be traded. The twist with Balancer is that the pool can contain up to 8 different tokens, as well as dictating the percent weight of each token This allows for some very useful pools that users can deposit their various tokens in, and has allowed us at Bankless to have a pool weighted 80/20, BANK/ETH. The advantage of this weighting is less reliance on a stable BANK price, and is favorable to the BANK hodler.
bDAO holders have been depositing their BANK into the 1.2M TVL pool for some time now with great success. In order to create that all important yield, Balancer rewards the users LP with its own native utility token Balancer (BAL) used for governance participation in their protocol.
Olympus Pro Bonding
We have incentivized bonding where you can trade LP tokens (either from providing liquidity in the BANK/ETH pool on SushiSwap or the 80-20 pool on Balancer) for discounted BANK on Olympus Pro.
This mechanism allows bDAO to own its own liquidity in the treasury, which is a very big step in the right direction, and a key feature that protocols are increasingly implementing in DeFi – POL (Protocol-Owned Liquidity).
The newest BanklessDAO bonding mechanism has been implemented, and you can now bond the 80/20 Balancer LP tokens (BPT) into Olympus Pro for your own discounted BANK after the bonding period is over.
*Be aware as this requires multiple transactions done on L1 Ethereum!*
You must factor the gas costs of these transactions into the equation and make the decision if bonding is the right call at that time. Since the discount is variable, sometimes it isn't a good time to bond. The bond price will steadily drop and increase this discount, however, until the next bonder steps in, so check this discount often.
Gas Fees SUCK!
The work we do has value and as such, we value the things we receive for the effort. This is because the cost to use it is so expensive.
We have a way forward!
There is a new proposal by Eagle, Grendel and siddhearta to incentivize the Balancer pool on Polygon L2, where bDAO would deposit enough liquidity (4M BANK along with 14 WETH) to take it over the threshold to qualify. With the pool being incentivized, Balancer will grant 300 BAL a week in rewards for the entirety of 2022 to the LP providers.
With this pool active and incentivized, it will more than likely see some BANK migrate over to the cost effective solution, and solutions are being finalized to allow the newly migrated BANK to qualify to vote in snapshot.
Read this great article written by 0xLucas last year to dive into making BANK in Balancer.
Price
The markets have seen significant volatility lately, causing a lot of us to feel the pain of a shrinking portfolio. Prices in crypto change in some dramatic ways. During the crazy upswings, that volatility is responsible for creating massive gains over very short periods of time. Today however, we are feeling the counterbalance to that upside potential. Volatility is one of the main talking points in this ecosystem, and can turn on a dime, causing major price movement in just hours.
The latest drop, however, seems to be caused by more traditional economic forces. Inflation and planned interest rate hikes in the U.S. have been blamed as one of the main causes for people to become risk averse in their portfolios. COVID-19 and supply chain issues are typically pointed to as a partial cause.
After seeing the price of the entire market (including BANK) fall back down to where it sits today, one must remember that we are on the frontier, it's volatile, and we are early! Something that you paid for could have one value today, and be worth 80% less the next day.
The one thing that hasn't changed is the people building!
This is the future, and we are creating it. The latest bull cycle has funded so many important projects and people in this space, providing capital to last many years of developing and building. The changing markets haven’t deterred any of those people from their goals.
Outside bDAO
BANK integration has been used in a few Discord servers to align our communities and pay people for their contributions in the token.
GMN (Good Morning News): BANK enabled tipping inside the server. Another way they have integrated is the PAPER/BANK liquidity pool, making it easy to swap between the pair on Polygon.
DAOpunks: is an NFT project spun out of BanklessDAO and in order to align the two projects, BANK is used to pay and tip in the server as well, allowing the two entities to grow together into the future.
Tokemak: We have passed a proposal to utilize Tokemak and diversify our bDAO treasury. The swap of BANK to TOKE is on the way, and with the ignition of our bDAO Token Reactor, allowing us to direct our liquidity for maximum effectiveness.
What the Future Holds
At the DAO, Season 3 will bring in more projects and proposals for holders to use BANK, and initiatives that can capture more value in the DAO. Ways to enter and exit the token, as well as deeper liquidity in key places to provide more price stability. All this and more to encourage people to hold BANK, and give opportunities to use BANK in new ways.
#JustDAOit
❤️ Contributor Care
Authors: tigress, borisSchickedanz.eth
Chats: Our Emotions, Mindset, and Intentions Matter
Last week we started our article with:
“How do you arrive at your keyboard everyday while being on the journey headed west?
Do you feel wired? Or tired?”
This week we will look at how the DAO tech stack might affect our mental health and readiness.
Since the tools we are using aren’t always suited to benefit our overall well-being, we’ll go a bit deeper into how we can approach our keyboard with a sense of readiness. The past few weeks have been tough; crypto markets are down and one of our foremost leaders is stepping down, making communication style all the more important.
Communication isn’t easy. When we voice-chat with someone about a certain subject, there are lots of obvious and subtle signals in our voice reflecting our current mood, how we feel about the topic, what our motivation is and much more. Even with all of this additional information, misunderstandings can occur, perhaps due to cultural backgrounds, personality, experience, knowledge, assumption of a different context or assumption of intentions.
Now imagine trying to talk about the same subject in a chat (Discord), using only text, maybe writing (or reading) in a language you didn’t grow up with and without the non-verbal cues.
It is easy to feel offended, misunderstood, criticized—or to make other people feel this way, just because of our unconscious assumptions.
The stories we tell ourselves can have a heavy toll on our emotional state, decreasing our readiness and making us less productive.
What can we do about it? How can we use text via chats to not only communicate about a certain topic, but simultaneously increase our own readiness and that of everyone involved?
Here are some tips you might want to embrace:
😀 Put yourself in a neutral, or even better, in a positive mood before reading or writing. This makes us see things in a brighter light, and when chatting, it unconsciously gives us the right words to make the other person feel better as well.
🎯 Check your intention. Why do I want to read or write this? Do I want to be supportive? Do I want to feel supported? Or is there a part of me which is sad or angry and just wants to assert my position? If we have constructive intentions, our thoughts, which influence our writing, will be notably different.
⚖️ Be considerate. Reading everything twice, while trying to think about how it is meant or understood (maybe for people with a different culture, mindset, knowledge) can help to catch unwanted interpretations.
🤓 Use emoji. They show our emotions and feelings, so we encourage using them from time to time. Just remember, they might be interpreted differently as well.
🤡 Avoid irony and sarcasm, which are difficult to understand for people who don’t know us or the general context.
🤗 Always try to be kind, supportive and appreciative when catching up or hitting the keyboard. Be clear with yourself about your intention. Does it help our mission? Is it aligned with your values and goals?
Our intentions are very powerful. They are the beacons of light illuminating the road ahead. The brighter they are, the more ready we are to face challenges along the way.
🎣 Phishing School
Authors: BogDragonov, d0wnlore
Fake Discord Gifts
So you received a Discord Nitro gift from one of your frens? Are you sure? Could this be a trick? How can I tell?
The Attack
Recently BanklessDAO suffered a wave of spam links and phishing attacks claiming to be Discord Nitro gifts. When people clicked the links, their account started spamming out the same links. There were a few tell-tale signs that these were fake.
Many of the Gifts Were Sent to Public Channels
The same unique link was posted in dozens of channels at once. The domain name was not real: "disorc.com" or "discorcl.com" may look real at first glance but notice the spelling errors.
How Can I Spot The Scams?
If you receive an unexpected gift, message, or email with links in it, follow up via a different method with the person who sent it to you to confirm they actually did send it. For example if Ryan or David DM you on Discord, follow up with them via Twitter DMs to see if it's really them. This is especially important when the content is something enticing like a gift, a free trial, or a link to some type of airdrop. You don't need to live your online life paranoid, but be cautious.
I Found a Scam! What Now?
Congrats for not falling for it! Please report all scams/phishing attempts to the #report-scams.
I Fell for a Scam. Feels Bad Man!
It's ok. Hopefully your funds are safe. If the scam involved a wallet, please use https://revoke.cash to revoke any permissions you may have given the attacker regarding your coins/NFTs. If the scam involves a Web2 account like Google or Discord, change your password ASAP, take advantage of any "Sign out everywhere else" buttons, and make sure to enable two-factor authentication.
Can the Devs at BanklessDAO Do Something?
We can and we absolutely are. BogDrakonov#1337 is putting together a proposal for an InfoSec team that will operate as a guild service. Be sure to keep an eye out for the Forum vote over the next few weeks.
🏛 Governance
Proposals in Discussion
🆘 Product Support Center Season 3 Budget Proposal
BanklessDAO products have grown so much we’re now seeing a demand for support services. An example of this situation is with the product DEGEN, which grew in popularity to the point where customer service was a necessity. A bDAO team created an open, decentralized, and evolving playbook which successfully navigated the challenge and has its success reflected in DEGEN which is now in over 100 servers.
The proposed bDAO Product Support Center will build on the DEGEN experience by creating a one-stop destination for all bDAO products. Benefit accrues both to the customer who enjoys a simplified service and to the product which will see greater adoption.
🙋♀️ Meritverse Partnership Proposal
Meritverse is the LinkedIn of Web3, and a good prospective partner for bDAO as it builds its own relationship management system through tasks like mapping its membership base. The proposal sees Meritverse and bDAO working together on two fronts: organizing the roadmap and acquiring users. For its work, bDAO gets increased relationship management capabilities. Additionally, in working with Meritverse to grow its platform and add users, incentives flow to bDAO and its members.
🤝 Bankless Cleveland-Blockchain Sponsorship
A Blockchain and Crypto meetup group hosted by two bDAO members is gaining traction in Cleveland. This proposal requests funding for bDAO to become the first sponsor of their meetup. The funding is proposed to cover the operating costs of hosting the events. In line with bDAO’s mission to onboard members onto Web3 and DeFi, the proposal seeks to take that onboarding offline.
🌊 Migrate DAO Owned Liquidity to Uniswap V3
This proposal will migrate SushiSwap protocol-owned liquidity to Uniswap V3 full range position. The benefit of this is that it would create a price oracle, allowing bDAO to launch a Rari lending market and generate more revenue, since the Uniswap position has fees defined at 1% (compared to SushiSwap at 0.25%).
👥 KeeperDAO x Bankless DAO Talent Scouting Partnership
This proposal will create a partnership between KeeperDAO and DAOpunks. KeeperDAO would like to leverage the collective talent and networks of BanklessDAO to help recruit individuals to become full-time contributors at KeeperDAO. To help facilitate this, KeeperDAO is prepared to pay up to 500,000 USD or more for successful placements initiated by bDAO.
✅ Action Items
🔥 Join: The DAO Heat Launch Party AMA.
❤️ Remember: DAO-wide Coordinape signup begins next week.
🏃♀️ Catch up: Review this week's community call notes or listen to the recording.
🙏Thanks to our sponsor
Balancer
Balancer is a flexible and versatile Automated Market Maker that enables efficient trading and the exchange of any combination of ERC-20 tokens permissionlessly.
Balancer also turns the concept of an Index Fund on its head: instead of paying fees to Portfolio Managers, you can now collect fees from traders who rebalance your portfolio by following arbitrage opportunities.
The Balancer Protocol is a core building block of DeFi infrastructure—a unique financial primitive and development platform.
Try us now:
🤣 Meme of the Week
Bringing these two memes together, please review this important proposal by angyts. He has our back during tough markets. Buy McDonalds Meal Vouchers
Dear Bankless DAO,
since early newsletter days I'm onboard. More of a lurkooor and readooor but there from day 3 or 4. Latest politics, powerplays, governmental regulatooor bullshit AND your amazing progress in so many fields AND this article made me go "BANKLESS WHALE" :-)
I now have 151k BANK in the Balancer Pool. Of course I want to flex my "whaleishness" - is there anything I need to do in Discord or is there a nice BANKLESS whale token or somesuch flexing thing? Please let me know, Please keep the pressure and the speed on.
Yours
jayjayRV