Season 6: Relivin’ the Ride | BanklessDAO Weekly Rollup
Catch Up With What Happened This Week in BanklessDAO
Dear Bankless Nation 🏴,
We’re finishing the first week of Season 7, and it feels good to be back amongst peers who share our enthusiasm about the DAO. Hopefully the gap week left you refreshed, and with increased energy to work and build like never before.
While guilds, departments, and projects are getting situated, we use this week’s editorial to take a look back at Season 6. Paulito relives last season’s ride, showing us that although we trudged through deep valleys, we also conquered mountains.
There’s been renewed discussion around the DAO’s financial health, so it’s appropriate that this week’s Community Call was a roundtable discussion with the Treasury Department, which shared a high-level accounting of the DAO’s financial position.
We’ve given the Rollup a refresh for Season 7. As the DAO evolves, so do we. So must we all. The season is still young, but work and activities are already on a trajectory of moving the DAO forward. Sit back as you enjoy this week’s Rollup, and most of all, have a great weekend, frens.
Contributors: Paulito, Warrior, Allyn Bryce, WinVerse, d0wnlore, KingIBK, theconfusedcoin, Austin Foss, Yofi A., salmanneedsajob, Chameleon, siddhearta, Trewkat, HiroKennelly
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✅ Action Items
💪 Read the latest Forum posts and add your vote.
🤓 Check out the Education Department Live Sessions Calendar.
📋 Make sure your Notion display name matches your Discord handle.
🏃♀️ Catch up: Review this week's Community Call notes or listen to the recording.
🏛 Governance
Proposals in Discussion
🗓️ bDIP-07: Set Season Length at 16 Weeks with Designated Downtime
This bDIP proposes a change to the Constitution, interim season dates for the remainder of 2023, and dates for 2024 as repeatable template for subsequent years. Having a clearly defined long term schedule will help all of us reliably plan for other activities in our lives and will greatly reduce the DAO work associated with seasonal change.
🪶 BanklessDAO Writers Cohort Funding Proposal
Taptive has partnered with the Writers Guild three times since S5 to facilitate the BanklessDAO Writers Cohort. This proposal seeks 140,000 BANK to co-fund Cohort Four. Over the previous three iterations, contributors have published more than 150 essays.
⚖️ Project Funding Proposal — Legal Guild Podcast
In 2022 the Legal Guild produced six episodes of the Ab Intio Legal Guild Podcast drawing in about 300 audience downloads to date. Championed by contributor ComeBackKid in collaboration with EurekaJohn and teresacd, the project is submitting a proposal for funding to produce two more episodes at a total cost of 118,400 BANK.
Season 6: Relivin’ the Ride
Author: Paulito
In the last issue of the Weekly Rollup, Kornekt provided a peek at the future as he reviewed some of the changes we might see in the BanklessDAO community during Season 7. This week, it’s time to look back at the rollercoaster that was Season 6 — at the DAO’s accomplishments, and some uncomfortable moments too.
With a series of good, bad, and ugly events, Season 6 was a season of conflicting emotions for many community members. This is not to say that there were no good moments, of course there were, but looking back we can see that there were several season-defining turning points for the DAO which arose out of undesirable circumstances.
Regardless of the crypto bear market, new members have been joining BanklessDAO nearly every day. Many of the relentless bear-market builders of BanklessDAO are feeling pretty bullish and still DAOing it.
Accountability and Transparency
During the December DAO-wide Coordinape round, Whales #7970, the DAO’s elected Coordinape admin, impersonated two DAO contributors — tomahawk #3011 and Shaun/dancingpenguin.eth#2590. Whales’ decision to act fraudulently led to an extremely challenging scenario for the DAO and resulted in his profile’s departure from the DAO’s Discord community. Such an incident has never happened in the DAO before. He was found to have allocated significant amounts of GIVE tokens to himself using the impersonated accounts, according to the inquiry carried out by infinitehomie.eth#4930, Sprinklesforwinners#1125, links#7868, and LiviuC#7835. Despite great work by this team, it remains unclear whether other DAO contributors or external parties were involved in the deception, and whether this was the first time Whales had abused his position as a trusted admin.
Due to the investigation team's findings, the Operations Department decided against providing the Grants Committee with a list of December contributor rewards, which prevented the payment of the December Coordinape round. In order to minimize the problems caused by a lack of openness, accountability, and diligence, the Operations Department further decided to stop the DAO-wide Coordinape workstream. It’s become crystal clear that for fraud prevention the DAO needs processes which enable transparency and oversight, and technology which reduces the ease of Sybil attacks.
Additionally, the Department removed Whales from his roles as DAO-wide and Ops Department Coordinape administrator, removed the Discord role and permissions associated with his Level 2 Contributor status, and reverted Notion access to view only. While the Operations Department was able to take these immediate necessary actions, there were some decisions it was unable to make on behalf of the community, such as who should decide the repercussions for Whales’ actions and what those repercussions should be.
The aforementioned inquiries also revealed the community's concerns about the role of the Ombuds Office and the need to examine the DAO's Code of Conduct, because the latter does not currently address the repercussions for actions like those of Whales #7970.
Ombuds Restructure
There were concerns raised by several community members as to the Ombuds Office's silence on the fraud case, leading to much deliberation over whether the Ombuds Office as a whole and/or individuals who hold the Ombuds role should get involved in discussions and decisions. All this led to some observations of lapses in the Ombuds structure and procedures as to how cases are approached. There were also issues of accountability and transparency within the Ombuds office that were raised by members of the DAO. All those concerns were addressed by the Ombuds team during a Community Call, and the Ombuds Office is currently restructuring its governance with help from daolexa.
We hope to see the Ombuds team come out stronger and better in Season 7.
Stewards of Governance
The DAOstewards, a metagovernance team from bDAO, have remained tenacious throughout Season 6. They serve as qualified delegates who support the governance of some of the DAOs we collaborate with. At the moment, they are representatives at EulerDAO and SAFEDAO. As part of their acknowledged delegate program, they are also scoping their relationship with VitaDAO. Governance is a crucial component of community growth and development, so it's encouraging to see that some people have stepped up to make the difficult decisions. For updates on the DAOstewards' Season 6 progress, see this Forum post.
An internal governance body for bDAO has also been initiated, and they have been making good progress so far and are looking forward to doing more in Season 7. Join the discussions in the bdao-governance-workstream channel if you are interested.
Project Highlights
In Season 6, Bankless Academy made impressive progress. The team developed novel lesson concepts, including Layer 1 Blockchains and the Bankless Constitution, and launched digital collectibles that will have 50% of profits donated to the DAO. The team hosted two editions of level-up live learning sessions for Layer 2 Blockchains, supported by Optimism, and even delivered an online guest lecture for the students of The Hague University's Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies course!
Toward the end of Season 6, The Governator bot was introduced. This governance tool enables DAO participants to use their BANK token to vote directly in Discord without having to sign with their wallet each time they want their opinions to be registered. This seems like a possible countermeasure to Sybil attacks, and we’re likely to see it in action in Season 7 after several rounds of testing by some DAO members.
Bankless Africa has successfully migrated to their own Discord server and has been doing quite well with their KPIs. The Bankless Africa podcast episodes have reached an all-time high of 4566 downloads. Towards the end of Season 5, Bankless Africa launched its project known as "Pidgin Parlor," which happens to be a media platform for educating native-speaking Africans on crypto- and web3-related topics. The Pidgin Parlor crypto podcast has reached an all-time high of 314 downloads of its episodes released just during Season 6.
If you want to know what's happening in the Africa space regarding crypto and its related activities, then plug into the Bankless Africa podcast episodes.
Recognition of Contributors
The DAO has always been about recognizing individuals who put in effort and work to improve the community, and in Season 6, we witnessed what must have been a record number of L2 nominations. Well done, contributors, and thanks to our community for praising the work of your fellow bDAO participants.
In recent weeks you may have noticed the introduction of the Praise bot into the DAO’s Discord server. Praise is a way to show appreciation for others through tailored messages which are visible to the community and notify the recipient as well. For more information about writing excellent Praise, visit the Praise docs website.
Also during Season 6, the DAO added new ways to be rewarded with Thrive Coin. Season 6 contributors earned a combined 89,205 THRIVE across 3,075 contributions. If you’re ready to get started, Season 7 rewards are underway!
Anticipation for Season 7
Although it is upsetting to learn that a contributor abused the DAO and to realise the flaws in the DAO system, this shouldn't prevent us from taking some time to appreciate the work we accomplished in Season 6 together. DAO governance is still a major concern, but after all the work the Governance team has done thus far, I am confident that when we enter Season 7, there will be greater governance engagement and a stronger framework.
With all that has occurred thus far, bDAO members and builders should take note of what happened in Season 6 and prepare themselves to perform better in Season 7. No one can guarantee that everything will be sunny and enjoyable, but one thing is certain: whatever the challenges we face, we as a community won't lose sight of our mission and vision. We don't develop by obsessing over the past; rather, we develop by concentrating on the potential of the future.
Get ready because Season 7 holds a lot of promise and opportunity. Don't let yourself fall behind.
bDAO Strong.
👀 In Case You Missed It
📺 Weekly Rollup Recap With Allyn Bryce
Revisit the last Rollup and ‘get it’.
You can find all the previous episodes on the BanklessDAO YouTube Channel.
🎬 IDriss Interview — Hackathon Strategy
IDriss allows you to link your crypto wallet address to an email, phone number, or Twitter username, enabling easier and safer transactions. In this interview, BanklessDAO member salmanneedsajob speaks with the team from IDriss — Geoist and Leonard — about how they are leveraging global web3 hackathons in developing their product. This interview was recorded in city of Bangalore, after the final day of ETHIndia.
🤑 Bankless Consulting AMA with MoonRock Finance
This past week Bankless Consulting sat down with JK, who is the founder of MoonRock Finance, and thegoldeneel from xToken Terminal to talk about MoonRock’s new index fund: LSETH. LSETH is an index pool of various Staked ETH primitives, which currently has a liquidity mining program to incentivize early adopters. They have some great LP rewards for the next month, (currently 87% APR) which has been vetted by the bDAO Tokenomics team.
Learn more about the LSETH index token and read the how-to tutorial for how to take advantage of the current LP rewards. Of course, this is not financial advice and you should consider your own circumstances carefully.
🙏🏻 BanklessDAO Turkey Disaster Relief Fund
South-eastern Turkey was hit by a devastating earthquake on February 6, 2023. BanklessDAO’s Turkish Media Node has set up a disaster relief fund via the Giveth platform so that individuals can donate towards procurement of items required to aid Turkey in their rehabilitation process. This Forum post is a request for funds from the DAO Treasury for this purpose. Individuals who donate to the Giveth campaign will receive ThriveCoin.
🎙 BanklessDAO Podcasts
🧠 Crypto Sapiens
🌍 Bankless Africa Podcasts
💰 Making Bank
✍️ Bankless Publishing
🗞 The Rug News
👩🏼💼 Bankless Consulting Newsletter
🗓 Set A Reminder
🤩 New Joiner Session s7x01
Join us for this New Joiners Session to learn more about BanklessDAO and how to get involved. At this session you will meet mentors who could guide you on your journey into DAOlife and other new joiners like you who may become a fellow traveller on your journey. This session will be held on Zoom. Please be prepared to share about yourself.
RSVP to have Zoom meeting details emailed to you nearer to the event, which will be held on Monday, February 20 at 13:45 UTC.
🏦 How to BANK
Bank is the governance token of BanklessDAO. Join the Education Department in Ed3DAO's Learn-o-verse in Zep to learn about how the BANK token came to be and the tokenomics related to it.
Join in on Tuesday, February 21 at 14:00 UTC in the watercooler voice channel. Hop in 15 mins before the event starts for onboarding to Zep. Its Zoom plus a metaverse!!
👛 HODL & Staking Knowledge Session
Do you want to know first hand what hodling and staking are all about? Do you want to know how they work in the Web 3 ecosystem? Join in on Wednesday, February 22 at 14:00 UTC in the watercooler voice channel. Hop in 15 mins before the event start to be onboarded to the Zep platform.
📇 How to Etherscan
Ever wanted to track the movement of your coins and tokens or would you like to know how to scan the bDAO treasury? Join in on Thursday, February 23 at 14:00 UTC in the watercooler voice channel. Hop in 15 mins before the event start to be onboarded to the Zep platform.
📨 RemittDAO Demo
RemittDAO is committed to enabling digital remittance payments among migrant worker families and displaced persons around the world, especially for those who are unbanked. Join us for the demo presented by Craig, a BanklessDAO member and guest from ConsenSys, who will be taking us through the work being done to increase digital-remittance literacy for migrant worker families.
🦅 GasHawk Demo — Fight Club Tech Thursdays
GasHawk is a free to use tool to help you save on Ethereum gas fees by intelligently submitting your transaction when gas fees are cheap. The average cost savings are 25% - 30%. Join this demo in the Amphitheatre on Thursday, 23 February at 17:00 UTC.
🎙 Asset Tokenization on Avalanche
Join Bankless Consulting next week for a conversation with Morgan Krupetsky from Ava Labs about tokenizing real world assets. One of the promises of web3 has been the ‘replumbing’ of traditional finance infrastructure. Avalanche has been leading this trend with asset tokenization. Join in the Twitter Spaces to learn how Ava Labs is reshaping DeFi.
🌐 The Africa Web3 Summit
The Network State is a professional and informative conference showcasing the latest developments in blockchain, crypto, e-sports, NFTs, and the metaverse, in the context of Africa’s transition into web3 and the possibilities for transformation of the continent's economy and infrastructure. To be held in Accra from February 23 to 24, at the Kempinski Hotel and Arena 233 respectively, the summit offers an opportunity for professionals in the industry to network and gain knowledge.
The conference is aimed at individuals interested in learning about the latest trends and market developments in web3, as well as anyone interested in attending a conference that showcases all things related to the internet. Come and meet industry titans and project reps, including Afropolitan DAO, Arts Help, Stanbase, Cointelegraph, NVIDIA, Bankless Africa, Mazzuma, and Red Bull Racing. For more information and to attend, visit the Africa Web 3 Summit website.
🍔 Grab It While It’s Hot
🪂 Check Your Airdrop Eligibility!
You now can see whether you are eligible for airdrops or POAPs with the new tool that BanklessHQ purchased recently. Visit https://earni.fi/ to check the tool out!
👩🎨 d’Art Drops
Title: Lotus
Price: 0.02 ETH
This drop, once again brought to the bDAO community by Decentralized Arts newsletter, features a piece titled ‘Lotus’ that will appeal to Bitcoin maxis, though everyone operating in the blockchain space will find something to appreciate here:
A crystalline flower blooms, revealing its nature as a beneficiary of the Bitcoin ecosystem. This flower expresses the hope that blockchain technology brings to many aspects of the online and offline lives of humans. Bitcoin may vie for the attention of all blockchain enthusiasts, but one thing remains as fact: Bitcoin was the first. As the popularity of blockchain technology increases and continues to diversify, Bitcoin will always be the protocol to thank—as pioneer of a new technology— regardless if it remains in operation or is overtaken by others in this space.
🏅 Collab.Land Token
Have you heard about the Collab.Land DAO? As part of the retroactive COLLAB token distribution, holders of the Collab.Land Membership NFT can join the Collab.Land Discord and claim an allocation of tokens, beginning on February 23. See https://wagmi.collab.land/ for details.
In addition, BanklessDAO has been included in Collab.Land’s top 100 Discord communities and can claim COLLAB tokens via the Community Claim Process. The goal for each community is to propose a unique and creative mechanism for how they will use and/or distribute the tokens. Top 100 communities can learn more in this Mirror article.
🎣 Phishing School
Authors: d0wnlore and the InfoSec Team
The Webaverse Rome Heist
In November 2022 the Webaverse team had 4 million in USDC stolen from them in a sophisticated theft by organized crime. It’s a bit of a surreal situation, starting with initial calls with an alleged grandson of a banking billionaire, to the eventual loss of millions of stablecoins during a phony investor meeting in Rome.
This news is just starting to come out, as Webaverse did not want to affect the current investigation. This won’t be a detailed writeup on the events that occurred, but rather takeaways we use to make sure we don’t fall for the same traps, whether we are a web3 end-user or running a crypto business. Summaries of what had occurred, to the best recollection of the victims and what investigators and vendors can piece together, can be seen in the following:
Much speculation had been around the photos taken by the thieves at the end of the event. But it's very unlikely that the photos of the summary screen from Trust Wallet are what lead to the subsequent transfer of the USDC tokens. Based on my understanding of the heist and public discussions surrounding it, the theft may have occurred by:
Use of a zero-day exploit, delivered through a malicious PDF, website, message, or physical connection to another device, that could run malware or retrieve unencrypted data from the iOS device Webaverse used to install Trust Wallet. A zero-day exploit is one that is unknown to the maintainer of the software that’s vulnerable to the exploit. In this case the exploit would have been performed to either steal the recovery phrase of the wallet or make the token transfer transaction directly. This is possible but unlikely due to organized crime usually not having access to such exploits and those that do would likely not want to exhaust it on only stealing $4M (think nation states wanting to steal incriminating information or disrupt certain people or groups that threaten them).
Social engineering or another sleight-of-hand during the dinner or meeting between Webaverse and the attackers that could reveal the recovery phrase from Trust Wallet, if the attackers had enough privileged access (phone unlocked and weak passcode to access the secret phrase in Trust Wallet). This could have occurred if there were any moments where the victims were distracted or away from their device while it was unlocked (or locked and a zero-day exploit was used). If this did occur then it's unlikely the Webaverse would be able to recollect this event fully.
Lessons Learned
The exact method of how the tokens were stolen remains unknown. But we can still learn some lessons from the information available.
Do not keep a significant amount of assets in a software/hot wallet. These types of wallets should act as an “outer wall” in your kingdom of blockchain activities and used for low-value activities that you need to make frequently. Slow yourself down and think critically in any situation where you are asked to move your assets into a more compromising situation, such as from a hardware wallet to a software/hot wallet. In these cases you are likely being set up for a scam.
Organized crime will throw whatever money they can into a heist. As long as they can steal more than what was spent and the risk of negatively affecting future heists isn't increased significantly. Flights and a fancy dinner in Rome are not that expensive relative to a potential $4M payoff. Especially if the thieves are able to remain anonymous. Don't assume that money spent in these situations can act as deterrents. What may be expensive to you may be a drop in the bucket to an attacker.
Scammers of all types will use different levers to bring your guard down. The main lever here was appealing to social authority by linking the attacker to a wealthy billionaire. There doesn't appear to be an event where “Mr. Safra” was forced by Webaverse to prove his identity and blood relation. Another lever may have been time pressure due to this event occurring deep in a crypto bear market and after a successful NFT drop for Webaverse, compelling them to act more quickly and possibly disregard thinking more critically about a potential scam.
Finally, ask for second opinions on anything that requires moving a significant amount of funds. If you are someone just looking to play in DeFi or buy NFTs, ask around to see if anyone has used the protocol, marketplace or contract you are about to interact with. If you run a protocol or crypto business, ask your peers if they have dealt with the lawyers or investors you want to engage in a deal with.
In particular this Webaverse incident may have been prevented had someone with information security experience helped them with performing due diligence and verifying the legitimacy of this possible investment. There are a large number of builders willing to help others in our industry. So take advantage of that whenever you can to avoid being the topic of the next Phishing School.
🤣 Meme of the Week
Thanks Crypto Twitter!
