RomeDAO: Launch & Roadmap
Please note — the information in this article is no longer up to date. We have kept it online for transparency and reference purposes
The dawn of the APYRPG. Where we’ve been and where we’re going.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. It was built in 30. It’s time to rewrite the playbook. From play to earn → stake to play. Introducing APYRPG.
We are planning the full launch of claiming ROME, staking, and bonding for the 29th. We are currently finishing our activities on testnet. All is anticipated to be live on the 29th at https://romedao.finance.
We will update with an announcement a few hours prior to launch, as well as at the moment the protocol goes fully live and functional on the 29th. Similarly, if the DAO needs to delay a day to the 30th an announcement will let you know in Discord.
What have we built, and where are we going?
Shipping, staking and bonding are just the start of an ongoing journey. War with the Etruscans will soon begin. For now, consider your staking of ROME preparation for a 3-month staking campaign.
Each campaign we will present an aggressive product roadmap for the Houses to execute against.
What are we building in Campaign One: Etruscans?
- Whitelist, treasury bootstrapping, stake, bond (Completed)
- Stable-stable bonds, gOHM-ROME bonds (December)
- Warmap v1.0 (December/January)
- Governance & protocol upgrades (January/February)
- Campaign completion — claim your NFTs in-game (February/March)
Let’s walk through each.
Claim, Stake, Bond (Finished)
As of launch, we’ve performed a token distribution that has bootstrapped the treasury to ~3.4M DAI + FRAX. This gives us our initial runway to start minting ROME against our backing in 8 hour rebases.
To get started, if you’re an aROME owner you’ll want to claim ROME. It is claimable 1:1 in the Claim UI at https://romedao.finance.
By now, you’re likely very familiar with the basics of staking. Stake your ROME to receive sROME (the rebasing token that is minted against our treasury’s risk-free value every 8 hours). We are targeting roughly a 100,000% APY at 100% staked. Of course, a % of the supply will remain un-staked for LPs and individuals un-staked, resulting in an APY greater than 100,000%.
Similarly, you may be familiar with bonding. At a discount to market price, you can bond either ROME/FRAX Solarbeam LP, FRAX, or MIM to bestow those assets to our treasury in exchange for 5-day vesting of discounted ROME tokens. Bonding is an active strategy that requires attentive behavior as compared to the more passive stake-and-forget.
As of launch, we are offering three primary bonds for growing our protocol owned liquidity and risk-free value. We are emphasizing our initial backing and deep liquidity with these bonds:
- ROME/FRAX Solarbeam LP
- FRAX (native/canonical)
- MIM (anyswap MIM)
Treasury Growth, gOHM/ROME, Stable-Stable Bonds
We will be posting a proposal on the OlympusDAO forums resulting from an active conversation with OlympusDAO on how to best acquire gOHM for the treasury. We will be helping OlympusDAO expand gOHM into the Moonriver ecosystem by bootstrapping their initial liquidity via our DAO. The program’s specifics will be outlined in a written proposal that we will post after observing the size/growth of our treasury after a few days. Said pool on Solarbeam will allow us to earn LP rewards of SOLAR+gOHM+MOVR.
Olympus’ success is Rome’s success and vice-versa. We anticipate a long and fruitful relationship between the Romans and Greeks.
We anticipate shipping gOHM/ROME bonds to bootstrap gOHM liquidity on Moonriver in mid December. The timeline primarily depends on when OlympusDAO finishes gOHM audits.
Stable-stable bonds are an experiment in protocol owned liquidity that we are taking on to help bootstrap stable liquidity in the Moonriver ecosystem. After speaking with several of our partners, we expect one of the prominent stable DEXs to support Moonriver very soon. Until that time, we plan to bond a FRAX-MIM stable pool on Solarbeam. This allows us to help bootstrap a stable pool until a Curve-style pool is available for us to bond.
We anticipate these stable bonds to go online roughly a week or two after launch.
Treasury growth is obviously an essential objective for our DAO. We believe that our promptness in arrival to Moonriver plays an integral part in our growth. We are early to a nascent ecosystem that we think is the next major EVM-compatible chain to experience massive growth.
RomeDAO is foundational to the adoption of the chain, as mentioned above. Through careful bootstrapping and liquidity we can be foundational to providing the liquidity the ecosystem needs to flourish. In the meantime, we’ll be earning healthy rewards from young protocols with substantial upside. This endeavor starts with becoming the largest liquidity holder in what will eventually be the largest pool and primary route on Solarbeam. It continues with bootstrapping stable-swap in this ecosystem. Our long-term treasury vision is for the DAO to profit from every transaction that happens in the Moonriver and Moonbeam ecosystems.
At every turn our DAO should be considering how to further the Moonriver/Moonbeam ecosystems. Their growth is our growth. And being here early means we will own a piece of nearly every quality protocol and transaction that happens in these networks. Their success is our success and vice-versa.
Warmap v1.0
We expect to ship the very earliest version of the warmap in December. You’ve likely seen some of our early renders of how the campaign map will look. We’ve started expanding on the user experience and how users will interact with the campaign in the broader context of the houses and DAO.
The map will be the home of every in-game action you take in RomeDAO. Clicking the standards (flags) on the map will function to open menus and prompts that show you the status of a campaign, mini-games you can play, and links to fully immersive experiences.
The inventory menu links you to the armorer, where you can view all the NFTs you’ve earned during and after campaigns. And the house page will show your house affiliation, delegated voting, and how it’s affecting your place in the campaign.
For our December deadline, we anticipate shipping purely the interactive map so players can zoom around and get a feel for the map and what’s possible in the browser. The DAO will continuously add features in ~2 week sprints.
Campaign NFTs
Like we mentioned back in October, campaign participants can expect to earn a variety of NFTs based on actions they take during the campaign. These NFTs will provide your citizen with armor, weapons, and spoils of war that will have various protocol benefits and attractive in-game aesthetics.
The spoils of war will be issued at the end of the campaign depending on if quests are completed.
The main questline for campaign one will be:
- Stake > 0.33 ROME by the start of the campaign (~December 6th) and remain staked for the duration. Unstaking any rewards will result in forfeiture of the NFT.
- Bond >$1k notional
- Bond > $5k notional
- Bond >$10k notional
- Bond > $25k notional
- Bond > $50k notional
- Bond > $100k notional
The bond objectives can be completed at any time from now until the end of the campaign to earn their corresponding NFT. Bonders at each successive tier will earn the items for each tier’s quest completed.
The perks for each NFT are to be determined, as there are upgrades to the staking contracts and governance that need made before we can assign protocol perks per NFT. For now, expect each quest reward to be purely a collectible & in-game item.
We hope that if the Roman Forum is shipped in time for the end of the campaign, claiming the NFTs can be an in-game experience. Like opening card packs or loot boxes, the armorer will hand you the NFTs based on loyalty to the DAO during the campaign + a randomized rarity aspect. Completing the objective guarantees you earn the base NFT for the corresponding protocol boost; getting lucky might get you the boost + even rarer skins and loot. Skins offer no added protocol benefits, simply extra skins and rarity on aesthetics.
Campaign NFTs will be rewarded at the completion of the campaign based on quests each account completes. Our artists have completed roughly 5 of the spoils, the 1 war relic (to be auctioned), and are planning roughly another 10 pieces to round out a 15 spoil collection of varying rarity at the end of campaign 1 (March).
Rome wasn’t built in a day. It was built in 30.
The original batch of early contributors made it their mission to find the best talent in crypto to build this DAO. The five houses stand ready to bring Rome to glory.
A quick outline of how our DAO has grown and a rough budget for the month of December:
On base protocol, game development, campaign, marketing, and operations:
- two full-time, one part-time smart contract devs
- three full-time, one part-time full-stack devs
- two part-time game devs
- one full-time UI/UX designer, one full-time 3D & game artist, three part-time animators, artists, game artists
- one full-time policy
- two full-time marketing & community/operations
You’ll notice we’ve taken a strong preference towards developers on payroll and will do the same in terms of compensation. Once the treasury is firmly established and warchest sufficiently funded, full-time max comp for non-engineering talent will top out at $80k before bonuses. In contrast, developer comp will top out at $300k before bonuses. The DAO will share the exact payments made at the end of each month.
The DAO plans to begin payments in January for services rendered in November and December. Early contributors who were on the early contributor allocation will forgo payment through these first months.
On grants towards mini-games, marketing efforts, partnerships, etc.
- Up to $30k to be awarded in the month of January to house projects (non-core protocol) that show progress in the month of December.
Our roadmap is aggressive and intends to ship product on two-week intervals. We expect tight deliverables with doable short timelines. To execute in these short 2 week sprints requires quite the team. The DAO is generally happy with the current state of paid contributors and thinks this size is roughly appropriate for executing on our roadmap.
That said, if you are a developer interested in contributing to the DAO, the DAO is always looking for more talent.
At this time we can budget for more of the following:
- Smart contract devs: contributors to core protocol upgrades and projects in the pipeline (i.e. governance upgrades and a new kind of stableswap)
- Full-stack devs: contributors to the core application for ongoing UI upgrades, DAO tooling, governance updates, warmap, etc.
Our stack is React/Next.js/Node.js - Gaming devs: helping build the games and experiences that will define RomeDAO community participation.
Building with Three.js
A quick word of thanks to everyone in the broader ecosystem that helped make this initial launch happen.
Frax Finance — Sam, Travis, and the rest of their team helped us get FRAX liquidity on Moonriver from 0 to 60M in less than 30 days. An ecosystem that was previously dry of stable liquidity is now moist with thick FRAX liquidity. They’ve been wildly helpful and supportive. We encourage any high-quality projects to consider Frax as a partner.
Solarbeam — Firekid, Solar Ape, and the rest of the Solarbeam team care deeply for the health of this ecosystem. They have made numerous intros as we’ve navigated our place in Moonriver. We expect to support them as Moonriver’s primary DEX for years to come.
Purestake — creators and maintainers of Moonriver/Moonbeam, Purestake have been nothing short of excellent. Always a message away, their support is incredibly helpful. Any projects considering building on Kusama or Polkadot should chat with the Purestake team to see if Moonriver/Moonbeam are a fit.
Anyswap — as the OG bridgooors of Moonriver, Anyswap have been supportive and easy to work with at all times. They’re clear professionals with some of the best technical minds in crypto.
Synapse — Synapse was aggressive from day one with shipping features that showed their intent of making bridging assets into Moonriver a positive user experience. They’ve been supportive and continued to ship features that establish them as one of Moonriver’s preferred bridges.
OlympusDAO — it’s no secret the builders of RomeDAO are OG ohmies through and through. Naturally, many of our friends from Olympus were eager to lend a hand. The DAO has been supportive throughout, always supporting projects they think are adding value back to the Olympus ecosystem. Their Proteus initiative is a clear indication of their interest to go multi-chain and support our mission; we can’t wait to help shepherd their liquidity into Moonriver.
Chainlink Labs — responsive and easy to work with, the Chainlink team have helped us work towards a MOVR oracle that will allow us to bond pairs against MOVR. Prompt responses and quick technical support make Chainlink the clear oracle of choice for every ecosystem.
1swap — not unlike many other Moonriver ecosystem projects, 1swap was very supportive of our launch. They added extra incentives to their FRAX pool to help prepare the ecosystem for RomeDAO launch.
And many, many individual contributors that have helped us along the way. This project wouldn’t be possible without the dozens of contributors across all five houses building and supporting this massive effort.
Here’s to the future. For Rome. 🏛
Twitter: https://twitter.com/romedaofinance
Discord: https://discord.gg/romedao
