ALEX DAO
In building decentralized finance, ALEX is committed to progressively decentralizing the governance of the project. The ALEX Lab Foundation (“the Foundation”) is a non-profit organization and is the home for governance of ALEX (protocol) open-source technology. The Foundation serves as neutral ground for various parties to come together and reach consensus on the path forward.
The goal of the Foundation is to become a full-fledged DAO, one which gives the ALEX community complete control over both on-chain and off-chain governance decisions. This is a complex process however, one which will have to be approached incrementally and deliberately by necessity.
The smart contract framework of ALEX governance will be provided by ExecutorDAO, authored and publicly released by Marvin Janssen.
What is ExecutorDAO?
ExecutorDAO is, according to Marvin, “the one DAO to rule them all”. To summarize briefly, ExecutorDAO utilizes Clarity to create an extremely flexible DAO framework. The core principals behind ExecutorDAO are:
- Proposals are smart contracts.
2. The core executes, the extensions give form.
3. Ownership control happens via sending context.
For more technical details of ExecutorDAO, please visit README.md.
ALEX and ExecutorDAO
What does this mean for ALEX? Through ExecutorDAO, proposals are submitted as smart contracts written in the expressive language of Clarity, instead of legal contract prose.
Clarity is a “decidable” language, meaning the code itself can be visually audited to know exactly how it will execute, the run-time and resources consumed. Clarity is not compiled into illegible machine code, it is interpreted and published exactly as it was written to the blockchain.
This provides the ALEX DAO, constructed from Clarity smart contracts, a degree of transparency and accountability that aren’t possible with compiled languages such as Solidity.
Executor DAO, at its core, purely executes proposals and keeps a list of authorized extensions, with no other features. It is through “extension contracts” that the general ExecutorDAO framework evolves into becoming the ALEX DAO. These extensions contracts are what add specific features to ALEX, and can be enabled or disabled by proposals.
ExecutorDAO allows ALEX governance functions such as operations, duties and members to be described using concise logical statements. Proposals implement a specific trait and may be executed by the DAO when certain conditions are met.
Enormous flexibility and freedom is allowed to future users, as extensions are interoperable, meaning that extensions that depend on other extensions can be designed. This allows for functionality to be added as diverse as:
- Issuance of governance tokens
- The ability to submit and vote on proposals
- The creation and management of a treasury
A base case that exemplifies the implementation of extensions and proposals is the creation of the ALEX Genesis DAO and the action taken of listing of $ALEX on our launchpad.
ALEX Genesis DAO
The first step toward progressive decentralization of governance is the creation of the ALEX Genesis DAO, which will act as an intermediary step between early-stage centralized and future decentralized community governance.
For a more in depth discussion of the governance and proposal flow process in ALEX Genesis DAO, please see our tokenomics paper.
ALEX Genesis DAO is implemented with the following extensions and proposals:
*Please note that the emergency extensions listed are temporary measures as the transition is made from centralized to fully decentralized governance. In the early stages of protocol’s launch, it is critical the Genesis Team is able to quickly and efficiently respond to possible emergencies.
AGE000: Governance Token (ALEX Token or $ALEX)
Creates $ALEX: Implements a SIP010 governance token with locking capabilities. The DAO has full control over the minting, burning, transferring, and locking.
AGE001: Proposal Voting
Allows for voting: Allows governance token holders to vote on proposals. (Note: vote, not propose.) One token equals one vote. Tokens used for voting are locked for the duration of the vote. They can then be reclaimed and used again.
AGE002: Emergency Proposals
Creation of Emergency Proposals (temporary): Manages a list of emergency team members that have the ability to submit emergency proposals to AGE001. Such proposals are not subject to a start delay and, as part of DAO bootstrapping (AGP000), run for 1,440 blocks (~10 day). This extension is subject to a sunset period after which it deactivates (currently block-height 70,729). The members, parameters, and sunset period can be changed by a proposal.
AGE003: Emergency Execute
Emergency Execution of Proposals (temporary): Manages a list of executive team members that have the ability to signal for the immediate execution of a proposal. This extension is subject to a sunset period after which it deactivates (currently block-height 57,589). The members, parameters, and sunset period can be changed by a proposal.
AGP000: Bootstrap
Initiates Bootstrap: A bootstrapping proposal that is meant to be executed when the ExecutorDAO is first deployed. It initializes boot extensions, sets various parameters on them, and mints initial governance tokens.
AGP001: Kill Emergency Execute
Disables AGE003: Immediately disables AGE003 Emergency Execute if it passes.
The emergency extensions have been implemented with a sunset period, which can be changed through proposal. The Genesis DAO itself is a stepping stone on the path toward full decentralization.
The above list of AGP (ALEX Growth Proposal) Extensions will continue to grow as the protocol matures. The Genesis DAO will work closely with the community of $ALEX holders to establish and formalize, through AGPs, the long term governance procedures ALEX DAO will adopt. The Genesis DAO exists with the goal of making itself irrelevant as soon as a steady-state of stable community governance is reached.
$ALEX Launch: The first action taken by the Genesis DAO
The first action by the Genesis DAO team was to create the listing of $ALEX on our Launchpad.
To that end, AGP003 (emergency execution of proposals) was created with the proposed details of the IDO listing and was deployed at block-height 44,448 for executive action (i.e. AGE003).
Executive team members then started signaling and upon meeting the threshold (3 out of 5 members), AGP003 was executed/the listing created.
The fourth member, however, spotted an error in the AGP003 and proposed AGP004 with the appropriate correction.
The AGP004 was deployed at block-height 44,457 and executed at block-height 44,459.
The result? The ALEX team, through the Genesis DAO, created the first IDO listing on the first Launchpad on Stacks via consensus-driven and decentralized decision-making.
To conclude, through the ExecutorDAO smart contract framework, ALEX utilizes the expressive precision of Clarity to implement ALEX DAO operations, duties, and proposals using concise logical statements. Whereas verbose “legalese” leaves room for interpretation, Clarity code is predictable, transparent and is broadcast to the blockchain just as it written.
