Announcing BABL
Two weeks ago, we introduced Babylon.finance, the first community-led asset management protocol.
Today, we want to introduce $BABL, the governance token behind the protocol.
$BABL Mechanics 🏦
The $BABL token ensures that Babylon.finance is owned by its users. We plan to distribute 69% of $BABL tokens to the community, dynamically rewarding stakeholders for investing, generating ideas, curating plays, and managing communities based upon a community’s performance and AUM.
BABL holders will share protocol ownership and vote on proposals through both an on-chain and off-chain governance system. If you are new to Blockchain governance, you can read more here.
We have designed the protocol with the goal of self-sustainability and governance-minimization. Coordination is a complex and expensive task. Members need assurances that the protocol is not going to change against their interests. Shareholders may change over time. In order to remain credible, the protocol needs to be resistant to value capture. Babylon.finance has the smallest governance surface area needed to function, also known as “essential governance”.
The $BABL governance token will control the following:
- Treasury Management. The $BABL holders will decide how to allocate the fees collected by the protocol.
- Protocol Fees. Exit and performance fees can be changed through governance.
- Integrations. $BABL holders will be able to add/remove integrations with other DeFi & Ethereum protocols.
- System upgrades. Proposals will be able to upgrade several core components of the protocol like the price oracle or the assets whitelist.
Handing over the 🔑
The team will execute towards progressive decentralization. The founding team’s goal is to create a secure and usable protocol that reaches protocol-market fit. The ultimate goal is to remove any dependency from the founding team as soon as it is viable to do so. These are the expected stages of decentralization:
- Development & Launch. Initially, there will be a multi-sig comprised of team members and advisors that will be able to change the protocol parameters and perform rescue functions in case of an emergency.
- After launch, we will open off-chain governance through Snapshot. We will extend the multi-sig to more members of the community.
- Before the end of the year, once the protocol is battle-tested and has reached a stable equilibrium, the team will remove the upgradeable contracts and hand over full control of the multi-sig. On-chain governance through GovernorAlpha will be enabled.
$BABL Distribution 📊
As we have mentioned before, Babylon.finance is designed to be owned by the community. The founding team and the seed investors will provide the capital and work required to make the project a reality. Both the team and seed investors have token vesting in place to ensure long-term sustainability. Here are the details:
Token Name: BABL
Token Supply: 1M (1,000,000) *
- 69% for Babylon community members. These tokens will be distributed to community creators, ideators, stewards, and passive members. More details on this will be released in the upcoming weeks.
- 19% Seed Investors, Advisors & Partners. These tokens will be vested linearly over a three-year period with a one-year lock period.
- 10% Team. Founding team members will have a linear four-year vesting period with a one-year lock period.
- 2% Reserved. For a potential future round.
The majority of the community tokens will be split between different participation mining programs and initial liquidity programs.
These programs will last 10+ years and will decrease slowly over time.
- Note on Inflation: Governance holders will be able to propose an annual inflation rate (capped at 5%) to guarantee the sustainability of the protocol beyond the initial reward supply period. However, inflation cannot start until at least eight years have passed since the protocol launched.
The Seed 🌱
The founding team has secured $1.9M in funding at a valuation of $10M. We have been intentional in raising this seed round from a high number of value-add investors. We are lucky to have 50+ members that will help the founding team refine and launch the protocol.
Our non-exhaustive list of investors includes:
Semantic Ventures, Joseph Young, Defi Alliance, Harvest.finance, Meltem Demirors, Fomosaurus, Dialectic Capital, Nick Chong, Tom Shaughnessy, Ryon Nixon, Coinlist Seed, Maple Leaf Capital, Luis Cuende, Konstantin Lomashuk, Angel DAO, Cluster Capital, Darren Lau (The Daily Ape), and many others.
The Best is yet to come 🏰
We have a lot of announcements and surprises🎁 coming up in the weeks leading to our launch. Here is a tentative timeline:
- Mid-March: Release Participation Mining details.
- Beginning of April: Release Litepaper & Documentation.
- Q2: Team Alpha.
- Q3: Private Beta.
- Q4 2021: Mainnet Release, code is open-sourced plus a big 🎁
Interested in building your own investment community with us? Fill this form
Stay tuned to be one of the first participants 🚀🚀
Legal Disclaimers
This announcement has been written and published by Babylon Finance, Inc. (“Babylon Finance Inc”). The directors and officers of Babylon Finance, Inc owe fiduciary and contractual duties solely to Babylon Finance Inc’ investors.
BABL confer no information, voting, economic, fiduciary, contract, or other rights against or with respect to the assets or personnel of Babylon Finance Inc. The interests of Babylon Finance Inc and its directors, officers, and investors may differ materially from the interests of BABL holders, protocol users, and other active protocol participants.
Babylon Finance Inc provides no guarantee, commitment, or undertaking to utilize any of its assets, funds, properties or personnel, BABL users, or other Babylon protocol participants. Babylon Finance Inc does not owe and does not intend to assume, any duties or obligations to BABL holders, users, and other protocol participants, other than duties or obligations arising under laws of general application, such as non-waivable torts. Moreover, Babylon Finance Inc has various legal, fiduciary, and contractual obligations that could conflict with the interests of BABL holders, Babylon users, and other Babylon protocol participants.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, all software relating to the Babylon protocol is being provided on an as-is, where-is basis, with no representations or warranties being made to BABL holders, protocol users, or other Babylon protocol participants and with no liability to Babylon Finance Inc or any other person involved in the development of the Babylon protocol. The statements set forth in this announcement also are not intended to be representations, warranties, guarantees, or assumptions of duty or liability of any kind, and Babylon Finance Inc hereby disclaims the foregoing and will not be liable for any damages arising from the use of the Babylon protocol or BABL.
In the event of any conflict or inconsistency between this announcement or any other communication and the terms of any software license involved in the Babylon protocol, the terms of the software license shall govern to the exclusion of this announcement and such other communications.
The forward-looking statements in this announcement are subject to numerous assumptions, risks, and uncertainties that are subject to change over time. Such assumptions, risks, and uncertainties could cause actual results or developments to differ materially from the results and developments anticipated by us. Even if our anticipated results and developments are realized, such results and developments may nevertheless fail to achieve any or all of the expected benefits anticipated by this announcement.
We reserve the right to change the plans, expectations and intentions stated and implied herein at any time and for any reason or no reason, in our sole and absolute discretion, and we undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.
This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any interests in Babylon Finance Inc, any Gardens or any other securities.This announcement is not intended to provide legal, financial or investment, or other advice and we recommend that you do not rely on, and do not make any financial or other decision based, on this announcement.
