Dank’s Vision for Wrapped Asset Governance
We’re unveiling Dank’s vision to be the wrapped asset governance layer for the IC to increase ecosystem interoperability and end user safety.
Today we’re unveiling our vision for Dank as the governance layer for wrapped assets on the Internet Computer (IC). Our intention with this blog is to put our vision out into the universe for the community to embrace, critique, and help bring to reality.
First, let’s remember what Dank’s current role in the IC ecosystem is. Dank has created and managed the wrapped versions of the IC’s two native tokens, Cycles and ICP. Dank’s wrapped counterparts, Cycles Token (XTC) and Wrapped ICP (WICP), are the two most heavily traded assets on the IC besides ICP. Dank is also now working on a Wrapped BTC (WBTC) token that will be released along with the native BTC integration, as well as a Wrapped ETH (WETH) and other wrapped ERC20 tokens that will be released along with the Terabethia mainnet release.
Awesome, with Dank’s current role in our minds, let’s go over why Dank becoming the wrapped asset governance layer of the IC is a win for all.
Dank’s Vision — The Decentralized Wrapped Asset Layer for the IC
Wrapped assets play a key infrastructure role in the Internet Computer ecosystem by taking assets that are not easily accessible by the application layer and ‘wrapping’ them in a common standard (like DIP20) to make these assets more interoperable.
Now the question becomes, who gets to control these wrapped assets? Anyone is able to create their own wrapped version of assets on the IC, but, as we’ll come to show, having multiple wraps of the same assets be under the control of various groups, companies, or anons, is going to lead to bad outcomes for users holding those tokens, with the biggest concern being rug pulls or other malicious code exploits. You don’t want end users having to worry about who is behind each wrapped asset, what their governance/security setup is, and how that determines who has access to that wrapped asset canister (and all the assets sitting in it).
In order for a wrapped asset to become beneficial to developers and end users, it needs to be as trustless as possible, meaning little to no human involvement, and following a common standard and using the same mode of code verification as all other wrapped assets (and being sure that code won’t change maliciously in the future).
We think the best way to accomplish this is having a single DAO governing all wrapped assets. The ecosystem will end up with superior security, simplicity, and composability through token standard continuity among all wrapped assets. End users also become assured that all wrapped assets are using the same code, following the same standards/interfaces, and using the same security setup (DAO governance) to ensure no rug pulls or bad actors, and that the wrapped assets they hold are properly maintained indefinitely (refilling cycles, paying CAP to store historical tx’s, etc).
Dank is perfectly poised to become the DAO and governance layer through which the community can manage the IC’s wrapped assets.
Why Dank?
First and foremost, Dank already has extensive experience creating and managing wrapped assets on the Internet Computer through Cycles Token (XTC), Wrapped ICP (WICP), as well as Wrapped BTC (WBTC) and Wrapped ETH (WETH), launching soon.
Equally as important to Dank’s experience is the trust that we’ve gained from the community, which can be shown by the value of assets that users are entrusting to our wrapped asset canisters — $1.33M in XTC and $1.36M in WICP.
Dank also becomes a great impartial middle-ground for new wrapped tokens to be added to. For example, there will undoubtedly be multiple bridges (or native integrations) to the IC, each from different chains with their own ecosystems of assets that might want to be wrapped and used on the IC. It would be less-ideal if each bridge needed to then create a governance layer solely to be in control of and maintain their wrapped assets on the IC.
Bridge specific wrapped asset governance would create more security risks as well as add the burden of unnecessary cognitive overhead to users through requiring them to understand the nuances and risks associated with different wrapped assets from different providers.
And last but not least, we’ve been working on governance behind the scenes at Dank to address these exact issues on an internal level. This puts us in a very good position to continue the internal governance work we’ve been doing but now through a distribution of governance tokens to the community who wants to be involved, and let the community start playing a more active role in Dank — vote on proposals, enact transparent code upgrades from said proposals, vote in new wrapped assets or standards, etc.
Dank’s Wrapped Asset Protocol — A Preview
Imagine this.. Dank becomes DankDAO by issuing the $DANK token through a community fairdrop and adding liquidity to Sonic so that anyone who wishes is able to participate in Dank’s governance of the IC’s wrapped assets.
DankDAO will then need to become the owner of all the wrapped asset canisters. To do so, the first step is switching XTC and WICP to be owned/controlled by the DAO, and doing the same for Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and other wrapped assets from the start when they launch in the coming weeks/months.
With a close partnership with the Terabethia bridge, the next natural move is bringing in a DIP20 implementation of Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) to Dank. But that’s not all! Terabethia’s magic proxy & token factory contracts spawn a new DIP20 token canisters for each individual new ERC20 token that gets bridged to the IC, which will be automatically under Dank’s governance.
Terabethia will also be able to spawn a new DIP721 token canister for any NFT that gets bridged to the IC in the future — these wrapped NFT canisters would be owned/maintained through Dank governance as well.
In addition to owning the wrapped assets, Dank will also be responsible for their autonomous management. Each wrapped asset token under Dank will always be automatically topped up with cycles through our charging station canisters (coming soon) and will always have open source code thanks to verification through Cover. They will also all use CAP to ensure all historical transactions are recorded, and they will be auto-added to DAB so that they surface in Plug and other wallets automatically.
Okay, that was a lot… let’s recap. The plan is we will soon have Wrapped ICP, Cycles Token, Wrapped Bitcoin, Wrapped Ethereum, and all current and future wrapped ERC20 tokens (and NFT’s in the future) under the Dank DAO’s control, governed and managed by the community of $DANK token holders.
And that my friends, is how we intend to provide a safer, more interoperable and scalable wrapped-asset layer to the IC ecosystem!
That’s All 👋
We’re really excited to finally share with the community our grandmaster plan for Dank as the community’s wrapped asset layer.
Most importantly though, we want to hear from you, the community who will be future governors of Dank, what you think of Dank as the IC’s wrapped asset layer. Hop into our Discord to jam with our team & share your thoughts, see you there!
