Q1 2019 Genesis DAO Update

Hello, Genesis Alpha community and DAOstack pollinators! This post is the result of some deep thought on the part of the DAOstack team with regard to the short and long-term futures of the Genesis DAO, and we hope it will provide clarity about our vision for the DAO.

Three topics are covered here:

1. Our long-term vision for Genesis.
2. The Genesis Alpha, which will continue in the short term, running on Alchemy Earth and funded by DAOstack.
3. The Genesis Beta, which is being delayed to make time for the Earth release, to give some of our new ecosystem DAOs a chance to get up and running, and to allow the discussion about Genesis’ future to be a proper collaboration between current stakeholders.

Long-term Vision

DAO Principles

We, the DAOstack team, believe the Genesis DAO should hold the following long-term principles while in Beta and after it:

1. Rewarding people proportionally to their contributions to or stakes in the success of the DAOstack project (reward types include Reputation and tradeable currency)
2. Incentivizing work that’s anti-rivalrous within the DAOstack ecosystem
3. Aiming for diversity of expertise and perspective (a principle already adopted by the Genesis Alpha)

We describe the role we would like Genesis to play as a “Coordinator DAO” for the DAOstack ecosystem: Genesis should be an organization that includes all stakeholders in the DAOstack project and drives it forward, guided by the aforementioned principles.

DAO Assets

For the past six months, Genesis has been provided with a budget by DAOstack, and this will likely continue in the short-term, but in the long-term, we believe Genesis, acting as the center of the DAOstack/GEN ecosystem, should be given control over minting new GEN tokens (up to 40M). This power is currently controlled by the DAOstack team, but we believe the DAO can eventually become an entity more fit to hold that power, and we plan to transfer it as long as Genesis can demonstrate the ability to wield it responsibly. There are some transition steps we could take on this path, one of which is mentioned later in this post.

DAO Goals

Though we cannot control what the DAO will do once Reputation is distributed, we will encourage the DAO to undertake the following major tasks during Beta and beyond:

• Supporting a healthy GEN economy through the nurturing of any new GEN-using DAOs and the GEN predictors network
• Contributing to the development of the DAO stack software, directly by members and through funding others

We will also encourage these minor tasks, which we view as useful but not as vital as the major tasks:

• Experimenting with and testing the DAO stack in search of new improvements and possibilities
• Demonstrating by example what a successful DAO can do and be
• Recruiting or helping to found new DAOs built on the stack

Genesis Alpha

Very soon, we plan to restart funding for the Genesis Alpha, which has been semi-paused since it got hacked a month ago. While in many ways, things should continue as they were, there are a couple new elements we think are important:

1. Genesis Alpha will be running on Alchemy Earth once it is released, which should be an across-the-board performance improvement. This will also unlock some new capabilities for the DAO, such as adjusting its own governance structure.
2. The DAOstack team will be working on a proposal concerning the Beta launch that will include a Rep distribution plan and long-term principles. We hope to have such a proposal written by the DAOstack team and passed by the DAO in the next few months.

We believe this proposal is an important step for putting the DAO on a sustainable long-term path that includes current members and important future stakeholders.

Genesis Beta

Beta Delayed

Originally, we had hoped to launch the Beta around this time (March 7th, 2019 as I’m writing), but we have decided to delay this launch for a few reasons:

• Alchemy Earth was slightly delayed (but should still be ready soon).
• The community discussions around Reputation and structure in the Beta, and our internal discussions on those topics, hadn’t concluded.
• We wanted time to establish some of the new DAOs being built on the platform that may have a role to play in the Beta.

That being said, we fully intend to launch Genesis Beta within the next quarter, and we think that’s a realistic goal. Before that launch, we would like to submit (and hopefully pass!) a proposal in Genesis with detailed plans around Reputation and GEN distribution for the Beta. Here are some of our current thoughts on those subjects.

Reputation Distribution

Note: The following outlines our current thinking on Reputation distribution for Genesis Beta, but it is not a formal proposal. That will come later.

For Genesis Beta, we will suggest an initial Reputation distribution based on our best estimate of the DAOstack project’s current stakeholders. We don’t expect the distribution to be perfect right away, and the stakeholders in the project will also change over time, so we also intend for the Reputation distribution to evolve. We believe that the mix of Reputation flow mechanics provided by the Genesis protocol–contribution rewards, regular-queue voting rewards, and passed-proposal authoring awards–is a proper starting point for this evolution.

We’ve identified four stakeholder segments that we believe should receive Reputation upon the initialization of Genesis Beta:

• GEN hodlers
• Early DAOs of the DAOstack ecosystem (PolkaDAO, Liberland DAO, and Ethfinex DAO, etc.)
• Contributing organizations (the DAOstack team, Gnosis, dOrg, etc.)
• Current Genesis Alpha Reputation-holders

All four of these groups have made significant contributions to the DAOstack ecosystem, hold significant stakes in the DAOstack ecosystem, or both. GEN holders have financial reason to want the ecosystem to succeed and are also actively contributing to the GEN economy by holding GEN. Early DAOs will be active GEN users in addition to depending on the DAO stack to operate effectively. Contributing organizations and individuals such as the DAOstack team and current Genesis Reputation holders have spent many hours working on the DAOstack project and also hold ecosystem-related assets such as Genesis Alpha Reputation and the keys to Github repos.

We are not proposing an exact distribution between these four groups here, as we would like more time to consider the details with the current community of stakeholders. We do, however, intend to submit a more specific proposal on this topic to Genesis in the next month or so.

GEN Distribution Plan

Though we don’t think the Genesis DAO will be ready to be responsible for minting GEN during Beta, we would like the Beta to take a smaller step toward aligning its incentive-structure with the long-term health of the GEN economy. To that effect, we are considering granting Genesis Beta a supply of locked GEN, to be controlled by the DAO but locked until some time in the future. This should help reinforce the DAO’s goal of supporting the GEN economy responsibly.

If it wishes to access these funds indirectly during the locking period, the Genesis DAO can mint and distribute a new token of its own that can be redeemed for GEN once the GEN is unlocked. This new token might be used for many purposes, including distributing it to past Genesis Alpha contributors in order to both reward them and give them more skin in the game.

Like the Reputation distribution plan, a specific version of this GEN distribution plan will be submitted in our forthcoming proposal.

Wrap-up

We hope that this post clarifies our current thoughts regarding the short and long-term futures of the Genesis DAO. We believe the current DAO, though it started mostly as an experiment, can transition into being the “Coordinator DAO” for the DAOstack ecosystem, which will represent and act to benefit all the stakeholders of the project. We think the steps outlined in this post are a reasonable plan to put Genesis on that path, but we are eager to hear the community’s feedback and develop a proposal that, if passed, would formalize these plans and give us all confidence heading into Genesis Beta.