Digital Reserve Currency — Q3
Mentioned in this article:
- DRC Vault
- Uniswap v2 / v3
- DR Vault changes
- Community
- Decentralisation
First things first
DRC has been, is and always will remain the focus of this project. Anything else implemented alongside DRC is there to assist in its adoption, not to change or improve on the token itself. Becoming a viable Store of Value is a journey that takes time and patience, both of which we endorse.
🏦 DRC Vault
The DRC Vault is a symbol of the belief in DRC’s value proposition. It is simple; hold, show your desire to hold and get rewarded through DRC’s intrinsic growth alongside external rewards.
These external rewards can be considered as gifts, donations. Many community members have already pledged to provide donations of all kinds (NFTs, tokens, swag, etc.) to those that support DRC in its journey. The Fund has accumulated a large amount of DRC (>15m) to incentivize those in the community. By entering the DRC Vault, users are leaving their digital signature upon the oath to bring DRC forward. These digital signatures, live on the blockchain, are also how rewards will be distributed.
Current proposal for rewarding DRC Vault Depositors is as follows:
- Weekly distribution to 1random address: 50,000 DRC
- Monthly distribution to 1 random address: 250,000 DRC
- NFT Drops (i.e. Hashmasks, Spunks, AI Art, Wicked Craniums and more)
The minimum requirements to qualify for these rewards are:
- The wallet address must have an active deposit in the DRC Vault
- At least 50,000 DRC must be deposited to qualify for the DRC Rewards
- At least 100,000 DRC must be deposited to qualify for the NFT Rewards
- The deposit must be for at least 30 days uninterrupted
🦄 Uniswap v2 / v3
DRC currently has:
- a DRC/ETH pool on Uniswap v2;
- a DRC/ETH pool on Uniswap v3;
- Bilaxy and another upcoming CEX listing;
- DRC/MATIC is also available on Quickswap on Polygon.
Uniswap v3 was released in May and since has required the majority of Ethereum based DeFi projects to learn its new rules and adapt their current smart contracts to fit the new build. It is well documented now that many projects are finding it unwieldly and often not best suited to the protocol.
DRC was a very early mover to Uniswap v3, providing a DRC pool in the range of $0.004 to $0.050, and moving a portion of liquidity from v2. However, the liquidity pools of DRC, and other tokens, are an essential component for the DR Vaults — in order to make the allocations, there must be deep liquidity bases for all the assets.
This leads to the next item…
🔩 Changes to the DR Vaults
The DR Vaults, loved by many, were created during a time when DRC was first finding its feet. The early community expressed an interest for a more substantial addition to the DRC ecosystem and, thanks to the hard work and vision of If.x, Cryptographr and Maxim, the DR Vaults were conceptualized and created. The Vaults, designed to give users exposure to a more traditional set of Store of Value assets, were borne of the hard work from community developers and funded through the generous donations of the DRC Community.
In the process of their creation and release, DRC’s holders increased from a few hundred, to 3000.
Leading into the second half of 2021, two things have become clear: decentralisation is possible; and regulation is coming.
Decommissioning s1 and s3
As such, the s1 and s3 DR Vaults are set to be decommissioned over the coming weeks. Deposits will be suspended and withdrawals continue as normal.
After seeking advice from numerous legal professionals, it has become apparent that there is a lack of clear regulations of DeFi services in general and DeFi asset management platforms in particular. We may encounter compliance issues by providing portfolio allocation services.
Further, by closing DR Vaults s1 and s3, we are eliminating potential liquidity and security risks. The functionality of these vaults is heavily dependent on the underlying assets liquidity on Uniswap V2, and users may encounter a situation when they are not able to withdraw their funds just because of the lack of required liquidity. Specifically, this may be caused by the Vaults s1 and s3 assets liquidity migration from Uniswap V2 to Uniswap V3. On the other hand, Vault s2 will include only highly liquid assets, such as USDC, WBTC, and ETH, and hence liquidity risks associated with its functionality will be significantly mitigated.
Upgrading s2
As alluded to, DR Vault s2 is remaining and receiving a small change. Due to the liquidity issues mentioned above, PAXG is no longer a viable asset allocation. As such, due to overall market sentiment, the new allocation will be 90% USDC, 5% WBTC and 5% ETH. With Vault s2, we have a clear use case of hedging against inflation and market volatility, less compliance risks, and it is a perfect fit to the DRC model.
By keeping the Vault s2, DRC holders maintain their opportunity to gain fast, secure and simple exposure to a more stable allocation to help users hedge market conditions. This also demonstrates DRC’s understanding of DeFi user’s needs and prowess technologically.
By reducing the focus of the DR Vaults, DRC becomes more centred on its main value proposition; DRC. Moving forward, the community is the focus. In order to become a viable Store of Value token, DRC must be held and distributed. Following the decommissioning of the DR Vaults s1 and s3, the DRC Vault will become the primary DeFi dApp that DRC holders can interact with. The DRC Vault, whilst simple, is to be the vehicle by which all holders gain their much asked for “rewards”, “yield” and “earning potential”.
🤝 Community
Moving forward, the DRC community is now the locus of all attention. The decentralised DRC Foundation Fund has stockpiled donations and rewards for the community to benefit from. The DRC Discord will become a hub of activity including tournaments, contests, information sharing and generally a place to feel comfortable in the incredibly turbulent space of DeFi.
For those that may not be aware, the holders of DRC believe in its future and value proposition. The concern of “holders are just waiting to dump their bags” is the same across all tokens. DRC however is different. For a token with a small market cap such as this, it is almost unheard of to see the distribution of holdings that DRC has. Alongside the holders, those who are carrying the vision forward include prominent and well connected people in the space.
The Roundtable is a central part to the internal debate, and will become even more so. The GEN00 and GEN01 NFT Holders are an important part of the decentralised discussion and community accountability model. To gain access to the exclusive Roundtable Chat, users must hold either GEN00 or GEN01 NFTs, gained through donations to the Foundation Fund.
The concept of idea sharing is important to DRC and if a community member has a proposal that they think will benefit DRC, they can receive funding for their idea.
Expanding globally and attracting a strong community requires people to speak the local language, understand the mindset of the people and to provide that bridge to help onboard users — together the DRC Community can reach a wide audience.
🌐 Decentralisation as a goal
What does Decentralisation mean?
A great article from Binance Academy lays out some ideas:
It’s arguable that decentralization isn’t a state, but rather a range, in which each level is suitable for a different type of use case. In some cases, full autonomy or decentralization might not even be possible or make sense.
And from a further article regarding DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations):
DAOs can be classified with a taxonomy that is based on four key elements: multilateral agreements, resource management, and the discussion and voting process.
From a legal/regulatory perspective, decentralization means that the project is not managed by any person or a group of people who can potentially affect the token price (e.g. through marketing activities or exchange listings and respective announcements, etc.)
DRC becomes fully decentralized and censorship-resistant if it meets these criteria. Nobody can shut it down or manipulate the market with DEX trading and 100% of the supply in circulation.
Why Decentralise?
DRC decentralization will bring incredible value to DRC and will make it truly unique and censorship-resistant. The following aspects would indicate true decentralization with regard to DRC:
a) community controlled — no foundation or any other group of people who can make managerial, operational, or marketing decisions, even on behalf of the community (see Bitcoin as an example);
b) That the DR / DRC Vaults and DRC website work autonomously and are not managed by anyone; no development upgrades are needed, to the greatest extent possible.
The World Economic Forum released a paper — DeFi Policy Maker Toolkit in early June. This paper discusses DeFi, DAOs and crypto from a policymaker’s perspective. It is indicative of the realisation within government that cryptocurrencies are here to stay. This leads to one conclusion; regulation is coming.
How To Decentralise?
Currently, the DRC Foundation fills a gap between the centralised authority of traditional project governance and the ineffective efforts of a dispersed community. However, if the DRC Foundation did not exist, DRC would function no differently. This is the essence of decentralisation.
“Digital Reserve Currency” means many things to many people, but the one unifying factor is the belief in decentralisation.
Whether DRC is a long-term hold, a short term speculation, or even just an interesting project to watch grow, the core ethos is fully decentralised operations.
That is why, the current structure of CCs is to be discontinued. After earnest efforts at democratically electing Core Contributors since Q4 2021, it became clear that contributions were few and far between, with many of the previous CCs providing very little for the community. Instead, the efforts of the development team will be funded from the Fund when required, and a communications team will also be paid for their work. The end goal is for a self-sustaining community, driven by their interest as holders of DRC and by the community’s willingness to give back and recognise those that are driving DRC forward.
By 1/1/2022, DRC will be fully decentralised.
Full decentralisation in this case does not mean abandonement from those that currently support DRC. All of the current CCs, including Maxim, will continue to provide support for the DRC ecosystem long into 2022, and the future. The objective is to provide a real, coherent and functioning framework for DRC to thrive and function without ANY centralised efforts.
This proposal, with suggested changes, will be submitted for community voting until the end of June. The vote will be arranged as:
a) Changes in the DR structure;
b) Changes in DRC governance.
