#8 Monthly Newsletter, Full Project Review and DAO History

Originally published January 8th, 2023.

A review of everything from Ethlizards beginnings through the latest updates in December 2022.

2022 has been a big year for the Ethlizards with some major changes and many improvements.

Ethlizards DAO History

Ethlizards is an investment DAO, but the project has come on quite a journey to get to this point. We have created a timeline to summarize this and provide the highlights from the beginning of the project and covering events through the end of 2022.

2021 Timeline

August
Ethlizards were born.

• Illuvium’s Degen Trading channel was very active and many people were swapping alpha and hanging out there. Ethlizards was originally spawned from a group of degens that met there. 0xDrs made a meme NFT collection and offered it to various friends and degens as a free mint of 100 Genesis Ethlizard NFTs. (No utility at that time, this was changed in LIP-5).

November
Ethlizards Discord was created.

• As their success continued, they decided to form their own Discord to share their alpha and let the community grow. Ethlizards Discord was created and Ethlizard Genesis holders were invited to join.

December
The first Ethlizards team was formed to start working on Ethlizards V2 collection.

• The original team consisted of 0xDrs, 0xSp1cySauce, Galaxy 0xpress, 0xDupree. (0xDrs stepped out in early 2022).
• First version of Ethlizards.io website was launched.

2022 Timeline

January
Kieran Warwick (co-founder of Illuvium) joined as an advisor.

• Kieran saw the potential of the Ethlizards project and joined as an advisor to help mentor the team and support the project.

February
Ethlizards V2 collection of 5050 NFTs was a successful mint.

• White list minted out and public mint sold out in less than 3 minutes!
• The mint price was 0.06Ξ (approx. $185 at the time).
• The original Ethlizards’ vision was running web3 gaming tournaments, as the community was primarily gamers. This would happen while continuing to share quality alpha. Ethlizards V2 holders in a democratic structure would also govern it.
• The original team was paid 50% of the mint and would continue to receive 50% of incoming collection royalties.

The first on-chain vote for LIP-1 occurred on Snapshot.

• LIP-1 proposal to purchase NFT Worlds NFT with DAO treasury was rejected.

Astral stepped on board as social media manager.

March
Transition to GameFi/DeFi Investment DAO with LIP-3.

• Kieran and the original team introduced improvement proposals (LIP-2/3) to broaden the scope of Ethlizards to become a GameFi and DeFi-focused investment DAO. Through the network of Ethlizards and its advisors, the DAO would invest in pre-seed & seed opportunities, which are unavailable to most people. This proposal passed with a landslide vote and the DAO as we know it today was established.
• Note: LIP-2 did not have a Snapshot vote — the proposal and a lengthy and detailed governance discussion with the community and team; ultimately the LIP-2 proposal was rejected in favor of changes that informed LIP-3 (council to be elected position, changes of % and other variables).
• LIP-3 Introduces the concepts for Investment Council, DAO membership and voting (1 lizard = 1 vote), staking and revenue distribution.
• 80% of DAO treasury funds would be reserved for early-stage GameFi and DeFi Investments.
• The core team is to be paid 15% of DAO revenue (including a reduction to 15% of royalties).
• Investment Council is to be paid 5% of investment return revenue (1% each) for investments made during the 12-month epoch they serve (regardless of when it is liquidated).
• The democratically elected Investment Council is to manage investments and liquidations. Holders would be entitled to claim revenue distribution via staking rewards at the time of liquidation. A portion of the funds will be redirected back into the treasury for new investments. See chart below for a more detailed flow.

April
LIP-4 Established DAO Guidelines and Procedures.

• Including the process for writing and submitting LIPs and other governance procedures.
• Discourse governance forum was established. (now archived in favor of Discord’s internal forums).

Genesis Ethlizards were granted utility in LIP-5.

• LIP-5 was passed to grant Genesis Ethlizards (V1) utility which includes DAO membership, Discord access and voting rights, as well as 2x staking weight.

LIP-6 approved pre-council investments.

May
5 legendary Ethlizards (part of V2 collection) were auctioned.

• These 5 legendary NFTs were sold for a total of over 70WETH.
• Ethlizards Genesis collection is relaunched as an ERC-721 token to enable DAO utility (voting, staking, etc).
• Genesis bridge was created to allow migration for users.

Honorary Ethlizards Collection was launched with custom 1/1 Ethlizards designed for VIPs including Steve Aoki, What So Not, Timmy Trumpet, Matt Steffanina and Blond:ish.

NFTs designed by Illuvium Head Concept Artist @ Rogiervdbeek

June
LIP-7 Established Council Voting System.

• Snapshot’s Weighted Voting was selected as the mechanism for Council specific democratic votes.

First Investment Council was elected via Snapshot vote.

• Democratically elected Investment Council members were: Wanderingcryptowolf, lizident.eth, Kieran | Illuvium, jeff, and marmalade.

The website was updated to version 2.

• New aesthetic, roadmap, content, etc.

July
LIP-8 Closing Genesis Ethlizards Bridge proposal was rejected.

Partnership with No Standing announces activation campaign the Mr. Regular music video ft. What So Not, Oliver Tree and Killer Mike.

Staking Dashboard was launched.

• Note: staking is still in development as of Dec 2022.

Wanderingcryptowolf (who was serving as a community manager) stepped into the core team. Treaton (previously a mod) stepped into a community lead role.

August
LIP-9 to change the staking mechanism was recalled.

• LIP-9 proposal to change the proposed staking mechanism was passed in the prelim stage, however, a final vote was never held because the proposed change was found to be potentially detrimental to the protocol so this proposal was scrapped.

Alongside partners Aelin and Muse, Ethlizards launched their first NFT gated investment opportunity for holders.

• Aelin is a decentralized on-chain fundraising protocol. They launched their first NFT gated pool with Ethlizards. Individual Ethlizard holders could directly access this opportunity.

LIP-10 approved the Ethlizards Team restructure.

• While the project and community continued to push forward, it was not without some struggles and bumps in the road. The scope of the project grew massively from the original vision as did increasingly higher expectations from the team. Progress was less and slower than what many had anticipated.
• A team buyout was proposed by Kieran in LIP-10, which he would personally fund (with no repayment required), and a new core team would be appointed. This passed with almost a unanimous yes vote. A new team with a more applicable skillset was appointed: Kmao, Lu (KakashiSama) and Jumbo. The previous team stepped down, assisted with the transition and remained welcome in the DAO.
• The core team receives a flat salary of $5000 USD plus 15% of DAO revenue (changed from LIP-3).
• The team has access to up to 50% of the DAO treasury for operation expenses and for expanding the protocol.

New team launches first newsletter.

• Commitment to regular communications and ongoing newsletters.
• Laid out immediate priorities and actions, as well as a basic road map.

September
Rebranding

• Website revamp initiated.
• Logo and design works initiated.

The team launches a second newsletter.

• Implemented actions for treasury management.
• Began exploring staking solutions.
• Merch research and planning began.

LIP-11 elected a temporary replacement Council Member.

• Wanderingcryptowolf unexpectedly stepped down as an Investment Council member. LIP-11 was drafted and voted in as an immediate temporary solution.
• Kmao would serve as a temporary council member (without council compensation) until upcoming governance changes were complete.

October
Community Lizard Contributor Program launched!

• Scaling up DAO operations by introducing new roles Librarian Lizards to develop and maintain the DAO dashboard and Liaison Lizards to support collaborations & partnerships.
• Kudos to Animositas, Seagolem and Entity for helping us to kick off the Lizard Contributor program. We have now grown to a total of 17 DAO contributors at this time (including core team & mods).

Third newsletter was published by the team.

• All works on the website, design, and merch continued.
• The roadmap presented for Q4.
• A new organization structure is presented (see below).

Rebranding works completed.

Discord improvements.

• Updates to FAQ, channels, roles, etc.

Fourth Newsletter published by team.

• Treasury updates; council and investment updates.
• Onboarded first members for the Lizard Contributor Program.

Partnership with Thalon announced.

November
Fifth newsletter published by team.

• Website and investment application form works continued.
• Updates on Lizard Contributor Program structure and launch success.
• DAO treasury and council investment updates.

Staking implementation was established via LIP-12.

• LIP-12 established the staking lock and unlock mechanisms (min. 90 days lock) as well as revenue distribution and claiming mechanisms.
• Users are required to participate in Ethlizards DAO governance in order to be eligible to claim staking rewards.
• Locked Lizard (LLZ) NFTs are introduced — essentially a stand-in NFT that can be used in place of the original NFT when a user’s staked Ethlizards V1 or V2 is voluntarily locked into the staking contract.

The new Ethlizards.io website version 3 is launched.

• Complete aesthetic overhaul, branding update, and application for projects seeking investment and more.

Halls of Olympia partnership and council investment announced.

Sixth newsletter was published by the team.

• Expanded advisor support.
• Continued success with Lizard Contributors with collabs, partnerships and DAO dashboard development.

Co-hosted Illuvium gaming tournament with partners XBorg.

December
Seventh newsletter published by team.

• Staking architecture map presented.
• Website updates.
• Planning for 2023 explained.
• Q1/Q2 roadmap revamp presented with a few changes.
• Sneak peek at plushies (merch).

Seedify partnership announced.

Project Herpetarium (Project H) was launched by contributors Animositas and Seagolem.

• Project to further establish Aelin pools for NFT holders, as well as partnered projects which can provide additional benefits for the DAO.
• These contributors are coordinating with the Investment Council.
• Aelin pool launched for partner Halls of Olympia.
• Aelin pool launched for our partner Thalon.

Dyve partnership is announced.

Illuvium Partnership Christmas promotion.

• 5 Special NFTs designed by Illuvium Head Concept Artist @ Rogiervdbeek.

Gaming on the Block (GotB) partnership announced.

• Video podcast with hosts Animositas, TSG and MetaMona,
• The DAO will work with the GotB team to co-produce the series and it will be hosted on the Ethlizards upcoming Youtube Channel.

Ethlizards NFT Evolution

Genesis Ethlizards — V1 Collection
on opensea.io
on blur.io

DAO membership benefits including DAO voting rights and 2x staking weight.

Ethlizards V2 Concept Art

Ethlizards — V2 Main Collection
on opensea.io
on blur.io

DAO membership benefits include DAO voting rights and 1x staking weight.

Founder’s Edition (Part of Ethlizards V2 collection)

Legendary (Part of Ethlizards V2 collection)

Ethlizards Investment Council
on opensea.io

Honorary Ethlizards
on opensea.io

Each one created in its progenitor’s likeness, they are coveted as the unobtainable. Featuring Steve Aoki, What So Not, Timmy Trumpet, Matt Steffanina and Blond:ish.

2022 Department EOY Updates

Ethlizards Investment Council
Ethlizards Council has reviewed 20 deals within 6 months and invested within 7 projects. Our average deal size is $20,000 with an average Fully Diluted Value of 12M.

We have goals to increase our network with trusted advisors leading in the space and plans to increase the amount of deals we review on a monthly basis.

We have over $150k of pre-seed tokens being distributed to the DAO over the course of 2 years. We have the ability to earn while vesting with staking and platform revenues starting at each projects respective Token Generation Events. Q1 2023 is our first expected TGE.

Our Treasury remains healthy with a year runway at current operations with expected growth and available liquidity measures.

We look forward to Project Herpetarium as we see it as a good way to form collaborations and provide a great service for the GameFi community, projects, and our DAO.

Projects that the council has invested in and are no longer under NDA:

Civitas
Community-driven, 4X strategy MMO
Coming 2023 on PC, Android & iOS
playcivitas.io

Build. Explore. Own. Collaborate with thousands of like-minded citizens to build, develop, and advance your city. Compete with others for scarce resources to become the city everyone else admires.

Muse Group
Social Club
www.musegroup.io

Social Muse is a 30,000-strong global community of the world’s most influential social media content creators. Become the go-to partner for lead marketing services.

Thalon
Free-to-play Web3 RTS with NFT rewards
www.thalon.io

Immerse yourself in a free-to-play, sci-fi, base-building real-time strategy game, where every decision counts. You compete for territory, power and prestige. Harvest resources, command armies and battle for NFT rewards.

The Halls of Olympia
Race with simulated betting
www.hallsofolympia.io

Olympic Games, a PvP 3rd person Chariot Racing with integrated betting systems. Players are able to bet, speculate, and engage within money markets powered by DeFi.

Core Team
Lu — Operations Manager
Operations is a nice label for “a little bit of everything.” Lu helps with ongoing DAO management across most areas from admin and team operations, to managing contributor teams, partnerships, strategy, products and brand.

Kmao — Product Lead & Solidity Engineer
Since stepping on board, Kmao has been handling numerous responsibilities including solidity development within staking contract development, website, merch, product strategy DAO admin items and temporary council responsibilities.

Jumbo — Full-stack Engineer
Quietly working away behind the scenes, Jumbo has helped to develop the website, and application form, and provides technical support and development across the backend.

The core team has worked well together across multiple projects during these first 3 months. From discussion on strategy and implementation to merch and product development to potential governance reworks, we’ve probably spent time working on at least basic plans across most potential items on the roadmap. When it comes to execution, we do our best to maintain a high-quality standard and good communication. While we have hit a few bumps along the way, we’ve always recovered quickly and addressed any issues that arise. We’ve accomplished a good amount in a short time, but we want to achieve much, much more in 2023.

Mods & Community Management
Our Mod team and Community lead have been guarding the discord with watchful eyes and quick fingers ready to ban any scammers that cross their path. Security alerts and tips are also provided in #security-liz. Another discord support is provided for WLs, wallet collection and other helpful support. Most importantly, Treaton and Necro combined have likely contributed more than half of the DAOs memes, emojis, stickers. Legends.

Social Media

We have climbed to nearly 12.5k followers on twitter despite being an organic growth, ground up account. Our twitter analytics are excellent! We (mostly Astral) produced over 1,050 tweets on twitter in 2022, resulting in over 2.7 million tweet impressions. Our engagement rate is regularly over 7% and we have had over 2.3 million profile views since January 2022.

We have had over 360k impressions since October 1st despite the winter bear. We will continue to expand our presence behind the power of the lizarmy! Lizards will continue to grind towards Lizard Island in 2023 and beyond.

Partnerships & Collaborations
In Q4 of 2022, Ethlizards implemented the Liaison Lizard role to sustainably expand our reach as a community. Working in conjunction with the Team, Council, and Librarian Lizards, the Liaisons have pulled in numerous projects for our members and pushed our brand outward.

In under 3 months, our Liaisons have:

• Reviewed over 45 projects and delivered more than 20 partnerships including giveaways, tournaments, and investment opportunities including over 700 whitelist spots secured.
• Held over 15 Ethlizards-led or co-hosted Twitter spaces.
• Established a partnership with Gaming on the Block to launch Web3 gaming content under the Ethlizards banner, starting in January 2023.
• Designed and piloted a revolutionary structure with Aelin pools in Project H that will position us as leaders in early-stage investing.

Library and DAO Dashboard
In order to keep our community aware, informed and educated, Ethlizards created the Librarian Lizard role in Q4 of 2022. This role and its functions serves two main purposes :

Creating and maintaining a Notion site that allows the workflows of the team and contributors to be shared and managed in a single place.

• Through this tool, the council can keep track of its deal flow, the Team can manage its projects and tasks, the Liaisons can follow up on the collabs and partnerships they are working on and the Librarians can add content and information on the web3 projects Ethlizards have interactions with.
• Once the information becomes public, it can be shared with the entire community through an open Notion website.
• We aim at helping to both streamline the work being done and provide more transparency in the current and past activities of our DAO, while providing the structure to scale up the contributor’s program smoothly.

Creating the “Gaming Notion Dashboard,” a knowledge hub and database of NFT and Gaming projects.

• The Librarians have provided extensive details about a number of projects that we are affiliated with, partnered with and grant whitelists for: including whitepaper and tokenomics summaries for projects that Ethlizards have invested in or have long-term partnerships with.
• The dashboard allows our members to access the project’s information quickly and at a glance, while also offering them more in-depth information if they desire. Librarians are also serving to provide information about non-partnered projects in the “non-affiliated section” of the dashboard.

In a few months, our Librarians have:

• Created a structure for all contributors to work together and document their work.
• Created a public-facing website to share that work with the community.
• Analysed and added information for over 45 projects (and more coming!).
• Created whitepaper and tokenomics summaries for projects we have invested in and have long-term partnerships with.
• Created a “community content/work” vault which includes Youtube videos, articles & Twitter AMA’s created by Ethlizard members or affiliated community members for related projects.
• Discussing implementing the dashboard analytics and updating projects information based on discord/twitter community sentiment and reviews

2023 and Beyond

Bear or bull, we’ll still be building and expanding. We’ll keep publishing our regular newsletters and keep everyone informed on the latest developments. The lizards are set on a collision course for blue chip NFT status and racing to the forefront of Web3 gaming and NFTs. We are looking forward to a packed agenda of updates & releases this year! You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Here’s to 2023 as the year of the Lizard!

About

The Ethlizards project is positioned at the nexus of innovative projects within the Web3 gaming landscape. Ethlizards brings together an exceptional mix of avid gamers, visionary builders, and savvy investors, establishing itself as a highly esteemed partner in the GameFi ecosystem. Our unique position spans various verticals, encompassing Web3 game studios, infrastructure partners, venture capitalists, and gaming organizations. We seamlessly blend the best aspects of VCs and Web3 gaming guilds/DAOs while co-developing solutions with our partners.

Ethlizards is fostering a community that features successful investors, project founders, and a multitude of individuals actively committed to creating and contributing value. Our distinguished partners and advisors, including founders of major Web3 projects, remain actively involved at all protocol levels. At Ethlizards, we firmly believe that an exclusive focus on value extraction in Web3 is counterproductive. Through our early-stage GameFi portfolio activities, we ensure the long-term success of the DAO, while our short-term strategies prioritize gamification, product development, and extensive partnership growth. This holistic approach positions us to thrive amidst the industry’s rapid expansion in the coming years.