The Evolution of GATA DAO in 2022
Since its official launch back in January 2022, GATA DAO has been steadily growing — both in terms of GATA community as well as in regard to the scale of its validator and other operations.
Therefore, as 2022 is now passed, it is a good time to look back on how everything started and what the GATA DAO has accomplished in the first year.
tl:dr
-GATA DAO launched 2 GATA series collected ~5500 Atom equivalent Stars.
-In the past year GATA DAO distributed 5000+ Atom to GATA community and to the wider cosmos community in rewards and giveaways.
-GATA DAO treasury and validator holds ~3000 ATOM equivalent Assets.
-GATA DAO launched 8 validators during the year.
-Launched the first NFT collection of the yield series.
-GATA DAO proposed and passed 10 governance proposals during the year.
GATA Validator Operations
Back in March 2022, GATA DAO made a decision to kick off by starting the DAO’s validator operations on Sifchain. After the successful launch of GATA’s 1st validator and easily getting into the active set, the team was looking for opportunities and new chains to validate.
As a result of careful considerations and multiple discussions within the DAO, the decision was made to spin up nodes on Evmos and Nomic — in April 2022, just a month after the launch of the first validator.
In May 2022 this was followed by GATA’s validator on Juno. Even with the validator set being heavily contested at that point, GATA was able to secure a spot in the active set — thanks to the delegations from the whole GATA community that stepped up and to the support of our partners 0base.vc and others who gave crucial support to jumpstart our own operations.
Each of GATA’s validators made it into the respective active set quickly, hence started earning staking rewards for the delegators and for the DAO.
With the announcement of Interchain Security during the summer of 2022, the members of the DAO saw it as essential to start a validator on the Cosmos Hub. Compared to the launch of validator services on the IBC chains mentioned above, the battle to get into the active set of Cosmos was more fierce.
With a combined effort of delegations by DAO members, the IBC family, and special support from our anonymous but gracious partner, GATA DAO was able to join the ranks of active validators on the hub.
But GATA wouldn’t be GATA, if the team would have stopped there.
Mid-September 2022 the GATA core team revealed a surprise to the DAO: validator operations on Rebus had started. Built as an experiment by the core team and funded from the team’s budget, the validator got launched in no time and secured a top position in the validator set right after launch.
Only a week later, GATA DAO joined the ranks of genesis validators on Teritori Network, securing another top position in an aspiring IBC blockchain right from the start.
In November, as a result of the abnormalities around Sifchain and open discussions beforehand within GATA DAO, the DAO decided to shut down the operations on Sifchain.
The latest validator of GATA DAO launched on Osmosis in December 2022 and made it into an active set within days of operations. Again, thanks to unlimited and continuous support from GATA fam and GATA partners.
In total, GATA DAO has launched active validators on 8 different Cosmos blockchains within less than 9 months of operations, of which 7 are still up and running. The validators provide value to both regular delegators (in form of staking rewards + giveaways/airdrop and additional incentives) and holders of GATA NFTs (monthly epoch rewards, see Revenue Distribution).
NFT Collections
NFTs launched by GATA DAO can be separated into two categories: GATA Series and Yield Series. Both categories provided GATA DAO with additional funds to launch/fund new validator operations actively and offer opportunities for their respective holders.
GATA Series
Every GATA NFT, no matter from which GATA series, has the same utility, regardless of rank, minting date, and name. Holding one of those NFTs will give you access to the DAO and makes you eligible for the monthly revenue share coming from validator commissions and royalties of secondary market sales.
Colonial Cats (GATAc)
The genesis collection of GATA DAO, Colonial Cats on Stargaze, consists of 999 NFTs and marked the beginning of the whole project. It was minted on the 11th of March 2022 on Stargaze and sold out in less than 10 minutes, generating ~3,500 ATOM equivalent Stars.
The mint proceeds of GATAc were used to fund the DAO wallet as well as to cover the initial setup costs to launch the validators of GATA DAO.
Voyager Cats (GATAv)
Only three months later, on the 5th of June 2022, GATA DAO launched Voyager Cats on Stargaze, the second GATA collection, which consists of 888 NFTs.
Due to general market conditions around launch, the second collection of GATA NFTs did not mint out as quickly as the first one. In late August, the DAO made the decision to mint the remaining 547 out of 888 Voyager Cats and to put them into the DAO wallet. The total mint proceeds amounted to ~2,000 ATOM equivalent of Stars.
These GATAv NFTs in the DAO wallet are not participating in governance proposals and get no monthly rewards and/or shares. What will happen to this long-term is still the subject of ongoing discussions within the DAO — their fate is TBD.
With a floor price of 10,000 STARS (~250 USD) for both collections and a circulating supply of 1327 (986 GATAc, 341 GATAv), the market capitalization of GATA NFTs at the time of writing is ~335,000 USD.
Yield Series NFTs
After the successful launch of the first two GATA NFT collections, the team decided to launch Yield Gorillas, the first non-GATA collection, on Teritori.
Apart from being nice-looking PFPs, Yield series NFTs also come with utility. In the case of Yield Gorillas:
- 100% of the mint proceeds are staked to GATA DAO’s validators and
- all the staking rewards generated by those funds are distributed across all NFT holders of the Yield collection.
Additionally, Yield Gorilla holders enjoy the following benefits:
- a monthly raffle in which one holder can earn 2% of the whole staking rewards and
- a “buy & burn” event in which 3% of all staking rewards will be used to buy Yield NFTs at floor price to burn them immediately after
Any airdrops that the staked funds will receive in the future will be distributed among Yield Gorilla holders, the team, and the GATA treasury. The distribution scheme hasn’t been finalized yet, but will most likely look similar to the following one: 50% NFT holders, 20% Team, and 30% GATA treasury.
Revenue Distribution in GATA DAO
One of the most anticipated things was the first distribution of rewards to GATA NFT holders. The distribution took place on the 1st of September 2022 and paid out the accumulated revenue shares since the beginning of the project.
Since it was the first reward distribution, only the genesis collection GATAc was eligible. Each holder of Colonial Cats (GATAc) received 0.52 $ATOM per NFT owned, which was sent directly to the holder’s ATOM wallet. The holders of Voyager Cats (GATAv) have been included since the 2nd epoch.
Overall, there were 5 epochs of reward distributions this year, in which a total of ~2550 ATOM (~32,000 USD) were distributed to GATA holders. For further details regarding the individual epochs, please visit:
Source: Revenue Distribution, GATA Gitbook
Additional benefits for the GATA community
But GATA DAO wouldn’t be GATA DAO if we stopped there. Throughout 2022 we launched several initiatives (Twitter contests, giveaways, Crew3 competitions, etc.) with the goal to reward the entire GATA community, NFT holders as well as delegators. As a result, the following rewards have been distributed to the wider GATA community this year:
- 18 GATAv — (4,500 USD | 500 ATOM)
- 47 GATAc — (11,750 USD | 1305 ATOM)
- 105,000 STARS — (2625 USD | 291 ATOM)
- 100 JUNO — (125 USD | 14 ATOM)
- 50 EVMOS — (18 USD | 2 ATOM)
- 1,500 USD — (1650 ATOM)
- 25 Yield Gorilla — (450 USD | 50 ATOM)
- 10,000 TORI — (700 USD | 75 ATOM)
- 4,000 ROWAN
In total, NFTs and IBC assets with a value of over 2500 ATOM (~22,500 USD) were given out to the GATA community this year, apart from the monthly revenue distribution to GATA NFT holders.
Organizational Structure of GATA DAO
The organizational structure of GATA DAO is divided into 3 levels:
Level 1 — Team
GATA DAO is currently operated by a team of 10 people: (Full + Part-time)
The core team consists of Jove (CEO+CTO), SIF Wassie (CFO+BM), and Cryptopital (CMO).
In addition, Brasco and George9D recently joined this organizational level to help the GATA core team with content creation, marketing, and moderation.
The 5 additional members that complete the GATA team consist of 2 Design artists, 2 engineers, and a content writer.
Level 2 — Senators
The 50 most loyal members of GATA DAO are rewarded the senator role by the team and are organized in a council. This Senator council supports the core team with honest feedback and engages in open discussions.
Level 3 — DAO members
DAO members are the heart and soul of the entire project. In order to become a member of the DAO one has to hold at least one GATA NFT.
Governance of GATA DAO
Since GATA is organized as a DAO, governance is one if not the most important part of the entire project. So far, the DAO has voted on 10 proposals and each of them passed.
For further information about past proposals, feel free to visit: https://gatadao.gitbook.io/welcome-to-gitbook/gata-constitution
Game of Chains
Tribute to the very backbone of the project, our beloved GATA core devs. These guys are pros. Day after day, since the inception of GATA, they have managed to deliver.
And now they are also taking part in Game of Chains, an incentivized testnet program that helps validators develop confidence around Interchain Security (ICS) and provide a platform to test this new technology. All for the greater good of the entire IBC economy.
Partnerships of GATA DAO
Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is a success. — Henry Ford
The development of lasting relationships with other projects has been an important part of GATA DAO. Therefore, the team has been looking for suitable partners constantly, resulting in several partnerships:
- 0base.vc: A partnership with the validator 0base.vc was made right after the start of GATA DAO in March, consisting of a discount on the commission for delegations to its validator on Stargaze for members of GATA DAO. Several months later 0base.vc helped the DAO to help bring the Juno validator onto its feet and into the active set by a considerable delegation.
- Tyche: GATA DAO formed another strong partnership over the last couple of months with Tyche, a DeFi protocol on Evmos. The GATA core team helped Tyche with technical expertise and consultancy — as a result, the Tyche team rewarded the GATA core team with a part of the team’s airdrop of $TYCHE tokens. Instead of keeping these rewards just within their ranks, the GATA core team decided to share these with the GATA community. Therefore, members of the DAO as well as delegators to the DAO’s validators on Evmos, Juno, and Cosmos Hub will get an airdrop of $TYCHE tokens.
- Teritori Network: The partnership with Teritori Network, a social hub for NFT communities, is the most recent one and was announced in mid-September 2022. As a result of this collaboration, GATA NFT holders were granted an airdrop of 300 $TORI for each NFT they held — the highest amount of tokens rewarded among all Teritori drops to NFT projects. In addition, GATA’s Yield Gorillas collection was among the first NFT collections available on Teritori’s NFT launchpad.
- Anonymous partners
A few of our partners supported GATA DAO greatly but silently in terms of delegations to GATA validators. They wish to stay anonymous but we know, who they are and we wholeheartedly are thankful for their incredible support to GATA DAO and GATA team.
Outlook
As you have seen, GATA DAO was quite busy in the past few months, but there’s no reason to slow down now. The future is looking bright, as we are working on many improvements for the project’s internal structure as well as for the governance of the DAO.
With tools like DAO DAO and new Stargaze features for DAO management on the horizon, GATA will continue to explore different venues & opportunities to improve its decentralized governance.
After the successful launches of GATAc & GATAv, we are looking very much forward to the 3rd GATA NFT series launching within the next few months. With the new GATA collection on the horizon, we will continue to expand the size & outreach of our DAO even further.
You can also rest assured, that GATA will continue to grow — not only in numbers of fellow cat lovers & partnerships — but in regards to additional validator operations on new and uprising IBC chains.
Thank you for all the trust & support GATA fam — our journey has just begun.
You know the old saying Hold your γάτα
