Monthly DAO Update: November 2022
GM Degens and on-chain fanatics - welcome to our latest DAO update,
We could larp about how the shitshow that FTX is was proof that keeping things on-chain works better than trusting kids in the Bahamas. There is reason to argue about how on-chain leverage products did not go under when Celsius and BlockFi got hit. But we are not in the business of larping.
We are in the business of building. As hit as some of us are by the events that have panned out last month, we have been busy building the future of France day in and day out. Here’s a monthly breakdown of what that looked like in November. Sorted from bottom to top in priority.
AMAs and Twitter Spaces
Gearbox’s inventor 0xmikko did an AMA on the 11th of November. Ironically, around the time, concerns about FTX were all over Twitter. The AMA itself goes into Mikhail’s background, his journey through crypto and how Gearbox came to be. It is a good breakdown of how he thinks about helping Gearbox navigate the uncertainty we see in the markets and our approach to the gradual decentralisation on the product itself. You can read the transcript of the AMA here and watch the video here.
Another Space was held with the MASK network community w attendance reaching beyond 1100 at peak. Discussions around DeFi and it’s growth were discussed on length and how Gearbox is contributing to the same. Additionally, two of our contributors were on FlywheelPod breaking down composable leverage and what it means for DeFi. Listen to it here.
Grants for our VIBE-heads
The intern writing these updates spends most of his time at Mcdonald’s, ensuring his full-time employment is taken care of. This is why we have hired an army of community members to spread the gospel of Gearbox when he fails to come through. Over the last month — some 1800 community members have engaged with the VibeDAO — a metaDAO within the Gearbox community focused on marketing.
These members have engaged with our content on Twitter, surfaced proposals to teams like Frax and got us integrations with DeBank and Zapper. When it is all done, the VibesDAO plays pokers on the weekend to keep spirits high and engage our gambling spirits. In essence, it is our way of ensuring members that contribute through marketing, developing the business or onboarding integrations to Gearbox are incentivised.
If you want to build a position in Gearbox through “sweat equity” or should I say “greasy tokens”, consider that you can get up to 50k Gearbox tokens for being an active participant with meaningful contribution towards the growth of the protocol and the DAO. Hop on our discord and explore the multitude of ways you can get tokens by helping us grow. A more detailed breakdown can be found in the article below:
Governance around the token release
Talking of tokens, there has been deliberation over whether the tokens should be made transferable. The markets could not possibly look worse (we hope). And through the lens of price, we may see little performance given buy appetite is low. This is why we spent the past month looking at a series of approaches, including a gnosis auction, a simple unlock and outright keeping tokens locked.
On the 28th of November, the decision was put to vote. All of them can be read about in-depth here. The decision was made to go with a Cider’ed liquidity programme with over 67% of the votes in support of it. Now, what in the hell is that? Let me break it down.
Cider’ed Liquidity and what it means for GEAR
Cider’ed liquidity (funny name) in essence, is a slow, constrained auction programme. It starts with liquid gear tokens being deposited to an LP pool. A bit later, ETH is deposited into the same pool. Individuals looking to sell their Gear tokens — sell it at a discount. Over time, the discount would trend closer to 0%. The pool would start with a minimum of ~135 million gear tokens and 2.35 million worth of ETH. The variables themselves may change given the varying price of ETH — but this is the crux of the idea.
Now why bother with all this? Consider that this helps find a “fair” price for Gear tokens without the presence of a centralised exchange like the one that funded Tom Brady last year. It helps large token holders exit relatively easily (although at a discount) while encouraging new buyers to come in at size. Lastly, it makes sure nobody apes in at a ridiculous price, as is often the case with normal auctions. No point in front-running either.
The intern recognises he’s done a terrible job at breaking it down for you, so please go through he forum posts for a more in-depth breakdown.
Streamlining DAO Operations
We are in the process of streamlining how the DAO operates. As we scale, it will become increasingly irrelevant to have everyone vote on smaller details that do not require community consensus. Conversely, giving people free rein on community resources would lead to a lack of clarity and transparency over time. The community must re-align how it operates, especially as the token incentives become liquid.
In this regard, we have been discussing the set-up of SubDAOs in the community. Instead of the community voting on smaller decisions, a pre-set amount of capital would be allocated to each SubDAO. The Vibes programme we have is an example of a SubDAO. The SubDAO in turn, would have autonomy on how the allocated resources are spent. The leaders of these DAOs would report to Gearbox and lay their case for how much resources are needed going forward. The SubDAOs will be reviewed every two months or so.
Some initiatives will require seasonal resources, while others require longer time horizons to generate results. The community will determine which SubDAO will be voted into existence and have ongoing access to resources. We are still in the earliest stages of exploring operationally what this would look like. Join us in the discussion on the forum:
Financial Update
As of end of November, the DAO treasury stands with about $5.27M in its address and an additional 4.63B GEAR Tokens. Contributors were allocated $61k and a further ±4.1 million tokens over the month of work (vested for 12 months). While the only other expenditures were $20K paid out for Bug Bounty of the new V2 codebase as well as 32K in ETH was paid as deployment and gas reimbursement. The protocol generated ~$207K in revenue with majority coming through the LP fee which is now gone. In terms of Obligations, the DAO now has only GEAR obligations as shown.
The GEAR outflow was for setting up of vesting contracts to the strategic and community DAO round as well as Q3 contributor GEAR contracts. The GEAR from these will vest as per pre-approved dates.
See more in the monthly DAO reports section of Notion:
That’s it on this month’s DAO update. If you would like to earn passively, remember to LP into our Lending Pools to earn GEAR. If you want to take leverage as Ninja just ping us on Discord or post on the forum.
Otherwise you can always get involved with the DAO — discuss, research, lead and share. Call contributors out on their bullshit and collaborate on making things better. Here is how you can follow developments:
- Website: https://gearbox.fi/
- dApp: https://app.gearbox.fi/
- User Docs: https://docs.gearbox.finance/
- Developer Docs: https://dev.gearbox.fi/
- Forum: https://gov.gearbox.fi/t/start-here-forum-rules/
- Blog: https://medium.com/@gearboxprotocol
- Github: https://github.com/Gearbox-protocol
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/GearboxProtocol
- Snapshot page: https://snapshot.org/#/gearbox.eth
- And, of course, the DAO working docs:
