Meta Gamma Delta is now on Polygon!
We are less than 8 weeks into 2021 and it has already been a record-smashing year for the web3 ecosystem on multiple fronts. From BTC and ETH cruising through their all-time highs, to multi-million dollar NFT sales, to Uniswap surpassing $100B in cumulative trading volume… it’s a busier and more exciting time than ever to be in the crypto space. The industry is flushed with funding that is now being used to build new dapps that enable all sorts of use cases that simply were not possible just a few years ago.
With this flurry of bull-market activity on the Ethereum network however, gas prices are again reaching amounts not seen since DeFi Summer. For those moving many $k’s worth of crypto around, these transaction fees may be justifiable. But for the rest of us wanting to do simple, non-financial activities, it quickly became a hard pill to swallow.
Enter Scaling Solutions…
In the past year, Meta Gamma Delta has onboarded over 50 members ranging from startup founders in the crypto industry to those who are just using dapps for the first time. From the beginning, we kept the pledge amount low (10 DAI for women) in order to not let cost be a barrier to entry for those who are still at the beginning of their crypto journey.
We realised it made little sense to pay multiple times the pledge amount to submit and vote for proposals in the DAO. So 2 weeks ago, we started looking to scaling solutions to alleviate transaction fee pains for our current and potential new members. We spent one of our weekly calls exploring Polygon (formerly Matic) and xDai, playing around with some of the products that are already on them, which was a good learning experience in itself.
With excellent support from the Polygon team, and positive testimonials from other communities that have moved their DAO operations to a sidechain, we chose Polygon as the place for our day-to-day operations (member onboarding, small transactions) moving forward.
A Seamless Transition
Fortunately for us, others in the ecosystem also recognised the need for DAO infrastructure on scaling solutions. DAOHaus has supported the xDai chain for a while, and added support for Polygon this month. The platform recently revamped its interface to make it even more straightforward for anybody to start, join, and manage decentralized communities.
Thanks to DAOHaus on Polygon, we were able to re-summon MGD with all members and their shares imported in one transaction. Essentially, we were able to take a snapshot of members on mainnet and replicate their membership on Polygon. This all took seconds and costed less than a cent!
What this means moving forward
Better onboarding and operations
The gas costs to submit, vote, and process proposals will now be cents (or less) compared to the $50–100 they currently are on Ethereum mainnet. Not only will this significantly reduce friction for new members to pledge to the DAO, and for existing members to participate in decision-making, it will encourage new users to immerse themselves in the web3 experience without waiting for lower gas fees before taking action, which we increasingly found ourselves having to do on mainnet.
More flexible treasury management
In addition to the mainnet guildbank and multisig wallet, we now have the added options of transferring some of our DAO funds to Polygon, allowing us to move and trade smaller amounts of funds that would be hard to justify with mainnet gas fees.
A wider variety of dapps to explore
We anticipate that more projects will launch on or integrate scaling solutions moving forward, making the overall ecosystem more user-friendly by not letting high transaction fees be a deterrent for people to interact with web3 products. For those experiencing Polygon for the first time through MGD, by being part of our community they will be equipped with the knowledge and tools to interact with the growing ecosystem of dapps that are embracing this solution.
Ultimately, the decision to move most of our operations to Polygon was a tradeoff decision between decentralization and usability. We ❤️ layer 1 Ethereum and will continue our operations there where it makes sense, but now that promising scaling solutions are here, we will leverage them to ensure an inclusive and cost-efficient experience for both our crypto-veteran members and newcomers alike.
Many thanks to the folks at Polygon and DAOHaus for answering our questions and the continued support!
Where to learn more, and how to join
If you’re keen to learn how to coordinate decentralized decision-making and empower women led blockchain projects, join our super friendly society of web3 enthusiasts by applying here.
- Visit our page on mainnet and our newly summoned DAO on Polygon
- Check out our website and our Gitcoin Grants page
- Follow us on Twitter
