GIP-1: One-time 5% GNO merkledrop to active GnosisDAO participants

Governance GIPs
32

Hi everyone :wave:

I see a few issues in the way to execute the proposal and the way to clarify the current proposal definition. Following on that, it might be good to propose a way to make amendment to a proposal, right now is not clear if that has to be done by creating a new proposal or if there are ways to modify an existing one during the voting phase. If you want to make an amendment do you need to vote NO in the current proposal?

The other issue I see is:

If you want to encourage participation, the fairer way to do that (in my opinion) would be to count at least all users that voted on at least 1 proposal, and you say that already in the post.
The problem with that is, either a) you take one single snapshot of one of the votes and then you are requiring to vote on at least one particular snapshot or… b) you need to define a future block in which a snapshot of the current balances will be taken.

I think the way to way to go would be b) in order to give people time and freedom to choose the proposals they like the most and also more time for them to get familiar with the process.

Examples of that b) option can be seen by balancer team: https://github.com/balancer-labs/bal-mining-scripts

And as a final note, in the current proposal, those who vote YES are commiting to any dates? or would those be clarified in a second proposal if this one passes?

2 Likes
33

The proposal specified

5% of the balance GNO balance held in Gnosis Safes and used to vote in the GnosisDAO within the first month after the GnosisDAO launches

Which is why I suggested block 11,516,300 above.

I don’t think this requires a new proposal. But it is a good lesson for future proposals, we should make the very explicit when they are up for a vote.

1 Like
34

While I understand the intentions behind this proposal, I see a couple of issues.

  1. The proposal is in hopes of attracting more participation but one of the requirements is adding a lot of friction by requiring the use of Gnosis Safe. It makes sense for the DAO to encourage usage of Safe but I’m not sure this is the place. It seems pretty shoehorned in and goes against the motivations behind the proposal. If we want participation incentivized, it should be as easy as possible.

  2. It feels a bit rushed to me. This thread has 31 responses just 2 days in, which is actually very active for most of the governance forums out there. If we don’t have a participation issue, then we are giving away 5% of the DAOs GNO supply for no good reason.

  3. I’m not sure snapshot voting is a good judge of “participation”. Community building, communication, participating in threads and coming up with new ideas seems more valuable to me.

So while I understand the intention behind the proposal (lack of participation is what kills DAOs), I’m not sure I agree with it as written and at this time. Would these funds be better set aside for a “community participation fund” which is distributed out for individuals that we all identify as key members of this community in a few months time?

I do want to add that I think finding ways to better distribute GNO is essential to the future of this DAO. We definitely should be looking at ways to fix that and get more supply out, I’m just not sure giving more back to those that already hold it is the best approach.

4 Likes
35

It feels like there is some sentiment against this proposal, given this thread.
But only one little 5 GNO holder has voted to “make no change” so far! Someone is taking BOLD action!

Oh, and if GnosisDAO participation and GNO wider distribution is the goal, maybe a merkle drop to all wallets that have used Gnosis Conditional Token Framework, Gnosis Protocol and Gnosis Safes would be great.

The UNI drop was one of the most powerful distributions we’ve seen. I think this can be done with GNO. I guarantee GNO gets awareness and attention from it!

2 Likes
36

As a long time Gnosis supporter, I wanted to give some thoughts on this topic and the whole GnosisDAO effort in macro. I have watched gnosis evolve over the past 3.5 years since I entered the industry and have always been waiting for it to come full circle with incentives. It is a true testament in this space to get humans to use products without direct incentives. Gnosis has proven itself in this regard over the past 4 years.

To zoom out a bit Gnosis completed its initial distribution event in a different era compared to the Ethereum of today. While it was very novel it did not result in the best distribution (in todays terms), with only ~5% of tokens distributed (this old Vitalik article tells the story well).

IMO all of this would have been implemented if gnosis were required to fix it in the early days - required through a means of legal obligation or financial obligation. The project was lucky that shortly after they completed the initial distribution Ethereum took a quick trip to the moon. This allowed the project to explore a fascinating approach to Web3 by experimenting and building foundational open source technology and products for our industry for free with no incentives.

After 5 years of research and experimentation I agree that it’s time to bring it all together with incentives and release the project to the ecosystem - Low key one of the boldest moves of all time in the industry for the record - we aren’t talking about the decentralization of upgrading smart contracts for a lending protocol this is control of a massive treasury and product suite (and then some).

However, to ensure this mission gets off to the best start the first problem gnosis needs to solve is distribution and liquidity now that the token will begin to have a use (it has been basically dormant for years - DEX slippage is real right now).

As for distribution Gnosis has a 15% (or more) allocation problem - all of it needs to be strategically disbursed into the community. However, based on the DAO’s design and tooling it looks like they will be leaving that up to us to solve.

GIP-1 Thoughts
To get the Gnosis DAO kicked off I agree the first GIP should be one of distribution and incentives. However, I would prefer to see this proposal tied to a larger distribution strategy. What I see today is not robust, feels rushed, and could potentially waste the most valuable moment for Gnosis (which is the roll out of the first distribution strategy). I will not be voting yes for this incentive, however think we are on to something larger here.

GIP-1 Considerations

  1. Past behavior such as SAFEs created/used or prediction market participation should be incentivized with a claiming window. After the claiming the window all unclaimed tokens go back to the DAO
  2. Any wallet should qualify (maybe bonus rewards for using a Safe)
  3. Future behavior such as providing liquidity on Uniswap or Balancer, creating a SAFE (GNO already in my wallet when I create it), voting, etc

To summarize I like incentives for voting but I feel it needs to be part of a more robust potentially phased distribution strategy that seeds the new Gnosis from all angles.

If a few people are interested in working on a more robust proposal I would be keen to get something put together - the first incentive plan is the most important.

8 Likes
37

Based purely on the current votes, I’d be very surprised if the GIP-1 proposal in its current form does not pass. But there are already some others thinking about proposals for more robust distribution strategies over in this thread. Would definitely appreciate your input there.

38

Thank you for the great discussion!

Some clarification and some comments:

  • The proposal, if accepted, would give anyone time until December 23rd to participate and benefit from the 5% airdrop.
  • The Gnosis Safe requirement is adding some friction but is more than just dogfooding. I would consider it a best practice to use different wallets for holding tokens and voting. I consider it a security risk to always have your wallet with you, which holds your tokens just to be able to vote. This is why we extended Snapshot with the functionality of vote-delegation.

Now about the proposal itself (I have not voted): Initially, I was very much in favor of this proposal. It would encourage existing GNO holders to take a look at what we do and would dilute free riders.

The proposal would not guarantee new GNO holders, as you have to own GNO to benefit in the first place. It would not necessarily lead to a wider distribution.

The downside of the proposal would be significant tax implications (most likely income tax on received tokens) for anyone receiving the tokens and obviously, free riders would not appreciate the dilution. Based on the current participation I expect a lot of GNO holders are free riders simply because for them the amount of GNO they hold is not significant enough to invest their time. They might still participate in the minimum requirements to participate in the 5% airdrop but won’t do anything beyond that.

If we want to encourage participation and get new GNO holders, we should try to directly incentivize this by asking for more than just a vote and also find a better way to value contributions and ideally also a more tax-friendly one (there are many ideas!).

Also, dilution of free riders will anyways happen over time as the biggest part of GNO is still to be distributed.

Regarding the Gnosis Safe requirement: I think there is already a big value proposition of using the Safe and the vote delegation, which we should advertise but not enforce through this proposal.

4 Likes
39

Just to make sure I understood this correctly.

The 5% will be calculated based on the snapshot balance held on Monday, not at the end of the 1 month period? Meaning this would also dilute people obtaining GNO after Monday and voting during this first month?

40

There is no concrete date specified in the proposal. In my opinion, it would be unfair to use the snapshot on Monday as this won’t give GNO token holders enough time to react. A better approach would be to use the date at the end of the period and make sure everyone is aware ahead of time.

41

5 GNO “no” voter here! I’m in favor of voting incentives in general, but not really willing to set up a safe just for voting. Feels like this proposal could increase token ownership concentration by rewarding those who are already most involved with Gnosis products - I suppose this could be a positive as it rewards supporters (generally a good thing), but seems to be orthogonal to the motivation of activating new GNO tokens holders as governance participants.

2 Likes
42

It seems after a few days of voting some of GNO holders dont like predicted price impact in case “Yes”. It is minus 18% and it is much bigger than 5% airdrop and we can track re-voting for “No”. Interesting feature to re-vote before voting end. Maybe we see little drama.

43

Can I ask unmodest question to the community? If you vote Yes/No in GIP-1 case are you ready to buy same outcome on Omen markets with GNO/DAI? If “No, I am not ready” why? If “Yes, I am ready” are you already bought ?

44

I haven’t any bets on the GNO/DAI price right now because there’s no money to be made. See my reply here: Change the funding structure of Gnosis Impact markets - #7 by davidoj

I previously bet it would happen at 68c and switched to betting it wouldn’t happen at 97c, but 75-80c seems about right on that question to me.

1 Like
45

Lot’s of good arguments on both sides. I still think this would be a good experiment to execute, and learn from. There will need to be many many experiments. And this being one of them makes seems to sense, especially given the broad support.

1 Like
46

What is being recognized by active? Voting to proposals or just commenting on them?

47

Here’s how it is defined in the original post.

48

Marked this proposal as closed as the vote did not reach quorum.

49

When is the actual GnosisDAO launch date?

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@alex
My dear friend i have some gno token in my wallet.but i cant vote.why?
:grimacing: :grimacing:

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November 23rd, 2020

3 Likes