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
- 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
- Any wallet should qualify (maybe bonus rewards for using a Safe)
- 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.