My 5 pfennigs
I am felling myself like early Gnosis Safe user and from first look I was not very like this proposal. First of all I see risk of destroying well known brand ‘Gnosis Safe’ and a lot of usual users will be confused. Second ‘Gnosis Safe’ it is a beautiful software and it is really difficult valuate it in fair way and GNO holders fell uncomfortable giving blind answer.
From other side I see some benefits for future grow for Safe with out Gnosis monopoly trust. It is very strong point. All Ethereum supporters like freedom and collaboration and in long run Safe will benefit from open status. Gnosis not a jail 
As preparation to move GIP-2 to Phase 3 (Snapshot vote) I have updated the proposal to make clear GIP-2 is about a commitment of the Gnosis Team to work out a more clearly defined SAFE token model. Meaning a yes, vote does not yet necessarily mean that a SAFE Token will be implemented eventually. Rather, there might be several follow-on GIPs to approve individual parts of the SAFE token model such as token economics, distribution etc. And there might be a final GIP to make the final decision once all aspects have been agreed upon individually. Ideally, we would also have some community-sourced proposals contributing towards the SAFE token model.
This clarification of GIP-2 is important as some of the components of a SAFE token model also have dependencies on how the GnosisDAO will develop itself (e.g. the GnosisDAO manifest) and making a full commitment towards a SAFE Token, with these open dependencies as well as open questions around distribution / impact on the product might not be beneficial and could create wrong expectations/concerns.
5 Likes
If I may play devils advocate for a moment. I thought that the idea was that the Gnosis Safe can stand alone as an independent entity for which developers can build and deploy apps at will, earn rewards and somehow still not be directly tied to Gnosis as a whole. This might entail that a separate token that is specifically dedicated to this entity may be more appropriate than having the safe governed by Gnosis DAO. However, if it is the intention to keep this intertwined with GNO, then perhaps it is more reasonable not to have a safe token.
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I like this - Let’s get community approval to start a formal work stream and then vote on different token models as the Gnosis Core Team and community proposes them. Thanks for the clarification!
As a GNO holder, I think most of SAFE tokens should be owned by the Gnosis DAO and SAFE should never be dissociated with GNO investors.
The Safe product was funded with GNO so any attempt to remove value from it will effectively dilute GNO holders. People invested in GNO because of the Gnosis Safe product.
Moreover, It would further endanger the value proposal for GNO giving the hint that every future Gnosis product’s value will be distributed among contributors and users that are not necessarily related to GNO token.
I also agree that most SAFE tokens should be owned by the GnosisDAO, given that GNO holders basically funded Safe development over the years.
It has been a challenge though to associated the success of the Safe to the GNO token. That’s a question which hasn’t only come up now, but which was thought about before as well.
For exchanges (e.g. Gnosis Protocol) or prediction markets (e.g. the conditional token framework), putting in a fee token (OWL/GNO) is not easy, but possible. (And actually has been done in the former.)
For the Safe, a fee token feels wrong since wallets/accounts should be free to use in my opinion (that is, except for gas fees or potential relayer fees).
That leaves governance of the Safe to capture value.
A specific SAFE token would allow to think about a token model independently of different Gnosis products.
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Generally agree on the notion of separation of concerns as it relates to governance of the Safe development; we need to foster the Safe as a product that could be used by the broader crypto ecosystem and new participants like institutions - and we really need inputs from that community to help guide and craft product development to make it the standard-bearer for self-custody for everyone; a Safe token could easily address and provide a voice to those segments of users in a way that hasn’t been thought of before.
The Safe could benefit from a whole host of services that users might end up paying fees for: customised analytics, support for visualisations (in terms of hosting for backend services - directly, or via the graph), support for customised security/policy modules for institutions, the notion of a backstop for simpler insurance/coverage for assets/apps that are utilised by users and additional app integrations (to facilitate connections to other ecosystems/apps) - as a few ideas off the top off my head, all of which could potentially lead to value accrual for Safe holders.
The Safe user community represents an extremely valuable one for people wishing to launch new protocols/products to target (for liquidity, for utilisation, for feedback), as well as gauging additional parameters to track utilisation. Additionally, there may be a need to complete more integrations with other protocols/services that the Safe community would find useful for broader adoption - and this would require the feedback of people using Safes. This essentially leads up to a good route for the utilisation of the tokens to serve as a signalling mechanism - and get the right feedback from the relevant segment of users.
From the perspective of GnosisDAO - we should really think about increasing the size of the pie and helping create value for the Safe and its ecosystem of users - which ultimately would create value for GnosisDAO. It is a good way to broaden participation and increase inclusivity + also gain the chance to start testing out the notion of futarchy as a basis to provide relevant signalling as it has to do with the development of the Safe.
5 Likes
As the founder of [SAFE] Safecoin, I would question the value of switching to a ticker that has already been heavily in use for over 4 years. SAFE is growing and more active all the time, and I do question if this would just create more confusion than anything. Nothing wrong with your model itself, by the way.
I would strongly suggest taking the time and investing the creativity into deciding on a new ticker which clearly relates to your project and is not already heavily in use. There are a lot of great names out there. Certainly it is a free world but this is probably going to lead to more credibility than creating, for instance, a conflicting “BTC” or “ETH” or “SAFE” ticker.
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