Proposal Name: Thank APE: Decentralized, Automated Rewards for Valuable ApeCoin Contributions
Proposal Category: Ecosystem Fund Allocation
Abstract
We propose to thank (reward and recognize) decentralized contributions to ApeCoin with $APE, charitable donations, and an on-chain thank you note. We will do it in a way that is scalable, automated, bot-protected… and rewards truly valuable contributions.
Thank APE is critical DAO infrastructure that can enormously increase opportunity, utility, and value for APE holders. We can encourage and thank the following categories of utility-creating contributions across platforms:
- Governance participation
- Onboarding & education
- Intra-DAO collaboration
- Defi & web3 partnerships
- Community building
- Completing Core Tasks
- Art and culture innovations
- Infrastructure innovations
How it works
-
ApeCoin members are auto-rewarded with $APE + on-chain thank you notes for valuable, decentralized contributions to the DAO.
-
Members can keep rewards or donate them to approved charities that accept $APE.
-
Sophisticated tech automates and scales thanking and filters out bots and bad actors to ensure real, valuable contributions are rewarded.
Team
-
Our Thank APE advisory board are seven OG BAYC and ApeCoin members. We are long-time community contributors with diverse backgrounds and skill sets. We are committed to ensuring Thank APE creates extraordinary value for our DAO.
-
Our Thank APE tech is supported by ThriveCoin. We are web3 natives and VC funded. Our leadership team has scaled tech to support millions of users. We are also long-time BAYC and ApeCoin community members.
Funding (one time)
-
$0 to start. 100% performance-based. Thank APE is rewarded only when we create value for ApeCoin.
-
0 $APE to 33.3k $APE / month (up to 200k total) allocated ONLY to ApeCoin members who make contributions that create value for our ApeCoin community.
-
0 $APE to 7k $APE / month (up to 42k total) for all tech, dev setup, servers, maintenance, white-labeling, integrations, support, and customization [offsets some infrastructure costs].
-
$0 after six months: We’re building sustainable funding for Thank APE through exciting collaborations with core ApeCoin infrastructure you’ve voted for!
Milestones
- January: Community feedback and Snapshot vote!
- February: Launch within 1 month of positive vote
- March: Reward 30+ ways to contribute at launch
- July: Reward 100+ ways to contribute by month 6
- August: Fully sustainable funding model after six months
- Monthly: Improve core DAO engagement metrics by >10% each month!
Why we made this proposal
We love this community. Our expertise is in driving utility and value for communities by automating and scaling decentralized rewards. We believe now is the time for ApeCoin to harness core infrastructure that can profoundly increase excitement, demand, and value in our DAO!
Motivation
The long-term success of ApeCoin depends on decentralization, automation and scale. To do that, we must reward all community members helping get us there now!
ApeCoin already rewards contributions - but only centralized functions, passed AIPs, and staking. There are many more ways our decentralized community can create value for ApeCoin - but we don’t yet have the infrastructure to scale and automate decentralized contributions.
Thank APE provides that infrastructure. We automate and scale decentralized rewards for valuable contributions in the following contribution categories. The results should be more utility, more value, and more fairness in the DAO!
Rationale
ApeCoin serves as a decentralized protocol layer for community-led initiatives that drive culture forward into the metaverse.
A critical ingredient for driving culture forward into the metaverse is a community infrastructure that makes it easy for every member to create value.
Thanking decentralized APE holder contributions should create enormously positive impact:
- APE holders should feel more valued for contributions to our community
- APE holders should want to contribute more and in more ways
- APE holders should notice the impact their contributions have on our community
- Prospective APE holders should be more likely to join and contribute value
- With a bigger, more robust community, the power of our APE token should increase
Specifications
For this initial implementation, we recommend rewarding contributions clarified as valuable by the community as a whole, Thank APE board, special counsel, and emerging working groups (under WG0). These contributions can exist across platforms, including the following which we already support and other platforms desired by the community going forward:
note: based on Special Counsel feedback, we can provide on-chain thank you notes for Snapshot activity, but due to ongoing considerations, we will not reward it with $APE.
We will use the ThriveCoin tech to do the following:
- Auto-validation of ApeCoin DAO contributions:
- Auto-validation of activities across all relevant platforms
- Granular control over specifically what activity to reward
- Platform-specific quality control filters to greatly reduce fraud risk
2. Auto-thank ApeCoin DAO contributions on-chain:
- Thank You notes are automatically recorded on the Mumbai network, Polygon chain
- Contribution details logged in IPFS file (blockchain storage) referenced in on-chain record
- Contributions are recorded in a way that maintains contributor anonymity.
3. Auto-reward ApeCoin DAO contributions with APE and charitable contributions:
- Contributions will occur within Seasons that will typically last three months.
- Contributors receive $APE as rewards for their contributions at the end of each Season.
- If APE earned is above a certain threshold (based on gas fees) they can keep their reward OR donate it to charity.
- If their APE earned is below that threshold, their rewards will automatically be allocated to their desired charity.
Steps to Implement
Since we’re proposing to use existing technology to cover the heavy lifting, implementation needs are light and dramatically less expensive.
We have created a small Advisory Board (“board”) to administer the initiative. The board is a group of trusted OG Apes and ApeCoin DAO contributors.
Board members have been meeting weekly to support Thank APE over the past few months, and they will serve an initial six month term. They are empowered to make decisions regarding:
- Definition and review of community participation (“Season”) goals
- Decisions around which contributions to reward
- Specific rewards allocated to each contribution type
- Details around charitable contribution opportunities.
- Spreading awareness of the initiative and encouraging participation
The ThriveCoin team (a few of us doxxed above!) will provide expert staff support with all of the above, while all reward and charity allocation decisions will be made by the board.
When we launch Thank APE, contributors will simply complete a one-time authentication (e.g. sign a read-only message to verify their wallet address and auto-verify Discourse contributions).
The authentication enables future auto-verification of their contributions (including historical contributions, if desired), auto-recording on-chain of those contributions, and the auto-distribution of rewards at the end of each Season.
Timeline
The required technology tools and deployment processes are already built.
We anticipate launching within a month of receiving a positive Snapshot vote - and as soon as we receive final approval, likely in late January.
Overall Cost
Thank APE is a one-time cost that is entirely performance based. It uses, at most, less than .04% of the treasury. In return, it gives ApeCoin lasting, critical infrastructure to help scale decentralization, automation, and utility-creation long into the future!