AIP-317: ApeCoin DAO Governance and Operations Budget

They will be investigating income possibilities, the Uniswap investment is supposed to generate income already, albeit small. Perhaps a game developer can request $5000000 from the DAO and offer 25% of all profits, if any, to GWG DAO LLC or Metaverse DAO LLC etc. The DAO voters might be more inclined to give a vote of approval for a proposal that would create revenue? However, I believe the idea is for the DAO LLC to have their own significant treasury so they can conclude agreements themselves. Ideally thus 10 million dollars or so should be transferred to the DAO LLC treasury when they request funding for a gaming project that they will enter into an agreement with or that Metaverse Working Group will enter into, funded by GWG. This was what I gathered the Treasury working group would play a role in, but as that was rejected it could perhaps be directly done by GWG Treasury, if properly funded.

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I think you misunderstood. I was referring to the “establishment of the DAO LLC and the subsequent activities related to it.” There’s no transparency related to those activities. e.g. what stage are those activities in? What’s the name of this DAO LLC? Where is it formed? Who are parties to it? etc. etc.

So, that’s what I was talking about, and not the veracity of your statement (which I have no issues with).

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Who is they?

Sadly, I don’t share you enthusiasm nor hope because people are who they are.

I setup a $5M game AIP-316 @ $1M per year for 5 yrs.

Because I already knew that the DAO wasn’t setup to receive revenue, I tailored it such that I would then spend $650K per year on the DAO by it having own servers and hiring people from here. All I was getting back was the $250K license + $APE token implementation costs

As it stands, it’s been whittled down to $500K one-way expense - much to my chagrin.

If the DAO was setup to receive revenue, that would have been a simple matter of also doing a rev share agreement - which is standard in my business. e.g. ApeCoin gets x% of all token based micro-transactions that’s paid directly to a wallet setup to receive it.

And as I mentioned on Discord yesterday, I have lost all confidence in the AIP and since we’ve been running tests with 3 other tokens, assuming we don’t roll our own, we would already be well underway with our token implementation before AIP-316 even goes up for vote, thus rendering it moot. The DAO is currently running an avg of 36 days to send an AIP to vote, because, you know there’s so much work to do reading and approving AIPs :roll_eyes:

To be clear, I haven’t seen anything that leads me to believe that the DAO is going to be able to effectively engage in any tangible revenue streams. For one thing, games are the primary entry. That’s why Yuga and Animoca are all-in on games. Games cost a lost of money, take a lot of time, require talent - and are high risk. Good luck asking this DAO for $2M to make a decent game - of any kind.

If I were in the MWG as steward, as I’ve said before in the MWG interest thread, my primary goal would be to ping my vast network of game devs and get them to either build games or release derivatives of existing games that use the token. They trust me, so they will listen to me instead of some rando with an ugly JPEG. And to do that, I would first request and get approved for a budget that I know works; and to make sure that the MWG have complete autonomy. I’ve built companies and teams; there are methodologies involved in the process; not this head-in-clouds bs that’s rife in Web3.

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Ahhh yes… Fair question and one that we are all eager for more clarity on, too.

Definitely a slower process than I am accustomed to when previously incorporating in North America, but from my understanding we are quite close to being able to draft our LLC articles and bylaws.

Certainly not a nuance of the process that we have much control over, or any wishes to keep anyone uncertain of so we appreciate you voicing that concern on this and will continue to announce more on this process and it’s ongoing evolution as we go.

AC

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Yes, I would also not be surprised if voters would still vote game proposals down, even with a rev sharing agreement, as many will just vote it down if it is not a Yuga project. That is why the MWG would also need its own treasury, so it can conclude contracts, rev sharing agreements etc. Without a vast treasury, it is quite possible that not much progress will be made in income generation. I do not see any game developer running games just on Apecoin without an incentive to do so, will make more sense to request games to be made for the MWG and have a rev sharing agreement. @SmartApe, you will definitely be useful in a position in Metaverse Working Group with your gaming knowledge. I for one would love to see your game as a rev sharing agreement with GWG or MWG, but it wiil be tough to get an AIP to pass that will give these working groups 10 Million dollars or more, but that is what is required in my opinion, that is actually the intended decentralisation. If MWG or the DAO wants to fund gaming projects, well that is what Animoca is doing, but in this case only for projects solely using Apecoin for payment with a rev sharing agreement paying back to the Working Groups.

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After I deleted all the invalid, under 1 APE votes there was only a total of 355 votes in snapshot.

Before adjustments for invalid votes
For - 269
Against - 80
Abstain - 223

After adjustment
For - 193
Against - 61
Abstain - 102

There 54.1 % to 1 decimal point was in favour of the TOTAL vote.

If you exclude the Abstain then it was 76% to 1 d.p. in favour and 24% to 1 D.P. against.

As someone who discuss ethics and experience in financial systems you should appreciate the results.

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If you want the Ape Assembly to have a greater role it needs more members to join and vote. Joining is up almost 67% in the last month. Voting numbers were high for the elected results but now sit at around 15/20 voters, unless more come out and vote today.

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Well… I haven’t seen any revenue streams coming from these working groups yet and I don’t expect any coming soon and here’s why: most people think about themselves, not for the overall good of the DAO. As long as “they” are in a position which favours them and secures them financially there won’t be any considerate motivation to execute effectively.

I’m all up for investing or using capital for initiatives that bring revenue, but working groups is not it imo.

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The Working Groups are in fact it to create revenue, there is nothing else. They would need about 10 million dollars though to start commissioning games that will create revenue and that will probably be done by MWG, which does not yet exist. As is apparent from some comments here, some in the DAO do not trust their elected offcials, why I do not know. Perhaps you can elaborate, one should not accuse people without more information to back it up. So far their task has been to set up a separate legal entity and draft a budget and present it, so as far as I can see they are on schedule.

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Couple of things here:

  1. You meant ‘invalid’ not ‘illegal’ since those were in fact legal votes when AIP-239 passed
  2. It is improper to remove votes less than 1 $APE because at the time AIP-239 passed, those were valid votes. Your AIP-295 related to this only recently passed last month
  3. Abstain votes are wholly immaterial in the mathematical model for determining pass/fail ratios

So, the ratio based on vote counts of 269/80 which equates to 40.83% vs 32.38% still stands.

A greater role is immaterial to the voting metrics. How material to AA is 50 people vs 20 people? I mean, it’s not the number of people that matters either way; it’s that those who are in AA go and vote.

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That’s the crux of the DAO’s impending demise. And it’s all rooted in the mere fact that unlike in the real world, there are NO consequences for failure. People get voted in, do their term - with or without any sort of performance metric or consequence - and then leave. And our AIP-277 failure is the test that’s indicative of the flaw as I detailed in my synopsis.

The DAO leadership is nothing like a corp that some claim it to be. It’s a political org that has all the trimmings of lobbying, politics, special interest groups, grifters (!) - the works. Politicians get voted in, and they’re stuck there until their term ends and the new guy - same as the old guy - gets slotted in. And this is precisely how the founders set it up to be. It had nothing to do with being a grants DAO. That, in my opinion, was just a cover to stave off regulators who were already sabre rattling around the time that the token, and consequently the DAO, were created.

To be clear, since I have been here, I think the current crop of leadership are giving it their best shot, but are still hamstrung by the iherent legacy mechanics of how the DAO is setup to run because nobody wants to rock the boat.

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Corrected typo should be invalid not illegal.

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Well, $10M is just an arbitrary number. It could very well be $20M or $100M. The main issue there is that the DAO proper doesn’t engage in AIPs that span more than a year. Not sure how that rule came about, so there’s that. You are never - ever - going to engage any meaningful projects that would initiate and launch within that time span. Assuming it’s not some re-skin like Yuga’s own games. So, we would end up in a scenario whereby for all the money spent you won’t see any tangible or meaningful results for quite some time. And during that time, the DAO would probably be extinct either by it’s own internal machinations, lawsuits or regulators.

That’s why one of my ideas for the MWG is to not only engage my trusted fellow industry devs to adopt their games for Web3 but also seek out entire projects and corps to buy. Looking at game metrics, corp EBITDA metrics etc. the group can aquire corps (not games themselves - unless bought and held in a DAO owned corp entity) - just like a VC would - and immediately start generating revenue on the day the deal closes. There’s a reason that M&A in the gaming sector has been so high these past years, though in Web3 it has basically flatlined because all the free money in exchange for sh*t games dried up.

Though the Treasure DAO tried to do specifically as per above, they too failed because they focused on the quick cash grab metrics derived from the premise of quantity over quality. thus resulting in games that didn’t move the MAU/DAU needle enough to be sustainable.

I believe that the MWG can do better with the proper team, resources and funding. After all, in such a competitive industry, I have managed to survive doing this for 30+ years. So, I probably know what I’m talking about, even though some people - with nothing to show for their achievements or failures - just decided to question or attack me in my AIP-316 - even as the DAO heads into the crapper. Pretty sure the joke isn’t on me because I will still be making games long after the DAO has come and gone. Just like always. I only mention this because I firmly believe that my AIP, in it’s original form, was the best path forward for the DAO in terms of doing something bold, tangible and which - at the very least - would have proven a point. And at $5M, it was an immaterial amount, but some people who have their heads in the clouds and who have no idea what stuff costs in the real world, balked at the very idea. But some of those very same people have no problem with the DAO doling out $9M, $15M etc to blatant grifts that are only designed to drain the treasury without any tangible benefits to the DAO. I mean, in AIP-209, the DAO gave $480K to an Animoca owned team and nobody seems to care about what happened to the project because to the DAO, the concepts of accountability and transparency are just suggestions instead of the tenets of running a corp.

FYI, not all the working groups are setup to generate revenue. e.g. the Marketing Working Group isn’t a revenue generating one. Take a look at AIP-239.

The Metaverse Working Group would be the primary rev generating body via digital initiatives such as games.

The Treasury Working Group would probably generate rev via staking (lol) or other investment vehicles.

As to the trust, I can only speak for myself, but I haven’t found any reason to not trust the Ape Foundation because it’s a lot more nuanced than that. Trust is earned, and it’s not something that can easily be quantified. For example, you can trust people in the leadership, while not trusting their judgment. You can trust those prople, while not trusting the process.

At the end of the day, actions speak louder than words and thus far, to me, the actions are screaming loudly that leadership are out of their depths when it comes to forging a path ahead for the prosperity of the DAO. And we - the DAO - don’t have the power to change anything due to how the Special Council wields it’s power and how the voting system ensures that the status quo never - ever - changes.

And it’s precisely why I raised the alarm bells in the now withdrawn voting AIP at how the GwG seemed to be making a powerplay to knee cap the AA.

People are either leaving, not showing interest, nor care simply because they see the whole DAO as being corrupt, rigged and unable to function effectively. Yet, some here are lamenting the low exposure and engagement of the very people who came together to build this DAO. And it’s why, in all of Web3, this DAO is the laughing stock. It didn’t have to be that way.

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Yes, your proposals for MWG are good and I also see that as the income generator. You are right that 10 Million as an arbitrary number might not even suffice depending on what you want to build and how many games etc.

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Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

Edits have been made to this Topic, by the author’s request.

You can click the Pencil icon at the top of the post to see these edits.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-@Facilitators

Those are observations, not criticisms. If anything is very worthy of blanket criticism, it’s the corrupt IRL voting processes we’ve copied wholesale - without a single person ever voting to do so - only with worse implementation and incentives that makes vote manipulation much easier here than IRL. Then we ape the IRL political divisions and entrench similar powerful voting blocks and expect different & harmonious results.

There’s a lot of topic pivot in your reply which I’ll not engage on, rather simply pointing out this DAO wasn’t set up to earn revenue. It’s good, successful works would be enough to attract replenishing donations, and if people had confidence and clarity in leadership appointments and how the money is spent. Its conduct would be emulated and rewarded, if deserved. Just like major IRL grants foundations.

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Thank you. @SmartAPE already addressed some of this.

Even looking at it through this lense, a mere 50.1% pass rate for something so sweeping and different - arguably contrary to founding principles - is laughably low and nobody voted to implement such a low pass rate or for this voting process and its highly problematic quirks in the first place.

The rot is at the foundation of the DAO’s voting process and the hyper-corrupt failure of IRL voting / elections we foolishly copied without thought, if not at the Foundation itself.

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Yup. And that’s precisely why I am of the belief that it’s up to the Ape Foundation to fix it. No AIP needed. There was no AIP for it’s original creation. So, fixing it just implies that the original implementation was flawed and thus needs fixing. I mean, they claim to have “fixed” the issue with abstain voting because it was “implemented incorrectly”; but yet still, they can’t see to fix the fundamental flaws in the voting mechanism while knowing full well that as an AIP, any attempts at fixing it will ultimately fail. I would guess that’s specifically why, until I came along and wrote AIP-318, nobody even bothered.

Like all votes abstain is not included and people know when they vote it is not included. So in reality it passed with 76% to 1 DP NOT 50.1% as you state.

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^this

I think this is the part that most people aren’t thinking through. The value of the treasury is immaterial if it’s sitting atop a house of cards that’s the governance. And when people lose confidence, they exit - not only the token but also the DAO.

As I type this, $APE is trading at an all-time low of $1.11. I bought it at $1.90 when I first got here in early July. Look how far its fallen - and continues to do so. And on the 17th of this month, 40.6m tokens will unlock, further depressing the value as people and investors alike exit the token. I had once stated that it would be under $1 by Q1/24. It appears that I was a bit too conservative and it’s likely to happen by year end - and probably get even worse during the $BTC halving which is already threatening to bankrupt a lot of investors - especially miners.

The token has no utility - and ApeCoin DAO isn’t doing anything to address that. Sitting on the treasury until the token goes to zero isn’t a good plan.