I’m gonna attempt to be a voice of clarity from my own understanding and perspective, feel free to disagree or point out any flaw. Please note I have no involvement in this AIP but merely am speaking on behalf of my own point of view.
While it seems strange and odd to knowingly state the exact date the AIP is put up for vote, it is quite clear based on the contents, the authors, and the specific level of detail in this post that a extreme amount of thought and discussion took place prior to it being posted on discourse and anyone else in the community knowing about it. I surmise that the Facilitators and rest of the SC were quite aware and were involved in the discussion process to help refine and hash out any inquiries prior to this being posted.
The AIP Process really only has one time limit for when something is posted on the forum to when it can go up for vote, and that is the 7 day discussion period for an AIP Idea. There is no other time requirement prior to a vote going on snapshot. Once the 7 day period is up (next thursday) it will receive an AIP number and be put up for vote because the SC already reviewed it and have no further questions.
Most of you who have followed my thesis on this on X, already know that I have opined in detail about this specific issue. I will not post the X links here because I don’t want to run afoul of the powers that be - again.
Fact is, there is [currently] zero incentive for any [serious] dev to build for ApeChain.
They keep throwing around numbers like “34 builders are ready to on-board”. Yeah? That’s great! Who are they? What are they building? And if so, how does that relate to this fund that seemingly sprang up out of nowhere even when there were others like this one by @yatsiu and this one by @CaptainZwingli which, after languishing for months in admin review, he was forced to withdraw it because apparently they couldn’t get 3/5 people to agree on actually sending it to vote.
I have yet to meet or hear a single dev who has all these other great gaming chains and platforms to choose from, go “Yeah, amma totally go build for ApeChain”. The reason? It’s not so much the issue with apes being elitist and all that; but it’s all about perception and optics. The only people who believe that ApeChain has any [plausible] reason to exist, are those outside the DAO community trenches, those who stand to gain financially or those who believe that somehow having our own chain is going to automagically make us cool again and number go up.
But ApeChain is almost here - and I said back in Oct when the noise started, there’s nothing to put on it - yet. Testnet? Nothing. Any chain going live has dApps in test mode etc. waiting to roll. There’s nothing. Unless they’re hiding - which would be odd.
The greatest challenge is not that we don’t have very talented apes in the community. We do, and I know quite a few of them who I communicate with regularly. The issue is that we don’t have enough of them. Why? Because most of them - like me - have long since moved on for some reason or another, and just observing on the sidelines. And that’s the thing with loss, it’s difficult to rebuild. Like the token, the community has been on a slide for months and that’s what is going to affect the long-term prospects for attracting talent to ApeChain when there are so many other competing chains and communities - with less drama and [Yuga] baggage.
I want to make myself clear. I think this proposal is well-intentioned, but lacking in so many areas. But the primary issue is that, regardless of what the community says or wants, just like the voting where 4 whale wallets can change the outcome of a vote regardless of the popular vote count, the leadership will do what they want. I mean, after all, to believe that they didn’t think of all the pros and cons of this when they came up with this, and that they needed community voices to point out issues etc. would be the height of arrogance on our part. First we had the Polygon fiasco. Look how that ended. Then we had other questionable ones in between, leading up to the recent F1 sponsorship fiasco. All these things erode trust and affect the optics when you consider that there are people on the outside looking in - while pointing and laughing.
Right now, I am working on a DePIN platform + two Web3 games. In parallel - across two teams. And they’re all on another chain. Not because I don’t love my DAO frens or because I don’t want to see the DAO or ApeChain prosper - especially if I get to brag about it - but because, like most, I became disillusioned months ago. Until this AIP showed up, and people asked me to opine here for beneficial impact rather than on my X feed where I regularly write multi-page missives about our DAO. It’s disheartening for me to say this because ApeChain was a blue ocean opportunity for a lot of us to do something great and to get the support of the community - just like in other gaming chain communities. I mean, as I type this, in less than one week, I could have three projects migrated on ApeChain testnet. Ask Machi and others who all know what my teams have been working on for months. The other games that came and went - same thing. Does anyone think those guys would even consider coming back here? At least not without major financial incentives. I mean, there was a lot of noise and angst over AIP-364 not passing. I very much doubt that those guys are even coming back.
While we’re at it, what happened to AIP-438? Anyone got performance metrics? That was $420K.
You see where I’m going with this? Well, just imagine $100M with little or no guardrails.
I mean, Yat has AIP-438, which I believe to be a [small] step in the right direction, which went up on May 1st, and concluded on June 6th. It’s not on schedule to go to admin review, let alone to vote. But this $100M BANANA boat is on the fast track. That’s the sort of thing that optics are all about.
Yes - we need to do something to spark builders (not me - I’ve moved on) to deploy on ApeChain. Throwing a good portion of the treasury liquidity at it, while appointing the usual frens to manage it, isn’t the way to do this. It just isn’t. You want credibility with the DAO community at large so that spreads outwards? Good.
Go get the ThankApe guys involved in this proposal. We ALL trust them - implicitly, and because they’ve proven themselves time and time again.
Allot $50M in tranches across a specific set of [game/dApps] RFPs here so that the community knows what is going on, and thus have a say. We recently had an AIP-401 pass, and which setup some clear guidelines for them.
Then, have the 4 whale wallets commit to NOT override the popular vote, and let the DAO community determine what they believe to be worthy titles to fund via the RFP process.
When the $50M is allocated - just like ThankApe - renew it for more as-needed.
Start there.
I have no reason to believe that this initiative will even work, not with $10M, nor with $50M, and certainly not with $100M. Why? Because games are super high risk and we’re hardly going to see any tangible gains at all in the short-term. There’s a reason that over 95% of current Web3 games are underperforming, while everyone is waiting for the next crop, like cicadas, to pop up by YE24 to 2026. But they’re all currently on committed chains that aren’t named ApeChain.
I guess @JonahBlake was onto something. Too bad most didn’t quite like the idea of a $20M games publishing arm of the DAO because that was too much money in the hands of an “outsider”. Here we are. Hindsight and all that. And that was a year ago this month. Now he’s literally blown up and thriving elsewhere - not here.
The more I think about the Banana Bill and talk to others, the more this becomes a central issue in my opinion.
I have no issues with the amount asked for nor the amounts paid to individuals involved. For me, it comes down to:
Do the people involved have the experience to launch a chain that can legitimately compete for builders, users and attention from other similarly positioned chains (e.g. Base, Blast, Polygon, Arbitrum, etc)?
Will the people involved have the capacity to dedicate enough time to legitimately compete for builders, uses and attention from other similarly positioned chains?
Can the author(s) address these questions?
We all want ApeChain to succeed, so we want the best possible team assembled building day in and day out to make it succeed. Clarity on this point would go a long way in helping the community feel confident that it will.
Much needed proposal if we plan to have the slightest chance of success with ApeChain.
That being said, I love what Pirex shared here:
And what Kodama shared here:
Here’s some suggestions I saw from the community that I believe we need to consider:
Cut advisor pay by at least half. Incentivize with small % from deals they make, if that’s their job.
If we want to have advisors, ok, but I believe we need an “Executive team” focused solely on bringing deals to ApeChain - the role should be about bringing commercial deals that benefit the whole ecosystem and shouldn’t be rewarded without delivering.
Pay a base salary plus tokens with a one-year cliff and a four year vesting period.
Now more than ever we need people that are focused and full-time on bringing deals to ApeChain. We only have 1 shot at this.
I wonder about the concept of breaking things down into bite sized pieces
Starting with a banana instead of the full forest
I agree entirely that we all need to rally behind and support ApeChain, and that allocating a portion of the DAO Treasury to help launch projects on it makes 100% sense
What about starting with a $10M fund first, distributing it using this AIPs proposes process before the end of Q4 this year, tracking and reporting on the metrics/success/impact it had, then coming for a further $10M - $25M for Q1 2025?
Does that seem like a reasonable compromise?
Eating one banana at a time instead of forcing it all out all at once?
How can we expect detailed transparency reports when one of the proposed advisors is @capetaintrippy, who during his last mandate as a Special Council provided little more than a ‘Copy & Paste’ of the definition of the Special Council in the Weekly Reports and rarely gave any personal input about the challenges or problems faced during his tenure?
ApeChain has a competitive advantage no other chain has had with a built in community in the 10s if not 100s of thousands across Yuga asset or ApeCoin holders.
We’re starting the series up 3-0 with a lead at the half.
Forcing this through and not galvanizing the broader ecosystem throughout the process blows this lead IMO.
I know time is a factor, but I hope the feedback is incorporated.
The response and feedback on the Banana Bill so far has been incredible.
While there has been tons of positive response and encouragement, we recognize that folks have raised plenty of valid questions and concerns, particularly here on discourse.
We have been compiling all of your feedback and are meeting over the weekend to discuss how to make changes.
Here is some of the feedback we have identified so far:
We are going to be doing a Banana Bill public town hall on Monday June 17th @ 11am PST. It will be hosted by the official ApeCoin twitter account.
We would like to discuss proposed changes then, including ones that incorporate the great feedback many of you have provided here.
We will be providing responses to folks on here as well. We just need a little more time to discuss all of the great feedback.
Later today or tomorrow we will also set up a Telegram group chat for live discussion of the Banana Bill. We will make ourselves available to discuss feedback and proposed changes live. I will share the link in here once it is set up.
We are looking forward to continuing to work with all of you to improve this AIP.
Happy to see you doing this my dude.
I’m pretty sure the most concerned things around this is how rushed and quickly this AIP idea would be pushed forward without any accountability and the people involved in this.
There’s a popular saying from where I am from " Haste is the devil’s work "
Just to clarify my points about AIP-209 and AIP-438. I mentioned them because, thus far, we have no clue what is going on with them, and so, the $100M fund is likely to suffer the same fate whereby the DAO will have no insight (agreements, KPIs, metrics, funding etc) because everything will be tucked away in secrecy and handled behind the scenes.
Not to mention that, traditionally, and for reasons that are as unknown as they are ridiculous, the DAO seems to have a problem disbursing funds for proposals in a timely fashion. To the extent that some AIPs (e.g. Machi) takes months to get their funding. And apparently, the same thing happened to AIP-209, and is an on-going issue with AIP-438 and others.
So, imagine what will happen when you sign a game dev who expects to be paid in a timely fashion. Then, the team doesn’t get paid within a reasonable amount of time, they fall behind schedule, the project suffers, milestones can’t be met - and as a result, they can’t be funded.
If not handled properly and carefully planned, this is destined to be an absolute mess because, by design, the DAO is completely inefficient in this regard. But yeah, we’re totally going to raid the treasury of $100M liquidity while ignoring all things that nobody seems in the least bit incentivized to fix. The end result, as I see it, is that the DAO won’t benefit. Only those who are getting paid, regardless of success or failure of a $100M spend, will benefit. Games fail? No recourse, but “advisors” and “leaders” still get paid.
You know, if I were in leadership (e.g. via something like AIP-413, I would absolutely take it all apart and rebuild it from the ground up, and with complete accountability and transparency. And I would do it for the low, low price of FREE. But the whales would never allow that. And no, I have no interest in ineffective leadership positions like the Special Council. If I did, regardless of success or failure, I would have thrown my hat in the ring these past months. When you’re 1/5, you literally can’t get much of anything done. That’s why most DAOs - fail.
It is my hope that this proposal gets revised adequately before it goes to admin review and the DAO gets bamboozled into a $100M risk - with zero mitigation (which, nobody seems to be actually talking about)
Get rid of this proposal, and get ThankApe involved; only then do I see this working to any reasonable degree, while mitigating risk because of ThankApe’s track record.
ps. For as much controversy as it generated, you want to see what a proposal looks like? Take a look at final version of the $265M Arbitrum one. And here is the Tally vote results.
ThankApe would do better, $100m is too much for something without advisors, KPIs etc the DAO can’t just splash $100m because someone is a special council and just have total trust without complete transparency and accountability….
That feels like a lot of free reign to me. I think as much should be kept on chain as possible, so DAO members can see where their funds are at all times, whenever possible.
Also, a serious look into Hats Protocol would be highly advised, in fact this is the exact use case for Hats. Everyone named as actors within the AIP would have a Hat, and it would grant the wearer permissions to perform their duties. The DAO would hold the Top Hat, which would have permission to remove people from roles, if people are not performing to expectations. It adds a layer of accountability and trust that would be well suited for this AIP.
