Abstract
Considering the concentration of voting power in the hands of a relatively limited number of APE NFT holders, and taking into account the various classes of community equity. This proposal is to create governing bodies which will serve as a check on the effective centralization of power within a small group of APE IP capital holders. In addition the proposal outlines a mechanism for stimulating the token economy, while also distributing voting power in a stable way, similar to the way a government would stimulate the economy with a public works project.
Rationale
There is a clear imbalance of voting power within the DAO, while no system is perfect we should try to spread voting power around in order to hold to the founding principles
A thriving economy requires investment and dispersal of funds to the population in order for commerce to occur and market effects to be felt. Sitting on voting stockpiles does more harm than just centralizing voting power, it stagnates the economy. We should be funding and executing projects and stimulating work both within the DAO and in the wider crypto and DeFi community
There are a number of proposals for projects which require domain specific knowledge and coordinated effort. In addition there is a need for basic services such as education, security, administration, project management, data gathering/analysis, etc…
Specifications
Apeless Holders Fund
The Apeless Holders Fund will be a separate wallet from Ecosystem Fund Allocation. This wallet will be funded by donations and levies on the wale NFT holders who represent centralized voting and economic imbalance within the DAO
Apeless Holders Representatives an elected body pulled from the general Apeless holder population. The ratio of representatives will be set by a formula based on the order of magnitude of Apeless holder population. This will assure adequate representation without creating a massive legislative body.
formula- if the number of Apeless holders = x * 10^y then Apeless Reps = y - 1 + 2y
NFT Senators an elected body pulled from the population of NFT holders. Fixed at 2 for each of the NFT collections
The Apeless Holder Representatives will control the allotment of ApeCoin which will be collected as a wale tax on any NFT holders with more than a fixed number of ApeCoin, say 1,000,000, though the actual number will be decided by vote, as will the tax rate. The collected tax will be used to fund the formation and operation of publics works councils, and projects which the councils plan and execute according to the budget of their allotments.
The NFT Senate will appoint Directors from the total population to lead the public works councils
Public Works Councils
We should take proposals for councils, but here are some suggestions
I appreciate where this proposal is headed, but there are some issues to point out. The BAYC/MAYC NFT holders don’t need APE coin in the same wallet as the NFT to participate in Apecoin DAO, so they will be able to vote & split their holdings across wallets with the same effect.
I 100% disagree full-stop on any sort of wealth tax on APE coin holders. This seems very misguided when there are alternative revenue sources for the treasury to explore.
Thanks for your input @Amplify . The intent of this proposal is to incite a discourse on the topic, so all of your points are welcome, and I encourage others to express their stance on these ideas. The main point is that we should look for methods of distributing both wealth and influence among the population as a way of stimulating a vibrant society. If those without sources of capital wealth within the system have no voice and no way to participate in a meaningful way, then they won’t. The future of the DAO and the community depend on us early members putting in the hard work of debate to come to consensus on a solution to the problem of distribution. Think of it as tending the zen rock garden of our distributed society.
While I don’t agree here, AIP’s 21 & 22 do just this. Assuming wealth and influence is measured in APE. I believe influence should be given to those who have demonstrated the merit to use it properly.
As I pointed out, anyone in the community is welcome to petition anyone else for their voting power. If you have no capital wealth in the system, you still do have a voice and an opportunity to participate if people delegate their votes to you on snapshot.
Just to clarify my point. I don’t mean to imply that wealth and influence should be indiscriminately distributed. I mean we must create efficient means by which those with demonstrated merit can achieve it. Otherwise those individuals will play on a field which gives them more incentive to do so. I think we are saying the same thing in different ways. There is no perfect system for doing what we are discussing here. As we have discussed before it’s important to take useful patterns from other projects and stand on the shoulders of giants. But I believe meaningful progress will never be made unless we take a first principles approach and leave our assumptions at the door. Its clear that the first order of business should be to gather data on key indicators of DAO performance, from a community standpoint (growth rate, attrition, engagement), from a tokenomic standpoint (standard indicators), from a governance standpoint (lots to talk about here, but we should consider standard controls frameworks as a starting point), and from a marketing standpoint. We are in uncharted territory in many ways, so the way forward will be best charted by experimental cycles with careful observation of outcomes and validation of assumptions. I’m sure everything I’m saying is perfectly obvious, and someone somewhere is taking care of all of this. I would love to participate in that process if so.
I have read through your ideas. As an Apeless holder I’m excited for others to be involved from outside of the BAYC ecosystem. In the future, I envision holders of CryptoPunks, Cryptoads, and World of Women to also become more involved in conversations here. There are a lot of interested parties beyond just BAYC & MAYC including small $APE holders like myself.
Having said that, I do not like the idea of councils and senates. I’d like you to reconsider taking this further towards a snapshot vote as I feel it is premature. Yuga Lab’s upcoming Otherside will be powered by ApeCoin and involve many more collections and parties.
Eventually we will certainly benefit from having technical teams and product development task forces. There are a lot of exciting things to look foward to. Voting now could affect that.
@Oxa01 thanks for the feedback. I’m actually not really excited about the idea of a legislative body, its just a common way of balancing power in existing system of governance. If there is a better way to balance out the highly concentrated power of wale NFT holders I’m interested in hearing it. If anyone has examples of other projects dealing with this issue I would love to read up on the solution. I want to re-emphasize that the problem with concentrated power is that it constitutes a reinforcing feedback cycle, where power is more highly concentrated over time. It’s not sustainable. We need a balancing feedback cycle. Checks and balances are just one way to balance concentrated power. Alotting a certain number of board seats to Apeless Holders might be another. Ideally I would like to see voter certifications, open to all, which amplify the vote of those who have been through extensive training to have nuanced understanding of the issues and forces at play. Classically such systems have been used to disenfranchise classes of voters, but that can only work in conjunction with economic and systemic oppression. As for the councils, I think it would be useful to identify and tap the skills of domain experts, but I don’t have a strong opinion on the formal structure of how they are organized. Maybe a domain knowledge registry would be sufficient. Again I would love to hear some examples of how other projects handle such things. If anyone has a good list of the best DAOs to look at for examples I would be grateful.
Ser, I believe you’ve mistaken my last post as feedback, infact it was direct opposition to both the idea presented above and having you write any sort of governance measures in these early stages.
steal.neal writes: Those among us with advanced understanding of economies should meet periodically to review indicators and track the health of the $APE economy
I have data and have meticulously tracked holders and wales. This information directly contradicts statements that you continue to make about checks and balances. You’re very excited about this.
Here is the current number of wallets, including the huge increase of April:
In this data you will see that the top 100 holders currently have 52.24% of the ApeCoin in circulation. Having said that, these numbers may include locked coins for partners, Yuga Labs, and more.
Additionally, BAYC & MAYC have recieved a large number of governance tokens to each member, and you’ll find it interesting that they don’t all agree on topics regarding ApeCoin. Some groups are pooling together through the delegation system and others are coordinating their votes for ApeCoin.
There are a large number of independent minds and voters within the current system. As staking becomes implemented, more ApeCoin will be designated to the 10k collection of BAYC and 19k collection of MAYC holders. These are often individuals, each with their own agendas and interests.
I have a concern that poorly written or planned AIP Ideas will clog up and harm voter engagement. If voters have to continually snapshot vote topics like this governanance measure down, it harms more than helps. This should have started as a general discussion, please consider that approach.
@0xSword thanks again for your feedback, which I believe is defined as a response to a post. I welcome opposition, as debate can hardly take place if we were all in agreement.
The only thing I’m excited about is currently walking my dog. But I do have some concerns about about reinforcing feedback cycles ruining promising community projects. My concern isn’t so much with what is happening now, but what could happen given the rules of the system. What will your chart look like once the numbers increase by a couple of order of magnitude? How about after a couple of years?
I’m sure you will be surprised to learn that you are not the only individual who finds my ideas hard to read. I’m happy to work with you if you would like to help edit the boredom games proposal, I’m much more interested in getting the idea socialized and made more palatable than I am in making my own writing more readable. My sense is that you have done plenty of public posting, which I have not. I could use the benefit of experience to get the idea through without the drag of my communication style. I write how I think so count yourself lucky that your exposure to my thoughts is voluntary.
I really find a lot of enjoyment and pleasure in following a user’s posts. From first Introduction on, its exciting to see new people get active and engaged, both on these forums and twitter as well.
There will be a lot more ApeCoin distributed to BAYC & MAYC holders over the next 3 years as staking has been approved. Collectively they will hold many many governance tokens, there’s no debating.
Collectively they will have a large say in the direction of ApeCoins future. Many are excited about it too. Many would also like to design a senate, install board members and etc. Whats important to remember is that the 10,000 BAYC and 19,000 MAYC collections are held by many thousands of companies and individuals. Each have their own agenda, and coordination at that scale is impossible.
My strategy for navigating this has been to appeal to both company and individuals who hold Apes. Ultimately, through competitions, video game distribution and more, there will be many many small and micro-holders join the ecosystem. We’ll never have as many votes as Ape holders, its…the way it is.
As far as check and balances, governing bodies…I choose to aggressively oppose the creation of all of these things, until criteria such as 120,000 wallet holders, the launch of The Otherside, and a few other things are met. That’s why I’m in your topic at all, instead of writing more cool stuff for my own. You are proposing governing bodies and I am committed to fighting each of these ideas vehemently, until we have many many more holders than currently.
@0xSword thanks again for taking the time to reply. This back and forth exchange and the things I’m learning as a result are one of my major incentives for creating proposals at all. Since the community is so young and the post history doesn’t allow for mining information from prior discussions I am forced to actively inquire and probe.
I agree that governing bodies make little sense below a certain population. Things move so fast now its hard to predict how long it will be before such things represent a viable approach.
So what are the important early stage moves in a developing tokenomic system of this scale? What is the sequence of important major milestones? What are the indicators we should monitor for signal indicating turning points in the development of the token economy? Who will work toward understanding and solving the problems these questions present? How long do we have to answer these questions before the window for action, and thus the oportunity, has passed?
These aren’t facetious questions, I really think it’s important to attempt to answer these or similar questions. Unless we plan on sitting back and waiting for the project to fail while taking notes to learn from the experiment, which is also a perfectly valid plan.
The imagination is welcome, but speaking about things like wealth tax etc., bayc ecosystem is neither a government/country nor an economy, thus such ideas are not realistic.
I am also not excited about a few whales voting powers, still I think very complicated if not impossible to limit those extremes and at the same time keeping a balance among all stakeholders. @0xSword also pointed out that the token distribution is already changing, and probably will change even more after staking and Otherside open.
AFTER Otherside will be open or eventually enough information about its economy will be released, it will be possible to talk about the metaverse economics, THERE maybe we could even think about a taxation system etc.
@giacolmo.eth I agree that taxation is not the correct approach until much later, if ever. I sometimes include extreme ideas in proposals to get people thinking about boundary conditions, and why things will or won’t work. It may be best to leave the question of concentration of power and wealth until we have more data and a larger population to observe. The most important thing is engagement. What is scary to me is when community members are afraid to sound like they don’t know what they are talking about or afraid to say the wrong thing, because it puts a damper on the entire process. We should work to create an atmosphere of trust and acceptance of viewpoints, so that we can benefit from the broadest set of ideas. Our collective intelligence is defined by our individual engagement and how well we synthesize the beneficial contribution of each individual as a group. Proposals should just be the tip of the iceberg. A metaverse is only a virtual expression of those who participate. In the absence of those aspirational expressions of our future state selves, councils will give some structure to the fabric of the group, giving members a subgroup within which they can express their individual contributions in a specialized way. But perhaps council isn’t the correct term. The real point of this proposal is to establish methods to fund growth of differentiated subcommunities, so that each can get to the business of building the future world we hope to inhabit. I do think some form of wealth redistribution will inevitably be required to maintain economic equilibrium and fund stable growth, but perhaps I’m putting the cart before the horse. Premature optimization is the root of all evil, or so I’m told.
Thank you @steal.neal for your ideas and the ApeCoin DAO community for the thoughtful discussions. A moderator will get in touch with the author to draft the AIP in the appropriate template. Once the AIP is drafted and meets all the DAO-approved guidelines, the proposal will be posted on Snapshot for live official voting at: Snapshot
Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments. @steal.neal please see your messages for the next steps.
This Topic has been rejected based on the DAO-approved guidelines due to no response in the last 30 days. The Topic may be submitted again by any user and upon approval, will be open for 7 days for community discussions.
This Topic will move and remain in the Withdrawn AIPs category.
Introduction on, its exciting to see new people get active and engaged, both on these forums and twitter as well.