PROPOSAL NAME:
Boring Security – It’s Game Time
TEAM DESCRIPTION:
Boring Security was founded by Feld, a long-time BAYC holder and DeFi advocate. Since its inception, the organization has become a community-driven force for good, focused on providing free, vendor-neutral Web3 security education.
Our core team includes a rotating cast of over 20 contributors per month, featuring instructors, moderators, developers, and artists.
In 2024, we began building the Boring Security RPG, having Captain Bad as our Lead Dev, and onboarding Peekcell as our AMAZING pixel artist!
You can view a full list of our active contributors here:
https://boringsecurity.com/#contributors
PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION:
Boring Security has received 306,398 Apecoin since the DAO inception over 3 years ago, but thanks to our treasury strategy, we still hold an ApeCoin liquidity position worth over 230,000 ApeCoin.
In 2025, our focus is on enhancing every layer of the Boring Security experience:
- Launching our biggest initiative yet: the Boring Security RPG ON APECHAIN.
- Maintaining live classes & 24/7 security support on Discord
- Focusing on improving class content and structure.
- Building bots that simplify quiz-taking and Alumni Token distribution.
- Implementing our Treasury Strategy to drive sustainability
- Build the Boring Security Legacy Strategy
- Migrate Contract Token Contracts to ApeChain
Firstly, this AIP will enable Boring Security to stay up and running as we continue to provide free live-classes every month, and all-day security support in our Discord server that’s supported by over 9900 members and over 120 communities.
Beyond that, we aim to continuously improve our class content to ensure we’re capturing the latest tactics and scams, and teaching you all how to avoid them. And with automation and bots, we will also be able to boost operational efficiency, improve the class experience, and reduce overhead costs.
Now for the RPG: this is an immersive, gamified learning experience designed to teach essential Web3 security concepts through storytelling, quests, and on-chain gameplay. It’s designed to onboard both newcomers and seasoned degens, making security not only accessible, but fun. Launching it on ApeChain aims to drive traffic, attention, and new users to the ecosystem while making Web3 safer for everyone.
BENEFIT TO APECOIN ECOSYSTEM:
Boring Security has grown alongside ApeCoin DAO from the earliest days of both initiatives. With the passage of AIP-9, ApeCoin became one of our first and most significant supporters; and since then, we’ve proudly remained one of its most loyal builders.
Over the past two years, we’ve deepened our relationship with the DAO through impactful initiatives:
- We partnered with Ledger and ApeCoin on wallet security efforts.
- We became an ApeCoin DAO Delegation, actively participating in governance.
- We brought free, vendor-neutral security education to Apes, Penguins, Mocaverse, and over 100 other communities across Web3.
Throughout it all, we’ve remained committed to the ApeCoin ecosystem—not just in name, but in action. Our treasury is held in $APE, we provide liquidity in Uniswap V3 $APE pools as part of our treasury strategy. We’ve stood by the community through market highs and lows. Now, we’re asking the DAO to continue supporting our mission and help us maintain a healthy treasury so we can keep doing what we do best: educating and protecting Web3 users.
Here’s what the DAO stands to gain:
Operate // Serving the Public
This is the foundation. We’ll continue running the core services that people have come to rely on from Boring Security:
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Live Security Classes - Our classes will keep running regularly. We will keep it free, vendor-neutral, and engaging, as we aim to be the go-to for Web3 security education.
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A Trusted Discord Community: Our Discord has grown into a go-to hub for people with questions about scams, contract safety, best practices, and more. We’ll continue to support and moderate this space as a public good.
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Recovery as a Byproduct of Trust: In December 2023’s NFT Trader exploit, Boring Security helped recover and return over $3M in stolen assets, including 36 BAYC and 18 MAYC NFTs. We also supported a Flashbots recovery, helping users reclaim hundreds of thousands in assets across partner communities including 20+ Chimpers NFTs .
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A Public Good Born From ApeCoin: Continuing the mission signals to the web3 community “Security is important - and ApeCoin cares”. No other NFT ecosystem has supported security like ApeCoin has. This passing of the AIP would cement that.
Innovate // Building for the Future
We’re investing in new formats and tools to improve how security education is delivered and experienced:
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Boring Security RPG: Coming SOON on ApeChain!!!
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Process Automation: We’re rolling out backend systems that improve how we distribute Alumni Tokens, manage class signups, and track learner progress to support scalability and reduce overhead.
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Wen New Class? We’re exploring new advanced topics like DeFi safety, Advanced Sleuthing, and how to navigate emerging threats. With the right resources, hopefully we can put out a new class this year!
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Content Maintenance: Updating and maintaining over 5 classes and 20 articles to the latest scam trends, security measures, updated flows and tools available.
Collaborate // Expanding Reach, Working Together
Our impact grows when we work with others. We’ll continue to seek partnerships that help bring high-quality security education to more communities. We’ve already built strong relationships with projects like Open Campus, Ledger, ThankAPE, Lokie Labs, and will continue to do so!
At the end of the day, this proposal helps bring new users into the ecosystem, supports current ones in staying safe, and keeps one of the DAO’s longest-aligned builders delivering impact.
DEFINITIONS:
Treasury Strategy
Our treasury strategy is centered on long-term alignment with the ApeCoin ecosystem while ensuring we have enough runway to continue delivering security education and public goods. This means:
- Holding our treasury in $APE as a sign of trust and commitment to the community.
- Providing liquidity to $APE trading pairs (e.g. Uniswap V3) to contribute to the health of the token.
- Maintaining a conservative burn rate, ensuring funds are used efficiently and contributors are compensated fairly.
This strategy allows us to operate sustainably while staying closely tied to the ApeCoin DAO both in principle and in practice.
Our treasury records can be found here.
Active Liquidity Management
Liquidity management has become an ever-increasing important part of DeFi. Active Liquidity Management refers to the algorithmic and/or discretionary management of funds in DeFi that attempts to maximize fees earned by the liquidity provider, and minimize impermanent loss.
Impermanent Loss
Impermanent Loss refers to the potential losses incurred by liquidity providers when the prices of tokens change, but is only realized when a liquidity provider withdraws.
Boring Security RPG
A gamified, educational, web-based role-playing game where users learn Web3 security through quests, battles, and interactive lessons. The format is as follows:
You are a hero walking through the old Metaverse Trade Route, trying to avoid the scammers from DownBad Inc. who have taken over the area. Make it out of a sewer-adjacent labyrinth with your tokens in-tact and report back to 0xQuit of your findings inside!
Vendor-Neutral
Unbiased and not influenced by commercial sponsorships.
STEPS TO IMPLEMENT:
Key Milestones:
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Implementing new funds into our Treasury Strategy
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Launching Boring Security RPG
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Potential development of new classes
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Develop the Boring Security Legacy Strategy
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Treasury Strategy: Our treasury strategy was meant to provide value to the ApeCoin ecosystem, providing price stability and protection for those buying on-chain. Instead of dumping our ApeCoin to fund our operations, we simply used the ApeCoin earned as part of our treasury strategy that allows traders and DAO members alike to buy and sell ApeCoin on-chain with low slippage.
Although dollar for dollar, our treasury strategy is performing well, one of its core tenants was “not to dump ApeCoin”. Therefore, given the recent downturn in the ApeCoin price, we’ve had to return seeking to “top up” our current position. Our current performance so far in the last 25 days is as follows:
The reason for the request of $169,000, is that it is the least of our requests since AIP-9, and we feel, provided ApeCoin doesn’t go to 20 cents or below, and interest in the ecosystem remains high, we should be able to keep operations at full capacity for the foreseeable future. We also believe that as soon as the staking rewards and upcoming lockups are done, it will relieve a lot of downward pressure on ApeCoin.
On top of UNIv3, we’ll also deploy some funds into the GMX APE-USDC pool, as well as a small position on ApeChain’s Camelot DEX. Although these positions will be small we want the treasury to support the broader ecosystem of products and protocols catering to the ApeCoin ecosystem.
- Boring Security RPG Learning methods for security have always been kind of arduous. A 2 hour class, constantly trolling the various security spaces, or reading long articles. In today’s time-sensitive, ADD rattled world, we just don’t have the patience for many of the outdated mediums that haven’t kept up with the speed of modern media. So we asked the question, “how can we keep up?”
Creating endless tiktoks didn’t seem like the answer so we opted to create a 2D RPG experience instead. This way we can have a more immersive experience that creates scenarios that scammers might use, and surface scam-like transactions on a safe, testnet environment.
Check out some of our gameplay videos here: https://x.com/BoringSecDAO/status/1879335900817309784
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Boring Security Legacy Strategy If we aren’t able to continue to fund our full set of operations at some point for whatever reason, we have to answer the question: what does a scaled back Boring Security look like? Along with the RPG, we’re planning on breaking down our classes into bite-sized chunks, allowing future students to “learn at their own pace”, while still being a gathering place for Security professionals, and those in need of security advice and assistance! Maintaining these modules, although it will detract slightly from what makes Boring Security special, it will allow the content to scale and exist with only minimal updates on a quarterly basis.
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New Classes and Maintenance We want to create more classroom content around more advanced Sleuthing techniques, DeFi safety, and a “Staying Safe On ApeChain” module. Although this is last on our priority list, if funds allow and ApeCoin appreciation occurs, we will drive more funds into creating new content if we feel we have a healthy enough buffer to do so, while maintaining a reserve in order to maintain old stuff.
REPORTING EXPECTATIONS:
We are committed to transparency and will report progress consistently across the following channels:
- Monthly Announcements on Discord (open to the public)
- Implementation Reports on the ApeCoin AIP Forum
- Regular Milestone Threads on X
OVERALL COST:
Total amount requested from the ApeCoin Ecosystem Fund = $169,420
Due to the nature of our Treasury Strategy (defined above), in order to meet our monthly spend, we’re requesting the full amount to deploy in our Treasury strategy.
As we have always done with our liquidity provisions, any money leftover at the end of our spend each month in terms of fees earned, we put back into the strategy, buying ApeCoin when possible.
If Milestone payments are necessary, the second half of the amount could be paid after the launch of the Boring Security RPG if required by DAO rules.