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BanklessDAO

Project Description

What are the purposes, goals, or scope of the project? If there are metrics to measure success, what are they?

Bankless is a movement for pioneers seeking liberation from the tyranny of the traditional financial system. Going Bankless means adopting decentralized, permissionless, and censorship-resistant technology. The aim is to achieve financial self-sovereignty, security, and prosperity and to help the world with user-friendly onramps for people to discover decentralized financial technologies through education, media, and culture.

What, if any, are the coordinating entities, and what are their functions? (For example, a foundation, software development corporation, DAO, etc.)

The idea of creating BanklessDAO has been taken by the Bankless LLC. The entities are formally separated. The Bankless LLC holds ¼ of the supply of $BANK tokens

How are participants and users of the project identified? (For example, by public/private cryptographic keypair, wallet number, government ID, etc.) Are there restrictions on who can participate? If so, how are they implemented?

The access to the discord server is limited to holders of $35k $BANKS. Users are identified by wallet number and (usually) a pseudoanonymous name.

The DAO is organized in 13 Guilds (Writer's guild, Treasurer, Translator's Guild, Research Guild, Ops Guild, Marketing Guild, Legal Guild, Education Guild, Design Guild, Developer's Guild, Analytics Guil). Each Guild has a multisig.

Stakeholder Groups

Does the project’s software code delineate groups with particular functions? (For example, those who can propose changes, arbitrate disputes, or vote tokens on behalf of others.)

The only difference is given by the competences, among the different guilds. There is one important group of members (7 members) who delivers grants on the basis of precise funding proposals provided by members.

No distinctions between groups exists with regard to the sofware.

Every member can enter into a Guild on a voluntarily basis. Multisig signers where selected within every Guild. The Grants committee has been elected by the whole DAO

Are there other important groups either constituted informally, specified through contractual arrangements, or based on geography/choice of law?

For the Guilds see above. Usually a new member presents himself or herself in the start-here channel. Other people help him or her to onboard.

In addition, there are ambassadors, who fulfil the function of representing the DAO in the DAO in the different geographic areas (50)

Goals and Implementation

What behaviors does the project seek to encourage, or discourage? How are such behaviors incentivized?

The community incentivizes work and collaboration through the allocation of $BANK tokens in the form of tips and allocation of $BANK tokens

During Season 0 – Members were paid through tips by other members; Finally an additional supply has been distributed through coordinape. It has been the largest use of coordinape so far

During Season 1 – Guilds are funded by the Grants committee with a fixed and equal amount of tokens. Each Guild can then decide how to distribute tokens among the members. Additional funding can be requested by every member

(For operational projects): How well are the incentives and governance mechanisms functioning in practice? Are there metrics to measure the effectiveness of governance?

We don’t have measures as the DAO has 3 months life. Nevertheless the flexible structure seems to work well. We are testing UMA's KPI options.

Are there systems to pay for infrastructure, protocol upgrades, development work, network enhancements and/or other work deemed to be in the interest of the network? If so, how do they operate?

Our devs are remunerated as every other Guild. Plus, they can apply for funding. Due to the media-educational purpose, costs has not been expensive so far.

We have created a bounty board, a tool to allocate work. It could be of interest for other DAOs.

Governance Powers

What makes a governance decision associated with this project legitimate or illegitimate?

If treasury is involved, a majoritarian vote on snapshot. If treasury is not involved, a forum post is sufficient.

Who has power to introduce governance proposals, and how does that process operate?

Everyone who is holder of 35k BANKs

Who has policy-setting (“legislative") power to decide on proposals, and how does that process operate?

BANK tokenholders

Who has implementation (“executive”) power to execute proposals once decided upon, and how does that process operate?

The directly involved Guild or the members that were the promoters

Who has interpretive (“judicial”) power to resolve disputes over application of a policy to a specific instance, and how does that process operate? What can the interpretive power be used to mandate?

We have created an Ombuds office composed by 5 members selected by the community.

What checks and balances, or systems of accountability, exist among these governance powers?

Every Guild works in an independent way. The community has always a veto power. We are working on possible conflicts of interests

Governance Procedure

Governance Procedure

Are there systems for non-binding signals or binding votes on governance decisions? If so, please describe them in detail.

https://forum.bankless.community/t/project-proposal-framework/1431/2

Are there distinctions between decisions made by ordinary processes (for example, majority votes) and those which require extraordinary processes (for example, supermajority votes)? Or are there non-standard processes you would, or have, used in emergency situations? Explain as appropriate.

https://forum.bankless.community/t/project-proposal-framework/1431/2

Are there aspects that can never be changed through governance processes, short of a contentious hard fork of the network? If so, how is that ensured?

https://forum.bankless.community/t/project-proposal-framework/1431/2

Are there mechanisms that make changing the project easier or harder?

https://forum.bankless.community/t/project-proposal-framework/1431/2

What revisions to governance mechanisms have been made, or are under consideration, and why?

A core team of people able to take fast decision seems to be missing. for the next season an implementation of such a team is under discussion.

If there are any significant aspects of the project’s governance that you have not described, please provide details here.

Other Information