With clear expectation around brand usage (some of which are outlined in this proposal), I think a dispute would be a rare edge case if it ever occurs. The existing entities (e.g. Bankless Africa, Bankless Card, etc.) provide a pretty broad set of examples that we can extrapolate moving forward.
I think we could agree to take $BANK vote and foundation board into account in a dispute, but ultimately weāre proposing that BanklessHQ have veto right on commercial use of the Bankless brand for proposed subentity products or services . Note: BanklessDAO could use āBanklessDAOā in any context and āBanklessā prefix could be used for non-commerical usage and/or regional chapters as determined by the DAO, including via $BANK token vote - I donāt think BanklessHQ needs de facto veto right for non-commercial usage.
- Would HQ be willing to provide an honest retrospective on fulfillment of commitments made in the genesis proposal, and follow through on whatever HQ decides to do with its BANK allocation, before this brand clarity proposal (or a version of it) goes to vote?
The original proposals I put forward as draft to leaders in the BanklessDAO included language around BanklessHQ burning or returning its portion of BANK allocation. The leaders of the BanklessDAO encouraged us to remove it from this proposal.
It remains our intent not to sell BANK tokens or receive economic benefit from them for two reasons.
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Iād like to indisputably put to rest with onchain evidence any claim that myself, David, or BanklessHQ has rugged BANK holders or has been on a mission to pump then sell the price of BANK - as far as weāre concerned, the function of BANK is as a governance token.
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I donāt think we earned our BANK governance allotment.
As far as a retrospective on our fulfillment of commitments, Iāll say we tried some things such as BanklessHQ sponsorship of leaders like Lucas Campbell and Frogmonkee in the early days - thereās more i could list - but ultimately, i donāt think we fulfilled all of our commitments - hence the return of funds.
As far as why we werenāt able to fulfill the full vision of the genesis proposal, iād say a few things.
First, DAOās are hard - like harder than I knew 3 years ago - thereās enormous energy, but channeling that energy into productive output is hugely challenging. I think DAOās do very well as open social clubs, but further coordination requires some type of hierarchy for decision making and resource allocation. We may have signed up for mission impossible in the original proposal.
Second, we took on too much and didnāt have time to lead the DAO - BanklessHQ has been so focused on producing podcasts and fulfilling the Bankless mission via our media company that Iām not able to help coordinate a DAO. Even if I had the time, i donāt think iād be the operator it needs. It requires an mega-operator that we never found. The ābeautiful chaosā of the DAO was overwhelming and exceeded our ability to channel.
Third, it very much seemed like the BDAO has been succeeding on its own - maybe not in its full capacity - but it was doing many things without our leadership and those who opted in seemed happy. Maybe thereād be a way to integrate BanklessDAO and BanklessHQ, maybe crypto would discover a governance breakthrough, so we kept that option open - we kept kicking the can down the road.
tldr; HQ didnāt have the skills nor resource to plug into the raw energy of DAO and itās unclear whether DAOās have the governance structure to succeed as commercial startup entities - they have other unique advantages that are hard to marshall.