Profoundly Disappointed

I’ve been listening to Bankless since DeFi summer, I’ve subscribed to the newsletter, and I’m essentially getting nothing from this DAO.

When I learned that there was going to be a subscription option, I was extremely excited to sign up - only to find that the only option to subscribe to the bankless newsletter was with a credit card from my bank. That… was not ideal.

I mentioned this hypocrisy on Reddit, I think I mentioned it on Twitter. I got a reply from the Bankless Reddit account that suggested I use Coinbase Commerce to sign up - but I looked everywhere and that never was an option that I could find. I mentioned this, but received no reply. “Oh well”, I thought, “I’ll just wait till I can pay with crypto, obviously that’s in the works”.

Then the shirt giveaway happened, still no option to pay with crypto. Then the ETH giveaway, still no option to pay with Crypto. I’m a principled person and this was silly to me, so I decided that I would wait.

Then the DAO announcement happened - the day after badges were claimed. That hurt. But I did get a small amount of BANK tokens (Which, I have to say, again, we’re bankless, how did this token name get approved?), and I heard that newsletter subscriptions would be rewarded retroactively at the start of June. “Okay”, I reasoned with myself, “Principles be damned, I want to participate in this community”. So I signed up. I think it was May 2nd. Literally the day of the DAO launch.

And now, after working 14 hours today at the job that I’m quitting at the end of this month, I happen to open the DAO page and find a new vote - one that completely erases me from any airdrop.

Great. My principles have cost me dearly. I want very much to be a part of this community. I love Bankless and everything that Ryan and David have done. But I feel like this DAO is already working hard to exclude people from participating.

So, if this proposal goes through, I’m out. I’m done. You clearly don’t want me here, because I was hours too late to get that precious fucking badge. Fuck it. I’m going to bed.

The only thing the current proposal does is switch the distribution method for the second airdrop (the one for premium subscribers). This was initially going to be based on number of emails seen. For the reasons outlined in the background section of the proposal, this was decided by the community to be a less than ideal approach.

Thus, the proposal is to switch the mechanism for the airdrop to be from the number of emails seen, to badge holders. The snapshot of badge holders for this second airdrop is not happening until May 31st, so anyone who did not claim previously still has plenty of time to do so.

Hopefully that clears that up, if you were eligible for an airdrop (its not entirely clear to me when you became a premium subscriber), none of this should be erasing you from it.

Other than that, I agree with you that incorporating more crypto payment options into bankless products should be a priority. I appreciate the frustration in your edge case, where you wanted to support but didn’t want to go against your ideals, but unfortunately this is not something airdrops can really account for.

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I subscribed on May 2nd. I won’t be able to claim a badge until June 1st. The airdrop will completely exclude me and more like me. My only BANK tokens are from donating to the gitcoin grant, and that’s not even enough to get me into the discord. :roll_eyes: The reasons given for the proposal are tenuous at best, and reek of greed to me.

So my options are to spend >1 ETH to buy a bankless badge off of OpenSea, to purchase BANK tokens outright, or to forget about this DAO and give my time and energy to another DAO that’s actually interested in bringing in new people rather than consolidating power into a small established base. Leaning option 3.

Ah well, if you only subbed May 2nd, then yes you unfortunately will not be eligible for the airdrop. But the proposal you mention has little to do with this, even by the original distribution method you likely wouldn’t have received anything. The proposal is not intended to be greedy in any way. In fact, very much the opposite.

If you are wanting to participate in the DAO that is great. I, amongst others, are looking into ways of lowering the barrier to entry to those who wish to join but were not eligible for the airdrop. We will have ways of earning BANK by completing tasks, potential sponsorships, and other such schemes. So stay tuned for that!