tlBANK - Time Lock Bank - DRAFT 1

Governance
1

Title: veBANK - Value Escrow BANK - (DRAFT 1) - TEMP CHECK

Author(s): Icedcool🏴#4947

Date Created: August 28th, 2022

Date Posted: 9/9/22

TLDR:

  • BANK distribution currently doesn’t have any mechanisms that align contributors long term to the DAO.
    • This creates scenarios where value attributed to the token (airdrops, etc) are dropped to general holders, as well as long term contributors.
  • veBANK would create an additional BanklessDAO token that would enable adding time as a component to the token and would support long term contributor alignment.
    • By locking up BANK for a period of time, locked BANK indicates long term alignment with the DAO.
    • This could be used for value accrual, and potentially could become the standard for L1 membership, voting and more.
  • The following proposal aims to raise awareness and explore potentials and opportunities for veBANK while proposing a minimal viable implementation.
    • Based on discussion, we will develop future proposals and implementations.
    • Additionally, this MVP once completed, will be free to be adopted by projects, both internal and external, as a value accrual mechanism of BANK and BanklessDAO.

Summary:

This post is to propose and raise awareness around the creation of an additional BanklessDAO recognized token, value escrow BANK or veBANK. This token will support long term contributor alignment while giving the DAO tokenomic infrastructure to enable future opportunities around BanklessDAO governance and other options and utility.

veBANK adds time as a component to BANK, which when locked up, supports and identifies long term value aligned contributors to BanklessDAO.

This initial post is meant to generate discussion and identify parameters for a future proposal that will fund the development of the veBANK token.

Long term options could be for veBANK to be the core BanklessDAO governance token, as well as the token that has benefits and value accrual to it.

Specs on veBANK are that it would be a 1-1 deposit and claim on BANK, for different time periods. It would also, debatably, be a non-transferrable token.

We are planning the initial implementation to be a test of 6 months, and closely watch how it is used and adopted. Upon a successful implementation, we will roll out longer time periods including, 12, 18 and 24 months.

KEY POINT: veBANK will NOT have BANK distributions to it, at the current design, nor will it grant additional voting privileges or rights (YET).

As we work on and improve tokenomics at BanklessDAO, our core operative is to keep the system running and do as little harm as possible, so implementations take time.

Background:

BANK has been used as a compensation token for BanklessDAO, and is distributed regularly to organizational units(Guilds and projects) and contributors for work performed at the DAO.

Currently the token is held for governance rights for the DAO, speculation, deposited in defi platforms for yield or as collateral, or sold for other assets.

Alternatively, veBANK, or value escrow BANK, would allow adding time as a component to the token to indicate long term alignment to BanklessDAO, both as a contributor or speculator.

This creates downstream opportunities in that the longer term aligned members could accrue larger benefits, or be selected by other communities for benefits or distributions.

Currently, the benchmark for value accrual to the BANK token is in the form of L1 membership (holding 35k BANK). When value opportunities arose, we have had different parties buy up BANK, to obtain the value, then sell BANK off.

With veBANK, we have an easily identifiable group of value aligned, long term contributors, for which the value accrual of the DAO can go to.

For example, DAOpunks required 35k BANK to mint a DAOpunk NFT. This created significant buy pressure before the mint, then sell pressure post mint. veBANK could be used instead as the token which would require holders to be aligned to the DAO for 3,6 or 12 months to be able to mint. This would have alleviated BANK sell pressure, and had DAOpunks held by quality DAO members and contributors.

Initial Specifications:

  • 1-1 Deposit and Claim - 1 BANK = 1 veBANK + Time
  • Time locks
    • 6 Month - Initial implementation
    • 12 Month
    • 18 Month
    • 24 Month
  • Non Transferrable - IN DEBATE

Implementation:

This is the current implementation plan, and fully subject to change.

  • Engage the Dev Guild to create an veBANK token.
    • This would need to be scoped out and a forum proposal submitted and approved, then funded.
  • Engage the Website Team to implement a front end for the depositing of BANK for veBANK.
  • Engage Snapshot admins to support veBANK for voting.
  • Engage Discord admins to support veBANK amounts for L1 membership perks.
  • Engage Operations, and DAO wide information distribution to ensure that outside parties accrue value to the veBANK token.

Initially the tokenomics department was working to solve the problem of L1 membership with veBANK, but found the challenge to be a larger challenge along with implementation of veBANK.

As we worked on the idea, projects found out about the initiative and started to plan for it, so instead of attempting to solve the problems from top down approach, we are planning to make the token and infrastructure available so projects, guilds and the DAO can adopt as makes sense.

Beyond value accrual, with veBANK available as a token infrastructure, many new possibilities open up around governance. Some of the ideas that the Tokenomics department have thrown around are:

  • Requiring veBANK to sponsor a project for funding
  • Requiring veBANK to vote on governance
  • Requiring veBANK to obtain project benefits
  • Requiring veBANK to participate in Guild governance
  • Require veBANK for coordinape
  • Get a coordinape multiplier if you have veBANK
  • Gamification
    • HAVING AN NFT THAT LEVELS UP AS YOU RE-LOCK YOUR BANK <-!

This is where we can have a lot of fun with ideation, and I do hope people share ideas in the comments below!

Please share your thoughts, opinions and ideas :slight_smile:

Quick poll to gather sentiment:

  • Sounds great - Lets go!
  • Needs modification
  • Deny

0 voters

2 Likes
2

I like what I see! Lets get this printed and signed. Where is the 5 year staking term😁

2 Likes
3

I’ve been waiting for this to be on discourse for a while now, thank yo icedcool!! :slight_smile:

We definitely had fun ideating together with the team during BANK utility conversations. I truly believe veBANK has the potential to change our tokenomics for the better and can further help us make improvements in bDAOs-governance structure. Whether we shift to delegated voting or create a token and governance house going forward, veBANK will help underpin the importance of L1 membership as part of being a bankless citizen, which should be rewarded with perks beyond social capital.

It’s important to remain open as an org, build in public and be inclusive at all cost. However, if there’s literally no incentive to hold BANK, than our token will lose every trade. If we ever want BANK to be the Rocky Balboa of cryptocurrencies :boxing_glove:, then we need to train its tokenomics to handle these 1o1s :people_wrestling:. Folks should feel FOMO when they swap their BANK for ETH on DEXes.

p.s. if you, the reader of this comment, want to join the discussion and ideate with us on how to improve BANKs tokenomics join us in the treasury guild. We meet every Thursday at 2pm UTC.

5 Likes
4

Awesome work on this IcedCool and the Bank Utility team. This should be a welcome addition to governance and the BANK tokenomics as well as align the long term members of the DAO.

2 Likes
5

I love this idea of longevity and long term commitment. Too many imho are looking at this experiment as a speculative sprint whereas my view is as an investment marathon for potential life changing wealth. Love the commitment concept that supports bDAO contributor retention as well as improvement of the tokenomics. Great job as always Ic!

2 Likes
6

Until now I thought the ‘ve’ prefix was for ‘vested’

Voted yes to move forward on this. Can’t think of any downside.

Another use case, not sure how this would play out, is ask sponsors of projects like the newsletters to buy BANK and lock up into veBANK?

1 Like
7

Yes! Exactly :slight_smile: :+1: :muscle:

8

The future of BANk is escrowed

9

I like the idea! Thanks @Icedcool! But I struggle to understand which is the incentive of locking BANK to get the veBANK. veBANK holders would not get revenue and do not have accrued voting rights. This conflicts with how normally vetokenomics are shaped. Is the intent just to “confirm” membership and fidelity to the DAO?

If we don’t want to play with revenue, I think that at least a slight increase of voting power, at least on certain matters, should be granted to veBANK holders.

1 Like
10

Yea the challenge with BDAO is that we don’t have a centralized structure, and we were struggling to figure out how to implement a time lock token DAO wide with guaranteed value accrual.

SO we thought to implement this as an initial infrastructure step, to be replaced as the value accrual for BANK since distributed value to BANK holders is sometimes good, but is sometimes abused by external actors (DAOPUNKS, and others) with veBANK, that value can go to ONLY value aligned contributors to the DAO.

AND in the future we can experiment with additional options of voting power, or other mechanisms.

But the first step is to enable the infrastructure, AND attempting to do it from a bottom up approach, rather than top down centralized approach.

I hear you though. We don’t have direct line of sight to value accrual.

2 Likes
11

I see my friend. I would nevertheless at least recognize a special role or a membership perk to the veBANK holders. This alignement needs to be well emphasized.

1 Like
12

Oh yea dude, agreed. Working on what we can do :+1:

13

Amazing proposal @Icedcool :100:
This would level up BANK tokenomics tremendously IMO :rocket:

4 Likes
14

Hey, I really like your proposal @Icedcool. My BANK tokens just stay on Metamask from January and I will be happy to lock them for this for another 6-12 month. Let’s do this!

4 Likes
15

I’m strongly in favor of veBANK and would argue to completely scrap guest pass coordinape and instead send those emissions going straight to reward veBANK holders.

A minor quibble with the proposal might be the language of ‘value accrual’. I think we should replace this phrase throughout with the alternate phrase ‘BANK price stability’. While the addition of locked BANK is likely positive for BANK price, we shouldn’t make forward-looking statements on what the BANK price will do in any way, since in truth there is always uncertainty and many factors to consider.

We are authorizing no changes to BANK market supply (whether mint, burn, or buyback) with this proposal, so in theory, a veBANK mechanism shouldn’t by itself be expected to accrue value to the token (retail will still need to buy BANK on exchange to make price go up). However, it should diminish the sell frequency of those locked tokens and potentially slow the price erosion in the BANK token we have experienced over the last 3 seasons. Price stability.

3 Likes