SDIP-8: Enhancing DAO Membership

0xgregory

Summary
The DAO has expanded, and the primary ticket for membership (Squiggles) has increased in value to a level that is cost-prohibitive for many, if not most, people. The scholarship program helps but it isn’t enough to meet the inflow of demand that we’re seeing.

As a result, we propose an additional tier of membership for holders of at least 1,000 SQUIG tokens.

As a result, we need a mechanism with which potential members can acquire SQUIG tokens. DEX liquidity isn’t an option at the moment, which makes it challenging for those who may want to acquire tokens to join as members. Other DAOs utilize an OTC channel in Discord in conjunction with maintaining a basic OTC order book. We should implement a similar framework for SquiggleDAO.

Motivation
A second tier of membership will improve accessibility of the DAO and help meet the growing demand. The OTC book is one of the channels that non-members will be able to utilize to become members. It also provides a channel for existing holders to sell their SQUIG if desired.

A vote For SDIP
The DAO enables membership to holders of 1000 SQUIG or more. This reflected across our entire community.
We will launch a discord-based OTC Desk. A person will be nominated to support

A vote Against SDIP
Nothing

DETAILS
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ondk8k6cmcRlOd4G24IkaoVUD6KOXZ9VhRQdmkBnCxs

glorysk87

Fully support this. The OTC desk should be pretty straightforward. I will put myself forward as a nominee to manage the OTC desk, at least to start with. Ideally we'd nominate a backup as well - if anyone is interested please speak up.

For the new membership tier - I'd love if we could crowdsource some ideas on how to adequately differentiate the SQUIG tier members from the full tier members, while still delivering value to both cohorts. I think having a locked discord channel for the full tier members is a good start, and easy to implement. Nifty had mentioned having different discord name colors as well - I also think this is a good idea.

One other thing I thought of that I'd love to get feedback on - for the 1,000 SQUIG tier members. Do we want to implement an admissions process, similar to FWB, where prospective members have to apply and a council reviews admissions? Or should we simply leave the door open for anyone who owns 1,000 SQUIG to join? I lean a tiny bit towards having an admission process, but I'm mostly undecided on this point. Anyone have thoughts on this point?

Looking forward to a good discussion here.

manbearpig

I am for this proposal. I think bringing in membership through $squiq is an excellent way to drive growth for the DAO. Right now the OTC desk seems to be the easiest way. I’m curious on how we will set the valuations for that. I think what Glory mentioned, gated area for squiggle holders and different colors is important. I don’t think we need a FWB style panel but could change my mind if persuaded by a good argument. I can help glory run the desk if need be.

homerfan33

Yes, I'm for this proposal. Two additional thoughts:
1) Is there any thinking as to how this tier of membership would be different from those who own a Squiggle?
2) I'm less inclined to have a FWB-like admissions board, as I'm not sure what we are screening for. However, I don't have a strongly held opinion.

0xPrismatic

YES! Being able to expand the membership is critical for Squiggle DAO and this would be a step in the right direction. How much is 1000 SQUIQ worth at market price? Since a Squiggle is at least 9 ETH currently, I think it would be a nice medium while keeping it still an exclusive community.

I don't think we need an admissions board - that would be time consuming for some members to be involved in. People would naturally self-select and those who aren't so interested/motivated would self-select themselves out.

Would we be selling SQUIG from the treasury? or just facilitate members to trade out their SQUIG to potential new members? I think the treasury would need to fund some liquidity to get it going, otherwise it would be quite difficult to purchase the required 1000 SQUIG

glorysk87

0xPrismatic

Thanks - 1,000 SQUIG is worth somewhere in the ballpark of $9,500 currently, so well below the current market price for a Squiggle.

We wouldn't be selling SQUIG from the treasury in the OTC desk. We'd simply be providing a place for others to facilitate trades amongst themselves, and maintaining an orderbook to help match buyers and sellers. But all transactions would be between individuals directly, using something like Airswap or Sudoswap.

cheesebiz

glorysk87

I am in favor of this proposal. My only question is, is the $9,500=1,000 SQUIG estimate just the treasury assets? If so, is there a risk that SQUIG will end up trading at a multiple of treasury assets, which would then make 1,000 $SQUIG less attainable than were anticipating?

I think a squiggle only channel and a different colored discord name / emoji are both good ideas.

gCAN

I support the idea behind this proposal. Enabling more people to enter the DAO, feel part of it and support our mission is something to strive for. This proposal will take us in the right direction towards the goal of expanding the DAO and its reach.

As for the OTC desk, I assume it comes out of the issue of ETH liquidity, which is understandable. I personally find it's always better to provide a method with the least friction, which in this case would be Uniswap or Sushiswap, where everyone can acquire SQUIG anytime they want, at a price the 'free market' decides. I'm not sure how much an OTC desk will be used and if it will be seen as an easy enough solution for people who wish to join the DAO. We are not talking about a highly speculative token where the demand is very high and people go to great lengths to get their hands on something, where OTC would be one of these 'great lengths' IMO. Price discovery is also an issue, where SQUIG holders (who are mostly already members) - depending on the demand - will end up undercutting each other publicly in the discord chat in order to find buyers and ultimately find a market price.

Of course just going ahead and providing liquidity on a DEX also has its risks. A downward price spiral being one of them. The OTC way would put a brake to this development, if it was to happen. A clear and strong value proposition of being a DAO member is important in any case, I know this goes into marketing etc, but should also be considered as one of many parameters.

In summary; I support the proposal, would love to see these potential issues discussed so that we are prepared in case they occur.

glorysk87

gCAN

Thanks for the feedback - on the OTC desk, yes it comes out of the issue of ETH liquidity. The reason behind setting up an OTC desk rather than a Uniswap or Sushiswap pool is due to the issue of wanting to ensure that we're operating within the legal and regulatory boundaries in terms of the SQUIG token. A few members of the Genesis team are exploring this issue currently, and when we have confidence that we're on-sides with this issue we should look to set up DEX liquidity.

Most of the groundwork and research for setting up protocol-owned DEX liquidity has already been done, and we have a few solutions that we've found are good ones. So when the legal/regulatory issue is clear, we'll be ready to pose these options to the DAO for feedback and a vote, and if it passes we can immediately hit the ground running.

Until then, the OTC desk will allow at least some degree of buying and trading in the token.

glorysk87

Here are some ideas for membership tier differentiation:

Locked discord channel for full members only
Different name color in discord for full members only
Ability to stake their Squiggle for some sort of reward? Need ideas here - but that would go well with the fact that they're members due to the ownership of their Squiggles.

Would love some other ideas from everyone else. I think it's important to differentiate the two tiers, but not make it such a stark difference that the SQUIG-tier members feel like they're getting a bad deal.

glorysk87

cheesebiz Yea that's the best estimate right now. There's always a risk that the price of SQUIG will change significantly from that value, but there's not much we can really do other than try to set a level that's appropriate with the information we have right now.

I think that if SQUIG increased in value significantly we could always revisit the membership requirement level or maybe add a new mechanism for members to join. But it's impossible to take into account all the future possibilities of where SQUIG prices could move.

0xgregory

Great discussion 🙂

The nice thing about having a membership based on SQUIG # is that we can always adjust that number! $10k is a pretty good level to make the DAO more accesible but still require some buy-in which is important, IMO.

For the membership tier, I think we still need to explore this in more detail. We have 600/2000 squiggle holders in the DAO and still want those humans to show up as well. Perhaps the alpha leak channels around pricing and such are reserved for squiggle holders. Maybe we should go through all the discord channels and see if we could gate a meaningful amount of them for NFT holders as a jumping off point?

Name colour for sure

The staking thing is interesting. There's an argument for staking SQUIG and squiggles, although I think we should probably focus on the former so that we can build out the value proposition for SQUIG.

0xgregory

A proposition:

implement some immediate differentiation
Define and share a longer-term benefit structure

For example:

discord names and channel levels to be implemented immediately
long term: earlier access to events, art drops and other cultural experiences

homerfan33

For tiering, I think a different color would suffice. I don't know what a "squiggle only" channel would have that a "all squiggle dao members" channel would have.

PaulieJojo

Ten grand seems like a very steep price to pay for second class membership in a DAO where you don't own the underlying asset. What benefit is there for a non-squiggle holder to join the DAO?

0xgregory

Hey all...

This has been open for a while and I think we should probably conclude here which means converging on a couple of parameters.

Launching OTC desk, including nominating Manbearpig to administer
Agreeing on 1000 SQUIG for now (we can always adjust this in the future)
Membership levels: Maybe we should keep it simple and just have different discord role attributes for now