The Bulletin Bored: Comparing ApeCoin DAO Marketplace Proposals

Contributions to this week's newsletter made by @maariabajwa

With Beetle’s blessing, I have decided to incorporate a “Chart of the Week” that uses his Dune Dashboards to highlight an interesting metric pertaining to the ApeCoin DAO. You can check out more of Beetle’s Dashboards here.

To start, I’m including a chart depicting how voter turnout has been decreasing recently. Although voting has been on the decline, I’m optimistic Maaria’s delegation proposal can be approved and rectify some of this. There are also a few other proposals being worked on to help increase participation.

There are currently four ApeCoin DAO marketplace proposals on Discourse. Even for someone as plugged into the DAO as I am, I was finding it difficult to compare the four proposals. To rectify this, I decided to build out a chart to look at each one side-by-side to gain a better understanding of which proposal I want to stand behind. You may have already seen my chart floating around Twitter, but here is the most recent version including proposals from Magic Eden, SnagSolutions, X, and Rarible.

Three of the four proposals are asking for no funds, opting to instead focus on building on top of the ApeCoin DAO domain. I appreciate they are not asking for funding, but I am wary of building on the domain. Who would take on the risk in the event the marketplace was compromised? To avoid this situation, I would rather have the marketplace be built on a separate domain. It could still be linked to from the ApeCoin DAO website, but having a third party build on top of the ApeCoin DAO domain increases the DAO’s liability in case a security breach occurs.

The X marketplace is the lone proposal asking for funding, which includes a 75,000 ApeCoin DAO Marketplace fee (12,500 X 6 months) to pay for website build, support, maintenance, ongoing development, etc. for the first six months. The interesting part is they already built their marketplace so they’re essentially asking to be paid back for work they have already completed.

Fees are where each proposal takes a different approach. Here’s a breakdown of each:

• Magic Eden:

  • 1.5% base fee

  • 0.50% discount for ApeCoin trades

  • 0.25% discount for trades made by BAYC/MAYC/BAKC holders

• SnagSolutions: 0.25% for APE transactions (100% of this goes to DAO multi-sig wallet for community use)or0.50% fee for ETH transactions (half of this goes to DAO multi-sig for community use)

• X: 1% fee for all trades (100% of the fee will be burned in ApeCoin. If the sale was not conducted in ApeCoin, then ApeCoin will be bought on the open market and subsequently sold)

• Rarible: 0% for any trade

SnagSolutions’s proposal incorporates sending a portion of fees back to a DAO controlled wallet to be used at a later date. Magic Eden has also discussed this and might incorporate something similar as well. I’m worried this might go against SEC regulations. I’m also worried about the burning aspect of X’s fee structure because it increases the risk of it being deemed a security.

Here is a breakdown of past Web3 projects each of the teams have worked on:

• Magic Eden: Magic Eden (Marketplace, Gaming, Launchpad) + powering marketplaces for Raydium and Exodus mobile wallet + signed agreements to build marketplaces for Okay Bears, Aurory, Genopets, Mini Nations, Sugar Realm, Yaku Corp, VBA, Nekoverse, and many more 

• SnagSolutions: Currently working with CryptoChicks on another project

• X: X Marketplace (NFT buy/sell, Portfolio management, Marketplace as a Service & IP marketplace) + Apecoin.x.xyz (Pre-built and live NFT buy/sell and IP marketplace to support our proposal) + working with Arcade dot inc, Mintyscore and 247 NFT

• Rarible: Powers the following marketplaces: Robotos, Mfers, Rekt Guy, v1 Punks, Tiny Dinos, MetaAngels, Wanderers, Krapopolis, Degen Ape Academy

Magic Eden and Rarible are the two companies who have the most experience building marketplaces. They’ve done this numerous times and can draw on past experiences. X also has experience as well, albeit not as much as Magic Eden and Rarible.

All four proposals have mentioned having an audit done on their code. X has already been audited twice (Certik & Palisade Consulting) and Rarible’s contracts have been audited by Chainsecurity. Regardless of which proposal is selected, an audit will be a crucial part of the process to make me feel comfortable using the platform. It would also be good to see the DAO have some input on who performs the audit.

ApeCoin DAO Board Member Maaria continues to keep the community informed on what is happening across the Web3 community. Below are some of the updates from her most recent issue. You can subscribe to the full version here.

• Yuga Labs released the IP rights for the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections it bought earlier this year. 

• $5.3 million worth of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs are at risk of being liquidated on BendDAO, a p2p lending service that lets users borrow ETH against their NFTs. BenDAO lets users take out loans equal to 30-40% of an NFT collection's floor price. 45 of the 272 BAYC that have loans out are at risk of being liquidated.

• A gold Bored Ape NFT sold for 777 ETH ($1.5 million).

• Dapper Labs opened NFL All Day, its football version of NBA Top Shot, to the public

• Over 2 million ENS (.eth) names have been created.

• OpenSea will now require a police report to be submitted within seven days of flagging an NFT as stolen. If a report isn't filed in time, OpenSea will unblock the asset and it will be freely tradable on the platform. Previously OpenSea would keep assets blocked while it investigated each case.

• Fractional, a protocol that powers fractional ownership of NFTs, is rebranding to Tessera. It also announced a $20 million investment round led by Paradigm.

• GitPOAP, a project that issues POAPs to Github contributors, raised $4 million in seed funding.

• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong suggested that Coinbase would shut down its Ethereum staking business in the hypothetical scenario where the US government asked validators to comply with sanctions and censor wallet addresses at the protocol level. 

• Crypto exchange Gemini is launching staking services starting with Polygon, with Ethereum coming in the next few months. Crypto firms are adding staking offerings ahead of Ethereum's much anticipated Merge, which will shift the protocol to proof-of-stake. 

• The ETH POW campaign seems to have lost momentum. ETH miners had been threatening to hard fork Ethereum after the Merge.

Thanks for reading this week’s edition! As mentioned above, a lot of great ideas are being proposed on the Discourse forum nearly every day. If you have one of your own and are unsure where to start, join my new Discord server to request assistance from either me or the group of members we have in there.

Disclaimer: As part of Apecoin DAO AIP-66, my grant agreement includes the Ape Foundation sending me 400 Apecoin per month for delivery of this newsletter. Nothing said by me in this newsletter or on Twitter should be construed as financial or legal advice. All opinions in this newsletter are my own and not representative of the Ape Foundation or Apecoin DAO in any way. The purpose of this newsletter is to inform the community about news, proposals and what is happening inside the Apecoin DAO and BAYC ecosystem, not a promotion of Apecoin or anything else in any way. By subscribing to this publication you give consent to use your email to send you issues of its newsletters and podcasts. You can view my Privacy Policy here.