The Bulletin Bored: Improved Delegation Experience

Contributions to this week's newsletter made by @maariabajwa

This past Saturday, I shared a thread about some staggering voting metrics I found while utilizing a new query Beetle shared with me over the weekend. You can check out the full thread below.

The metric that stood out the most was how little impact the most active voters have had on the outcome of votes. As illustrated below, the wallets who have voted on all 18 proposals have only influenced 0.07% of the outcome of the votes. Those voting on 13/18 (~75%) of the proposals influenced 3.60%. Finally, those voting on 9/18 (50%) of the proposals influenced 22.72%.

This means whales are heavily influencing the vote when they choose to do so and a lot of them have only been voting sporadically. I believe we need a balance between the whales and the active participants in the DAO. Some kind of weighted vote where we take into account ApeCoin balance, level of participation, and possibly one or two other factors seems better.

Staying on the topic of voting, Special Council member Maaria’s proposal to improve the delegation experience should help increase the amount of voters. It is currently in the Live AIP stage and up for a vote on Snapshot for two more days.

To be honest, a lot of ApeCoin DAO participants do not have time to stay up-to-date on what is happening in the DAO. Instead of tuning into Discourse, Twitter, and Discord all day, another option is to delegate their votes to another member who can vote on their behalf. AIP-89 aims to improve the delegation experience and reduce friction by allowing people to do so directly on the ApeCoin DAO website.

Another interesting aspect of this proposal is those who wish to campaign for delegation will fill out an application and have a “Delegate Profile” appear on the site. Participants can then scroll through the list of applicants to view their profile and observe their voting history. A leaderboard will also be built to display different views for Proposals, Delegates, and Voters.

The tricky part about this process will be motivating participants who delegate their votes to remain active enough to check back in and confirm they want to continue delegating to the same person. For instance, imagine if you delegated your votes to John Smith because you appreciated his desire to place an emphasis on working with Non-Profit Organizations. Then, all of a sudden John completely changed his mind and decided the DAO should no longer be associated with NPOs. It would be prudent of you to change your delegate to someone else who still shares similar values as you or start voting yourself.

With two days left in the voting period, nearly 99% of the votes have been in favor. It’s easy to see why with the improvements to the delegation process this proposal will bring.

Even on her honeymoon, 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.

• ENS domains were the #1 collection on NFT marketplace OpenSea earlier this week. Nearly 9,000 ENS domains were traded, totaling $3.76 million in trading volume.

• NFT platform Sorare is launching an officially-licensed NBA fantasy basketball game. Users will be able to create fantasy lineups using NFT cards based on pro players from the league. Sorare will launch the offering for the 2022-2023 NBA season.

• Quentin Tarantino settled with Miramax over his ‘Pulp Fiction’ NFT sale.  

• LG Electronics launches its own NFT Marketplace called ‘LG Art Labs’ that will allow users to buy, sell, and trade NFTs directly from their LG TV. The program will be available for all US LG TV owners running webOS 5.0.

• Puma is launching a metaverse space called “Black Station” to showcase its sneaker NFT collection called Futrograde. The NFT’s are redeemable for physical sneakers, and will be showcased at New York Fashion Week.

• NFT influencer Cooper Turley launches Coop Records, a $10 million fund that will invest in music NFTs. The fund will act as a web3 venture fund, record label and incubator.

• Several US Senators issued a letter to Meta, asking for information on its efforts to prevent cryptocurrency-related scams on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

• Mysten Labs, the startup led by Meta veterans that is aiming to build infrastructure to accelerate Web3 adoption, raised $300 million at a $2 billion valuation.

• Binance US is offering 6% APY staking ahead of the upcoming Merge.

• SEBA, a crypto-friendly Swiss bank, is launching Ethereum staking for its institutional investors ahead of the upcoming Merge.

• Ethereum completed its 13th and final shadow fork in preparation for the proof-of-stake merge, which is now set to happen sometime between September 13th and 15th.

• At a conference this week, SEC chair Gary Gensler said “Of the nearly 10,000 tokens in the crypto market, I believe the vast majority are securities”. Later that week, the SEC announced it was forming a new office to specialize in “unique and evolving” filings around crypto assets.

• Coinbase is backing a lawsuit against the US Treasury Department claiming that its sanctions of Tornado Cash are illegal. The lawsuit questions whether the OFAC can target recurring code for national security purposes.

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.