DAOs are building a pro-crypto army
The Tally Newsletter, Issue 95
Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, your weekly source for DAO governance insights. I'm coolhorsegirl and I’m thrilled to be here.
This week, we’re talking regulation, a topic that is simultaneously everyone’s favorite and least favorite thing to discuss. DAOs are fighting back against ambiguous and unfavorable regulatory policy for trading and DAO legal status itself. And they’re using more than just memes.
We’ll also run through a few proposals, like a subdomain-focused one from Uniswap and a few unique ideas out of NounsDAO and its spin-offs. A Nounish mobile game could be coming very soon. Let’s get into it.
🤿 Deep Dive: DAOs are building a pro-crypto army
You’ve seen the memes. Memecoin $GENSLR was on the rise likely in response to memery regarding Gensler’s recent failure to define securities in U.S. court. Last week, Coinbase sued the SEC for lack of clarification on regulation, specifically in regard to its months-old petition. In a recent tweet, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren announced that she is “building an anti-crypto army.” Meanwhile, DAOs are fighting back.
Led by the SEC, we’ve seen a crypto crackdown in the U.S. since the collapse of FTX in November. Regulation has been plagued by ambiguity, in regard to trading as well as DAO legal status itself. Enter governance advocacy in favor of crypto from DAOs—think of those dime-a-dozen “please call your congressman” with the heat turned UP. DAOs are making moves that matter.
In partnership with Coinbase, Gitcoin is running an advocacy round, where you can mint Stand with Crypto, a commemorative NFT, to show your support for “sensible crypto policy”—not even particularly “favorable" policy, but “sensible.” So far, over 80k NFTs have been minted. You can mint one here.
“The Stand with Crypto commemorative NFT is a symbol of unity for the crypto community seeking sensible crypto policy. The NFT features a blue shield, representing a collective stand to protect and promote the potential of crypto.”
Until May 9, all mint fees from the NFT will be matched with quadratic funding. Funds will be donated to Coin Center, Fight for the Future, the Blockchain Foundation, Blockchain Association, and DeFi Education Fund.
DAOs have advocacy groups on their side. In their announcement tweet, Gitcoin highlighted Coin Center, 1 of 8 case studies in their impact report. Coin Center joined Gitcoin grants in 2020 and has raised over $1m there from 11k+ contributions and matching funds.
Beyond crypto trading regulations, the regulatory landscape for DAOs specifically has gained governmental attention recently, too. DAOs could get official standing under a proposed California law. Proposer San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney is calling Assembly Bill 1229 an effort to “keep up with the times.” Meanwhile across the pond, the first EU-wide crypto regulations have cleared a final parliament vote.
In the words of Gitcoin, “financial freedom and privacy are at risk in Washington D.C.” But this risk does not come without fervent resistance (and counteracting, thanks Coinbase) from DAOs and their contributors.
⌛️ On-chain Proposals
On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.
Uniswap
Create v3deployments.uniswap.eth subdomain and populate its text fields
Summary: 9 function calls to create the subdomain and add 8 text records to it. Passed on Snapshot already, canonical deployments of Uniswap v3 will be recorded in this new subdomain. No cost!
Voting ends: May 4th
Public Nouns
Fund Protocol Guild 1-year vesting contract with 10 ETH
Summary: Protocol Guild enables distributed funding for distributed systems. If passed, this proposal donates 10 ETH to a contract that vests over a year. Added bonus is that it contributes to the precedent that projects built on Ethereum should help support the protocol they depend on. Cool idea for sure.
Voting ends: May 2nd
Summary: Spending limits meet allow lists in the CookieJar. 2 ETH to co-fund a small safe and a daily allowance (called “cookies”) to anyone on the allow list. Co-funded alongside DAOhaus and RaidGuild.
Voting ends: May 5th
Lil Nouns
Summary: Give AutoBidder 60 more ETH to acquire 2 more Nouns for the DAO. Upping the contract balance but leaving min/max settings as is. And ooh, it recently won Noun 677.
Voting ends: May 3rd
NounsDAO
“The Nominal Hero”: A Nouns Middle Grade Novel
Summary: Can Caden Keller work with Nouns to fight off a threat to the Nouniverse? 25 ETH to fund a Nounish book for kids ages 6-10 and living expenses for the author during the writing period of 6 months.
Voting ends: May 5th
Summary: Initial funding of $90k for the 6-month process to get the mobile platformer game off the ground. 3D, multi-player-optional, monetization-possible, and Nounish.
Voting ends: May 6th
WarpedWorld: Nouns Get Warped ⌐◨-◨
Summary: NounsDAO x WarpedWorld. A series of IRL activations involving and proliferating the NounsDAO community, explained in great detail in the proposal. There’s even a proposal video (a 2-minute watch).
Voting ends: May 5th
Autobidder: Withdraw ETH and set ENS reverse record
Summary: To conclude the trial started in Proposal #268, resolve autobidder.nouns.eth to the contract address and withdraw the remaining contract balance to the Nouns treasury (~0.98 ETH).
Voting ends: May 5th
Oni Residency: Nouns Community Discord & Onboarding
Summary: 31ETH for the 6-month continuation of the Jungle, the intended successor to the official Nouns DAO discord that was closed. Full-stack revamp.
Voting ends: May 5th
📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To
Article: “Anti-crypto regulators are blocking the pathway to a digital American dream” by Li Jin
Article: “Tokenology: Moving beyond ‘tokenomics’” by Guy Wuollet
Article: “Hamas armed wing announces suspension of bitcoin fundraising” by Nidal Al-Mughrabi
Article: “DAO on-chain voting: Myth or Reality?” by Dexe.network
Thread: “Blind Delegation” by Outlier Ventures
Thread: “How to Build a DAO 101” by Connext
Thread: “Mental models to design governance” by Chase Chapman
Podcast: “Gary Gensler vs. Crypto: What Will the SEC Attack Next?" from Unchained
Podcast: “Building for Emerging Nations w/ Cami Ramos” from Rehash
Podcast: “Critiques and Alternatives from a Former Professional Libertarian” from The Blockchain Socialist
🤭 Meme of the Week
Proto-DAOs, mature DAOs, pseudo-decentralization, auditable onchain governance...not sure what those mean or why you should care? Catch up on last week’s DAO talk: “parks and DAOcreation.”
P.S. - Wee trip to Singapore to visit my prom date from high school whom I haven’t seen since, lol. I’m not sure what was cooler: these cute holders for the bubble tea I picked up or this massive wild lizard (“monitor”)!
