By Arina | ShapeShift

ShapeShift DAO Monthly Blog

How we are DAO’ing it!

Shapeshifting into a DAO!

ShapeShift has undergone a substantial transition to become a decentralized organization evolving into a community-owned and governed crypto platform. Everyone at ShapeShift is still learning how to DAO it and it is safe to say that they are doing an amazing job.

ShapeShift is hardly the first DAO, the growing list includes UniSwap, ThorChain, Yearn, OneHive and more. However, what sets ShapeShift apart from the rest of these DAOs is that no other traditional company - one with employees, W-2s, fax machines, janitors - has ever tried to transform into a DAO. There seems to be no precedent in the history of business. Decentralizing an entire company felt right, aligning with the ethos of crypto, which is about being truly borderless, immutable and open for everyone in the world.

So you might wonder, how will decentralized decisions get made?

Usually this starts off in ShapeShift’s discord where ideas are discussed. If a good reaction is received, the proposer moves this to the ShapeShift forum where this is discussed further. If this idea/proposal has a lot of support from the community, a vote will happen. There should be details of what is being proposed, the motivation behind it, any benefits/drawbacks, how much (if any) FOX is needed to fund this idea or project.

The actual vote is a smart contract that looks at the FOX balance of each person voting at a certain block height in Ethereum and you can vote yay or nay on a proposal. Based on the rules, a simple majority will win. Subsequently, funds will move on chains from the DAO to the address specified in the proposal.

As an example, we can take some of the latest proposals which have passed through the above mentioned process. ShapeShift OG @willyfox made a proposal for $1M FOX:Rune token swap and joint liquidity pool with THORChain. The proposal was posted in the forum, which received great feedback and support from the community, after which it was moved to the ideation phase where community members casted their votes in the forum. This proposal received a 100% yes vote and now moved to the next phase, voting by FOX token holders in the boardroom.

This proposal will undoubtedly bring in some strong benefits for the DAO. ShapeShift DAO’s Treasury will include RUNE and earn revenues from trade fees and RUNE emissions. Furthermore, this will establish FOX liquidity on THORChain, enabling decentralized cross-chain swaps for FOX for the first time, and opening doors for FOX holders to LP on THORChain.

Other proposals being made

Currently, there are numerous proposals and ideas being discussed, which can be found on the ShapeShift forum. Some of the DAO’s discussions surround the establishment of different workstreams, such as Tokenomics and Moderation. We have had some great talent come forward and propose to lead the respective workstreams, explaining the need for it, benefits for the DAO and proposed budgets.

Another hot topic this month is the establishment of a Treasury Management and Diversification Committee. The priority of this committee is to take a holistic approach to DAO treasury management and act towards the long-term success of the FOX token and the ShapeShift DAO. The five qualified community members will be responsible for administering pools the community owns i.e. adding assets, recommending liquidity incentives etc. They will be given 40,000,000 FOX to implore strategies such as collateralization, debt, liquidity provision, yield farming and other defi strategies.

The long-term goals for the committee to consider will be obtaining enough Stablecoins for one year of runway as well as designing and implementing strategies to manage assets and debts to achieve two years of runway.