Dear community,
We are happy to share the third community governance update for the DAO. The first community governance update was posted on 1 July 2022 and the second on 8 September 2022. This community governance update will seek to provide the wider community with a summary of the latest, and most notable governance related events, within the DAO between 8 September 2022 and today.
Updates on our DAO’s operations, including various information on our four verticals, can be found in our bi-monthly DAO progress update newsletters via Substack.
Our latest November 2022 monthly treasury report which provides a breakdown of the DAO’s financial activities can be found here.
In order to avoid overlap between newsletters and updates, these community governance posts will only focus on the governance and community aspects of the DAO, and will only be posted on the governance forum.
We hope that the DAO’s community members, and other stakeholders, will find the below of interest, and that our post will encourage further friendly constructive discussions within the community.
Investment in Project Firebrand & Roadslide - MIP-18
On 5th September the DAO Investment Committee (formed through MIP-2) proposed to make a USDC 3 million investment in “Project Firebrand” at a pre-money valuation of $80M with a 1.25% advisory token allocation and a USDC 5 million investment in “Project Roadslide” at a pre-money valuation of $40M with up to 2% advisory allocation (based on performance).
At the time of our previous community update, this proposal was up for a vote. The vote ended on 9th September 2022 and passed with a clear majority - 99.79% voting “Yes”, whilst 0.21% voted “No”.
Project Firebrand is a codename used to maintain confidentiality during fundraising. As informed in the proposal, the team is fully doxxed, a veteran 100+ person studio building a AAA Web3 shooter for PC and consoles. It is further emphasized that they have a successful track record in the PC/Console space, and that their past games have generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
Project Roadslide was a codename used to maintain confidentiality during closing of the fundraising. Following the proposal (MIP-18) passing, it was disclosed that Merit Circle DAO had partnered with and invested in Gameplay Galaxy and its ecosystem, a decentralized competitive gaming ecosystem that aims to revolutionize the mobile gaming industry. Gameplay Galaxy are behind the mobile gaming series Trial Xtreme, which has had over 250 million downloads. See here for further info on our investment and partnership with Gameplay Galaxy.
Two proposals closed without proceeding to voting
In our previous community update, there were two proposals mentioned which were subject to ongoing discussions at the time. On 17th August @doubleweb3 posted a proposal which proposed that the DAO, together with doubleweb3.com, develops an NFT security solution that should enable p2p NFT lending and have other attributes. On 25th August, @joebags proposed that the DAO allocates USDC 2 million to GLP, which is the liquidity token of the GMX platform existing on both Arbitrum and Avalanche. In this case, the proposal referred specifically to deploying on Avalanche.
Both of these proposals were more thoroughly covered in our previous community update and you can read about them in further detail there. As a result of lack of community support following discussions on both the governance forum and Telegram, none of the proposals moved to an official vote. Both threads have now been closed (which automatically occurs 30 days after the last comment on the relevant thread).
Upgrading to staking v2 - MIP-19
On 25th April 2022, @DaoCoreContributors opened up a thread regarding staking v2, where various components concerning staking were discussed. This thread in turn resulted in the holding of four official polls (see MP-1, MP-2, MP-3 and MP-4). Eventually, all of this resulted in MIP-19, which was a proposal seeking to implement a new upgraded staking module for our DAO, and to phase out staking v1.
This proposal was published on 14th September, and was - following community discussions - put up for vote on 20th September. The voting result ended with 99.99% of votes in favor of implementing a new staking module.
Staking v2 contracts went live on 7th November and a new upgraded version of the staking platform was uploaded at Staking | Merit Circle on the same day. For a more thorough understanding of the mechanics of the staking platform, please read the article accessible here.
A 200 million Merit Circle token burn - MIP-20
On 21st October one of the DAO’s most active community members, @SadCatCapital, put forward a proposal to burn 200 million MC tokens from the community incentives allocation. This proposal rendered vibrant discussions between community members within all DAO channels, including governance forum, Twitter and Telegram.
The proposal was put up to vote on 24th October and had a record breaking attendance, with more than 12 million MC tokens and 232 wallets participating in the vote, illustrating that the proposal was an important one for the DAO community members. The clear majority of 99.7% of the votes were in favor of the proposal. The 200 million MC tokens were burned on 2nd November, decreasing the capped total supply drastically. The total supply and overview of token burns can for instance be tracked here.
Merit Circle Grants
On 7th December @DaoCoreContributors put forward a proposal named “Merit Circle Grants”. Our DAO consists of large quantities of talented individuals all having their expertise in their respective fields. For the purpose of stimulating these individuals to step up and contribute to the DAO, the proposal therefore proposes that the DAO implements a grant system for our DAO, including appointing a committee consisting of DAO community members that may be altered through governance from time to time.
The proposal has been lively since being posted on the governance forum last week. The proposal was put up for vote on 14 December and the vote will be active until 16 December 5:19 pm CET. All community members are encouraged to review the proposal and to share their vote.
Proposal to develop MC Tactile, the first Merit Circle merchandise project
On 15 December @daandegreef proposed for MC DAO to decide on how Merit Circle merchandise could be distributed to the Merit Circle DAO community. In the proposal the author mentions that he has, for the past few months, been working with the Merit Circle DAO’s contributors on a merchandise project proposed to be named MC Tactile.
The proposal is still subject to discussion and everyone is encouraged to share their thoughts on how Merit Circle merchandise should be implemented and distributed within our community.
Closing remarks
The above multiple governance topics have resulted in discussions, proposals and voting rounds, and illustrate that our community continues to be active, despite the recent adverse events in the crypto market. We hope to see continued strong momentum and activity within our community continue going forward as well.
As part of our closing remarks, we wish to remind everyone in the community of the important Transparency & Accountability section of the forum, where various forum threads from early stakeholders can be found. An overview of forum threads posted to date (with links to the respective forum threads) can be found here.
We hope that the wider DAO community appreciates these updates concerning Merit Circle DAO. Please feel free to leave a response to address any information that you believe was lacking or that you wish that we shed more light on. As we intend to provide such updates on a regular basis going forward, let us know if there is anything you want done differently in the future – we are as always happy to receive your feedback.
