Dear community,
We are happy to share the fifth community governance update for Merit Circle DAO. This community governance update will seek to provide the community with a summary of the latest, and most notable governance related events, within the DAO since 6 March 2023 and until today.
Updates on DAO related operations, including various information on Merit Circle’s four verticals, can be found in the bi-monthly DAO progress update newsletters via Substack.
The latest May 2023 monthly Merit Circle treasury report, which provides a breakdown of the DAO’s treasury, can be found here.
In order to avoid overlap between newsletters and updates, these community governance posts 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 continue to find these community governance updates of interest, and that our post will encourage further discussions relating to Merit Circle.
MIP-24 - Integrating Edenhorde NFT into Merit Circle Ecosystem
On 19 April @drcomot put forward a proposal named “Integrating Edenhorde NFT into Merit Circle Ecosystems”. The proposal sought tokenholder approval to further increase the integration of Edenhorde NFT into the Merit Circle ecosystem, whereby MC tokenholders who stake their MC tokens and own an Edenhorde NFT would receive additional rewards on top of the existing APY.
After a proposal discussion period, the proposal was put up for a vote on 27 April, which was subsequently concluded on 29 April. 68.97% of the votes cast were against the proposal, resulting in a rejection of the proposal. Although this particular proposal relating to Edenhorde was not approved, we hope to see more proposals relating to Edenhorde in the future.
MIP-25 - Constitution of the Merit Circle DAO
On 24 April @daocorecontributors and @Cryptolawyer put forward a proposal that sought tokenholder approval for the adoption of a written constitution for Merit Circle DAO.
The draft constitution was reviewed by the community, and a discussion took place in a separate discussion thread, which was posted in the Discussions category of the governance forum on 5 February (see our previous community update for further details). After the community finished reviewing and discussing the draft, the authors revised the constitution before submitting it as an official proposal.
The proposal proceeded to a vote on 2 May. The voting period ended on 4 May, with all voters voting in favor of the proposal and the constitution becoming effective as of 4 May 2023. This was only the third time to date that all votes were in favor of a proposal (previously happened in relation to MIP-16 and MIP-10).
There is currently ongoing work to store the constitution on-chain in an immutable manner and it is expected that this work will be completed soon. Any future amendments to the constitution are subject to tokenholder approval in accordance with the rules set out in the constitution.
Three proposals that did not proceed to voting
Since the previous community governance update, there were three proposals that were put forward and that did not proceed to a vote. See below a brief summary of each of the proposals.
1. Launch Sphere - Gaming NFT Marketplace now
On 12 March @kabramanan put forward a proposal asking for Sphere to be launched. After discussions regarding the proposal, including a post by the Sphere development team (Orange Pill), this proposal did not move further. There is currently ongoing work to tie Sphere into the Beam ecosystem (a sovereign blockchain where the MC token will function as “gas”) and to exploit the synergies between these two developments.
2. Restructuring of Investment Committee into a Treasury Committee
On 9 May a proposal was put forward proposing the restructuring of the Investment Committee into a Treasury Committee. After receiving negative feedback from the community, the proposal was withdrawn by the authors before it could proceed to vote.
3. Gameland - provide a tool for analysis players graph
On 18 May @gameland put forward a proposal requesting funding of up to USD 80,000 to develop a customized player profile analysis tool for Merit Circle. The proposal was subject to a 7-day discussion period as per the requirements in the newly adopted constitution. The proposal’s poll failed to receive any “Yes” votes, and so fell short of the required threshold (minimum 25% "Yes votes), and therefore did not proceed to a vote.
Two discussion threads
Since the previous community governance update, two new discussion threads have been opened, as summarized below.
- Marketing collaboration (ICODA crypto marketing agency)
On 23 March @danayaaaa opened up a discussion thread that suggested a marketing collaboration between ICODA and Merit Circle. The discussion thread has not received any responses to date.
- Start discussion for Treasury Diversification
On 30 May, @mc_mark opened up a discussion thread asking the Merit Circle DAO community for opinions regarding how the DAO’s treasury can diversify risk, and what alternative investments could be considered.
The thread has already rendered notable interest by the DAO community, with several options being highlighted, such as diversification between stablecoins, adding to the ETH or BTC positions, etc. Other community members are encouraged to share their views on this important topic.
Closing remarks
The above illustrates that Merit Circle and community members continue to be engaged in discussions, proposals and voting rounds with respect to a variety of topics. Looking back at the period since 6 March 2023, it is fair to say that our DAO has continued to have a relatively active governance platform, despite the general downtrend in markets.
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 Merit Circle DAO community appreciates these updates. 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 continue to provide such updates going forward, let us know if there is anything you want done differently in the future. We welcome all feedback.