Dear community,
We are happy to share the seventh 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 topic of governance since 11 September 2023 and until today. In addition, this update will include the recent highlights relating to our grants program.
Updates on DAO related activities and operations (including DAO-adjacent activities) can be found in the bi-monthly DAO progress update newsletters via Substack.
The latest Merit Circle treasury report, which provides a breakdown of the ecosystem treasury as of 30 September 2023, can be found here. Since, and including, Q3 2023, treasury reports are being posted as quarterly reports, rather than monthly reports.
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.
MIP-28 and MIP-29 - Migration of MC token to BEAM token
With MIP-28 and MIP-29 the DAO embarked on a new journey, leaving the MC token behind and welcoming the BEAM token. With these two MIPs, the DAO decided that the MC token would be migrated to the BEAM token on a 1:100 basis, and that the tokenholders would be given 12 months after deployment of the migration contract to complete the migration.
The topics of these proposals quickly became popular and widely discussed by the community, with multiple community members participating in discussions both on the governance forum and in other channels. Overall the proposal to migrate the MC token to BEAM was positively received by community members, as well as other stakeholders of the DAO.
MIP-28 was presented as a proposal on 15 September. In order to better align with the current activities and practices within the Merit Circle ecosystem, such as launch of the Beam mainnet, this proposal sought to convert the MC token into the BEAM token, with the new BEAM token assuming all utility of the old MC token. In the event of approval of the proposal, BEAM would become the gas token on the Beam network and the token that powers the Beam gaming ecosystem, including through governance.
After considering the large scope of the token migration, the authors decided that the first proposal (MIP-28) would focus solely on whether the DAO was in favor of the token migration, with a later technical proposal to follow.
The vote for MIP-28 commenced on 22 September and ended on 24 September. Approximately 18 million MC voted in favor of the proposal, whereas only 86k MC voted against. The clear majority of the voters in the community thus expressed their wish to migrate the token.
The follow-up proposal regarding the technical details and execution of the migration (MIP-29) was posted on the governance forum on 12 October. Amongst other things, the proposal requested that a token migration smart contract was deployed on Ethereum and that tokenholders would have 12 months to migrate after the smart contract was deployed. Such a migration period would give every tokenholder the possibility to migrate, including those who had not yet claimed their eMC as that enters into a 12-month escrow period after claim in accordance with the immutable staking smart contract (the last eMC could have been claimed since 7 November 2022).
MIP-29 proceeded to a vote on 14 October and the voting period ended on 16 October. Approximately 10 million MC voted in favor of the proposal, whereas only 181k MC voted against. This ended up being the last proposal where the MC token served as the governance token.
On 26 October 2023 the migration smart contract was deployed and the deadline to migrate was set to 26 October 2024.
MIP-30 - Extension of the MC to BEAM token migration period
On 21 November @tmfbernd put forward a proposal that sought tokenholder approval to extend the migration period. This proposal was put forward as a result of the discussions in a discussion thread posted on 29 October, that discussed the same matter. The motivation behind the proposal was that certain tokenholders had not yet claimed their eMC before the migration smart contract was deployed, causing those to be unable to migrate the relevant tokens in time.
As a result of several changes to the proposal during the proposal discussions, the discussion period was extended. Ultimately, the proposal ended up seeking an extension of 3 months, and to initiate a timelock transaction that would automatically close the migration upon expiry of the, in total, 15-month (12+3 months) migration period.
This proposal was the first proposal where the BEAM token would serve as the governance token. The proposal was put up to a vote on 13 December. The vote ended on 15 December with approximately 1 billion BEAM voting against the extension, whereas 294 million BEAM voted for the extension.
The outcome of this vote meant that the migration period remains unchanged and the deadline remains 26 October 2024.
As of the time of writing, approximately 87.2% of MC tokens have migrated to BEAM tokens (see data here: https://dune.com/sub/beam-token-migration).
Three other discussion threads
Since the previous community governance update, three other discussion threads (apart from the ones mentioned above) have been opened, as summarized below.
1. Establishing DAO Participant’s Governance Data and Rankings
On 30 October @mialalala from ThePASS posted a discussion thread regarding the creation of a DAO participant’s governance data dashboard that would monitor various metrics. The discussion thread did not gain any traction but it is still possible to add to the discussion.
2. MIP-18 Discussion
On 13 December @CadetRob posted a follow-up discussion thread relating to MIP-18, where the question was whether the investment relating to “Project Firebrand” had been completed yet. The answer is that the investment has not been completed yet as the investment round has been put on hold for now.
3. Solution to improve DAO governance efficiency
On 17 December, @nqd.syncvote opened up a discussion thread where ideas to automate certain workflows within the DAO ecosystem based on SyncVote technology were presented. This topic is the most recent on the forum and has yet to be subject to any discussions. The discussion thread builds on the same topic as presented in the discussion thread posted on 7 September 2023, which was covered in our last community governance update.
Merit Circle Grants
As a result of MIP-21, Merit Circle has embraced the Merit Circle Grants. As a result, we’ve had a variety of applications. Below follows a short update as to what happened recently.
Beam Burn counter – Accepted
@sub_research, long-term Merit Circle DAO contributor and supporter, applied for a development grant to build a simple tool to track the burns of the $BEAM token. After a brief discussion within the Grant Committee, the application has been accepted with a few conditions.
- Full application can be read here.
DEGA Realms - Game Builder - The Wix for Gaming – Rejected
Carlos Rene applied for a development grant to build the Wix for Gaming. The application has been rejected with the following comment:
“We recognize and commend the dedication and innovation evident in your project, particularly your commitment to developing a unique token system. However, after thorough review, we have concluded that the specific direction and focus of DEGA Realms do not align closely enough with the strategic objectives and priorities of BEAM.”
- Full application can be read here.
Project Bae: Your personal Jarvis, X to Evolve (Gamified AI Socialfi) – Pending
Jeremy applied for a development grant to build a gamified AI social finance platform. Although the application was thorough, we added a few questions to clarify the benefit to the Beam/Merit Circle ecosystem.
- Full application can be read here.
Closing remarks
Although the main focus within our community in the last few months has been activity and developments surrounding the Beam network and SDK, the tokenholders continue to be engaged in discussions, proposals and voting rounds with respect to a variety of topics.
Hopefully, we will continue to see high governance activity with the continued development of the Beam network and SDK, and possible expansions of governance use cases.
The DAO is actively considering more appropriate voting and governance platforms in order to ensure governance remains transparent and fair as the DAO grows in size.
We hope that the wider Merit Circle 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.