GGWP-1 DAO Bootstrapping, Phase I

This is a proposal to bootstrap the Gyroscope DAO (Gyro DAO) from the community that has formed around the Gyroscope project. Since the launch of the Gyroscope testnet early this year, thousands of users contributed to testing and joined the community. One of the outputs of the testnet game is a series of "space frog" NFTs on the Kovan testnet, which now represent the first iteration of the DAO voting mechanism.

The Gyro community will require a robust governance mechanism to govern the Gyroscope protocol. Currently, there is no Gyroscope token and the project has been completely grant-funded (thanks to Balancer and Aave!).

This proposal presents a vision for the next steps of maturing the community. It contains three parts:

1. Ratify the current Gyro core development team, as FTL Labs, and give them a mandate to develop Gyro V1

2. Ratify the high-level governance token distribution

3. Inaugurate the initial Gyro multisig

1. Ratify the current Gyro core development team, as FTL Labs, and give them a mandate to develop Gyro V1

The first iteration of the Gyro system has been developed by a team of academic researchers and developers. The results of this research were made available at gyro.finance, and after very positive feedback from the community we are currently forming a software development company, FTL Labs, to formalise the relationship between Gyro, as an independent stablecoin and DAO, and the development team.

Gyroscope must be decentralized and community-driven in order to be both legitimate and successful. We ask the community to endorse FTL Labs as the Gyroscope core development team and present them with the mandate to complete the Gyroscope protocol v1.

2. Ratify the high-level GYRO governance token distribution

We propose that the Gyro DAO adopt a governance token, to be deployed soon by the core development team, based on the code available in the Gyroscope GitHub repository.

We further propose that the Gyro governance token has the following initial distribution properties:

• 65% be vested to the community

• 35% be granted to the core development team (FTL Labs) to be used in furthering the development of the protocol. All tokens that come out of the Core Development allocation will be subject to lock-up schedules that follow industry standards.

• 2% inflation per year after 4 years, unlocking to the community treasury

Subject to community approval, a more detailed release schedule will be released later. Some further detail on the token distribution is also available in the Gyroscope forum

The proposed breakdown is more heavily weighted to the community than most major successful DeFi projects. This is motivated by the critical importance of decentralization for a stablecoin’s legitimacy. Further information is available on the Gyroscope blog.

3. Inaugurate the initial Gyro multisig

The initial DAO structure should be nimble and accommodate a voting structure that evolves as the community develops. We propose that the initial DAO adopts a 3/5 multisig to represent the community. All of the signers have been providing valuable input to Gyroscope:

• Tarun Chitra
• Mathijs van Esch
• Hart Lambur
• Fernando Martinelli
• Geometry (Tom Walton-Pocock)

For further information on the multisig signers’ involvement with Gyroscope, see the full proposal in the Gyroscope Forum.

The multisig is intended to take advice from the DAO community via an evolving voting mechanism (starting with the “space frog” NFTs). This community voting mechanism is intended to evolve throughout a transition period. Following this transition period, the multisig is intended to gradually relinquish control to the full Gyro DAO as it evolves the institutional checks and balances required for sound on-chain governance.

The tokens will be stored in the multisig for the interim period. The token contract is upgradeable, and the multisig will hold upgrade control for the interim period.