Approve MaskDAO to pursue strategic swaps with holdings

Summary

Mask Team proposes to pursue strategic token swaps with a 5 million $Mask (~$50 million) first fund. The goal is to strengthen ties with partner projects, diversify Mask treasury as well as provide financial returns. The swap targets will be partner projects in the Web 3.0 space that could range from infrastructures to applications with similar or even more upside than Mask.

Background Mask Network wants to give users full data sovereignty and usher in Web 3.0 in a seamless way. Mask has thus been building a bridge between Web 2.0 social networks and Web 3.0 DApps. We have built a robust decentralized infrastructure that allows almost any dapp to be integrated on top of existing social networks without resorting to their APIs. More than 20 Dapps have gone live on Mask network, including Uniswap, Sushi, Opensea, Snapshot, Arweave, Gitcoin donation, etc.

You can use all of them without ever leaving Twitter as long as you have the Mask Browser extension installed. Mask is even compatible with Metamask and can be used alongside. In fact Mask is even sharing a seat with MetaMask in one of the major standard-setting organizations for the internet, ECMA.

Recently, we started the SocialFi Alliance(https://news.mask.io/2021/08/16/mask-network-launches-the-socialfi-alliance-with-15-founding-partners) with 7 DeFi apps in the alliance all live on Polygon. We will also expand it to Multi-chain and Multi-apps. We are also planning to start a Social NFT Alliance with even more features including NFT gallery, Verification for Twitter NFT avatar, NFT primary launch, NFT secondary marketplace, wrapping your social content into NFTs, NFT social games.We try to bring outstanding DeFi/NFT projects or anything Web3.0 of utilities to the Mask extension and to billions of social network users.

With the ecosystem growing, we feel the increasing need to further strengthen partnerships with additional financial incentives, and the opportunity to expand our funding method beyond bounties and corporate venture style investments.

We envision a future where Mask indeed helps billions of people access Web 3.0, and a very significant amount of valuable projects in the new world have a financial tie with Mask one way or another. Think Tencent or Softbank. This needs both Mask core product to take off and a large war chest to form such ties.

Therefore, to further expand mask ecosystem, to increase $MASK’s use, to facilitate governance, and to enhance MASK’s influence within the DeFi, NFT and Web3.0 spaces, we are introducing the Mask ecosystem fund for token swaps, a Venture Capital fund, and Mask Grant. This post will focus on the token swap fund.

The Mask ecosystem fund for token swaps

The MaskDAO currently holds over 39% of the entire Mask token supply that is meant to be utilized to support and expand the MASK ecosystem. We believe an important way to do so is via strategic partnerships with crucial infrastructural protocols in the industry. We would like to pursue token swaps with our current/potential ecosystem partners as a way to accrue our utility of incentives to facilitate governance.

We propose a clear mandate allowing the DAO to pursue strategic swaps. Swaps may occur at par, a discount, or a premium, depending on additional factors involved with each deal. Tokens swapped will be subject to mutual lockups of at least a 12-month linear vesting schedule.

The size of the first fund for token swaps is set at 5 million $Mask, valued at roughly $50 million (30-day TWAP at ~$10, 5% of total supply). We expect to support 30-80 listed projects over the next 2-3 years, as Mask total supply unlocks gradually to 100% (100mil Mask) as well. Follow-on capital allocation from MaskDAO will depend on the performance and net effect on ecosystem growth of the first fund.

All major decisions would be voted upon prior to finalization. Approval here allows DAO members to initiate conversations with other DAOs and entities and structure terms that should be agreeable both to the counterparty and the MASK community. In other words, this provides permission to speak on behalf of the DAO during the legwork of these proposals.

First batch of potential partners could include 3 of our SocialFI Alliance partners: Sushi, dHEDGE, and Gitcoin.

SushiSwap The SushiSwap community is building a comprehensive, decentralized trading platform for the future of finance. Sushi has long been the fan-favorite among the crypto community and has been a long-term partner of Mask. Mask has integrated Sushiswap on Ethereum mainnet, Polygon and BSC, will integrate Shoyu, the Sushi NFT platform at launch, and continue to add support for new Sushi endeavors.

dHEDGE dHEDGE is a social trading Dapp where managers can operate a fund and followers can directly invest into the pool to enjoy the strategy. dHEDGE just launched its brand new V2 on Polygon. Social trading directly on major social networks is a huge upgrade over existing stand alone social trading sites.

Gitcoin Gitcoin is our Developer Community Partner, a community of builders, creators, and protocols at the center of open web ecosystems. Gitcoin is the easiest way to leverage the open source community to incentivize or monetize work. Mask is one of the largest bounty sponsors of Gitcoin with 44 bounties to date. Mask’s long term vision of a decentralized app ecosystem directly on top of social networks can’t be built without Gitcoin.

Other candidates also include (but are not limited to): Layer 1/2s: Polygon, Flow, Near, Solana, Avalanche, Fantom, Luna NFT: Axie Infinity, Ygg, Rarible, Superare, Agld Web 3.0: The Graph, Arweave, Filecoin, BAT, Radicle, Kp3r, Epns DeFi: YFI, 0x, Rari Capital, Pooltogether, QuickSwap, AAVE, OlympusDAO, Perpetual.

We thank Polygon, Perpetual and Olympus for being the first few pioneers in the DAO token swap experiment. We also want to thank The Defiant for featuring us in the DAO token swap report.(https://thedefiant.io/defi-token-swaps-daos/)

Concerns: DAO-owned $MASK would be introduced into the market. However, it would remain in the possession of those who are highly likely to remain long-term aligned with us.

Motion For: Approve DAO to pursue strategic swaps with a 5 million $Mask (~$50 million) first fund