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We can't invalidate existing voting power and expect members to go mint. That removes the fundamental value of the ATX DAO NFT. It's unfair to rug people from their voting power and then effectively punish them if they aren't plugged into our info streams. It was never part of the arrangement for ATX DAO members to be required to follow our news.

@Ncasares at the contract level, Bluebonnet is using the existing Zilker contract so it's actually pretty simple - hence the rationale behind nuking the airdrop but adding burn. All the Genesis, Zilker, and Bluebonnet NFTs are the same token with different images. Introducing the airdrop without voting power is going to be too ugly on OpenSea TBH and have implications on the secondary value of our NFT that are hard to predict.

I personally think that perhaps my personal preference for the Bluebonnet NFT is skewing the importance of this issue. We should keep it simple by doing the burn as an option. It's better for the way our organization presents itself.

Just a note that we already have unequal voting power today. (And I'll admit I didn't think that was too cool when I found out.)

Removing the airdrop would contain the issue, and let the DAO decide at a later day what do do about the extra votes. NOTE: We are using the double votes today to make proposal quorum, so that will take time and thought before any changes are made.

4 days later

Addressing the recently revisited proposal of the ATX DAO airdrop, I want to highlight the merits of such an initiative and why it not only aligns with our organization's ethos but also sets a precedent of recognizing the efforts of our community's contributors.

Broadly speaking, the benefits of the airdrop can be summed up in two main categories: early contributor rewards and governance rights.

Rewarding Early Contributors

Rewarding Early Contributors: At the core of ATX DAO is a community of innovators and pioneers, those who have invested their time, skills, and resources to shape the organization into what it is today. We should not lose sight of the fact that their contributions laid the groundwork for our current operations and the DAO's future prospects. The proposed airdrop is not just about extra voting power—it's about recognizing and rewarding these early contributors for their commitment and dedication. It is a gesture of gratitude that aligns with our values of camaraderie and shared success.

Financial Inclusion: While it is true that some of our members have enjoyed financial benefits from their involvement with the DAO, many have not had such opportunities. An airdrop serves as a token of appreciation to those members who have consistently participated in the DAO's governance process and contributed to our organization, yet have not received financial returns. It underscores the principle of equitable distribution of rewards, emphasizing that all members' contributions—irrespective of their monetary gain—are valuable and appreciated.

Governance Rights

Decentralization is the lifeblood of our DAO, and we understand that any move that could be perceived as undermining this principle requires careful consideration. However, the proposed airdrop would not lead to voter centralization, but rather, it would ensure a fair representation of those who have been actively involved in the growth and governance of ATX DAO.

Scale of Influence: Even with the proposed airdrop, the balance of power within ATX DAO will not shift drastically. Even if all current members receive an additional NFT, this will not result in a monopoly of power. The maximum an individual member could wield is three votes, a capacity only held by twelve genesis members. The vast majority of our members will have either one or two votes, maintaining a diverse and distributed decision-making process.

Democracy in Diversity: It's crucial to remember that diversity is a strength in a democratic process. Having a mix of voting powers among our members—those with one, two, or three votes—enhances the variety of perspectives and influences that shape our DAO's decisions. We are not centralizing power; rather, we are ensuring our early contributors have a slightly amplified voice in recognition of their foundational role in the organization.

Experienced Decision Making: Those members who have been with us from the beginning have a deep understanding of our organization's vision, ethos, and operations. Their additional voting power simply acknowledges their experience and knowledge, which can guide the DAO in making well-informed decisions. Just as senior board members in traditional organizations often have more influence due to their expertise and experience, our early contributors' enhanced influence is a testament to their familiarity with the intricacies of ATX DAO.

Future-Proofing: As our membership grows and more people get involved in ATX DAO, the relative influence of the airdrop will diminish over time. Moving to a Nouns style auction for future members will not lead to higher concentration of power among early contributors because there won't be more airdrops. This ensures that while we reward our early contributors now, the future remains open and balanced for new members who wish to get involved and make a significant impact.

As we move forward, let's remember that the airdrop clause in the initial Bluebonnet round proposal is not an exercise in concentration of power but a means to recognize and honor the tireless efforts of our early contributors. It is a manifestation of our respect for their dedication, a celebration of our shared successes, and an embodiment of our commitment to remain an inclusive and decentralized organization.

Lastly, I want to clarify that the perspective I have presented in favor of the proposed airdrop reflects my personal viewpoint, shaped by my understanding and interpretation of our organization. My main intention is to articulate the potential benefits of the airdrop and to contribute to the ongoing discussion. However, the final decision is not mine, nor should it be. Our strength as a DAO lies in our collective wisdom and our shared commitment to democratic decision-making. I believe in the ability of our members to thoughtfully weigh all arguments, engage in open and respectful dialogue, and ultimately make a decision that best aligns with the collective interests of our community.

    RobertoTalamas Once Mason raised the airdrop as an area of concern, it dawned on me that airdropping will have serious consequences to treasury inflows related to our Bluebonnet mint. Under the current model, the Treasury receives no commissions from transferred membership which is a huge flaw in design.

    If we proceed with Airdrop, there are a number of risks:

    • Members sell the second ATX. With a floor price of 1 ETH, I am sure a number of people will be tempted to trade a second vote for $2k. The DAO would not benefit at all from this scenario.
    • Members simply giving away the second ATX to a friend who applied in the Bluebonnet round. This would be an individual who may have otherwise minted. The DAO would not benefit at all from this scenario.
    • The additional minted NFTs have the potential to flood the market and reduce the floor price (logic being "this was free to me, so I'll list if for 0.5 ETH cha-ching"), This will be counterproductive to future fundraise efforts and deplete the value of membership in the open market.

    Any combination of the above will significantly reduce the opportunity for newly minted NFT inflows to the Treasury.

    I understand the counterargument of granting a second NFT for rewarding those who have voted which is a great intent. At the time of the original proposal, I am not sure that we understood that reflected 80 unique wallets. I echo Mason's concern about the risk of Airdropping to departed members, which would not be a good situation. We do not have a great way to reconcile wallets to existing members, as members may transfer assets between their own wallets. We know the wallets that originally minted, but cannot map transfers as easily.

    We have two primary inflow sources for ATX DAO: Memberships (which solely fund ongoing operations) and Sponsorships (which have historically operated at break-even). The inflows from the Bluebonnet membership round is critical to maintain our treasury until more sustainable models are active. I know we have other ideas for future revenue generation, however with 160+ applicants this is the most significant and certain opportunity in the short-term. At a 50% mint rate, that is $150k+ raised at current market rates.

    I understand many people will want the new NFTs, which are super cool. An optional burn to trade the current NFT for the Bluebonnet NFT makes sense to offer existing members.

    @RobertoTalamas your point on future-proofing prior to a Nouns or auction model is valid and a very good one. However, instead of achieving that thru Airdrop now, I would suggest memberships from the Nouns auction be granted 0.5 of the voting power as ATX. This will reduce the risks mentioned above, retain the floor price on the open market, and carry more voting weight for all cohort-based members.

    I really appreciate your perspective and thank you for raising these points.

      EDIT: Apologies where you see terms like "we", "collectively", etc and feel that it does not reflect your viewpoint or are unclear how it is. It may not particularly mean you or the DAO. It could entirely be me. This was quickly written up as my gears were turning while typing and wanted to capture it all.

      Surprisingly, I am switching sides on this.

      As long as there is voting power involved in the airdrop, then I don't think we should go through with it. The associated money from selling? Fine. Getting access to the cool artwork and tech? Fine. Extra Voting Power? Not Fine.

      To @RobertoTalamas 's point: Even with the proposed airdrop, the balance of power within ATX DAO will not shift drastically. Even if all current members receive an additional NFT, this will not result in a monopoly of power. The maximum an individual member could wield is three votes, a capacity only held by twelve genesis members. The vast majority of our members will have either one or two votes, maintaining a diverse and distributed decision-making process.

      Although it is fair to say that this won't cause a monopoly of power, it just feels like we are headed in that direction. Even if only by a miniscule amount. A DAO should seek to have EVERYONE'S power and voices equal. I would even argue that regardless of your number of NFTs, you still have 1 vote for X NFTs to place instead of X votes for X NFTs.

      I agree with the sentiment that early founders and contributors should be rewarded for their efforts, but not in the terms of rewarding them power. Sure, they built the groundwork and structure and made all of this possible, but making it so that their voices are more amplified goes against the ideals of a DAO. It is difficult, and I think we've been blinded by centralization of power recently. The DAO belongs to one person as much as it belongs to a founder/early contributor. It's a hard pill to swallow because many of us see this as our "baby" that we've nurtured and raised, so of course its difficult to let someone else nurture it when we "think" we can do it better. When in reality, the other people will bring new ideas and contributions and help nurture the DAO into something far greater than it currently is.

      Although, the DAO has shifted into a more "centralized" mindset recently: Members NEED to be congregated in the Austin area. Members NEED to be KYCed....to name a few quick ones off the top of my head. I don't entirely disagree with these motives/requirements. It's tough when we have to think about the health of the organization and playing properly by the rules (U.S. Laws). But I personally joined this DAO because of the promise of what a DAO could be, following the vision of what a DAO was back in 2021. "Decentralized", "Autonomous", "Organization". A way for everyone's voice to be heard equally and the ability to do that anonymously if they prefer. Along with the ability to make some sort of livable wage through their contributions and efforts and have those contributions/efforts weighed equally when compared to the next person. That is pretty much what a DAO is to me. I think we've done a good job of upholding a lot of DAO values. However, I personally, have recently strayed away and lost the vision, replacing it with money, power, aesthetics. Simply GREED. I will continue to fight the good fight and help keep us clear of the problems introduced with traditional structures. Long story short: I do not think that we should allow the airdrop as long as any form of centralization of power exists alongside it. And of course, and hopefully as always, it ultimately comes down to a decentralized vote.

      We could adjust the voting strategy on our Snapshot such that any number of NFTs would only give an address one vote. This would allow us to distribute the new NFTs as described in the original proposal while moving in the direction of decentralization.

      As long as the NFTs are transferrable, there's the potential for an individual to build greater voting power than other individuals in the organization if they have the funds to pull listed NFTs off the open market and perform a sybil attack across several addresses. It would however, be pretty straightforward to see someone doing this with the airdropped NFTs.

      I would suggest that we continue with the original proposal, but we require the following

      1. Eligible members must claim their Bluebonnet NFT within a certain time period - say a month. This will further reinforce that we're distributing these as a way to reward ongoing active members.
      2. We pass a Snapshot proposal to move to a "one member, one vote" governance model along with serious penalties for those caught performing a Sybil attack. (We can keep track of all the addresses for members to check this)

      Perhaps it would also be possible to open this claim after new members have joined? Just to offset the distribution from the announcements and reduce the number of eyes on the market listings.

      If we go down this route, we might need to open up vote delegation and provide some education around that. Many of our snapshot proposals have narrowly passed quorum due to the extra voting power of active members. It really depends on how many of the new folks stay actively involved in governance.

      Just a security note for the air drop. If that's the route. The team has probably already handled this, but just in case.

      I MAY have voted from different wallets across multiple proposals. (Just to test out the robustness of the security since I new there was an airdrop previously. ) So you can't just pull the active addresses from snapshot in order to determine unique token holders. The airdrop needs to identify each active token and drop to the last active wallet address for that token.

        bobwith2bees

        @RobertoTalamas and I have been working with Clifton on the technicals of the process and it may reduce some concerns overall.

        In order to claim the airdrop, existing members will have to submit their preferred NFT design between July 3rd and July 20th. If they fail to do this, they will not be given an extra NFT. When they submit their design they will have to list their name, email, and wallet address.

            Super awesome to see all the engagement in this governance decision. Shoutout specially to @512mace for putting so much thought into this and bringing this up for discussion.
            I know I am late to the party, but wanted to drop a few thoughts here:

            I see the two sides of the argument and see the pros and cons for each. If we airdrop the NFTs to current members, this will effectively dilute their voting power compared with more "senior" members. If we don't, current members (from Zilker I onwards) will miss out on a sick ass NFT, and feel that the work they put into the DAO over the last year does not reflect in higher voting power the same way it did for the Genesis round.

            More so than whether to airdrop Bluebonnet to current members or not, I think the underlying crux of the discussion here is why do some people even have 2x voting power as others.

            We are effectively implementing Seniority into our organization but acting as if it isn't there. We either truly implement the 1 person (not NFT) 1 vote approach (through any technical approach - more on this later), or we make it clear to new incoming members that they will have less voting power compared to more senior members.

            I would like to believe that most of us would chose the former, and here are a few ways in which this could be implemented (in order of personal preference, little account for the underlying engineering lift):

            1. Airdrop Bluebonnet to all unique 153 holders, and render Genesis and Zilker NFTs useless.

            Genesis and Zilker would only be a cool memorabilia, they would not give you access to the discord nor have voting power.

            2. Implement some way of tracking wallet ownership and enabling only one vote per wallet.

            This is similar to what @realitycrafter proposed. A way in which we track who owns what wallet and the NFTs associated with it.

            3. Don't airdrop bluebonnet to current members and make Genesis NFTs vote-less.

            May be unfeasible as I think not all Genesis members received Zilker.

            All in all, regardless of the option we pursue, we need to remove the 2 votes some people have (or may have in the future). This seems essential for the future of the org that is aligned with what we preached and equitable regardless of seniority.

              SamPadilla what @realitycrafter was referring to was exploring a "voting strategy" that made # of NFTs irrelevant to voting power. https://docs.snapshot.org/user-guides/strategies/voting-strategies

              1. @JacobHomanics brought up this exact idea and I think it's solid, but we would have to explore it via Snapshot voting strategies, not by creating an entirely new collection because that's too ugly and confusing on chain / on opensea etc.

              2. We struggle even keeping track of who is a member, so I don't think this is a feasible option admin-wise.

              3. 12 of 24 Genesis Members received the airdrop, and it's the same contract as Zilker (just with a different image IPFS) so this would be similar as 1.

                Bluebonnet is also using the same contract as Zilker, so yeah - if we want to flatten out the votes we just have to do a Snapshot voting strategy, which is fine.

                Also - for what it's worth re: Senority @SamPadilla. I did tell some of the prospective members that some founders had 2x NFTs and they understood. I think it's the sheer volume that could happen with the Bluebonnet airdrop that is potentially destabilizing.

                I guess the question I want to know the answer to right now is: do we put a proposal on Snapshot about whether or not to proceed with the airdrop or do we put a proposal on Snapshot about flattening the votes?

                It's also important to note that if we implement a Nouns style membership like we are hoping to do, having incumbent members that worked on the organization with extra voting power would be beneficial for the organization since someone could accumulate as many ATX Nouns as they want.

                Give me and @JacobHomanics a couple days to dig into the Snapshot Voting Strategies and then I'll write up a proposal!

                Thanks for all the rigorous discussion!

                512mace

                Great to see security continues to be a priority.

                This is why I love ATX DAO - I'm not the smartest person in the room! *

                • Please do not use for promotional purposes as it is a bit self-incriminating. :-)

                  I am putting Brennan's solution here as I improperly explained it on the weekly meeting.

                  1. Axe the airdrop entirely
                  2. Upgrade the current smart contract to allow for genesis/zilker NFTs to optionally upgrade to BlueBonnet artwork/metadata.
                  3. Remove voting power from genesis (doesn't solve entirely, but helps to flatten voting weight).

                  This potential solution solves the voting weight problem in the short term (In order to solve it entirely would require something gitcoin passport). It also keeps things clean by still only dealing with 1 NFT Collection. It also removes the concerns around flooding the market with more (unneccesary) NFTs, thus helping out the treasury in the long run. Along with the concerns surrounding the airdrop being a legal issue if someone sells.

                  I don't think this is that "perfect answer", but at least one to add to the pool of options for the proposal.

                    JacobHomanics Thanks for communicating this to the group!

                    My main intent with the contract upgrade and meta data updates is to address a problem that was communicated to me roughly along these lines, "As an existing DAO member, I want to be able to customize my art using the minero tool and have the reflected on (one of) my membership NFT(s)".

                    The solution that had been communicated to me about this was to include zilker and genesis members in an airdrop of the bluebonnet round tokens - leaving genesis members with 3 tokens, zilker members with 2 tokens, and bluebonnet members with 1 token. This conflates the "I want to customize my art" user need with "As an incumbent, I want increased governance weight".

                    By introducing the possibility of upgrading the contract to allow for token URI updates (which would facilitate minero generated metadata being associated with a member's existing token) we fully decouple the desire to have the new customizable art from the more controversial distribution of governance weight and dilution of token supply.

                    I see it as an optimal comprimise between "only bluebonnet members get an NFT" (no new art, no additional governance weight for incumbents) and "everyone should get a bluebonnet NFT" (everyone gets to customize / get new art, everyone gets additional transferable governance token).

                    I believe that while this slightly increases the encapsulated complexity required for implementation (engineering lift to facilitate contract upgrade and process for updating token URIs for existing members), it significantly reduces systemic complexity associated with the "airdrop + 1 address 1 vote snapshot strategy" approach (no sybil attacks, no need for long term commitments to external software like gitcoin passport, no potential dilution of secondary market).

                    Assuming the implementation for contract upgrades that @JacobHomanics and I discussed can be feasibly implemented by next Monday, I think we will end up with significantly fewer headaches over all by simply giving people the option to update artwork on existing NFTs rather then minting everyone a new one. However, this will mean that in order to get an NFT with the new artwork, a member will need to forfeit their original zilker art as the primary image linked within the metadata. That said, I believe we could still include the link to the original image in the token URI's metadata so that it is not lost for ever - it just wouldnt be displayable on applications such as opensea.

                    A note on the snapshot strategy that @JacobHomanics mentioned. The intent of this is to achieve a "one member, one vote" system given the CURRENT unequal distribution of vote power. This snapshot strategy would NOT allocate voting power to wallets based on their ownership of a genesis NFT (token ids 1 through 25). This means that only Zilker and Bluebonnet NFTs would be used for governance and genesis members would not receive double voting power.

                    Due to the increased manual work required on the engineering side, I believe that any proposal to go forward with this should allow for compensation of the contributor who prepares the contract upgrade and establishes a token URI update process for existing members - if they so desire.

                      I should note, another option may be to airdrop bluebonnet to all members and then implement a voting strategy that ignores token ids 1 - 165 (genesis and zilker) for the purpose of calculating voting power

                      It seems far simpler to just stay the course of the original Bluebonnet proposal and introduce a snapshot proposal to flatten the voting strategy.

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