[IGP - 0007] - IOTA Growth Initiative
Simple Summary
This proposal aims to create an ambitious IOTA Growth Initiative that aims to massively enhance two key areas of ecosystem growth: Public awareness and on-chain network metrics. For this, currently dormant IOTA assets held by the Tangle DAO LLC (around 44.8 million IOTA tokens) shall be unlocked and used by the community-elected Tangle DAO committee to execute a host of effective growth measures, all aiming at firmly positioning IOTA for both fast and long-lasting growth.
This is the Phase 2 proposal. Read the original Phase 1 proposal here.
This poll will be open for seven days and close on Thursday, 10th January, at 12 am CET.
For this proposal to reach Phase 3, this poll requires to receive 100 supportive votes for the proposal.
Only forum members with Trust Level 1 (basic user) or above are eligible to vote in this poll.
- Yes - I support this Proposal
- No - I do not support this Proposal
Abstract
The two pillars of the IOTA Growth Initiative are:
- IOTA Awareness Initiative
- IOTA On-Chain Initiative
The IOTA Awareness Initiative focuses on attracting positive attention to the IOTA ecosystem via education, marketing, supporting the IOTA community and real-life events, while the IOTA On-Chain Initiative complements these activities by improving network key metrics such as total value locked (TVL), liquidity and the level of decentralization.
The timing of this proposal is dictated by the recently decided, massive IOTA Rebased network update, which, among other things, moves the IOTA mainnet towards a decentralized and smart-contract enabling MoveVM network. This development is undoubtedly a crucial moment for IOTA, its technology and its surrounding ecosystem alike, and must be handled with seriousness and also forward looking courage. Times of change like this naturally open up both chances and risks. Therefore, this proposal asks the community to step forward and take on these chances actively and with both spirited action and well thought-out strategies.
Motivation
With the decision to launch the IOTA Rebased update on the IOTA Mainnet and in anticipation of even more upcoming releases, upgrades and partnerships, the IOTA ecosystem has positioned itself to become a top-contender and platform for cryptocurrency investments, projects and community engagement. However, these new developments in the IOTA space require swift and decisive action as well as coordinated efforts by all available supporters of the IOTA technology in order to achieve the best possible outcome. For one, the new possibilities of IOTAs Move VM and EVM double-ecosystem, its upcoming news and developments, must be explained to the world and shared actively with the crypto space and the wider public, else this important news might go under-noticed and miss its full potential. Secondly, IOTA must be objectively inviting for projects, investors and talent to flock into, especially in known key areas such as on-chain rewards, TVL, liquidity and level of decentralization. We think that the IOTA community can play an important role here and use its funds to help in growing an inviting and sustainable ecosystem.
The IOTA Awareness Initiative
A key ingredient for any major project’s success is public awareness. In the context of the IOTA ecosystem this means that various different entities, ranging from average community members to business owners, developers and investors, all that have specific communication needs, must be actively addressed using a variety of tailored methods and channels. This effort requires both professional leadership as well as considerable funds, both of which the IOTA community has in fact available. The Tangle DAO LLC, as a non-profit company that is fully controlled by the community, was founded specifically for the purpose of using donated assets to grow and mature the IOTA ecosystem. In fact, today it holds around 44.8 million IOTA tokens, which are currently lying dormant in custody, and which can only be used if the IOTA community comes forward and expresses its will on-chain. Therefore, we propose to use 50% of these funds for each of the two parts of the IOTA Growth Initiative. The IOTA Awareness Initiative would use its part to grow the IOTA ecosystem in the following ways:
IOTA content and marketing
The basis of any type of scalable communication is content in the form of texts, pictures, audio formats, videos and other media. Creating the necessary communication pieces in high quality, quantity and tailored to all important types of audiences, requires teams of professional content creators, all with different styles, focuses and types of communications, to work together in a coordinated manner. By focusing on these tasks with the help of external experts and a worthy budget, IOTA will become more accessible as ever to the minds of all audiences. This content needs to be coordinated and disseminated in professional ways with the help of specialized agencies and qualified individuals.
IOTA- and crypto events
A major catalyst of fostering project visibility, valuable peer-to-peer contacts and partnerships are real-life crypto events. These events are where the subject matter experts of the crypto space meet, ideas get exchanged and even friendships built. The effectiveness of attending or hosting some of these events was proven time and time again and therefore this initiative will focus on increasing the presence of IOTA on these events.
IOTA personalities and supporters
People need approachable identification symbols, communicators and mentors that inspire, peers to connect to and that they can listen to. Therefore, this initiative aims at supporting renowned IOTA ecosystem supporters that rise up from the crowd and show willingness to talk and educate about IOTA to the public and to other IOTA ecosystem members. This can happen via content creation, but also via organizing a large variety of helpful activities such as meet-ups, events, hackathons and other activities. These types of individuals will find support as part of this IOTA Awareness Initiative.
IOTA On-Chain Incentives
Crypto ecosystems must be attractive for newcomers and inviting to regular traders, in order to get some first attention. One proven and effective way to attract such attention are on-chain incentives right on the network and in DeFi apps. Simultaneously such activities improve on-chain metrics such as unique active users and network liveliness. Parts of the funds of the IOTA Awareness Initiative would therefore be used to increase rewards for network participation in cooperation with other entities, such as protocol owners.
Motivation for IOTA On-Chain Initiative
While content, education and dissemination are indeed central pillars of any successful crypto network, they are still by themselves not enough to create a welcoming and attractive crypto ecosystem. New community members and observers require that the network itself looks healthy and well established, using on-chain metrics such as total value locked (TVL), market liquidity and degree of decentralization. Therefore, this proposal includes a second initiative called “IOTA On-Chain Initiative”, which focuses solely on improving precisely these on-chain metrics using the other 50% of the available assets of the IOTA Growth Initiative. It is important to note that these funds would almost entirely be not-spend, but rather be used actively to improve network metrics.
IOTA DeFi Liquidity
With smart contracts fully enabled on IOTA EVM and soon IOTA L1 as well and a fast-growing DeFi ecosystem developing IOTA officially entered the arena of decentralized finance networks. These networks all compete very much to create the best network metrics, which in turn attract traders, investors and projects. We propose to use community funds to improve these network metrics, specifically total value locked (TVL) and on-chain liquidity in various DeFi protocols. This will also open up possibilities for the Tangle DAO to improve its financial situation via collecting fees and other protocol rewards and reduce its price volatility risk through liquidity-pool participation all while helping to improve much needed and publicly monitored network metrics of IOTA. All such DeFi operations will always be performed according to Tangle DAO LLCs internal Asset Management Policy which introduces safety-measures, risk assessments, mandatory committee majority decisions before any new type of operation and requires publicly verifiable code security audit results of used DeFi protocols.
IOTA Rebased Validator
The fundamental appeal of distributed ledger technology such as IOTA is that the ledger state gets maintained in a decentralized way by a host of independent entities and individuals. A high degree of decentralization acts always as a green-flag to outsiders looking onto a network and inspires trust in its technology. Because of that, the IOTA On-Chain Initiative includes the creation of the first, fully community-owned validator node on the IOTAs rebased network. The setup and maintenance of this validator node would be paid by the budget of the IOTA On-Chain Initiative, as well as its token stake, creating a fully independent, community-owned validator on the network. All proceeds would flow back to the Tangle DAO LLC and would be used for future operations to the benefit of the IOTA ecosystem.
Specification
All IOTA tokens owned by the Tangle DAO LLC due to the donation by the IOTA Community based on the “Build vs Burn vote” in 2022, that are currently held in custody by Dominik Schiener (in total 44,896,324 IOTA tokens), are to be used in equal parts (22.448.162 IOTA tokens per initiative) in two newly created Budgets, namely
- IOTA Awareness Initiative
- IOTA On-Chain Initiative
IOTA Awareness Initiative
Aim: The IOTA Awareness Initiative aims to increase public awareness and education about IOTA
Scope: The IOTA Awareness Initiative is a Budget of the Tangle DAO LLC that starts off with 22.448.162 IOTA tokens and is taken from the General Assets of the Tangle DAO LLC. The Budget is bound in its use to the following rules and requirements (in addition to all applicable laws and internal policies of the Tangle DAO LLC):
The Budget is to be exclusively used for activities that support the public awareness and education around IOTA, its technology and ecosystem. These activities can include, but are not exclusive to:
- IOTA-centric Content creation
- Dissemination of IOTA content
- Organization of IOTA- or cryptocurrency-themed activities and events
- Support the participation of individuals and organizations at IOTA- or cryptocurrency-themed activities and events
- Support of individuals and organizations that raise public awareness and education about IOTA
- Contract consultants and experts that support the committee in decisions regarding the allocation of funds from this Budget
- Pay a share of the Tangle DAO LLC operational costs, including legal fees, salaries, service providers and other regular costs.
- Exchange IOTA tokens and other digital assets for each other
- Provide liquidity on IOTA L1 and IOTA EVM Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platforms and markets.
Timeframe: The allocated budget can be used until the end of the term of the current Tangle DAO LLC committee. After that time period all leftover assets will be handed back to the General Assets of the Tangle DAO LLC, except for those assets that are already bound to a certain purpose via written contract and that will need to be paid out for that purpose at a later point in time.
Decision processes: The decision for individual spendings from that Budget will be made by the community-elected Tangle DAO LLC committee in line with all applicable laws, internal policies and rules and requirements additionally introduced in this proposal.
Specifically, the committee will decide on all major decisions in the usage of this Budget via Committee election (“Level 2” decision in the Operating Agreement), where a minimum of three out of five committee members need to sign a written decision to enable a specified spending activity. Within the confines of such a decision individual transactions can be made by qualified individuals (usually Lead, Co-Lead or appointed experts). Furthermore the committee will appoint one or several qualified individuals to focus on all activities related to the IOTA Awareness Initiative and related budget spendings and that will have authority over regular, everyday decisions and limited spendings within the scope of their appointed authority.
However, the members of the Tangle DAO LLC (= all IOTA token holders) remain at all times in ultimate control over all activities of the company and can express their will through token-based on-chain elections (“Level 4” decision in the Operating Agreement) in order to create binding decisions that always prevail over decisions of the committee or individuals.
Additional requirements: All assets from this Budget must be held on dedicated multi-signature wallets that can include third parties (such as contracted experts) as signers, but remain always under majority control of the Tangle DAO LLC committee. Parts of these assets can be handled on official hardware wallets of the Tangle DAO LLC when appropriate for the ease of operations (for example when bridging tokens to other networks for certain payments, etc.).
Transparency: Following the transparency standards of the Tangle DAO LLC all crypto wallets in use will be public and spendings will be summarized in regularly published progress reports.
IOTA On-Chain Initiative
Aim: The IOTA On-Chain Initiative aims to support the IOTA ecosystem by improving key network metrics such as TVL, liquidity and decentralization.
Scope: The IOTA On-Chain Initiative is a Budget as defined in the Operating Agreement of the Tangle DAO LLC that contains 22.448.162 IOTA tokens.
The Budget is to be exclusively used for the following activities:
- Provide liquidity on IOTA L1 and IOTA EVM Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platforms.
- Set up and maintain a reliable IOTA mainnet validator node
- Use IOTA tokens to stake for Tangle DAO LLCs own validator node.
- Exchange IOTA tokens and other crypto assets for each other in order to improve Tangle DAO LLC asset portfolio and liquidity provision options.
Timeframe: The allocated budget can be used until the end of the term of the current Tangle DAO LLC committee. After that time period all leftover assets will be handed back to the General Assets of the Tangle DAO LLC, except for those assets that are already bound to a certain purpose via written contract and that will need to be paid out for that purpose at a later point in time.
Decision processes: The decision for individual activities with that Budget will be made by the community-elected Tangle DAO LLC committee in line with all applicable laws, internal policies and rules and requirements additionally introduced in this proposal.
Specifically, the committee will decide on all major decisions in the usage of this Budget via Committee election (“Level 2” decision in the Operating Agreement), where a minimum of three out of five committee members need to sign a written decision to enable a specified spending activity. Within the confines of such a decision individual transactions can be made by qualified individuals (usually Lead, Co-Lead or appointed experts). Furthermore the committee will appoint one or several qualified individuals to focus on all activities related to the IOTA On-Chain Initiative and related activities and that will have authority over regular, everyday decisions within the scope of their appointed authority.
However, the members of the Tangle DAO LLC (= all IOTA token holders) remain at all times in ultimate control over all activities of the company and can express their will through token-based on-chain elections (“Level 4” decision in the Operating Agreement) in order to create binding decisions that always prevail over decisions of the committee or individuals.
Additional requirements: All assets from this Budget must be held on dedicated multi-signature wallets that can include third parties (such as hired experts) as signers, but remain always under majority control of the Tangle DAO LLC committee. Parts of these assets can be handled on official hardware wallets of the Tangle DAO LLC when appropriate for the ease of operations (for example when bridging tokens to other networks for certain payments, etc.).
Transparency: Following the transparency standards of the Tangle DAO LLC all crypto wallets in use will be public and spendings will be summarized in regularly published progress reports.
Rationale
The proposed initiatives are motivated by the need for the IOTA ecosystem to attract positive attention from investors, companies and other supporters. By tackling both marketing and on-chain metrics the IOTA ecosystem will benefit from comprehensive growth opportunities.
Implementation
If this proposal passes the community governance process successfully and is thereby officially accepted by the IOTA token holders, the following will happen:
- Both new Budgets, the IOTA Awareness Initiative and the IOTA On-Chain Initiative, will be created within the Tangle DAO LLC, a Non-Profit LLC on the Republic of the Marshall Islands with the address P.O. Box 852, 96960, Majuro
Marshall Islands, and executed using the 44,896,324.51149 IOTA tokens it received as a donation by IOTA community in 2023 based on the results of the “Build vs Burn” election in 2022 and that currently lie under custody of Dominik Schiener on IOTA mainnet address iota1qz2njf2m4wyp6hxz9cs296yfnpdclegh7c6dqcrux5zcjg2cxwrvjlu5cyr (following: “IOTA tokens”)
- Both Budgets will be used according to the scope, rules, decision processes and so on specified in this document and in compliance with all applicable laws and internal policies.
- The Tangle DAO LLC committee will establish all necessary administration and processes to facilitate both Budgets activities and achieve their expressed goals.
- The IOTA tokens will be sent to two new multi-signature wallet on the IOTA EVM network that both lie under control of the five elected members of the Tangle DAO LLC committee, each with a â…— signature threshold. One wallet will be dedicated solely to the IOTA Awareness Initiative, the other to the IOTA On-Chain Initiative.
- All crypto addresses used by the Tangle DAO LLC will be public and transparently recorded. Regular progress reports about all activities of the Tangle DAO LLC will continue to be published and publicly accessible.
Proposal Name, question and answers, and optionally additional information
Proposal Name:
[IGP - 0007] IOTA Growth Initiative
Question:
Do you support the Proposal [IGP - 0007] -IOTA Growth Initiative?
Answer 1
Yes - I support this proposal
Answer 2
No - I do not support this proposal
Participation event of this proposal
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