Authors: Ryan Sean Adams, David Hoffman

Proposed: 04 May, 2021

Summary

Bankless LLC is requesting a one-time grant of 250,000,000 BANK vesting over 3 years (includes a 6 month cliff) for on-going participation in the Bankless DAO.

👉 Vote on Genesis Proposal 👈

Background

Bankless LLC is a core media node for the Bankless movement led by Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman. In addition to founding the bankless meme it has grown several valuable media properties including:

Bankless LLC is a profitable company with revenue, expenses, employees, and contractors.

Bankless LLC currently has 0 BANK.

This is by design. BANK is a fair launch distribution. The only recipients of BANK at genesis are individual community participants. Despite the effort put into founding this movement and future plans to participate, neither Bankless LLC nor the Genesis team have a BANK allocation.

We think the community should change that.

We think the Bankless DAO should allocate a portion of BANK supply to Bankless LLC and the Genesis team who launched this DAO.

This isn’t about the value Bankless LLC has added to date. This is about the value we can add moving forward under the right alignment.

But we’ve chosen not to make this allocation decision unilaterally.

We want the community’s blessing and on-chain proof that the BANK holders voted to add Bankless LLC as an active participant in the Bankless DAO.

This is your call.

Motivation

We think you should vote YES and here’s why:

1) Growth

First, both the DAO and the movement need growth. We’re on track to 10x the bankless movement this year:

  • Grow Bankless Newsletter reach to 100k readers
  • Grow Bankless YouTube to 100k subscribers
  • Grow Bankless Podcast to 1m monthly downloads

Bankless LLC can act as a funnel for new participants in the DAO.

2) Products

Second, the Bankless DAO needs products.

We’ve shown the ability to scale new crypto media products quickly. For example, Metaversal our NFT newsletter was launched in January — it now has 25k subscribers! What could a DAO managed media outlet look like?

We’re also expanding into culture products. For example, we recently stealth partnered with the apparel DAO Metafactory to propagate bankless culture to scarce physical items (announcement coming soon!). These culture products can be scaled and expanded with the Bankless DAO.

Lastly, we can collaborate with DeFi protocols to create new offerings for the bankless community. Will protocols give group discounts to the Bankless community like this? Can we create new financial products like the BED index? Can the Bankless DAO build its own DeFi tools? We’ll see.

In short: we can help you build media, culture, and DeFi products.🔥

3) Execution

Third, the Bankless DAO needs execution.

Vision without execution is hallucination. When DAO’s fizzle out it’s not due to lack of vision, it’s due to lack of execution. Look at the successful ones — Aave, Synthetix, Uniswap, Sushi, Yearn. What’s the thing they have in common?

They deliver. They ship. They execute.

Bankless LLC executes.

We’ve built up the bankless narrative and created one of the most successful crypto media studios in the span of 18 months. We’ll bring the resources and a culture of execution to the Bankless DAO. 🥳

4) People

Which brings us to the forth reason, People. Aligning human capital to the mission and governance of the DAO is critical.

This proposal aligns the following talent to Bankless DAO:

  • Ryan Sean Adams — Media Producer (Genesis team)
  • David Hoffman — Media Producer (Genesis team)
  • Lucas Campbell — Writer & Analyst (Genesis team)
  • Michael Wong — Memelord (Genesis team)
  • Luke Whitten — Media Operations (Genesis team)
  • Mariano Conti — Solidity Lead (Genesis team)
  • James Montgomery — Front-end Developer (Genesis team)
  • David Mihal — Developer (Genesis team)
  • Nate Welch — Developer (Genesis team)
  • Reuben Bramanathan — Regulatory & Governance (Genesis team)
  • Logan Craig — Web Designer
  • William Peaster — Writer & NFT Analyst

Above — the Genesis team and Bankless LLC contributors.

Additionally, Bankless LLC will use a portion of its allocation to allow future talent and employees to participate in the DAO.

5) Partnerships

The fifth reason is Partnerships. We believe DAO-to-DAO partnerships are the future of the DeFi industry, maybe the future of every industry. 🧠

Here are some DAO’s Bankless LLC has already worked with:

  • Aave
  • Balancer
  • Index Coop
  • MetaFactory
  • Kyber
  • Synthetix DAO
  • Uniswap
  • YFI (via yearn contributor)

Additionally, we’ve partnered with a number of non-DAO ecosystem companies including Argent, Gemini, Ledger, Metamask, Zapper, and Zerion.

Perhaps we can find win/wins for these entities with Bankless DAO?

So why vote yes?

Growth. Products. Execution. People. Partnerships.

That’s why you should vote yes.

Here’s what Bankless LLC will accomplish in the first 30 days:

  • Provide the Genesis team members a vesting BANK allocation for getting Bankless DAO off the ground
  • Provide operational staffing to collect ETH Addresses from Premium Subscribers in order to complete the Premium Member Retrospective airdrop
  • Stand-up next versions of DAO infrastructure including: DAO Discord, DAO Snapshot, and DAO website
  • Participate in governance proposals to accomplish key objectives for the DAO (including Season 1 design)
  • Organize and recruit early community talent and participants

Specification

Bankless LLC is requesting a one time minority grant of 250,000,000 BANK (25% of the total supply) vesting over 3 years with a 6 month cliff, in order to participate as one of the core media nodes of the Bankless DAO.

This allocation will be granted out of the DAO’s genesis treasury and sent to a Bankless LLC controlled multi-sig.

If passed the community treasury will be left with 50,000,000 BANK liquid plus an additional 400,000,000 BANK vesting linearly over 3 years starting at genesis.

Bankless LLC will follow the DAO community treasury’s linear vesting schedule of 3 years but will also add an initial 6 month cliff to it’s allocation. During this cliff, Bankless LLC will receive no vesting distributions for the first 6 months. After the cliff has completed, Bankless LLC’s allocation will be distributed evenly over the remaining 30 months.

If this proposal passes, 75% of BANK will still be owned and controlled by non-Bankless LLC community members via the retroactive distribution and community treasury.

If this proposal passes, the total BANK distribution would as follows:

If this proposal fails to pass, the total BANK distribution would remain:

Conclusion

This Genesis proposal aligns Bankless LLC to the DAO as a media node and rewards the Genesis team for its role in launching the DAO. The allocation is a minority stake and vesting over 3 years.

The community maintains majority control.

If this proposal is passed by BANK token holders, Bankless LLC will provide foundational support for the DAO during its earliest phases and will remain long-term aligned as Bankless DAO pursues its objectives.

Vote YES to make Bankless LLC your first media node.

Let’s help the world go bankless.

-Ryan Sean Adams & David Hoffman

👉 Vote on Genesis Proposal 👈

Author background and commitment

Ryan Sean Adams is a crypto investor & co-founder of Bankless LLC. He’s an open finance maximalist who propagates the message of financial sovereignty. His mission is to onboard the first billion people to crypto through memes, media, and education.

David Hoffman is the co-founder of Bankless LLC, a content studio with a newsletter, podcast and YouTube channel focused on education on how to live a life without banks.

About Bankless LLC

Our financial world today is run by analog banks. Crypto money provides an alternative. The option of self-sovereign money & banking. In a world where private keys act as money and code makes that money programmable, the entire money system changes.