The bankless movement is now larger than any single entity, newsletter, podcast, or person to contain. It needs an internet-scale organization to achieve its goals.

A media & culture DAO for crypto.

Mission

Our mission: to help the world go bankless.

Bankless DAO is a decentralized community to coordinate and propagate bankless media, culture, and education. It’s goal is to drive adoption and awareness of truely bankless money systems like Ethereum, DeFi, and Bitcoin.

It achieves this goal through the collective participation of its community.

Bankless media vs Bankless DAO

The Bankless media team has always seen ourselves as a catalyst and steward (along with many others) of the bankless mission. It has grown the movement through memes and media, including a popular newsletter and podcast. Bankless LLC is now a fully operational media studio with revenue, expenses, and employees.

But the bankless movement is larger a media studio.

The bankless message is a global banner, and the Bankless DAO is the organization that can coordinate people under this banner. Only an internet-native organization is capable of growing an internet-scaled revolution, and thus we need a Bankless DAO to take the reins of the bankless revolution.

Though both share the mission, the Bankless DAO will be independent of Bankless LLC. Bankless LLC plans to continue to grow the bankless movement, but now as one of many participants in the larger Bankless DAO.

The Bankless DAO will act as a coordination mechanism for a collection of participating media nodes. Participants can range from individuals acting on their own behalf, or larger entities with employees and resources. Bankless DAO will coordinate them all in order to achieve its mission.

A new governance token called BANK will facilitate this coordination.

BANK

  • BANK on Etherscan
  • Token Contract Address: 0x2d94aa3e47d9d5024503ca8491fce9a2fb4da198
  • Name: Bankless Token
  • Ticker: BANK
  • Decimals: 18

BANK is the DAO’s native governance token which coordinates activity and gets distributed to community members for active participation in this movement.

Bankless wants to reach 1 billion people.

So there will be 1 billion BANK at genesis.

1 billion people. 1 billion BANK.

BANK has no financial value. It is a valueless token that simply represents participation in the bankless community.

There is no sale. There are no investors. The Bankless LLC media entity does not own any BANK.

This is by design. BANK is a fair launch distribution. The only recipients of BANK at genesis are individual community participants. The only way to get BANK is to participate in the bankless community. And the Bankless DAO will determine what qualifies as participation through token vote.

Fortunately, many of you have already played a role in participating in the bankless revolution…you are the seeds of this revolution.

Distribution of BANK

A retroactive allocation of BANK will go to those that have already participated in the bankless community. The rest will go to the Bankless DAO treasury. Here’s the genesis distribution:

  • 30% Retroactive distribution (liquid)
  • 30% Treasury distribution (liquid)
  • 40% vesting Treasury distribution (vested linearly over 3-years)

At launch the bankless community will have 100% ownership over the DAO. Bankless LLC will own 0 BANK.

However, if BANK holders want the Bankless LLC to continue participating in the Bankless DAO, it can vote“YES” on the Genesis Proposal.

The community chooses its destiny.

BANK Token Distribution at Genesis:

Immediately after the formation of Bankless DAO, Bankless LLC will be submitting a Genesis Proposal. Bankless LLC believes it has been a good steward of the Bankless revolution, and we would like to continue doing so alongside the Bankless DAO. The Genesis Proposal is a request to the community to distribute 25% of BANK supply to Bankless LLC and Genesis Team under a three year vesting period with a six-month cliff.

Read the Genesis proposal and consider the proposition.

Voting will go live at 3:00 PM EST on May 4th, 2021.

Voting is set to end on Friday, May 7th, 2021 at 3pm EST.

👉 Vote on the Genesis Proposal here

This is how BANK supply will look assuming the Genesis Vote passes:

If the vote passes, the community treasury will be left with 5% of the total supply plus the first month’s vesting distribution in liquid BANK. This fund should act as an initial bootstrapping mechanism for the DAO while the remaining 40% allocation unlocks over the next 3 years.

Retroactive Distribution

The retroactive allocation will distribute 30% of the total BANK supply to Bankless community participants largely via verifiable on-chain actions. The snapshot for all eligible addresses was taken on May 4th, 2021 at 12am EST.

This includes:

  • 2020 Badge Holders — Fixed distribution for all 2020 badge holders.
  • 2021 Badge Holders — Fixed distribution for all 2021 badge holders.
  • Gitcoin Grants — Anyone who has donated $0.95 or more to the Bankless Gitcoin Grants distributed pro-rata based on the amount donated.
  • BAPs — Early adopters of rare Bankless merch (BAP0’s)
  • Premium Members (off-chain) — Snapshot of Bankless Substack premium subscribers. This allocation will be distributed pro-rata based on “unique emails seen” as calculated by Substack on May 1st. The distribution will occur after 30 days of ETH address collecting.

Recipients of the retroactive distribution will be able to claim their BANK for 90 days after the Genesis distribution. 🚨

At the end of the 90 days, any unclaimed distribution will be returned to the community treasury.

ETH Address collection for Premium Subscribers

Given Premium Subscriber emails are maintained in an off-chain database, the allocation of BANK for Bankless Premium Subscribers will be deposited to a separate multi-sig and made available to recipients after Bankless DAO members collect Ethereum addresses from Premier subscribers during the 30 day period after launch.

A plan for this collection is included in the Genesis Proposal.

Future BANK Issuance

BANK will include an on/off issuance switch of 2% per year of the total supply governed by BANK holders as an optional growth stimulus. All tokens from issuance will accrue to the community treasury.

BANK holders gain control over the issuance switch after all token vesting schedules have been completed 36 months following the genesis distribution. The annual BANK issuance will be mintable by the multisig on May 4th every year starting in May 2024. Issuance will be off at default.

Community Treasury

🔒Official Address: Banklessvault.eth

The community treasury is responsible for allocating BANK to anything that aligns with the Bankless DAO mission and passes an on-chain vote by BANK holders.

The goal of the DAO is to drive adoption and awareness to bankless money systems. This could include allocating BANK to distribution campaigns called “Seasons” (more on this below), giving out grants to other media nodes, and more.

The treasury will initially be controlled by a 4 of 7 multisig composed of community members and launch team members. Here are the list of signers and their respective addresses:

  • Ryan Sean Adams: 0xeD7820deFdFFd1ec5Ac922a0DB721308FDaf509C
  • David Hoffman: 0x25468E86ED8eC296de39FcB798C7f212924443AB
  • Lucas Campbell: 0x35EA12472d6fb21A9dB24B397AA2775D332C14B7
  • Nate Welch: 0xec3281124d4c2fca8a88e3076c1e7749cfecb7f2
  • David Mihal: 0x8f73be66ca8c79382f72139be03746343bf5faa0
  • Anthony Sassano: 0x648aA14e4424e0825A5cE739C8C68610e143FB79
  • Andrew Hong: 0x2ae8c972fb2e6c00dded8986e2dc672ed190da06

This is intended to be a short term solution. In the future, the DAO can explore future treasury management solutions that decentralizes control over the multi-sig. High level options include: SafeSnap, Yam’s DAO House, and others.

BANK Seasons

BANK will operate in 1–3 month distribution campaigns called “seasons” with the goal of driving participation and functionality to the Bankless community.

Bankless Genesis

At genesis, the BANK token will provide:

The Bankless DAO Discord is the foundational communication and coordination hub for the community. At launch, access will be permissioned only to wallets that hold 35,000 BANK.

All governance votes will occur on SnapShot.

Bankless Season 0

Season 0 will start at Genesis and serve as a 1 month bootstrap period. This season will include:

The goal of this season is for the community to form in Discord and formulate the initial distribution campaigns and token functionality for future seasons.

Bankless Season 1 and Beyond…

Ideas for future seasons will come from the Bankless community, starter ideas from the Genesis Team include:

  • Legend’s League. BANK distributed to content producers for media and culture deliverables. Producers could include writers, filmers, and artists. (Media)
  • Rabbithole campaign. Collaborate with Rabbithole to create seasonal campaigns to level up in crypto and DeFi. (Education)
  • Discord contribution. BANK distributed to Bankless discord contributors pro-rata based on SourceCred scores. (Culture).

Will we get involved in protocol politics?

Will we produce culture NFTs?

Will we launch new media outlets?

Will we launch index portfolios?

Will we manage other DeFi communities?

Ultimately it is up to the DAO to determine Season 1 and future season initiatives through community discussion and token vote.

Discussions around future seasons will occur in the #governance section of the Discord channel!

We’re excited to see what this community accomplishes.

Join the Bankless DAO

Here’s how to get started:

  1. Go to bankless.community
  2. Claim your BANK (if eligible)
  3. Join the Discord

Check out the Getting Started Guide for more.

You’ll be joining a global movement to spread crypto culture, media, and education. This is beyond any single individual or entity. Our mission can only be achieved through the collective power of an internet community.

Bankless will change the world.

You are Bankless DAO. We are Bankless DAO.

Welcome to the frontier.

Let’s help the world go bankless. 🏴

Signed,

The Bankless DAO Genesis Team:

  • Ryan Sean Adams
  • David Hoffman
  • Lucas Campbell
  • Michael Wong
  • Mariano Conti
  • James Montgomery
  • David Mihal
  • Nate Welch
  • Reuben Bramanathan

Resources:

Website: https://www.bankless.community/
Discord: https://discord.gg/bjPz2w9Zts
Governance: https://snapshot.org/#/banklessvault.eth
Newsletter: https://banklessdao.substack.com/

Getting started: Bankless DAO Getting Started Guide

Appendix:

Who’s eligible for the Retroactive Distribution?

The following are eligible to claim BANK tokens now:

Here’s the full retroactive distribution list.

✅ 2020 Bankless Badge holders. The Bankless badge is a POAP NFT that was claimable by 2020 Bankless members. Any Ethereum or xDAI address that held a 2020 badge on May 4, 2021 at 7am UTC time (12am PST) is eligible to claim BANK tokens. Here’s the list of eligible ETH addresses.

✅ 2021 Bankless Badge holders. The Bankless badge is a POAP NFT that was claimable by 2021 Bankless members (see the guide). Any Ethereum or xDAI address that held a 2021 badge on May 4, 2021 at 7am UTC time (12am PST) is eligible to claim BANK tokens. Here’s the list of eligible addresses.

✅ Funders of Bankless Gitcoin grants. Any address that donated more than $0.95 to the Bankless Gitcoin Grant qualifies for the distribution pro-rata based on the amount donated. Here is the list of eligible addresses.

✅ Owners of BAP0s. If you owned or redeemed a BAP0 (Bankless Apparel Token) on or before May 1, 2021 at 12am UTC your ETH address is eligible to claim BANK tokens. Here is the list of eligible addresses.

🚨You will be able to claim these tokens for the next 90 days.

The following may be eligible to claim BANK tokens 30 days from now:

✅ Bankless Premium Members — If you were a Bankless Premium Member on May 4, 2021 at 7am UTC time (12am PST) you may be eligible to claim BANK tokens 30 days from now pending the passage of the Genesis Proposal. This allocation would be distributed based on the number of Bankless newsletters you’ve viewed up to May 1st, 2021 as tracked by “unique emails seen” in Substack. If the Genesis Proposal passes, the collection of Premium Member Ethereum addresses would be completed over the next 30 days and BANK tokens would be claimable after that.