TL;DR
This proposal aims to migrate the TECommons from Gnosis Chain to Optimism. The migration is suggested due to the benefits like reduced friction in buying $TEC, increased access to capital, and potential retroactive public goods funding. As Gardens (currently used by TEC) isn’t available on Optimism, the DAO will transition to Tao Voting DAO on Optimism, which will still be based on the Aragon OS framework and will feature similar functionalities with some adjustments.
Proposal description
After evaluating the technical requirements for a DAO migration to Optimism, the TECAN-Strategy group and Turmeric Labs came up with a plan to be considered by the community. Tam wrote a forum post for advice process on what decisions the community will need to make and other important considerations, meanwhile this proposal outlines the funding and deliverables for migrating the TEC from Gnosis to Optimism.
As Gardens are not available on Optimism, we propose to migrate the DAO from a Gardens on Gnosis to a Tao Voting DAO on Optimism.
Similarly to the Gardens, the Tao Voting DAO will:
- Be based on the Aragon OS framework.
- Have a similar architecture, with the same kind of tokens, a delegate voting system, and we can attach to it the same augmented bonding curve.
Differently to Gardens:
- As Celeste is not available in Optimism, we must choose a group of Guardians with the capacity of veto proposals that do not follow the Community Covenant. It would be a group of trusted people that must act as judges when somebody in the community or themselves claim that a proposal do not follow the community rules.
- Instead of using Conviction Voting for funding decisions, the new DAO can use Tao Voting with a lowered set of parameters for managing the Common Pool and use Tao Voting with hardened parameters to pass any other kind of decision.
- The DAO will be prepared to use multiple tokens as governance tokens. So in the future it will be easier to enable TEC reputation non-transferable tokens if the community decides so.
We will provide a more detailed specification of the DAO architecture and parameters on a subsequent post, as part of the work funded by this proposal.
On top of that, we will provide a report on which contracts hold TEC and a set of recommended strategies so their owners receive the same amount of TEC in their addresses on Optimism. Some of those strategies could be passive (we analyze the contract and determine who are the underlying owners) and some active (the owners should take some action before TEC is migrated).
In August 2023, when we did a preliminary census, there was only 132,786 TEC held in 17 smart contracts, and most of the value locked were in LPs (WATER-TEC and GIV-TEC) and Safes.
Once we have a clearer plan on how each smart contract should be migrated, we will perform a migration rehearsal test and check that the migration can be done without any issue.
After that we will be prepared to perform the real migration, which will consist on a Tao Vote that will move the Common Pool and Reserve wxDAI into a Safe controlled by trusted individuals of the community (still to be decided), and will freeze the transferability of the TEC token.
The multisig will bridge the funds first to mainnet, and from there to Optimism. If there is a chance to change the reserve token, that would be a good moment, and we could assist on that. Further discussion on this is happening in the Tam’s post on decisions the community must take.
Once the funds are in Optimism, they should be transferred to the Tao Vote DAO which specification was already shared previously in the forum, controlled by the brand new TEC tokenholders. The new token address should be updated in Coingecko.
The Augmented Bonding Curve should be open shortly afterwards, allowing people to convert between the reserve and TEC tokens.
How does this proposal benefit the community and/or the field of Token Engineering?
This proposal helps TECommons by:
- Lowering the Friction. The process of buying $TEC has very high friction. One must be on Gnosis Chain, acquire xDAI, wrap the xDAI, and only then can one use the wxDAI to buy $TEC. The process to buy $TEC from optimism will greatly reduce this friction. One will need to be on Optimism, and can then simply swap the tbd reserve asset for $TEC.
- Access to Capital. Optimism has a much higher TVL than Gnosis Chain, and much better integrations with centralized exchanges.
- RetroPGFs. Choosing Optimism as TEC new home makes it easier to receive retroactive public goods funding in the future.
Amount requested
For the successful execution and completion of the tasks at hand, we request a total allocation of 15,000 wxDAI. Here’s a breakdown of the funding:
- An initial sum of 6,000 wxDAI would cover the Deliverables #1 and #2 (see below). These deliverables will outline the technical migration plan in meticulous detail.
- Subsequently, a provision of 9,000 wxDAI would be spent on the rehearsal test and the actual migration phase.
How will these funds be used?
| # | Task | Amount (wxDAI) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prepare a census of TEC tokenholders and a migration strategy for each contract that holds TEC. This may include the writing of smart contracts to allow partial transferability of TEC in order to recover the funds put in LPs. | 6,000 |
| 2 | Prepare a vote that moves the funds of both the Common Pool and the Reserve, and freezes the TEC token making it non-transferable on Gnosis. | 4,000 |
| 3 | Create a Tao Voting DAO on Optimism with the same token distribution than in Gnosis (exceptuating the contracts which will have a different migration strategy defined in Task #1). Include an Augmented Bonding Curve that will be open when the funds are transferred to the new DAO. | 5,000 |
What does success look like?
This criteria should be met to call this proposal done:
- The funds from the Gardens DAO on Gnosis should be successfully migrated to Optimism.
- The tokenholders who had TEC tokens on Gnosis should have the same tokens on Optimism. The tokens on Gnosis should be non-transferable.
- Operations should be able to continue as normal after the small period of time in which the migration takes place (we aim to complete the process in 24h after the execution of the Migration Vote on Gnosis). This includes:
- A new frontend should be available to manage the DAO by TEC tokenholders.
- A new frontend should be available to mint and burn TEC in the bonding curve.
How will you share progress?
We will publish three deliverables in the forum before we create the Migration Vote:
-
Deliverable #1: TEC tokenholder census and migration strategy. The census will include:
- List of LPs in which TEC is in.
- List of Safes that hold TEC.
- List of other contracts that are holding TEC and who can recover it.
- Step-by-step strategies on how to remove the TEC from those contracts, who to contact to to make it done, and timelines on which action should be done.
- Deliverable #2: Specification of the new DAO on Optimism, with the same parameters as in the current DAO on Gnosis when possible (we will recommend others when it is not possible, and let the community decide).
- Deliverable #3: Results of the rehearsal test done weeks before the migration vote.
Team Information
- Sem - Software engineer and former tech lead at Commons Swarm, the team who deployed the TEC on Gnosis. Main responsible of this migration.
- Jorvixsky - Frontend developer at ABCswap and ABClaunchpad. Co-author of the report on the migration strategies.
- Pinglu - Software engineer new to Solidity but with lots of experience on other languages. She will write and run the tests to ensure the migration will be successful.
Complementary information
The team is also working on deploying an ABCswap page on Optimism which can replace the current TEC Convert page with frontend built on a more modern stack of technologies. The cost of building and deploying this service is already covered by an Optimism Grant, and we can offer a small customization for TEC so it can have it’s own swap page still in convert.tecommons.org.