Hello World!

Welcome to the first Eco Community update. This publication is a bi-monthly digest that covers all of the events, developments and news relevant to the Ecoverse.

Every few weeks we’ll be updating the community about key aspects of the Eco Protocol including Trustee Communications, Monetary Policy decisions, implemented EGPs (Eco Governance Proposals), community projects and events as well as themes from the broader markets that are relevant to Eco. This is a community first effort with various members taking responsibility for each section. I’m writing this introduction and will most likely have a hand in production for the near future, but the ultimate goal (as with all other aspects of the Eco protocol.) is to hand this off to our community to maintain and grow once its up and running.

So…if you’re a community member looking to get involved in Eco and this kind of work speak to your interests feel free to reach out!

I also want to thank all of the contributors to this first update, @Elena,
@Rob|Eco, @Rohit | Eco Inc and @ildar utebaev there’s a lot going on in the Ecoverse and it’s great to have team of committed members help us stay on top of it all!

Now let’s jump in!

Trustees & Eco Monetary Policy Updates

Thanks to Eco Trustee @Elena for this section of the update.

The first Eco Monetary Policy Cycle was a success in terms of Trustee engagement both in discussions around the proposals and on-chain voting.

• 15 total proposals were submitted. @Mikeweb summarized a few of the proposals here. Twelve proposals were discussed in the Trustees Private forum, of those, six were shared in the Eco community forum. For future cycles, Trustees discussed the possibility of coalescing around fewer distinct proposals as opposed to many similar proposals as well as standardizing how proposals are shared with the community, be it on Discord or the Forum.

• Once the proposal phase concluded, 19 trustees committed their vote and 17 successfully revealed their votes resulting in 77% “trustee turnout”. @MikeWeb summarized the results here:

• @Dave |Eco is organizing several calls this week for Trustees to share learnings and discuss the upcoming cycle. We will report any relevant updates in the Trustee-Community Discord channel.

• What we’re reading: Deep Dive into Crypto Asset Ownership from Into the Block, How might we create a monetary constitution for Eco? from Stablecoin Labs, Denationalization of Money by Friedrich Hayek.

Governance | Proposals

To date, all Eco Governance Cycles have been used to propose and deploy critical protocol updates identified by the Eco Currency Team and via an ongoing Immunifi bounty program. They have been universally supported by the community and have all been implemented smoothly. To review the list of passed proposals and updates head to our Forum.

Partnerships | Growth

Thanks to Rohit Krishnan, Eco Inc Growth Lead for this section of the update.

As we begin to find our footing in the open markets (both crypto and traditional), it's time to turn our attention towards making $ECO ubiquitous as an actual currency to save, share and transact with. The goal here is simple: increase $ECO’s GDP. This is an audacious goal and to hit it we have to move towards it intentionally and methodically, step by step. That's what we will be focusing on this year. We will begin by finding ways for you to earn, save and spend your hard earned $ECO. This means focusing on offering even better traditional benefits within the Eco App (imagine better rates or boosts within your banking app), and also introducing a larger selection of merchant partners.

We’re also excited to explore more ways to build this economy with the whole community: to start, we’d love to start developing a marketplace where we can buy and sell from each other, planting the seeds of the Economy.

While we’re cooking, we’d also love to hear from you! If you have a burning idea of what you would like to use $ECO for, or even new exciting ways we could introduce $ECO to new markets, we’re all ears!

Community | Culture | Events

Thanks to Eco Community Members @Lilishka and @ildar utebaev for this section of the update.

There have been a number of qualitative structural changes in Eco Discord since the launch of $ECO. We are now open to the world and welcome new members! Everyone can find opportunities to get involved in the community, and we'd love to help you do that! We came to Eco to win, and we will win together!

What does this Season hold for us?
For the start of the First Season, The Eco Association  allocated 1,000,000 $ECO, which will be distributed over the course of three months in the form of Points. Season 1 began January 4th 2023 and ends March 31st at 23:59 UTC.

Accumulate Points by participating in Eco community challenges and bounties, then exchange them for $ECO at the end of the Season. (or later, when it suits you) For more details see here.

In order to avoid transaction fees, the Points-based reward system has been brought back with the option to exchange the points for $ECO at the end of the season.

At the end of the Season a snapshot of the each participants' balance will be taken to record everyone's current balance, then balances will be reset and the game will start again. Point holders will have the right to claim $ECO from the communal pot based on their Point balance from the previous Season(s).

To incentivize maximum participation and optimal results, at the end of the first Season the Eco team may adjust the scope of the reward, either increasing or decreasing the amount based on community performance. Everything will depend on the results of Layer 3 coordinated work, and of course, on each participant.

We'll be launching a number of interesting activities very soon, #KYEP!

New Roles.

At the beginning of January, 59 Ecommunity members were given the Layer 3 role.

Layer 3 members manage and distribute the budget allocated by the Eco Association in the first Season (1 million $ECO) for organizing events that maintain a high level of culture within the community and attract new users.

All decisions regarding the budget allocation structure within the community are voted on and made by the majority of Layer 3 members. Each member of the Ecommunity has the opportunity to get the Layer 3 role being active and participating in the development of the project. Also, this role is not permanent, members can be added or removed via a majority decision.

New Opportunities.

The Team of Trustees, after reviewing a large number of proposals, voted in favor of the first Monetary Policy that includes $ECO staking capabilities. 

Anyone can lock in their $ECO tokens for 30 days and get 5% APR (that's about 0.41% for 30 days of staking).

See the Proposal here - https://governance.eco.org/account

All transactions are made in Ethereum network.

Importantly, once tokens are staked - they become unavailable for other uses. If a staked tokens are removed before the end of the 30-day staking period, the tokens are subject to a penalty that corresponds to the percentage rate.

Tools Built on Eco

We would like to thank several members of our community for excellent technological solutions. @flarcos, who created a BOT that will allow community members to transfer $ECO token inside Discord without transaction fees.

Right now the bot is in the final stages of testing and we look forward to using it. Also our dear friend, @yulston has created a BOT that will simplify the decision-making process for small grants and speed up the process of voting and promoting ideas within the Eco system.

You can learn more about this great solution here.

Great idea for an ECO ID verifier from @Jeremie.

An ECO ID interface site will be available to users and it will allow basic attestation by verifiers, so that anyone can become a verifier and create ECO ID attestations.

There is a wide range of opportunities to use ECO ID to begin building reputation. It will allow community members to attest to identity, build governance systems, use decentralized social networks, build recommendation systems based on attestations, provide access to various products and paid sites (purchase of subscriptions), business projects, stores selling attestations.

The ability to revoke attestations will also be very useful feature, as access or status can actually reflect real time status and change if needed.

The Ecommunity is open to everyone and is a space for like-minded and crypto enthusiasts! There are many interesting collaborations and events ahead of us.

Crypto | Tradfi Updates

Thanks to Eco Community Manager @Rob | Eco Inc for this section.

Crypto

• Immutable X seeing phenomenal growth.

  • Will on-chain gaming become a mainstay as opposed to a grifter fad?

• Uniswap Labs announces on-chain foreign exchange model.

• Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) is approaching launch—Documentation | Twitter Thread

• MakerDAO estimated to earn ~2% annual yield on USDC deposits after approved deployment of $100M USDC on Yearn— Twitter thread

• Genesis, one of the largest crypto lenders has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Jan 19th. They owe over $3.5 Billion to more than 50 creditors.

• Coinbase Director Conor Grogan alludes to Binance front running prices on tokens in a recent Tweet thread

• Binance stored user funds with collateral in “error” 

Recent Hacks/Hack Updates:

• Address associated with $323 million Wormhole exploit that occurred in February is swapping assets.

  • Most notably a consolidation into ETH then initiating a swap for 95,630 ETH ($157.2 million @ time of swap) into Lido’s staked ETH (stETH) via the DEX aggregator OpenOcean.

  • The stETH was then swapped for 86,473 wrapped staked ETH (wsETH), which is Lido’s liquid staked ether derivative.

  • The user then took out a $13 million DAI loan which = ~ 7,989.5ETH via KyberNetwork which can be seen on-chain here

  • Wormhole responded with an on-chain message offering a $10 million dollar bounty award “for the return of all stolen funds” in an on-chain message.

  • Here’s a funny song about the event for the audible/visual/comedic learners from songadaymann.

• North Korea’s Lazarus Group confirmed by FBI as group behind the $100M Harmony Hack—same group who allegedly had hand in Ronin bridge hack.

• Raydium exploiter moves $2.7 million to Tornado Cash.

Fear & Greed Indexes:

• Bitcoin Fear & Greed Index

• Ethereum Fear & Greed Index

• Ultra sound money data.

TradFi

• US Government hit its $31.4 trillion debt limit

• Inflation – Overall inflation for Dec. dropped to 6.5% from 7.1% in Nov on an annual basis. Sign that things are moving in the right direction aka rate hikes are slowing down the economy.

• CPI – Consumer Price Index data came out Thursday, January 12th and almost immediately impacted the stock market.

• Mild Recession? Soft Landing? What comes next?— Kyla Scanlon provides a diligent take

• NYSE briefly Halts Trading for 81 stocks for LULD (Limit Up-Limit Down) A mechanism intended to prevent trades in National Market System (NMS securities from occurring outside of specified price bands (Nasdaq Trader).

• PYMNTS has identified 4 emerging trends shaping EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) Banking Sector in 2023:

  • UAE and Saudi Arabia Lead MENA Neobank Wave

  • African Banks Collaborate w/ FinTechs

  • European Banks Doubling Down on Sustainability

  • Banks Called to Connect to CBDC Systems

Fun Reads

Arthur Hayes macro outlook - https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/bouncy-castle-1b92183c61a1

PayPal and Mastercard Dissect ‘Cooperation in a Fragmented World’ at Davos - https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2023/mastercard-holiday-gifts-and-get-togethers-drove-retail-sales-in-december/

Final Words

Like everything we do at Eco, this first edition of our Community Update has been a group effort and I’d like to thank all of the contributors one more time for making this publication possible. Keep Your Eyes Peeled for another Community Update in two weeks time. To learn more about Eco visit our Website and if you haven’t already make sure to join our community in Discord and follow us on Twitter for the latest updates and developments in the Ecommunity!