Gas DAO launched less than 24 hours ago (see our release Mirror post that outlined the high-level goals of the DAO). The past 24 hours have been nothing short of extraordinary as we continue on our journey together to become the first Super-Dao on Ethereum, over 57,000 addresses have claimed the airdrop, and there are over 34,000 unique holders with 90% of wallets still eligible to claim.

Have you spent over $1559 in gas on a time-weighted basis and haven’t claimed yet? Go claim your airdrop here.

Reminder: What is Gas DAO?

Gas DAO’s purpose is simple: to be the voice of the Ethereum network’s active users through on and off-chain governance, launched as a decentralized autonomous organization with a free and fair initial distribution 100x bigger than the original DAO. The eligible wallets form a broad union of the most active users in Defi, DApps and NFTs, giving Gas DAO the potential to be one of the most diverse and impactful communities in the history of Web3 — The Potential is Limitless. We aim to represent the views of the most active Ethereum network users to the core Ethereum developers and Ethereum Foundation.

Roadmap

Since we’re almost at the 24 hour mark, we thought it would be good to give what we think are the high-level goals and the preliminary roadmap. We do urge you, however, to keep in mind that the purpose and goals of Gas DAO are continuously evolving.

High-level goals

• Become the largest, most diverse DAO on Ethereum
• Represent the views of the Ethereum network users to the core Ethereum developers and Ethereum Foundation
• Reduce gas spent on Ethereum

Preliminary roadmap

• Take part in EIP voting
  • We will introduce an EIP to propose that Gas DAO snapshot votes become a step in the EIP finalization process
• Open Zeppelin grant
  • We propose Open Zeppelin build a new version of Open Zeppelin, Open-Zeppelin-LowGas that uses 25-50% less gas without sacrificing security
• Developer grants for Ethereum gas optimization
  • A 7/10 multisig will fund developer grants that are submitted through Google forms and approved through snapshot votes
• A GAS PFP NFT that can be purchased with GAS tokens, which are burned
  • We’ll give our community a way to expand our digital footprint and create a sense of belonging and shared purpose
• Burning the full initial contributor allocation
  • All contributors will send all claimable tokens to the burn address. We’ll tweet out the transactions as proof over the next 24 hours
• Staking GAS with rewards proportional to gas spent while staking
  • Build a staking contract for GAS that gives GAS to stakers proportional to how much gas they use while staking. This will ensure GAS is owned by the most active users of the Ethereum Network

We describe the concrete steps towards all of these goals below.

On-chain Governance Process

While Snapshot polls are great for one-off polling of the community, ultimately the real governance happens with the on-chain Governor and Treasury. The steps to getting a proposal approved on-chain are:

• Heat check: The first step in getting a proposal to be executed on-chain is to post a Heat check on Snapshot. This proposal should be general, asking a question, or proposing an action the DAO should take. If the heat check gains traction, one of our contributors can post it on your behalf. This is to gauge interest in your proposal. Eventually, we will be releasing a Discourse-like forum for governance-related discussion where you need to hold a small amount of GAS tokens to make posts.
• Consensus check: After the heat check passes, you can publish a Consensus Check on Snapshot. This should include the full details of the proposal, including rationale, execution, pros, and cons, and the full on-chain proposal parameters.
• On-chain check: After passing the consensus check, the proposal can be made on-chain. In the coming days, you can use Tally and Boardroom to delegate and cast votes.

While ultimately the on-chain governance is completely decentralized and permissionless, we urge everyone to go through the process above.

Voting on Ethereum Improvement Proposals

The Ethereum network evolves and improves through a process called Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). EIPs are the primary way that developers and community members propose new features and discuss design decisions. From their inception, EIPs follow a transparent process until they are eventually implemented, which can be seen in EIP-1.

Since almost every EIP directly affects Ethereum users the moment they are deployed, the crucial missing piece in the EIP process is the voice of the community. Since Gas DAO is composed of the most active Ethereum users, spanning the NFT, Defi, and Dapp communities,  we believe that a Gas DAO snapshot vote should become one of the steps in the EIP process. In the coming weeks, Gas DAO will publish an EIP proposing a role for Gas DAO in the EIP process. Of course, we will run the EIP through a snapshot vote to make sure that the community agrees. When passed, it will allow Gas DAO to provide its official stance on Ethereum developments, in the crucial period where Ethereum is transitioning to ETH 2.0.

Funding Gas Optimization Research

As Gas DAO’s first two on-chain governance actions, we propose to make a donation to Open-Zeppelin to reduce the gas usage of its contracts, and set up a multi-sig fund for developer grants.

Open-Zeppelin Grant

Open-Zeppelin contracts have been an amazing development for the Ethereum Network, making it much safer and saving users billions of dollars from scams. However, their security and simplicity come at the cost of gas usage. It is well known that Open-Zeppelin contracts use a lot of gas. For example, see this blog post. We believe that security and gas efficiency can exist synergistically, and so, we will be submitting a governance proposal to send 2.5B ΞGAS to the Open-Zeppelin foundation, urging them to build a new version of Open-Zeppelin, Open-Zeppelin-LowGas that uses 25-50% less gas without sacrificing security. Also, by having Open-Zeppelin own GAS tokens, that allows them to vote on proposals, which will be important moving forward as they are so essential to the Ethereum network.

Go vote on the Snapshot heat check here.

Developer grants

Developers do not have much incentive to reduce the gas usage of the contracts they develop. We will be submitting a governance proposal to start a grant system for developers across the world that are researching ways to reduce EVM gas usage. The funds will be sent to a 7/10 multi-sig wallet that will review Google form proposals and put the most promising ones up to a Snapshot consensus vote.

Go vote on the Snapshot heat check here.

Gas NFT

While we recognize the potential of the Gas DAO vision, we would like to expand our digital footprint to spread our message as broadly as possible. In order to create a strong sense of community, brand and identity we will release the genesis ΞGAS NFT collection.

The collection will consist of 10,000 unique ΞGAS NFTs, which can be minted by spending a to-be-determined amount of ΞGAS that will be burned or sent to the treasury to increase its allocation. All of the parameters of the drop will be decided by governance. The ΞGAS NFTs will be < — > themed, and will commemorate early membership in Gas DAO. The NFTs will be minted on Ethereum and stored on Arweave, a decentralized filestore solution.

Core Contributor Allocation Adjustment

We’ve received lots of feedback from the ΞGAS community that the initial contributor allocation is too high, and that too much is immediately claimable. Also, a big ΞGAS holder posted a Snapshot poll along the same lines, which got over 700m votes in favor.

In response to the community, all contributors have agreed to burn their initial claimable amount over the next 24 hours. We will post these transactions on a twitter thread. This means that none of the contributors will own or have access to any ΞGAS tokens until their tokens slowly vest over the next six months. This also reduces the contributor allocation to 12% of the total supply. We believe this is modest in comparison to comparable DAO token allocations (e.g. relative to the 39.31% allocated to the team and investors in the Uniswap airdrop). We also pledge that each contributor will not delegate or vote (except for @bobby-axelrod will delegate 1B tokens to submit on-chain proposals and vote on Snapshots) to reduce concerns that the contributing team holds too much voting power. The contributors are fully committed to the long-term vision and success of this project and want the DAO to be as decentralized and permissionless as possible.

GAS Staking

Going forward, we want to ensure that GAS is owned by the most active Ethereum NFT, Defi, and Dapp users. To this end, we plan on launching a GAS staking contract where you can stake your GAS for wGAS. While it’s staked you will be continuously earning a refund for the gas you spend determined by a formula. After several months of the staking contract being launched, we will launch a proposal that begins the airdrop to those who have staked.

Socials

Go claim your allocation by visiting our claim website, get involved by joining the Discord, and support us on social media by engaging with Twitter.