Discussion: What should the gitcoin community multisig do with the donated AKITA

Dai · May 13, 2021, 3:52am

I didn’t realize GitCoin / community have so many people think of themselves as so “righteous” that they can label a project as they want and reck a community of token holders like nothing happens.

Indeed the tokens are in GitCoin wallet, you can do whatever you want. But please do not use your “fund public good” flag to do evil, that makes me disgusted. Let me put it in this way, you are a venture backed company that tries to pump your valuation in the capital market and one day get rich from building this company, you are NOT a non-profit organization.

Whatever AKITA is, there are thousands of retail investors bought the token. Now you think you can reck these people because you are doing something righteous, and label AKITA a useless meme or scam, sell tokens in exchange for YOUR OWN BENEFITS. Please stop talking about funding public good.

You even mentioned to use the blood money to buy back shares from Consensys and VCs?? And what? Take back control from the investors or what? Is it that if you say something politically correct then you can decide other people’s fate?

Are you willing to disclose your identity? If not, I might even think you are a sent by the GitCoin team to test community tolerance. (Notably you said you worked for GitCoin but you didn’t participate in any previous discussion, ONLY THIS ONE)

Do NOT talk about “funding public good” any more, I am disgusted.

So, community, what do you think?

Reader_kk · May 13, 2021, 3:56am

Remember. Gitcoin’s purpose is to fund open source (and public goods)
gitcoin is for open source,
Akita is a meme coin, (after a short read) which aims to move towards real use case, which is built upon open source. in finance terms, there is a mechanism to have decentralized finance. Therefore, defi and open source both in one meme token. meme is their way to do marketing. behind the curtain, there are hardcore technical coding from open source, possibility of improving to the next version.

i think we shouldn’t bash each other like this. we are both in the open source community.

and…

a research on Profile - Adamscochran - Gitcoin Governance which has been voicing out strongly against Akita, sounds like fudding, as this guy joined only 7 hours ago. if you are not going to make constructive suggestion to the gitcoin community, please stay neutral.

disclaimer: I joined 10 minutes ago. look at my statement and see if what i have said is right or wrong.

to properly handle this huge windfall given by vb, we should first think. Has gitcoin been surviving with or without vb’s contribution? someone mentioned vb’s contribution as tainted money (this guy joined 1 day ago) . I would say I would like to throw back the tokens back to them or burn them off, solved all the headache. but that’s not the right way to manage this situation. JimWarren joined 1hr ago, so he might be coming from a perspective as Akita token holder. (sorry about that)

when suggesting to dump the token, it is akin to some manipulator in stock market with a huge holding dumping their stock and causing the price to crash. in the real world, we have regulations to monitor these. but in the decentralized world, are we going to do this? I understand this is permissionless and trustless system, you can do what you can with what you have on your hands. but that would create chaos. that’s why we need governance in blockchain, in cryptocurrency, there is a community voting system.

planckmatt suggestion sounds good. for Akita community to offer Gitcoin the same amount of funds if we are to sell Akita token now. price would possible doubled BUT nobody will be willing to give their token up. (Akita holders would love you for this)

my humble suggestion: if we are to sell, for gitcoin to spread the selling over 3 years. that means 50% of Akita tokens (what we have now) divided by (365*2) 1095. that would amount to 0.0456% daily. this percentage is calculated to be the no. 65 Akita holder (quite a big dent already). These funds are not us to begin with. even if we get a fraction of it, we could still do good with public goods funding. and considering the humanity impact it will cause the holder of Akita tokens. you could say most of them might be degen and moonboy but are we going to judge them and punish them like this? who are we at gitcoin to do that? we are not at the level to judge.

the other suggestion is to work with the this relic from Akita, (please confirm his identity by some means that he is the dev - sorry need to factual) to produce a passive income to have funding rolling in for the years to come. we could say that this is our golden goose. worse case, we get 1/3 of the funds (hopefully during the period of collaboration, funds rolls in weekly) after collaboration as project fails.

remember what lefterisjp said: Gitcoin’s purpose is to fund open source (and public goods). we are both in the open source and now Akita could be our evergreen funding wallet for years to come if we managed it properly.

Dai · May 13, 2021, 4:02am

Who is this guy @cupOjoseph?

@owocki Do you know him? If he worked for GitCoin.

Dai · May 13, 2021, 4:07am

Also, can we stop talking about “funding public goods” for a moment here? It looks like you guys are using funding public goods as something to justify your decisions. Let’s solve the problem first before you “fund public goods”.

papa_raw · May 13, 2021, 7:47am

So a few things here:

Dumping the tokens will rightfully piss off the community that supports them, and it’s ethically problematic to pretend that this community doesn’t matter (I’m sort of ashamed by the long-timers whose instant gut reaction was to do this)
We have a funding mechanism to distribute funding at scale. This mechanism has been used successfully with other ERC-20s, such as Panvala PAN token. If you look at PAN, it’s not that different from SHIBA in terms of utility.

Why not distribute SHIBA using the thoughtful and effective QF mechanism in a special SHIBA round? Why should Gitcoin have to take the moral burden of arbitrating of what’s right and wrong, here? My proposed compromise is to push these coins out to the “open-source community” and let them decide using the very same mechanism that’s meant to mediate these types of moral distribution issues.

A related Tweet, to help ground our intent:

Reader_kk · May 13, 2021, 8:13am

another way is to progressively convert bit of Akita , for a start, say 2% out of the 50% to eth, then create a liquidity pool using this initial 2% (in ether) with 2% Akita token. if this solution is a welcome action by the akita community and people are drawn to akita token, thus boosting the demand for akita token, the liquidity pool which we have in 2% ether/ 2% akita will become full one sided 4% ether.

then we remove liquidity and with our 4% in ether, we go on to add 4% akita to form the liquidity pool of 4% ether/ 4% akita. this way, eventually we will get 25% ether/ 25% akita. by that time, we are constantly earning liquidity fees of 1% (listed under exotic asset)

these can be done by bot to detect the full shift to near ether, then bot remove liquidity using uniswap api, then add liquidity as mentioned above, using up more akita until it is a balance of 25% ether/ 25% akita.

win-win situation for both gitcoin and akita, “nonviolent and solely based on cultures of consent”[Miko Matsumura]

wschwab · May 13, 2021, 8:55am

I’d like to just try to aggregate and summarize some ideas mentioned until now and add some opinions to them:

Option 1: Use AKITA for funding

The basic premise of this option is using AKITA to fund the Grants pools. The question is how best to execute this. Communication with the AKITA community is likely something a public-goods group should do - Gitcoin does not have to let the AKITA community decide how much of the funds should be used, nor how they should be used, but communicating with the community about it is likely beneficial. (Though it may require a large amount of patience and compassion.)

Similarly, dumping everything is unlikely to benefit anyone. A slow burn rate communicated clearly is likely to be more sustainable for the AKITA community, and seems more ethically in line with Gitcoin. A potential downside is if there is significant abandonment of AKITA (also called dumping) on this news, but I do not think Gitcoin’s goals should be maximization of financial value.

tl;dr if Gitcoin would like to use the AKITA for funding public goods, it should be done on a schedule transparently, and at a burn rate that is more sustainable

Option 2: Don’t Touch It

Mainly inspired by @tjayrush , there is the option of not touching something antithetical to Gitcoin. In this option, Gitcoin should likely either burn the funds or pass the bag back to Vitalik. Finding an AKITA community steward seems an unlikely possibility unless there is overwhelming AKITA community support, which would be hard to gauge imho. Burning should not adversely affect AKITA holders, if anything, reducing supply should make the value of their holdings go up, but is still taking a direct financial choice with the funds. Sending them back would be the most pure way for Gitcoin to wash their hands of the funds.

I am a member of the Ethereum Cat Herders. If there is any way we can assist Gitcoin with whatever Gitcoin chooses, or in facilitating comms, feel free to reach out.

owocki · May 13, 2021, 2:16pm

Heads up - It sounds like PolyGon (who received SHIB tokens from Vitalik), is considering using Wintermute (or a similar market maker) to handle the donations by Vitalik on their side.

This community might want to consider engaging them as well.

owocki · May 13, 2021, 2:24pm

Hi everyone,

Just so you know funding public goods is Gitcoin’s mission (About us | Gitcoin) so thats why you’re getting a lot of heat about that topic.

Curious how you’d frame the problem here?

I’m mindful that the Gitcoin community’s problem (how do we solve public goods) might be different than the AKITA community (I’m only guessing here but I guess it might be : how do we not crash the market / destroy our pgoress?). Protocol politics is the art of the possible, so my north star would be coordinating to find a path forward that meets both community’s goals.

Yes he worked for Gitcoin (the company) a few years ago but does not anymore.

My 2c as a community member myself: I think it might be fruitful to come up with 3-5 paths forward and put them to a vote.

Root · May 13, 2021, 2:32pm

[Personal Opinion]

I don’t have anything against AKITA community, however, I don’t think AKITA has any technology to offer where there are tons of similar projects with possibly more added value to the world.

I think having multiple approaches to vote on is a good idea, but at the same time spending any more time on this means less time on actual development and helping the public good. It might be a better approach to do the all as well:

Burn 33% of the token help by Gitcoin community multisig
Liquidate another 33% and distribute between active projects in Gitcoin ecosystem or start new grant programs to help under representative groups
Send 33% back to the AKITA community (possibly with a year vesting)

omnianalytics · May 13, 2021, 3:20pm

The solution to this should include as much cross-collaboration with the AKITA community as feasibly possible and socially acceptable. The reality is, $5M isn’t going to create a self-sustaining Gitcoin, but $100M just might. To extract $100M or anything close to that amount, the AKITA community will need to not only mature, but grow large enough to engender market demand that can sustain the multiples of millions of dollars in liquidity Gitcoin would need to support the sale of their position. This reality links, and ultimately aligns, the two communities. Even though Gitcoin has been gifted AKITA’s treasury, the public goods community has something else to offer AKITA , legitimacy. Having a noble purpose to support open source projects takes AKITA beyond just being one of many DOGE-clones into a more sustainable status as the go to coin for those who want to meme and do good. I believe this is the way to maximize the potential of the opportunity given to Gitcoin.

From a practical perspective, after a few basic tweets are published stating that co-community opportunities are being explored and $AKITA holders can be confident there will be no short term dumping of the coin by Gitcoin, then some co-community building begin. This could include:

A portion of the funds to be allocated for bounties that build and support the AKITA ecosystem.
A special Round 10 sponsorship by the AKITA community where CLR Matching of $AKITA can be gamified so that AKITA community members have additional sway in the matching.
Between-round funding initiatives supported by or promoted with AKITA. Considering there isn’t ever much action between funding rounds, this could add a bit of life to the platform during down times.
Initiate partnerships with educational platforms like rabbithole.gg to onboard the AKITA community into the broader Ethereum ecosystem.

The grand irony in this is that the most valuable thing here isn’t the money, but the access to a large community that could potentially be evangelized and mobilized to work on behalf of open source and the overall public good. If that’s successful, it literally unlocks a war chest that can be used to sustain Gitcoin in perpetuity. This approach is idealistic, sure, but offers the highest potential reward and since Gitcoin isn’t struggling, why not shoot for the moon?

isaac · May 13, 2021, 3:25pm

I have been thinking about this all day, wondering if it is best to sell as much as possible, or to try energise the project (like how sushi devs rugged, before later redeeming themselves and actually contributing to the ecosystem).

The question I land on is why should Akita receive the support from this community to develop it into something meaningful and useful, when there are already so many underfunded, understaffed, and non-meme non-PnD projects out there that could do with the support?

If we had been just handed cold cash, how would that have been invested? most likely put up as match funds for the grants rounds. We have this ball of energy, with which we can invigorate projects we (the gitcoin grants donors) think deserve it. Does Akita deserve this energy? Is there something more deserving of it?

If akita team is committed to their work then they can create a gitcoin grants profile, explain what they are doing, and be applying for the funding on the same level as all other projects in the space.

My conclusion is sell as much as you can as soon as you can. There is no guilt here, the money will go into supporting community projects as gitcoin always does.

Even if you sell the 10% for the $5m, you’ll still have 90% of the tokens left, you could airdrop them to gitcoin grants donors and then the community might see that as some incentive to do something with akita and give it a reason to have value.

If the plan is to sell you should act swiftly. If you wait around for a vote, then as soon as the vote leans towards selling the prices will collapse.

owocki · May 13, 2021, 3:48pm

been chatting a bit with banteg; who understand DeFi way more than me. here are two of their suggestions (neither of which i specifically endorse, just communicating what i’ve heard)

you can also probably try making a limit order on http://match.xyz
Make a Gitcoin Endowment Convert them to something valuable using https://gnosis-auction.eth.link Then put it into Yearn and have all the future rounds secured by yield. we used gnosis auction for token buyback and it was pretty scary because it seemed people don’t understand how it works. but ultimately it cleared very close to the market, like 0.2% difference.

jpitts · May 13, 2021, 4:02pm

Selling scam tokens thrown on your doorstep is tricky. To immediately sell is not pragmatic, considering the slippage. To quietly sell a large holding of a meme coin (or possibly even any highly over-valued asset) is unethical; it takes advantage of people potentially being scammed.

One key thing to remember though: Gicoin owes the token holders and community nothing. A sell operation to DAI should only be bounded by the market mechanics, our general ethical responsibility, and Gitcoin’s mission.

It would be good to know from more experienced traders how to do this sell w/ the following constraints:

simplicity
general transparency
unload it all within a few weeks

With these in mind, I would propose making the operation public, and selling the AKITA token at regular intervals in blocks that keep getting larger.

Adamscochran · May 13, 2021, 4:51pm

I think the challenge is that the simplicity, transparency and timeline here all counter act the effectiveness of the trade as the asset is so microcap that it is monopolized by bots, market makers and dark forest types.

Your options are really memory pool bypass swaps, or hoping an OTC market maker like Wintermute or Alameda would take it on for you. Unlike the SHIBA token, ATIKA doesn’t have the major markets that those kinds of traders operate on and so I doubt you’d get much.

Since that leaves you on chain you get a MEV/dark forest issue, anything you publish gets front run either when its in the mempool, or manually when announced on a timeline.

I think the balance is to announce that you are selling the asset and the intention is clear, but not to announce the mechanic.

I think the social contract obligation of a large holder should be treated no differently than that of a small holder in this case, so I dispute the claim of it being unethical as it isn’t Gitcoin who built the project or hyped it. But, I can see middle ground merit in making clear that they plan to sell the token and after that doing as they see best fit for Gitcoin.

The other problem baked into the assumption of many of the users (whom I’d guess are from the ATIKA community) is that they propose other models will work as those models assume ATIKA will be worth more (or anything) at future time X. While I disagree with that view, even then we’d have to consider that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

relic · May 13, 2021, 8:16pm

Reading some of the recent posts I have to say I am mortified. Its literally a bunch of people telling each other how to most efficiently gut our project. This is the reality, every token you extract value from effectively takes it away from someone in our project.

Our governance model relies on the tokens being out of circulation.

This project has been my life for the past four months.

So I’m just a little startled to see these kind of brutal ideas being thrown around so easily.

omnianalytics · May 13, 2021, 8:22pm

At this point in time, @relic, I think the best thing you can do is provide advice and ideas for Gitcoin x AKITA collaborations. From there, just be patient and let the conversation evolve. It’s only been 24 hours, so no need to panic.

nickjohnson · May 13, 2021, 11:24pm

Then why did you give them to Vitalik?

castall · May 14, 2021, 2:15am

I think this would be a great outcome if it’s possible. I bet the investors would be in a better position to deal with an asset like this. I know you want the community to decide @owocki , but we would need your help executing it. Is it possible in your estimation?

My other favorite option (using whatever is left over after the above) is the one by @papa_raw to use QF. I don’t think it needs to be a special round–just an additional matching pool (and additional multisig) with all the Akita in it. We measure and report matching in terms of Dai, like always, and all the other normal considerations which you can read about here. The Akita wouldn’t be included in the UI estimations for matching–recipients can just consider it a special, unadvertised bonus. We don’t have to set any expectations about how much it will be worth or how recipients should use it.

Update:
After talking with @relic on telegram, I’ve come to learn that they are in the middle of setting up a community or ecosystem fund and that there will soon be ways to stake Akita, so in my opinion we should hold off distributing Akita tokens as part of a grants round until these options are in place.

Dai · May 14, 2021, 6:28am

First of all, while the GitCoin community is talking about how you can extract value from the AKITA coins, thousands of AKITA holders have already been doomed. Do they deserve it just because they hold a meme token?

Funding public good is your business (every business creates some value, including yours), and you benefit from that. Maybe temporarily you don’t benefit from revenue, but you benefit from growing your platform, which gives you higher valuation. So it’s definitely not all about “doing good to the world”, if I were you, I would think about using this money to secure the company’s funding source too. But if the AKITA community is doomed because of you, you have blood on your hand. That’s why I said, let’s STOP talking about funding public goods for a moment. Communism murdered millions of people, but in the first place they had good cause – to improve public goods too.

It looks like your community is talking about how you can use OTCs, Defis to extract value while trying to ignore the problem of AKITA community. When you are discussing it, they have already lost so much money.

Having said that, I do think there are some ways you can work with AKITA community. There are a few possibilities moving ahead.

dump the tokens and extract cash from it – blood is on your hand.
work with @relic and AKITA team, come up with a common goal (including funding public goods of course), and make AKITA a token to support public goods.
(Note that GitCoin team might want to issue token (or maybe not, who knows) but you don’t have a good excuse to do it, it’s an opportunity to convert a token that works for your goal, without having the burden to be a token issuer. But, you do need to design a token economics that actually works, so that it has some real utility)
If you can’t work with AKITA team in the end, you should probably just return most of the tokens back to AKITA community and as @relic mentioned, they would like you to keep 10%, which is good enough for you guys to secure enough funding to “fund public goods”, by whatever means (OTC, yield farming, Gonsis auction, bondingcurve, whatever) I see previously discussed.

After all, being sanctimonious is disgusting. But if you take care of the AKITA community FIRST, there are several path you can take to move forward.