ApeCoin DAO committee is about to undergo a change of leadership, or will it be deployed on Optimism?

Potential Leadership Change in ApeCoin DAO Committee, or Will It Move to Optimism Platform?

Author: Sharon

Table of Contents:

• The community is discussing the salary issue of its members
• New proposal by ApeCoin DAO: deploying ApeChain on Optimism

Yesterday, several industry KOLs participated in the election for the special committee of ApeCoin DAO. This includes over 20 nominees, such as 0xAndy.eth (@0xAndy_eth), a core member of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) Taiwan team, and Balou.eth (@BalouBAYC), co-founder of ApeTownio.

According to official sources from ApeCoin DAO, this election will select 3 nominees to join the special committee of ApeCoin DAO, and a new round of community governance will commence from January 1, 2024.

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Image source: ApeCoin DAO

What’s more interesting than the election is the recent frequent actions of ApeCoin DAO.

The community is discussing the salary issue of its members

Regarding the special committee of ApeCoin DAO, many members of the current community have some grievances, but the previous special committee was once a gathering of “stellar” individuals.

In March 2022, ApeCoin DAO and ApeCoin were launched simultaneously. ApeCoin is the native token of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT ecosystem issued by Yuga Labs, while ApeCoin DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization specifically designed to handle token-related affairs. Any holder of ApeCoin is a member of ApeCoin DAO and makes decisions together regarding fund allocation, governance rules, partnerships, and other matters.

Initially, in order to promote decentralization and community-driven governance, the Ape Foundation was established to act as the steward of ApeCoin DAO. Its tasks include managing the decisions of ApeCoin DAO and handling daily administrative, recording, and project management affairs to ensure smooth implementation of the DAO community’s ideas.

The Ape Foundation also established a special committee, the special committee of ApeCoin DAO, specifically responsible for supervising the foundation’s managers and managing DAO proposals and community services.

This special committee was initially composed of 5 members with a term of 6 months, after which DAO members would vote for board members annually. At its inception, this special committee was indeed a gathering of “stellar” individuals.

The initial committee members included Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit; Amy Wu, venture capitalist and gaming executive at FTX; Maaria Bajwa, head of venture capital at Sound; Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands; and Dean Steinbeck, CEO and legal advisor at Horizen Labs.

However, on November 20, 2022, ApeCoin (@apecoin) announced on official social media that Maaria, Dean, and Amy have resigned from their positions in the special committee of ApeCoin DAO and will not run for re-election in the upcoming election.

The special committee of ApeCoin DAO, which has lost three star players, continues to operate as usual, but recently there has been a discussion in the community about the issue of committee members’ salaries.

According to BlockBeats observations, on October 20th, according to the Snapshot page, the ApeCoin DAO community initiated a vote on the proposal to “reduce the salaries of special committee members by 50%” (from a monthly 20,833 ApeCoin to a monthly 10,417 ApeCoin). The proposal points out that from a financial perspective, this move could potentially save ApeCoin DAO up to 104,165 ApeCoin in costs per month.

It is worth noting that the vote ended on October 26th, and although the result was not passed, the difference between support and opposition was not significant (58.22% against, 41.78% in favor), which does mean that many community members do believe that the salaries of the special committee members should not be too high.

The voices in support of this proposal state that the work of the special committee is not to expand or increase the value of tokens, it is mainly administrative work: “So whether the tokens perform well or not is not important to them. Therefore, in my opinion, it is a bit of a gray area to attract talent with high salaries.”

Those opposing the proposal point out that “salary review should be conducted after determining the expectations, time/hours/functions of the review committee, as well as the type of people you want to attract… The current salary may be considered very low and may not attract talent… Cutting salaries is easy, but if there is no background and the goals we are striving to achieve, then it is actually just scratching the surface.”

ApeCoin DAO New Proposal: Deploy ApeChain on Optimism

Aside from the discussion about its special committee, BlockBeats noted that ApeCoin DAO’s recent proposal also has many noteworthy aspects.

On November 22nd, Ben Jones, co-founder and chief scientist of Optimism, proposed that ApeCoin DAO can develop and maintain its L2 network, ApeChain, on Optimism Superchain.

Ben Jones stated that this can help ApeCoin DAO easily deploy and maintain, and ApeCoin DAO can express opinions on the Optimism platform, such as actively participating in governance, helping to guide the future direction of Superchain, and also creating income streams and innovative opportunities.

On the same day, the website of ApeCoin DAO featured a new proposal that aims to appoint a dedicated team to deploy, manage, and operate ApeChain.

The proposal states that the team has chosen to support Layer-2 rollups and is committed to deploying ApeChain on Optimism as part of the Optimism superchain ecosystem, with plans to become a core contributor to the Optimism Foundation. The proposal emphasizes that Optimism has committed to supporting ApeChain by granting up to 20 million OP tokens based on milestones.

And the recommended team mentioned in the proposal, like the founding members of the former ApeCoin DAO Special Committee, is also a star-studded lineup.

The proposal hopes that this team will consist of Nicholas Lin, a former Ethereum Foundation developer, Jimmy X, the technical co-founder of Velodrome Finance, Indigo, former chief engineer of Olympus DAO, Fully, former protocol architect of OlympusDAO, Exodia, co-founder of Solend, Rooter, co-founder of Solend, Nope, Chief Technology Officer of Solend, Dasichuan, backend engineer of Solend, Ripleys, former engineer at Two Sigma, Jackie Lee, web3 game/metaverse builder of AnotherWorld.gg, Bradley, co-founder of X Marketplace, Lumberg, founding member of MetaCartel Ventures, and MachiBigBrother, DeFi OG.

At the same time, the proposal also mentions that the costs associated with the deployment, management, and operation of ApeChain can be handled through the launch of ApeChain (AC) tokens or by requesting grants from ApeCoin. If the DAO chooses to launch the ApeChain token, the ApeChain team will be responsible for raising funds to finance all operations, and the AC token will be distributed as a governance token to ApeCoin stakers.

As of the time of writing, the proposal has not yet completed voting and is in the “preliminary discussion” process. However, according to observations by BlockBeats, community members’ comments tend to support the proposal as a whole, with some even suggesting that they should emulate the recent popularity of Blast. BlockBeats will continue to follow whether the ApeCoin DAO will pass this proposal and if ApeChain will progress smoothly.

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