The Genesis DAO

OlympusDAO
4 min readMar 11, 2021

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We want to decentralize this thing as fast as possible. Most of the core components of the system will be in place at launch or soon after. There are plenty of new things to add, but the what and when will be decided by the community.

However, we need to keep safety in mind. It’s a dangerous move to lock the system or distribute power to the community too early. What if there’s a bug, or one whale buys up enough supply for sole decision-making power while tokens are cheap/supply is low?

To balance our ideals and goals with reality, we are launching with a Genesis DAO setup inspired by the guys at BarnBridge. The Genesis DAO is an Aragon company composed of team members, investors, and advisors. The Genesis DAO exists for no purpose beyond executing the decisions of the community.

Here’s how it’ll work

All decisions will be made via snapshot, using OHM as voting power. Following a vote, the Genesis DAO will prepare the necessary contracts/transactions and put it to an internal vote. DAO members have been instructed to only vote “for” if it is in line with the community’s decision. Thus, we are not making decisions, we are merely executing them.

This allows us to cede decision-making power to the community without putting the protocol at risk. We intend to transition iteratively from this setup to full on-chain voting and governance.

What powers are held?

The Genesis DAO holds all critical powers. These include fund rescue functions in case of exploit or bug, contract ownership for migrations, and control over the DAO treasury. All decisions are subject to a 30% quorum, 70% consensus, and 2 day voting period. We encourage you to track actions and verify they are in accordance with the decisions of the community.

The team will retain a few non-critical powers that may be needed on shorter notice. These are policy control and halt functions. In the case that something bad happens, we cannot move funds or change contracts, but we can halt the ones that exist. We believe this is a solid division ensuring safety of funds while retaining critical abilities to move quickly when we need to.

When would the Genesis DAO overrule a snapshot?

Hopefully never. The only time this would be done is in response to a malicious change pushed through by a single address or small minority. There is of course nuance here (why shouldn’t a token holder be able to exercise their voting power?), which is why the emphasis is on malicious.

Ello Gov’na

The DAO-first approach is super exciting. Hopefully you all appreciate the effort being made to distribute as much power as possible; if we were most projects, we wouldn’t say anything and would just retain all these powers to a multi-sig.

Of course, please direct any comments or concerns to the Discord. We want to hear them! Olympus is yours: time to start acting like it.

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