it's Sean Ali Mohamadi here from Exo
just checking to see if my microphone is working
hi Sean, hi Alvin, hi Peter
wonderful to have you all here today
excellent, looking forward to having a whole bunch more people join
I'm sitting on the other side of the world from you guys in Singapore
awesome, yeah I'm sitting in Cape Town
it's a lovely warm day here
how's it in Singapore Sean?
is it also a summer day now?
no, it's the equivalent of winter but it doesn't really get cold here
so perhaps we give it one more minute and then we can kick things off
how does that sound Sean?
yeah, that's good, you have people time to come on
I'm a bit flu-y today so my voice is croaky
and I'm going to try to speak a bit less today
hey everyone, how are you doing?
would you guys like to introduce yourselves?
where are you calling from?
you don't need to invite them up as speakers
alright, and maybe we should kick off
great, well it's an immense privilege to be here with everyone
I look forward to having an engaging conversation around two topics
and that is the Impact Style Venture Co-operative
and the XO Token Economics Design 2.0
and perhaps we can start off with Impact Style
and just at a basic level, what is the Impact Style and why was it created?
so let me give a bit of historical context to this
so the Internet of Impact's vision, as most of you know already, goes back a number of years
and was formalised in the white paper that we published in 2021, I think it was
but the idea goes back before that
and was one of the fundamental reasons why we built on Cosmos
since 2017, Cosmos had this vision of an interchain and internet of blockchains
and that very much aligned with this idea that we needed to have a new form of internet
that would be multi-network and that would serve a lot of different purposes
across all of the different needs around sustainability, sustainable development goals, climate
and any other development priorities that people have
and so the innovation of the internet of impacts is a technological innovation
first and foremost, the protocols, the software, the mechanisms that the software gets used
in order to deploy real world solutions
and so the intention was always to set up some kind of mechanism where this could be supported as an ecosystem
just like the World Wide Web as an example, as an ecosystem of all different players
that all contribute towards developing the standards, setting up and running the infrastructures, building applications on it
and there are formal bodies for organisations that are working on the World Wide Web
such as the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, which sets a lot of the standards
and so when we set this up, the form of organisation that seemed at the time to be the most appropriate was a foundation
and so we set up the EXO Foundation in Switzerland
with the intention that one day this would become a DAO but this was still very early on
DAOs were actually quite experimental and not yet ready for the mainstream
as we've gone along and we've built the infrastructures and we've seen the whole idea of using blockchain technology
and then as it became known as W3C and more than blockchain
as we've seen that become adopted as an ecosystem of innovations and different projects and infrastructures and things
we now also have these networks talking to each other and through inter-blockchain communication and other ways of connecting the networks
and so we now do have what is needed in terms of an ecosystem of players
as well as the tooling and mechanisms through the developments that have happened through DAO innovations
to be able to support an ecosystem through a DAO mechanism
Now fundamentally, when we talk about an ecosystem, it's a cooperative of organisations that are all working towards common goals
and so we wanted to create an organisation that would have a legal basis so that it protects the legal liabilities of its members
that would also be able to operate in compliance with regulations
particularly because we are within the W3C and blockchain and crypto space
and so we have transitioned from the EXO Foundation into forming a Liechtenstein Venture Cooperative, LVC
which is really a very fit-for-purpose legal entity for progressing and innovation through the different phases that the innovation typically goes through
regardless of whether your innovation is AI or biotechnology or software technologies
Generally any innovation goes from having an idea and a concept into phases of research and development
and eventually becomes adopted by the marketplace and so there's a risk in moving the innovation and investing in the innovation through those different phases
We're fortunately beyond a proof-of-concept phase, but still have a long way to go
and so using the legal mechanism of a Liechtenstein Venture Cooperative really made sense for us
and so we've set that up and I can go into more details about how that operates and how the economics and so on work
but then what we've done is applied our DAO tooling that we've developed at EXO
and this also draws on the innovations and good work that's been done by other contributors like DAO DAO, we use the DAO DAO smart contracts
So now we have an operating system for the cooperative and have launched that as the internet of impact DAO cooperative
So LVC is the legal entity, the Liechtenstein Venture Cooperative that underpins it
and the organization is called ImpactDAO for short so that we don't have to say internet of impact DAO cooperative all the time
and this is now live and inviting in participants and the purpose of this is to make outcome-based investments into the innovations
and the projects and the research and market solutions that continue to build the internet of impacts
and delivers it into the markets where these are most needed
So that's the context to why the DAO and the cooperative and where we stand now
Thanks for sharing that additional context around why the cooperative approach
and I understand it as the internet of impacts as an innovation requires different organizations to collaborate
Perhaps we can open it up to the floor to see if anyone else has got questions around the impact DAO
Hi, this is Graham, I have a question around the impact DAO
Is it open to individual contributors as one of those organizations or will that transition happen later in its development?
Good question, so it's designed for organizations to cooperate, so it's a cooperative of organizations
Now whether it's organizations or legal entities or other DAOs that are underpinned by legal entities or not necessarily underpinned by legal entities
What's important is that it is organizations that have continuity beyond individuals
Now the reality is that organizations are made up of people and so it really is the people who drive this
But we want the organizations that participate to continue to participate even if the individuals who are part of those organizations
decide not to continue being part of an organization or maybe they switch organizations or whatever
And so for the continuity and for the integrity of the cooperative, it is organizations that are members
Participants can include the people who are part of those organizations
And so organizations can distribute their equity that they receive in the DAO, in the LVC
They can distribute that to their employees, to their stakeholders
And the LVC regulations define the governance mechanisms of an LVC using the concept of member points
And we turn those member points into DAO tokens
So each member point is represented by a DAO token
And if you hold DAO tokens as an individual, you can participate in governance
And that very much aligns with the way in which the legal framework for Liechtenstein venture cooperatives has been defined by the government of Liechtenstein
Thank you, that makes a lot of sense
To make sure the work that's being done extends beyond any contribution by one individual
I have a question around the competitive nature of the economy today
And the impact DAO is emphasizing cooperative nature
Do you think most people are ready to embrace real cooperative economics?
And how do you think we could overcome some of those challenges?
So I think there's kind of two parts of what the impact DAO is contributing to
And generally public goods are underfunded
I've seen it at the World Wide Web Consortium where there's technical working groups and so on
It generally relies on the large members like the Googles and Facebook and Microsoft and so on
Who are members of W3C to have to put forward people who they pay for their time, their employees and so on
Who participate in the technical working groups or they fund the operations of those working groups
Or do the technical work that they then contribute into the public good
And so there's this ongoing challenge of how to fund the Commons
And there's a whole movement around that funding the Commons, which we're part of
And so for things such as core protocols, nobody particularly gets an advantage
If it's a core shared protocol
And so the public good of generating these protocols, doing the work to develop protocols and standards and so on
Is tough and cooperatism is the only way to really make that happen
And hopefully the incentive alignment is good through having a mechanism such as the LVC
That organizations see the benefit of working together to create those public goods
So that's the one part of it
The other part of it is a cooperative in more of a commercial sort of sense
Where if you look at cooperative businesses across the world
They actually make up a very huge part of what we might consider to be the commercial world
And they extend across all different sectors
Cooperative supermarkets, cooperative manufacturing
Basically all sectors have got cooperatives
Where the organizations that participate in the cooperative
Understand the benefits that come from the economies of cooperatism
So whether that's economies of scale, whether that's a reduced friction because of the closer working together
There are many many benefits of being part of a cooperative
And so I think that the way we've set this up
Where there are revenues for instance that come into the LVC
From all different use cases using the Internet of Impacts
That aligns everyone's interests
So if you've got a project on Celo
But you're using some of the services on EXO for instance
And you're part of the cooperative
Then the cooperative benefits
And if you're a member of the cooperative you benefit
And so this is bringing together these two dynamics of public goods and cooperatives
Into a formalized structure that I hope is complementary and creates synergies
Between the commercial interests and the public good interests
Wonderful, thanks for sharing Sean
Maybe we can have one more question from the floor before moving on
Do you have any questions around the impact style?
Yes, and I think Sean you touched on it now a little bit
Around cross-chain or multi-chain
So Celo, something needed on Celo but a service perhaps being provided on the EXO network
I know that we're looking at creating a request environment
And offers to human and baby just as the founder and idea generator around that concept
Maybe talk us through how that would work
So there's a couple of parts to this
So through the Launchpad interface
Which is only one of the interfaces to the Internet of Impacts
But it's where we're for now managing the DAO processes for the LBC
We will be going live with offers and requests
Essentially a marketplace where you can post requests or you can post offers
A request might be something like an organization saying we need help to develop
This specific piece of software or we need some help in entering a new market
We're willing to pay this amount or reward it with whatever incentives
So that would be one type of request within an internal marketplace
But maybe also available to non-members
So anyone can come along and see what the cooperative needs in order to progress its mission
The other part of it is investments by the DAO itself
The DAO has a treasury and it has a mechanism whereby it can make investments and give grants
With the principle being that all of those investments and grants should be generating at least one or greater return
So for every dollar that you receive for a request that you fulfill
And it's a request made on behalf of the cooperative that gets funded by the cooperative
It should generate at least a return in investment that will equal the funds that have been spent
And in that way it becomes sustainable
So unlike a venture capital fund which is trying to get many multiples of return
100x or whatever by making an investment
The economy of the Internet of Impacts and the DAO ecosystem fund that we're operating
Is such that as long as we continue to steadily sustain and grow the resources that are available
The growth of the ecosystem feeds back into the growth of the resources that are available
And so it becomes a positive replenishing cycle of funding
And so this is really meant to be an enabler for all of the participants in the ecosystem
And it's a formalised mechanism that will enable organisations to make contributions
And also to benefit from the contributions that come through the DAO marketplace
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense
Now I'm quite keen to follow up with the conversation around how we could link carbon and the whole exo-toconomics design into what the impacts DAO also does
Yeah, maybe that provides a good segue into the second part of the discussion
But maybe just to kind of wrap things up on the impact DAO
And perhaps you've already touched on it Sean
But simply in one or two sentences
If you had to look ten years into the future
What is your ideal vision for the impact DAO cooperative?
So I think that there is an opportunity to have progressive decentralisation
So I would ideally want to see a collective ownership
So there's the cooperative participation and cooperative ownership
But then I would like to see that going beyond the organisations that are part of the cooperative
To essentially the cooperative becoming a public entity that can be owned by anybody
Or shares can be owned by anybody
So potentially down the line there could be a way of doing the equivalent of an IPO
Essentially doing a token issuance that brings in individual people to participate
And to have ownership participation in the economy that is being supported by the cooperative
Or may even transcend from being a cooperative
But in order to get there this needs to be a really healthy, growing and impactful ecosystem
And so the other part of the vision is that we will have before ten years
Hopefully like even this year
We'll have very, very clear measures of the impacts that are being achieved
And we will have proven in ten years time
Which is roughly where we are in 2024
So it will be past the expiry date of the sustainable development goals
And it will be coming close to the expiry date of the Paris targets
And hopefully we will have shown and also have given the world the digital infrastructures that are needed
To make the huge changes that are needed
In terms of coordination, financing, verification and growing intelligence around impact
Amazing, progressive decentralisation, cooperative ownership and coordination
I see we have Moonkid that's joined us
Welcome, it's great to have you here
I've invited you to speak
Would you like to introduce yourself and maybe use this opportunity to ask a question
If not, then we can continue on to the revised tokenomics
And where things are at around the proposals that have been submitted or proposal
Surrounding the decreased inflation rate to 10%
Has that been passed already?
Indeed, yes, so that was passed
And it was met with good feedback
And I think people are quite keen on
Especially after last time's conversation when we have a pathway for validators to be able to still keep the same fees
There are two mechanisms for them, the one that can increase from 5% to 10% perhaps
So that's great, it got passed 100% approval
And we're now looking forward to the next one
Which will be coming up next week
Great, and what is the next proposal about?
So the next proposal will be a signaling proposal
Where the final version, for the purpose of voting on a signaling proposal
Final version of the tokens, exit token 2.0, light paper
Will be put to the vote so that we can get a temperature check on the support for implementing this
Obviously the first part has been implemented already
Which is part of the basic token economics around inflation rates
There's still the discussion and governance around reducing the supply
And I'm looking forward to a robust further conversation around the use of the community funds pool
With the proposal being to burn some of those to reduce the supply
But then most importantly, and the thing I'm most excited about
Is the introduction of the impact rewards function on the blockchain, on the Exochain
And I think this is really going to be a very, very powerful cryptoeconomic mechanism
We're very keen to get started with testing it out and seeing how it evolves
And getting feedback based on the data that we collect
To see how it's affecting the economy, how it's affecting the demand and pricing on carbon credits
It's incentivising the behaviours towards retiring carbon credits
Because ultimately that's the whole purpose of carbon credits
Is to generate impacts and then complete the impact cycle through retirement
So that more credits need to be generated and more revenues and capital can be deployed into projects that are doing impactful things for climate
And yeah, so looking forward to being able to implement that
And the next steps are getting a good sense from the community that this is what everyone wants
And then proceeding with the more specific technical proposals around token burns and the implementation of the rewards mechanism
Wonderful. Does anyone have any questions so far?
Welcome Max, thanks for joining us
Please feel free to say hi, I've invited you to speak
Hi, do you have a question? I'm not sure if we're going to get around to that little data on the conversation
At our last space as we spoke about the use of the community pool
And a few ideas were put out
And I'm wondering if we could maybe speak a bit deeper about that and give more consideration to how the funds
I think it's about 40 million or so, how that will be put to good use
Yes, so the analogy of the community pool if we were talking about a company is that they're unissued shares
So it's equity still to be allocated
Typically, in a company scenario, you wouldn't keep unallocated shares on your balance sheet for too long
And would issue shares as needed going forward
Of course, this is not a company, but that would be an analogy is a relevant one in terms of equity
Now, currently, in terms of the supply
We are in a situation where I think the supply through inflation, which has got to 148 million
Or thereabouts, 143 million is probably too high for what's currently needed in terms of the distribution
And the current uses for the EXO token
Of course, that's going to change quite dramatically over the coming months and years
As we go further with all of the utility that is coming on chain
So the one option is to kind of take conservative approach or not a conservative approach
But a prudent approach and say, you know, we don't need all of that supply right now
Let's reduce the total supply, which gives us space for growth through the inflation mechanism
Other options which people have raised would be to use the equity to do the equivalent of kind of mergers and acquisitions
Protocol mergers, so make a proposal to another project, for instance, and say we'll do a token swap
And merge in certain ways
And I quite like that proposal. It was raised by Davin on our last call
I like the idea of it because it may be a way of further increasing the cooperatism
And sort of collective ownership at the level of the blockchain and the protocol
However, I don't know that we've actually got that many examples of that kind of deal
Actually having gone well within the web tree space
I'd be happy to hear of examples if anyone knows of them
Another option could be something like doing an airdrop with some of the community pool
Whilst the value of the tokens is still quite low in terms of price
The issue is that once the token increases in price, then these kinds of decisions become that much more complicated to navigate through governance processes
Because there's a lot more vested interest and there's a lot more eyes on the honeypot
So all options that we have, we can hold off on the burn or we can go ahead with the burn
I really want to hear ideas from the community to have healthy debate around this
And then come to the governance decision around what to do
That makes sense and there are quite a number of early investors in the EXO network
They definitely have to make their voices heard because I think especially they would have quite a big stake in what happens to the token and the price
Especially now that you mentioned like $143 million versus the initial $100 million and the price that has gone down over time
And it's coming back up now
So quite a number of considerations and it will be great to hear from the community
The other thing is it's not an all or nothing option
We could burn a percentage of the community pool
So I gave this context on last week's call that the intention for the large community pool, which was 40% of the total issuance at Genesis
Was that it would pass into a DAO that would essentially do what the LBC and Impact DAO is now doing
The way things have developed, we've put all of the circulating supply of EXO tokens that were held
Through the other organizations that have now basically become the DAO
We've put those tokens into the DAO treasury
And so we don't really need per se to have the community pool
We have the option to do a partial burn, so we could burn of the $40 million, $41 million, we could burn $30 million
For instance, it will be left over with $11 million
I think the key thing here is to look at the impacts on the token economics from a market cap valuation perspective
And also to be looking at how do we use the means that we have available to us in the near term
To set us up for success in the long term
Without compromising the optionality that we will continue to have or we should continue to have in the long term
So there's compromises or let's say trade-offs that need to be made between near term and long term objectives
And this is why we need to have some consensus around it
I think there's no clear answer to know which is the correct way to do it
Because we will only know in the future how the decisions that we make now will play out
We've done some modeling around it and it seems to indicate that this is the right thing
This is a good option to go down, but we need consensus, we need the sort of wisdom of many people
And the voices of many stakeholders to agree that this is the right thing to do
Welcome the article, thanks so much for joining us
Would you like to ask a question? I see you've got your hand raised
I'd like to comment, I'm in favor of Token Economics 2.0
The main thing being with the burn
When we propose to burn 40 million tokens
That speaks a lot about the team itself and that you're in it for the long haul
In the future, you can do proposals to take some of the inflation and create a new community pool
I think it does need to be reset
I know IxO has been at it for 12 years or more
I think it speaks volumes about looking at 10 years from now or 5 or 10 years from now
We just made it out of an ugly bear market
And we're trying to fix the token economics
And plus all of the work that's went into it before
It shows that you're not here temporary
And that's what the token burn is, it's a catalyst
It gets people's attention and then if there's another community pool to establish
You can do that with inflation with another proposal like
3% of inflation will go to a community pool
And then the community can get more engaged
So I just wanted to put that out
I like the proposal, I like the burn, I like all the things with the white paper
I'm in favor, you got my vote
It's really great to hear direct feedback like that
And by the way, I really appreciate your engagement in Telegram as well
So I think one of the wonderful things about having built our blockchain with Cosmos technology
Is the optionality that it provides through the governance mechanism
And so you're absolutely right
We're not closing off future optionality by having a burn now
We still have many options available in the future
But we should do what's good in the near term, keeping optionality
And then exercise that optionality as we move forward and as we learn new things
And as the dynamics change around the economy and the ecosystem
I agree, I'm going to step down from speaker
But I'm just going to listen in
I appreciate it sir, thank you
Your engagement's appreciated
Is there anyone else who'd like to ask any questions?
We've covered quite a lot of ground and nearing the end of the call
Although I've drawn, is there anything that you feel like you'd like to elaborate on or touch on?
I just want to say that I'm enjoying getting back on these community calls
We didn't have them for a while
We used to have a very, very active agenda of what about Earth State briefings and weekly calls
And it was quite crazy at one point
And then we had this quiet period where we've been just heads down and building
But it's really great to have these conversations
And so I would just welcome that members of the community put forward ideas of what we should talk about
Should encourage others to participate
So we broaden the conversation
And yeah, we continue to build on this momentum
And the story that we're making happen, which is really cool
I'm really looking forward to sharing so much more information
The developments that we have already accomplished
And we haven't really gone public yet
And what we have coming is really incredible
So I'm looking forward to sharing a lot more
And I'm looking forward to this open engagement
I can echo your thoughts, Sean, in terms of the community engagement
And my involvement with EXO has only been over the past two years
Which was literally at the end of the ball, into the bear, deep bear
And now I'm coming out of the bear again, hopefully
So right at the beginning, it was very engaged
There was a lot of incentive for people to be engaged on these sessions
And what I'm seeing now is that specifically on our telegram
And Discord channels, where the validators are
There's a lot more interest and a lot more focused interest
And it's almost like the base of a group of committed community members
Are being formed right in front of our eyes
And for me, that is incredible to experience
So I just want to say thank you
And it's a wonderful experience to everybody out there
Just a thought that came to my head
That it doesn't take a lot of people to make positive change in the world
And I would like to continue having these weekly calls
And growing slowly but surely
If no one else has any questions or comments
Then I think we can call it a wrap
Thanks everyone else for being part of today's conversation