Sunsetting Atom Accelerator DAO (AADAO)

Summary

After careful consideration, Atom Accelerator contributors have unanimously voted for the DAO to go into maintenance mode and return all funds not needed to fund grantee obligations and maintenance mode activities, back to the community pool.

Motivation

As we approach the Alt Coin season, the Cosmos Hub needs a team to support its growth effectively. In the past year, the team at AADAO:

• Secured core infrastructure for the Cosmos Hub, including funding the Hub’s IBC relayers; establishing a first-party archive node, improving data reliability for integration partners; and establishing reliable data pools for all other developers on Lava Network.
• Successfully supported the regular Cosmos Hub Testnet Program, helping it incentivize validators for higher engagements, as well as accelerating the launch of PSS by funding the ISLE testnet.
• Arranged for an emergency security audit for the Liquid Staking Module
• Helped to demystify the economics for PSS, with a tool that is used by every team considering adopting Interchain Security
• Significantly increased ATOM utility in NFT and CFTs, including securing ATOM minting on Stargaze, promoting ATOM at live NFT events, and facilitating the premier Cosmos NFT collection, Bad Kids, to adopt ATOM as its denomination.
• Further helped ATOM utility by helping to bring to to market Amulet Finance (self-repaying loans), supercharging Asteroid Protocol (Hub inscriptions), Superbolt (NFT-finance with ATOM) and soon Atlas DAO (NFT Aggregator and NFT-fi)
• Supported end-user tools and platforms to promote the Hub and AEZ, including Spelldrop (ATOM Airdrop Tracker, as an argument to buy and hold ATOM), the Cosmos Ecosystem Jobs Board (tracking over 1500+ open roles in the ecosystem), and running the ATOM 5K quests campaign (attracting over 5,000 active users)
• Also helped to bring to market Data Lenses’ Airdrop Snapshot tool – allowing new projects to easily snapshot and airdrop to ATOM stakers, as well as holders of liquid staked ATOMs!
• Allowed the Cosmos Hub for the first time benefit from the value created in the ecosystem, through venture investments in Elys Network, Drop Protocol, Plaza Finance and others. When these projects come to TGE, tokens will be airdropped to the Hub Community Pool.
• Supported numerous teams by acting as their counter-party for the Cosmos Hub, helping them navigate the complexities of our ecosystem and extensively supporting their GTM.
• Organized the Cosmos Hub’s first-ever first-party events at EthCC and DevCon, engaging over 2,250 registrants and establishing the Hub’s presence at industry-leading gatherings; in addition to organizing, attending or representing the Hub at 40+ other events and podcasts to promote the Cosmos Hub
• Successfully organized the first three major hackathons for the Cosmos Hub – South Korea, Dubai and Barcelona (soon) – including producing developer documentation and university partnerships.
• Transformed the Cosmos Hub grant program to include extensive non-financial support, such as go-to-market strategies, resulting in better products for the Cosmos Hub.

In total, just looking at our grants program, we processed 368 applications, which otherwise would have likely been governance proposals, rejecting over $33.77 million worth of unviable funding requests to safeguard Hub’s resources over the past 20 months.

However, as many of you know, navigating the recent events has been challenging for the DAO. Since before the dismissal of the General Manager, contributors were discussing the need for critical changes for the DAO to become more effective in the growth of the Cosmos Hub, and those discussions were compounded with his dismissal.

Initially, pursuing a proposal for a third mandate with a narrower scope and well-defined functions made sense for all contributors. Today, that’s no longer the case.

This decision was not taken lightly.

While we at AADAO are firm believers in operating transparently and being held accountable for our actions, we believe that the current approach of the Oversight Committee has created a challenging dynamic that significantly hinders our ability to operate effectively. As such, no AADAO contributor wants to continue working in the DAO or to lead it going forward.

We did our best to continue delivering, always in good faith and with the best intentions, despite the unfavorable conditions, but this isn’t sustainable in the long term.

Decision

After carefully considering Atom Accelerator DAO’s future at a recent meeting, contributors reached a unanimous conclusion: under its current Oversight committee, AADAO’s value proposition to the Cosmos Hub appears significantly limited.

Therefore, we decided to do the following:

• Take the DAO into “Maintenance Mode”
  • Effective 29 November 2024 (2 weeks from today), AADAO will be in maintenance mode.
  • This means that except for critical grant applications in the process of coming in, Atom Accelerator will not be processing any future grant applications.
  • By 31 December 2024, all applications will have been processed, and the DAO will know exactly what its funding obligations will be during the Maintenance Mode.
  • The Maintenance Mode will last till all open grants are completed.
  • A skeleton crew of 3-4 contributors will remain on payroll during the Maintenance Mode to manage outstanding grants/milestones. Their FTE will be at most 40% for 2025 Q1, tapering down to 0% in subsequent months, accounting for reduced duties as grants complete. We plan to share more details on staffing and timeline soon.
  • All other contributors have volunteered to remain on the multi-sigs of AADAO to assist with any governance-related topics post-mandate without pay (such as voting to authorize payment disbursement)
• Return all remaining funds allocated to AADAO in its funding renewal proposal
  • Shortly after 29 November 2024, most of our excess treasury will be returned to the Community Pool. This amount will represent all remaining assets in the custody of AADAO except for:
    • Payroll for November and December 2024
    • Expected payroll for the Maintenance Mode team
    • Funds earmarked for approved grants with unfinished milestones
    • Small contingency for unexpected fees such as legal/ admin
    • $1 million USDC held back for applications yet to be processed
  • Shortly after 31 December 2024, we will send back any amount from the $1 million held for applications yet to be processed, since all applications and funding will have been confirmed by then.
  • At the end of the Maintenance Mode, send back any amounts left over from funding not sent due to grants not delivering, and any amount left over from the contingency budget.

There are of course many other aspects we will need to figure out over the coming days, in order to ensure a responsible shutdown. We will update the community on these aspects soon.

We plan for the Oversight Committee to continue their duties during the Maintenance Mode, but have yet to discuss with them about their expected FTE commitment during that period. We plan to share more details about the full staffing of the DAO for the Maintenance Mode very soon.

Final thoughts

We want to reiterate that this decision was not made easily. AADAO contributors poured their hearts into delivering value for the Cosmos Hub even during the recent challenging circumstances and we always hoped that we could find a way through this.

In the end, we had to soberly assess whether the DAO, in its current form, could still provide meaningful value to the Hub. We sadly concluded that our ability to deliver was critically constrained. Therefore, we felt the responsible thing to do was to step back.

There were other ways to address the situation, but we all agreed to prioritize the Hub’s best interest and chose the path of least drama. Our focus now is to honor the commitments made to grantees and to make sure our wind down is orderly.

It’s been an honor and privilege to serve you all. We will do our utmost to responsibly wind down as outlined above. Thank you for your understanding.

Regardless of what happens, we remain passionate believers in the Cosmos Hub vision and believe, with or without us, the Hub will succeed.

Long Live ATOM!