PrimeDAO (D2D)

Basics

• Founded in: Q2 2020
• Announced on 17-9-2020
• Testnet release:
• Mainnet release: 11-12-2020
• From their announcement (17-9-2020), their mission is to:

"Facilitate wide adoption of Open Finance by coordinating and cultivating projects that promote safety, reliability, liquidity, and open access, while avoiding centralized appropriation of critical financial infrastructure through decentralized governance."

History

• Began in Q2 2020, with the creation of a working group at ETHDenver.

Audits & Exploits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].

Governance

DAO

• From their blog (6-10-2021):

"PrimeDAO’s next governance set-up combines existing building pieces with Reputation (REP), a custom-made non-transferable token function developed by PrimeDAO. The app allows the Prime multi-sig to batch mint and burn Reputation to Prime stakeholders. PrimeDAO aims to update Reputation at the end of each Prime Development Cycle.

The full set-up uses the following tools and can be accessed through:

1. Snapshot — vote. Prime.xyz
2. Multi-sig — treasury. Prime.xyz
3. Boardroom + Multisafe — governance. Prime.xyz
4. Reputation Mint/Burn contract: reputation.prime.xyz"

• From their blog (30-9-2020):

"This first DAO is deployed on the DAOstack framework and utilizes holographic consensus for governance. At this point, there still isn’t a PRIME token, but only Reputation (REP) — which is non-transferable voting right — as the source of governance truth."

Treasury

• From their announcement (17-9-2020):

"PrimeDAO will govern and allocate resources towards contributors for building, auditing, and maintaining its DeFi mechanisms and products."

• From their blog (30-9-2020):

"As an on-chain entity, Prime can govern a treasury, where funds can be exchanged to workers or service providers for their efforts."

• From The Defiant (9-12-2021):

"Holders of Balancer’s governance token, BAL, are considering two proposals now, from mStable and PrimeDAO, likely, another proposal, for MIST (the token behind the DAO that built copperlaunch.com), is coming. PrimeDAO wants to get Balancer directly involved in its operations."

Token

Launch

• Will have a token sale in the future (17-9-2020). Expected (30-9-2020) in Q4 2020. It will be an IDO on Mesa (20-10-2020) and happen on 9-11-2020.

Token allocation

D2D

• From their D2D announcement (11-12-2021):

"D2D is the Network token of PrimeDAO. It plays a crucial role in managing the resources of PrimeDAO and stewarding the products and services of Prime as a Cryptonetwork. In our quest to create a collective identity, D2D token embodies our mission to connect the tissues of our value network — a distributed matrix of contributors, squads, products, and further on the entire DAO ecosystem. D2D holders hence receive exposure to the underlying value of Prime’s products, partnerships, and assets as well as the ability to partake in governance around PrimeDAO."

PRIME

• From the Litepaper (17-9-2020):

"PRIME, PrimeDAO’s utility token, will initially be limited to a total supply of 90M distributed over multiple stakeholder groups. Note that this distribution is still subject to change based on the decisions taken by PrimeDAO in the Incubation stage. [Update (20-10-2020): numbers indeed changed, although not a lot, couple % here and there.]

1. Founders and Partners (Early contributors) A total of 22,350,000 PRIME tokens (25.9%). All early contributor tokens are vested for one year with a continuously linear release schedule.

1. The Prime Development Foundation, a Curaçao-based foundation mandated to support the initiation and development of PrimeDAO, will receive 1,500,000 PRIME [1.7%] tokens to be able to provide support services to PrimeDAO and to cover expenses for two years. 500,000 of the Foundation’s PRIME tokens are unlocked, while the other 1,000,000 are locked for one year.
2. Token Sale Participants. Up to 24,000,000 PRIME Tokens (27.8%) will be distributed to PrimeDAO Token Launch participants. These tokens will not be vested and can freely move after the launch. Alternatively, they can be locked to acquire additional voting power in PrimeDAO.
3. Contributor Rewards. Up to 13,200,000 PRIME Tokens (15.3%) are reserved for Contributors and awarded if they provide valuable commitment to the development of PrimeDAO during the Incubation and Growth phases. Contributions could include developing Prime products and tools, technical audits, evangelism, research, good governance or any other contribution deemed valuable by PrimeDAO. Contributor Reward tokens issued during the Growth phase may or may not include vesting schedules—this is up to PrimeDAO’s community to decide.
4. Incentives. Up to 13,200,000 PRIME Tokens (15.3%) are reserved for product users as incentives for protocol usage and community engagement. Following the token launch, a Balancer pool will be created to incentivize market makers for providing liquidity and additional price discovery for PRIME tokens. Up to 1,200,000 PRIME tokens will be distributed via this initial liquidity reward scheme. Further incentive mechanisms have been conceptualized— such as liquidity rewards for Prime Aggregator users—however; it’s up to PrimeDAO to ultimately decide which mechanisms are most valuable for PrimeDAO stakeholders and should be implemented.
5. Products. Up to 12,000,000 PRIME Tokens (13,9%) are reserved to providers of early PrimeDAO products and licences acquired by PrimeDAO. This includes the purchase of a license of Totle’s liquidity routing engine. Product tokens are vested for two years with a continuously linear release schedule."

REP

• From the Litepaper (17-9-2020):

"The initial REP distribution is based on merit and optimizes for good governance, vision alignment, and stakeholder cooperation. Initially, 5,500 REP will be distributed at the launch of the DAO, with large REP inflation shortly thereafter for stakeholders who lock their PRIME tokens. Further distribution will be governed collectively by the PrimeDAO REP holders and is only possible through governance proposals.

1. Founders and Partners (Early contributors) The early Contributor group, to consist of approximately 50 individuals from 8+ different teams, will receive voting rights from an initial pool of 4000 REP that is divided according to past contributions and assumed Growth Phase responsibilities to help ethically and strategically steer PrimeDAO during its infancy.
2. The Prime Development Foundation operates two-of-three multi-signature wallets and is mandated to provide support to help initiate PrimeDAO. Based on this mandate, the Prime Development Foundation will receive 1500 REP to help practice good governance. Unlike other contributors, the Foundation will not attempt to gain further voting power beyond its initial assignment of 1500 REP. In other words, PrimeDAO will progressively decentralize away from its involvement as REP is inflated and earned by Growth-stage contributors.
3. Locking PRIME for REP Following the launch of PrimeDAO, PRIME holders will be able to lock their tokens to earn up to 4,500 REP proportional to the amount and time of tokens locked. Additional details regarding this mechanic will be provided through PrimeDAO’s communication channels as its Q4, 2020 on-chain launch approaches."

• From their blog (2-2-2021):

"PrimeDAO has determined that any individual in the DAO should not possess more than 500 REP. With this in mind, any locks that result in higher than 500 REP will have their Reputation slashed by the DAO."

Utility

• From their Discord (17-9-2020):

"PRIME functions as an utility and reward token in PrimeDAO and REP, a non-transferable governance token, is utilized for PrimeDAO governance. The $PRIME token is the contributor reward token used to coordinate internal resources, exchange value and align stakeholders."

Token Details

• From their Discord (17-9-2020):

"In its initial form, PrimeDAO will be deployed on the DAOstack framework and follow a dual-token design. By separating voting power from utility PrimeDAO is better able to reward contributors according to their appetite and promotes strong alignment between governing contributors. PrimeDAO practices Holographic Consensus, a governance mechanism native to DAOs powered by DAOstack that streamlines the attention of the collective. Central to Holographic Consensus is Reputation (REP), non-transferable voting rights used for voting on proposals. REP can be earned by contributing to the development of PrimeDAO by:

1. Submitting contribution proposals to the PrimeDAO
2. Participating in a PrimeDAO working group
3. Earned by locking PRIME tokens into the PrimeDAO locking mechanism"

Technology

• Litepaper can be found here (17-9-2020).
• Code can be viewed [insert here].

Implementations

• Built on: Ethereum, and deploying the first version of Prime to the XDai

Upgrades

• PrimeDAO Governance launched on Mainnet (10-12-2020).

Their Products

• Has five products on its roadmap (17-9-2020).

DAO2DAO Interactions

• From the Litepaper (17-9-2020):

"A robust interface supporting DAO to DAO interactions is necessary for PrimeDAO’s success as an ecosystemic coordinator. Such interactions could range from token swaps to establishing joint ventures and/or launching funding rounds such as Gitcoin that support new builder teams and enterprises. With such an interface, we can imagine fractalized DAO orders where PrimeDAO delegates or formalizes relationships with a network of sub- or partner DAOs."

• The first DAO2DAO pool went live (7-5-2021) with Balancer.

Decentralized Hackathons

• From the Litepaper (17-9-2020):

"Quarterly decentralized hackathons and innovation crowdsourcing competitions are planned to stimulate and expand PrimeDAO’s builder ecosystem. PrimeDAO members with voting power will be able to allocate rewards, determine the number of winners, and the share of rewards each winner receives in a trustless and fair manner."

Liquidity Pool Manager

• From the Litepaper (17-9-2020):

"As one of its first implementations, PrimeDAO is creating a governable scheme for deploying liquidity pools on Balancer Protocol. This is an experimentation ground for novel ideas such as co-farming, where PRIME rewards and voting power are allocated to liquidity providers who stake into the DAO-governed pools, or a DeFi/DAO alliance pool: a multi-token liquidity pool which builds liquidity between project members who cooperate on joint initiatives."

Prime DEX Aggregator

• From their announcement (17-9-2020):

"PrimeDAO’s first product is a DEX aggregator that provides best-price discovery, slippage reduction, and reliable settlement. It is a licensed version of the Totle aggregator, provided to PrimeDAO as its first product."

Prime Pools

• From the announcement (6-6-2022):

"Prime Pools is a Balancer reward optimizer that aims to empower DAOs to contribute to the Balancer ecosystem by providing additional rewards and control.

Unlike current solutions, Prime Pools does not introduce a native governance token and instead aims to enable current veBAL holders to collectively lock their tokens and provide benefits to liquidity providers to enhance their rewards. By adopting Prime Pools instead of an aggregation platform with a Native token, Balancer can keep the majority of the value created by BAL inside of the Balancer Ecosystem.

An important aspect related to ve tokenomics is Bribing. Through Bribing, projects can reward veBAL holders for aligning with their project Gauges & Proposals in exchange for a reward. PrimeDAO is working closely with Paladin, a platform creating Markets for Influence and Voting Rights across DeFi, that launched on Prime Launch, to integrate their Warden & Quest product into Pools."

Prime Rating

• PrimeRating V2 has gone live (30-11-2021).
• From their announcement (17-9-2020):

"As one of its first products, PrimeDAO will prioritize creating a decentralized DeFi Safety Interface that informs and guides DeFi adopters."

• The above has grown into Prime Rating (14-1-2021).

• PrimeDAO’s DeFi pool launched on dHedge powered by Prime Rating (28-4-2021):

"Since its inception, the pool has attracted over $140 thousand in value and generated 27% returns after fees. The pool charges a performance fee of 10% on gains made by the pool. Because of the good returns, the Prime DeFi pool qualifies for dHedge performance mining, earning Prime DeFi pool investors 22% APY in dHedge’s native DHT token!"

Roadmap

• Can be found here (17-9-2020) and stretches into 2021:

"The Incubation phase started in Q2 2020 with the creation of a PrimeDAO working group at ETHDenver and is expected to end in Q4 2020 with the launch of PrimeDAO. In this phase, the main objective has been to create a coordination structure that can facilitate ecosystemic DeFi advancement by providing democratized prime brokerage services. Once PRIME tokens have been allocated according to this litepaper, PrimeDAO will transition into its Growth phase.

Second Phase: Growth. In this phase, PrimeDAO should develop several tactical governable primitives for itself. Development of the primitives will be matched by the DAO’s governance to an ecosystem of development teams according to their strengths and capabilities, with a designated team dynamically maintaining and reporting on a holistic ecosystem roadmap to all DAO stakeholders. This Growth phase is projected to start in Q4 2020 with the deployment and launch of PrimeDAO governance and resource allocation. The PrimeDAO will utilize the Alchemy platform by DAOstack at the beginning of this phase. During this phase, the dual primary objectives are (1) to mature PrimeDAO by expanding its suite of products, achieving much-needed economic sustainability, and (2) designing and improving Decentralized Governance and Operations specific to the needs and requirements of PrimeDAO. The former objective is expected to accelerate adoption in the DeFi space and the latter expected to require DAO fractalization and delegation mechanisms. These mechanisms include the capacity to designate and deploy sub-DAOs and joint DAO ventures, form nested organizational hierarchies, and allocate funding and/or special governance privileges to designated administrators. At the start of this phase, PrimeDAO will launch its first product, primedao.eth/trade, a DEX aggregator leveraging Totle’s smart routing technology. Afterwards, PrimeDAO’s community can decide on other promising DeFi valueadd models that contribute to the advancement of open finance and strengthen PrimeDAO. At this stage, PrimeDAO now consists of a broad network of independent stakeholders that coordinate publicly and transition value through PRIME tokens. In this phase, the function of the Prime Development Foundation will be limited, and the vast majority of interactions will be executed directly by PrimeDAO and its consortium of decentralized actors. All infrastructure, including the smart contracts, will become increasingly decentralized during this phase. Once stakeholders have agreed to the specification of a new PrimeDAO governance and tokenomics for the next phase—including the speculative initiation of a continuous fundraising mechanism, such as a PRIME bonding curve—the network will transition to its Maturity phase.

Final Phase: Maturity The Maturity phase is projected to start in Q1 2022 with the launch of a native PrimeDAO backed by on-chain governance and fully integrated tokenomics. Through continuous improvement, PrimeDAO should continue to evolve into a global decentralized autonomous organization that can self-fund, self-govern and self-organize. At this point, PrimeDAO should govern a network of decentralized financial applications and interfaces that allows anybody—without being limited by a lack of resources of any kind—to be able to utilize and benefit from PrimeDAO’s integrated financial offering. The ‘completion’ of the Maturity phase depends on the state of the industry and evolution of PrimeDAO, however specific cryptoeconomic simulation tools such as CADCAD can help create models to determine when PrimeDAO has reached a point of resiliency and economic sustainability."

Team, Funding, Partners

Members

• Luuk Weber; Prime Governor
• Renç Korzay, the lead of Prime Pools
• From their blog (20-10-2020):

"The DAO consists of multiple organizations that contribute in different ways. Some provide governance oversight and advisory, others are active builder collectives who are creating the first round of products and protocols for the DAO. These roles — even roles that have more of a leadership aura — are fluid and always open to change. With this understanding, there is no core PrimeDAO team as such."

• From the Litepaper (17-9-2020):

"To better coordinate and steward governance, a Curaçao-based foundation—titled Prime Development Foundation—has been established to support the initiation of PrimeDAO and provide the network with a legal anchor into the traditional legal world. The Prime Foundation does not own PrimeDAO or any of its products and only has a supporting and stewarding role.

The PrimeDAO working group has consisted of a handful of stakeholders that coordinate via private group chats, private meetings and align through mutual contribution."

• According to a tweet by Alon Goren (17-9-2020), the following were all starting members:

Totle, Curve Labs, DAOstack, DMM DAO, Validity, dOrg, Rivet, BlockScience, DAObase, API3, Meme, AlphaFin, Draper Goren Holm, DeepDAO and Level K.

• According to their blog (30-9-2020) the following are also co-governing PrimeDAO:

Agency, CryptoAtlas, The Builder Collective, DeversiFi, Kleros, Hyper Partners, Protofire, DeFi Safety, Kolektivo Labs.

Funding

• From their blog (7-5-2021):

"Through a grant from Balancer Labs the development of what is known as Prime Launch started. With the development of Prime Launch, PrimeDAO became a Balancer v2 launching partner, expanding the collaboration from protocol usage to active contribution on the development scope. Prime Pools is another giant step in a productive collaboration between two parties."

1. From their blog (15-9-2021):

"Raised $2 million from DAO backers, including LD Capital, Stratos, TokenInsight, Signum capital, Stacker ventures, Senary Ventures, Atka Capital, ID Theory, SMAPE Capital, XeO4, Meld ventures, Faculty Group. Some DAO contributors have also joined PrimeDAO to accelerate DAO to DAO innovation, including Fernando Martinelli, CEO of Balancer Labs, Griff Green, a true DAO legend, and Nima Asghari, experienced DAO contributor."

Partners

• API3; is mentioned as a partner on their website (5-3-2021).
• Went into tokenswap deals with Balancer and OlympusDAO (12-12-2021). Another one with Gitcoin followed (17-12-2021). One with FIAT DAO came next (16-6-2022) and four days later announced one with Giveth.
• PrimeDAO partnered with Celo to accelerate DAOs building at the nexus of web3 and climate (4-4-2022). Both projects intend to seal the deal with a tokenswap of $250,000 (23-5-2022).
• Aragon and PrimeDAO completed a strategic partnership and token swap totaling $100,000 in $ANT and $D2D (31-10-2022).