StakerDAO (STKR)

From CryptoCurrency Wiki

 Basics

"StakerDAO is a DAO governed by STKR token holders on the Tezos blockchain. The goal of the DAO is to issue regulated investment products for the blockchain space. The first product is a liquid staking design with custodial elements and a token called Blend."

History

  • From an interview with the founder (9-9-2020):

"StakerDAO was born out of the desire to build a DAO for the PoS world: on StakerDAO, “we can create products that open up entry to the PoS world for more and more users,” he said. “What we saw a couple of years ago was a lot of challenges in those centrally-controlled protocols to determine how they were gonna change,” Jonas said, pointing specifically to the Bitcoin and Ethereum forks of several years ago that resulted in the creation of Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic. “The trick is to build something that gives everyone a say and puts a governance process in place that can run on-chain, but also that doesn’t ‘get stuck’, something that allows the protocol to move forward,” he explained, adding that this kind of a governance system was “one of Tezos’s main innovations. Jonas said that therefore, StakerDAO “basically decided we were going to ‘steal’ that innovation and put it into a DAO.”

“So, the first thing that we built with StakerDAO was a governance model that was basically very similar to how the Tezos governance model worked,” he explained. “What that means is that if you become a StakerDAO token holder, then you get a say in the process.”

Token

Launch

Token allocation

  • From an interview with the founder (9-9-2020):

"STKR tokens were originally distributed as tokenized representations of equity for early investors in the platform. “Like every startup that I’ve been a part of, I needed to find investors to help us start this organization,” Jonas explained. “Therefore, in a very ‘silicon valley’ way, I went out and talked to venture capital firms and angel investors and people in the crypto space who were excited about this concept, and raised a round of funding to build StakerDAO.”

“Rather than just give people traditional equity, like you would in a startup, we decided to give them a tokenized version of that equity. That’s what the STKR token is today. So, essentially, the STKR token is a governance token that lets these early investors participate in the network. The process, so far, has been to have a small community of about 20 to 30 different token holders. Those token holders have appointed that board of directors,” he said."

Utility

Token Details

"StakerDAO also launched its first token, Blend (BLND), which can be found on CoinList and will generate revenue for DAO members. An Ethereum ERC-20 token, BLND tracks the performance of a basket of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) cryptocurrencies. BLND is not available for U.S. investors."

  • From an interview with the founder (9-9-2020):

"This is because “we wanted to offer it in a way that we could get broad exposure to institutional investors who might wanna hold it, and that requires us to do a partnership with CoinList.” In any case, Jonas explained that “the BLND token goes back to the original, founding concept of StakerDAO: how do we get more people aware of these Proof-of-Stake blockchains?"

Stablecoin

Tech

  • Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
  • Code can be viewed [insert here].
  • Built on: Tezos

How it works

"At the beginning of each year, STKR token holders will elect five council members to make governance decisions on what projects and DeFi applications to build.

Then, on a 30-day cycle, proposals for StakerDAO council members to vote on will be introduced, deliberated on and ultimately executed. This part of the iterative governance of StakerDAO was largely inspired from the Tezos blockchain, according to Lamis.

Having executed its first-ever system-wide upgrade finalized through a token holder voting process in May, Carlson-Wee said, the Tezos governance model was a testament to how “hard decisions” can be made in a decentralized manner on a blockchain.

Lamis added that the Tezos governance processes implemented on the protocol layer were ultimately why StakerDAO was built on the Tezos blockchain as opposed to ethereum. Ethereum currently relies on an informal and off-chain process of decision-making influenced by the collective will of protocol developers, miners and other community stakeholders.

“Tezos is by far the best-structured blockchain for managing governance over the long-term,” said Lamis. “We think it’s going to be the [most] stable blockchain for long-term governance.”"

Mining

Staking

Different Implementations

Interoperability

“It’s about maximizing yield but it’s also about carefully curating a portfolio of these underlying staking assets,” Polychain’s Olaf Carlson-Wee said. StakerDAO will focus on existing PoS blockchains such as Cosmos, Tezos, Terra and others, he added."

"We think that Ethereum (as it moves to PoS) will also be a really important provider of services to the ecosystem, and I’m sure we’ll be doing things on Ethereum,” he said. “But we built our governance system on Tezos.”"

Other Details

Privacy Method being used

Compliance

“We want it to be secure, decentralized and compliant. I don’t want to get ahead of myself on how that’s going to roll out just yet. It’s not something the lawyers want to talk about yet [either],” said Lamis. “When you start dealing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, you have to be very conservative in your vision.”

"Under the hood, StakerDAO has two pieces: a Cayman Island corporation and a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Operating with two faces gives StakerDAO the flexibility to offer a U.S.-compliant security offering while leaning on what many see as a novel form of democratic governance with DAOs."

Oracle Method being used

Their Projects

Blend

"StakerDAO’s first product Blend is an ERC20 token that seeks to incorporate staking rewards across different networks and validators without requiring holders to engage with the respective staking protocols. Holders of Blend need to register with StakerDAO and are able to sell their tokens back to the DAO in recurring auctions, which uses accumulated rewards to buyback and burn Blend tokens.

Blend will focus on large PoS networks, which will include Tezos, Cosmos, and Algorand. The product will expand to include other large PoS networks. "

Governance

"StakerDAO annually elects a council that votes on proposals proposed by their operations team and STKR token holders that are then implemented by the StakerDAO operations team. Aside from the governance process that happens on-chain, all operations are carried out manually by humans meaning this solution is trusted. However, all processes will be fully transparent and on-chain with real-time data, including, but not limited to, wallet balances, rewards generated, and buybacks.

The initial version is governed by a council of five individuals made up of representatives of funds (Polychain, Lemniscap, DTC Capital), StakerDAO CEO Jonas Lamis, and Luke Youngblood from Coinbase Custody."

DAO

  • From an interview with the founder (9-9-2020):

“So, the first thing that we built with StakerDAO was a governance model that was basically very similar to how the Tezos governance model worked,” he explained. “What that means is that if you become a StakerDAO token holder, then you get a say in the process.”

What does this entail? “The most basic thing that you can do for network governance is elect your representatives,” he said. “You can vote on the council that gets to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on proposals for StakerDAO.”

Self Funding Mechanism

Upgrades

Roadmap

  • Can be found [Insert link here].

Audits

Bugs

Usage

Projects that use or built on it

Competition

"StakerDAO works in a similar space as the Ethereum-centric LAO, a DAO meshed with a legal wrapper. While both lean on DAOs as a governance mechanism for capital allocation, StakerDAO’s audience resides in the “early majority” who are not ready to jump into more technical protocols but would like to hold investments in those projects, Lamis said."

Coin Distribution

Pros and Cons

Pros

  1. "Makes it very simple for crypto users to get exposure to a basket of PoS returns.
  2. Low regulatory risk as this solution is designed with current regulations in mind. 
  3. BLEND tokens as an ERC20 can benefit from integration in the existing DeFi ecosystem."

Cons

  1. "The service is custodial, requiring token holders to meet regulatory requirements and trust the StakerDAO Ops team with their assets.
  2. Currently highly centralized, although they are making efforts to build a community and to evolve governance. 
  3. A small set of owners of STKR governance token have a significant say over the system, and especially over BLEND holders."

Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.

Team

"StakerDAO itself is led by a five-man council including Polychain’s Olaf Carlson-Wee, Coinbase Custody’s Luke Youngblood, Lemniscap’s Shaishav TodiDTC Capital’s Spencer Noon and StakerDAO’s Lamis."

Funding

  • The lead investor in the project is crypto hedge fund Polychain Capital. Other participants were not disclosed, nor was the amount invested.
  • From an interview with the founder (9-9-2020):

"STKR tokens were originally distributed as tokenized representations of equity for early investors in the platform. “Like every startup that I’ve been a part of, I needed to find investors to help us start this organization,” Jonas explained. “Therefore, in a very ‘silicon valley’ way, I went out and talked to venture capital firms and angel investors and people in the crypto space who were excited about this concept, and raised a round of funding to build StakerDAO.”

“Rather than just give people traditional equity, like you would in a startup, we decided to give them a tokenized version of that equity. That’s what the STKR token is today. So, essentially, the STKR token is a governance token that lets these early investors participate in the network. The process, so far, has been to have a small community of about 20 to 30 different token holders. Those token holders have appointed that board of directors,” he said."

Partners