PrimeDAO and Aragon Swap D2D and ANT

Aragon and PrimeDAO completed a token swap this week of $50,000 worth of ANT for $50,000 of D2D, PrimeDAO’s token.

PrimeDAO builds DAO-to-DAO products and services with the goal of creating a more collaborative, cooperative ecosystem of DAOs and DeFi protocols.

Aragon and PrimeDAO are aligned in that both help DAOs launch and scale. Aragon provides the permission management system in which to build a DAO on top of, and PrimeDAO provides the tooling that connects DAOs and facilitates partnerships.

Details of the token swap

A token swap was proposed on the Aragon forum on October 3, 2022. The vote moved to Aragon Voice, where 100% of voters cast their ANT to approve the vote. The vote concluded with 33,594 ANT in-favor on October 17.

Details of the token swap include:

1. 6 month soft lock-up period, meaning the token lock-up is enforced socially rather than on-chain.
2. Full voting power granted immediately upon completion of the swap (due to the soft lock)
3. Terms symmetric for both parties
   

PrimeDAO posted the proposal to their community as well. You can find the proposal on their Deals page.

PrimeDAO products and services

PrimeDAO offers many products and services to help DAOs launch and scale. From token launch to deal-making, PrimeDAO has created a suite of tools that can take DAOs from 1 to 100.

Prime Launch: platform for token sales and distribution

Anyone starting a DAO knows how difficult navigating a token sale can be. Prime Launch makes it simple and fast to kickstart your DAO with liquidity.

DAO builders have two options for raising liquidity: a seed funding round or liquid launch.  The seed fund is when you allowlist wallets and distribute tokens to them or give them the opportunity to buy them before they go on the market. This keeps your token holders tight and controlled, which can be valuable when a DAO is just starting and is governed by a token.

You can also run a liquid launch with PrimeDAO’s Balancer integration, which means token holding gets disbursed quickly when people buy it on the open market. Liquid Launches allow fair price discovery over the course of a few days and distribute your token to investors. A project typically releases a set amount of tokens and has them for sale for a set period of time.

For example, when PrimeDAO did their liquid launch, they allotted 7 million D2D to sell between December 15 and 17 2020, and distributed 3.06 million of those tokens.  The price is “discovered,” or set naturally by the market, over that time. This helps projects build meaningful liquidity quickly and without a small launch.

Pairing Prime Launch with Aragon Client

A powerful pairing for DAOs launching a token is Aragon Client and Prime Launch. On Aragon Client, you can mint your ERC20 tokens and begin using them for on-chain governance right away.

Then, once your tokens are minted, go to Prime Launch to run either a seed fund or a liquid launch to distribute your token and raise funds to kickstart your project!

Prime Deals: trustless environment for DAOplomacy

Want to initiate a token swap with another DAO, but not sure how to hold each other accountable? Check out Prime Deals, a platform for on-chain DAO-to-DAO token swaps and deals. Pick an on-chain module, write your deal, set the terms, and put it to vote with your community. Think of Prime Deals as a way to run governance with another DAO outside of yours.

Prime Deals is how PrimeDAO put the Aragon token swap up for governance in their community. Prime Deals are public and are forkable, so DAOs can use existing templates to create their own deals.

Prime Rating: rating framework for crypto protocols

It can be hard to know how other protocols stack up when it comes to smart contract quality, value brought to the ecosystem, tokenomics, and governance. Prime Rating is a permissionless rating framework that helps you understand how other protocols compare, scaled in a traditional grading system (A to D).

Raters evaluate a protocol using the template provided by PrimeDAO. Raters either specialize in technical rating (smart contracts) or fundamental rating (value proposition, tokenomics, and governance). Raters submit their scores to a council of experienced Raters, who vote on whether or not to submit the report. High quality raters can level-up and eventually increase their rewards.

Why swap tokens?

Token swap are a key method of collaboration in DAOs. They’re useful mechanisms for these reasons:

• Swaps create economic alignment between projects. When one project’s token goes up, the other’s treasury increases in value.
• Swaps distribute governance power to relevant groups. PrimeDAO has interest and stake in the Aragon ecosystem, so swapping governance power gives each group voting rights in the other’s organization.
• Swaps diversify each DAO’s treasury. A diversified treasury is a healthy treasury. By swapping tokens, each group is further diversifying their own assets and firming their stores against the next downturn.

Token swaps are DAOs’ way of starting a partnership and increasing alignment between groups so the ideals of WAGMI can become a reality!

Making steps toward our strategy to build a governance hyperstructure

Strengthening partnerships and incentivizing ecosystem collaborations is a key piece of our strategy to build the hyperstructure for governance.

Aragon as a protocol cannot provide everything that DAOs need to grow and thrive. So, we’re building partnerships that increase our collaborations and make experimentation at the speed of software a reality for organizations everywhere, and we’re excited to be taking the first step in a partnership with PrimeDAO!

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