Apecoin DAO: A decentralised entity representing the desires and interests of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, has just elected its second term of Special Council members following an astonishing final hours of voting.
The election campaign commenced circa Nov. 19 when three existing members Dean Steinbeck, Maara Bajwa and Amy Wu opted to step-down from their position after serving for eight months.
These individuals, alongside the founder of Animoca Brands, Yat Siu, and the co-founder of Reddit and venture investment firm Seven Seven Six, Alexis Ohanian, formed the inaugural Special Council at inception of the ApeCoin DAO.
The council has been largely praised for its coordinated efforts in establishing a foundational structure and organisation, creating and actioning AIP proposals via snapshot, as well as collaborating with the NounsDAO on funding initiatives and exposing $APE during ETH Global.
Siu and Ohanian have retained their positions, and will welcome new members BoredApeG, Vera, and Gerry to the council on January 1st 2023. Each Special Council member will receive $20,833.00 in $APE per month as compensation with a term length of one year.
Apecoin DAO: Voting Drama
After an open nomination process attracted forty candidates, a final round of voting narrowed the selection down to five. Bored Ape Degentraland was comfortably leading the rankings in the days before the deadline, before a dramatic turn of events in the final hours of voting.
Twitter sleuths exploded with accusations of voter fraud on deadline day, asserting that the voting mechanics were being gamed in favor of candidate Degentraland by folks working for the interests of Web3 firm Horizen Labs.
The raucous debate on Crypto Twitter rapidly influenced the prejudice of voters — especially those who had already cast but altered their decision — with Degentraland falling to fourth place, and therefore of the council group by the end of time.
As the results reveal below, Bored Ape G topped the final leaderboard with 6.3 million $APE votes, a 27.65% proportion across 1,363 individual voter wallets.
AIP-196 Explained
Since the formation of the new council, its members have advocated for the backing of a new Ape Improvement Proposal titled AIP-196 and headlined BORED: Bringing Order and Reliability via Ecosystem Decentralization.
AIP-196 has two main priorities: to establish an interim working group and to organise DAO administration.
The Interim Working Group, referred to as Working Group Zero, or WG0, will be a three-person interim group commencing work on January 4th 2023 across three months with the ambition to decentralize and operationalize the [ApeCoin] DAO.”
The initial three stewards will be immediately appointed while elections taking place for the remaining four slots. Therefore, WG0 will eventually consist of seven members.
As outlined in AIP-916, the working group will operate under the “conceptual mandate of operationalizing the DAO, empowering and rewarding community members for domain expertise and work on DAO operations, while taking further steps towards decentralizing the DAO.”
WG0, which has been granted a first month budget of US$44,710 and US$58,594 for the following two months by the Special Council, will comprise active members of the Ape community who have consistently engaged in governance processes and token holding.
Interested parties must meet at least one of three requirements: have a trust level status 2 on ApeCoin discourse, have participated in at least 50% of all AIP proposals, or have held in excess of 50,000 $APE prior to December 21.
Since inauguration, the APE Foundation has contracted Cayman-Island based fintech consultancy firm Cartan Group, LLC to manage administration services.
As per AIP-916, Cartan Group will continue to serve for a 2-month period, as well as “implementing a transparent Request for Proposals (“RFP”) process to identify future APE Foundation administrators.” In other words, finding a new decentralized suitor for their job.
Over a three month period between January 23rd – March 23rd, the ApeCoin DAO has budgeted to pay Cartan Group a sum of USD $200,000 until the termination of their services.
Scrutinised on this decision on Twitter, Special Council member Gerry revealed that they “chose to ignore our emotions and do what was right for the DAO.”
Apecoin DAO: Bored Ape G Interview
The Chainsaw sat down with newly-appointed Special Council member Bored Ape G to discuss the professional qualities and skills required for the role, his expectations for the implementation of Working Group Zero, and the council’s ambitions for this time next year.
Bored Ape G revealed that his primary qualifications for the role of ApeCoin DAO Special Council member reside in his experience within the finance and accounting professions.
I am a registered CPA [Certified Public Accountant] in both Canada and United States, and for the past 8 years I have been the CFO of a healthcare system based in Southern California, he stated.
Additionally, he is the co-founder of a Cayman-Island-based foundation called the Curators Society, so can offer expertise in the Cayman region for the APE Foundation. Bored Ape G believes this diverse background will provide a unique perspective to tackle our challenges of achieving further decentralization for ApeCoin DAO.
On the subject of Working Group Zero (WG0) — Bored Ape G shared his opinion that having immediate appointments [3 stewards] will allow the group to hit the ground running while elections are being conducted for the remaining 4 stewards.
“I expect Working Group Zero (WG0) will successfully transition most duties we reasonably can offload from our Cayman Islands administrator; this will be a significant step forward to further decentralization. WG0 will lay the foundation for future working group AIPs that will be presented after this initial period, he added.
Community Reaction
Two-term member of the Special Council, Yat Siu, tweeted his congratulations to the incoming members with high-spirited optimism for the future of the ApeCoin DAO.
Bored Ape FFV shared that the skeptical voting numbers in favour of Degentraland challenged his faith in the integrity of the ApeCoin DAO, but that ultimately the right decision was made.
