We’re almost two thirds into 2022 and readers of The Otonomist will hopefully sense that OtoCo has accomplished a lot so far this year with a modest budget and a small development team.

Only in June of this year did OtoCo add a second Solidity coder to its development bench. As of today, the core team consist of 6 people, 3 of whom are half-time, and a contracted-in UXUI designer. For now, we feel this will do until late 2023.

Lasting team

A lot of our thinking on governance for OtoCo is colored by our strong conviction that Web3 won’t win from Web2 if it does not manage to build lasting teams.

Our earlier post on Token Option Programs aired the idea of governance mining of liquid tokens, similarly to a Web2 Employee Share Option Scheme, as a possible way to build a lasting team.

The core concern governance mining is trying to address is that if the initial leads of a project get an early payday from the liquid token pre-mine without any further visibility to earn more tokens, what incentives do they have to stick around?

More generally, unless collaborators in a Web3 project receive clear visibility of a reward for their sustained contribution, there is a real risk that most DAOs lives will be short and brutish: constantly under threat from being rug-pulled and with no dedicated team to fall back on.

Our design in Part I introducing a separate class of non-transferable NFTs recognizes that we need to go a step beyond liquid token mining as a way to reward governance participation and contributions to a Web3 project generally.

OtoCo is trying to come up with a a model that not only rewards governance participation by minting extra tokens, but also gives predictability as to the size of the award as a % of the total tokens minted, in the same way that Web2 Employee Stock Options express the % of the total issued shares an employee can receive if he/she sticks around and fully vests.

This means the governance participation NFTs will likely be capped or subject to a rigid inflation model to give recipients a clear sense of how much they can earn as a portion of the total pool.

As a first step towards such scheme, an initial vote will take place in December of this year which, if approved, will bind the Foundation to put a governance participation award mechanism in place on the terms proposed, even if on the technical side we will still have to abide our time until some of the technology matures.1

Below, we have situated this vote within a sequence of key governance Proposals to originate from the OtoCo DAO, together with our development roadmap for the remainder of 2022 until mid-2024. This roadmap is of course not frozen. Note: Items indicated with G relate to governance, and items prefaced with D indicate the milestones on the development roadmap.

2022

September

• G: OTOCO token balance together with unspent portion of proceeds of Mar-22 fundraise get pledged to OtoCo Foundation by OtoCo Labs.
• G: First vote on OtoCo Snapshot re allocation of OTOCO tokens to project leads and other contributors by way of grants, subject to vesting terms.
• G: Vote on proposal to use portion of OTOCO tokens and USDC in Foundation Treasury towards liquidity pool on Uniswap.
• G: Vote on fundraising options for OtoCo.
• D: deployment of tokenized series LLC smart contracts allowing OtoCo users to create “mirror tokens” that represent membership in an onchain LLC, together with initial voting logic based on Open Zeppelin Governor.
• D: First set of LLC “Manager matters” as smart contract plug-ins.

October

• D: Fiat payments from within OtoCo dashboard.
• D: Instant filed LLC in WY and DE.
• F (for fun): DevCon in Bogotá!

November

• D: APIs for LLC fiat solutions.
• D: Customizable LLC governance parameters (quorum and voting).
• G: Detailed spec of NFT governance participation awards.

December

• G: Vote on governance participation award scheme, initial allocations and terms (see above).
• D: Release of next batch of LLC smart contract plugins.

2023

January - September

• D: On the development side, the first 3 quarters of 2023 will be entirely dedicated to building the OtoCo dAppstore, which will allow third-party developers to offer and monetize smart contract and other plugins to OtoCo’s user base. The launch of the dAppstore will coincide with the start of the algorithmic OTOCO liquid token minting as a function of user spend and developer revenue in the platform.

• G: On the Governance side, proposal submission and voting will continue via OtoCo’s Snapshot. Regular polls will take place and each token holder can submit proposals.

• G: Before the launch of the dAppstore (see above), a 2024 community vote will take place on the ratio of OTOCO liquid token minting as % of user spend/developer revenue, and how the newly-minted tokens will be allocated across users, developers, contributors and the Foundation.2

October - December

• D: Scheduled creation of the first set of OtoCo governance award NFTs and their equippables.
• D: Governance dash with avatars as equippable Base NFTs.
• G: Commencement of the bicameral governance system with the first airdrop of trophy shelves and governance awards.

2024

2024 will be the year we work towards our vision of business building as a Massively Multi-Player Onchain Role-Playing Game (MMORPG).

With avatars embodying real-world legal powers and privileges in an onchain organization, our dashboard and graphic interface will increasingly resemble an online game in which users can perform set tasks in return for rewards, gain NFT trophies based on reputation that slot into their avatar, and earn boosters and megas that increase their governance powers.

OtoCo will first build this for itself and then port the functionality over to its user organizations, incrementally moving Web3 business building into the metaverse whilst maintaining legal validity.

Follow OtoCo’s progress by joining its official Telegram and Discord channel today!