Investment Proposal: Firn Protocol

ogma · April 27, 2023, 9:52am

Announced:

https://twitter.com/lunarpunksquad/status/1651297732458323968

Lunrapunk Future VI w Firn:

https://twitter.com/lunarpunksquad/status/1651346075238686720

Grav · April 30, 2023, 3:33pm

After discussing with Captain McAteer we are prepared to make a significant increase in our offer.

We would like to move from a 7% discount on $10,000 investment to a simple 50% bonus on any investment over $10,000. The structure will thus be:

$10,000 investment will receive $15,000 $FIRN
$50,000 investment will receive $75,000 $FIRN, etc.

This investment proposal represents our dedication to the Lunarpunk community, and the Lunarpunk vision. If the DAO chooses to invest in this extremely generous offer, we expect that LunarDAO will work closely with Firn to grow together, and work for the best interests of both groups.

All other requirements outlined in the original offer apply to this offer, including the 12 month locking period, and this discount will only apply to an OTC purchase. This is not financial advise.

Thank you

bil · April 30, 2023, 7:21pm

Hi, this is great savings for the Treasury. How are the rest of the Firn tokens be distributed. I believe it’s hard capped at 1M but are all circulating? A significant portion is in 0x…3B0dC. What’s the plan for those? If they belong to your team, any lock-up periods?
I love the app by the way. Good job.

Grav · April 30, 2023, 11:26pm

The distribution is as follows:

30% - Team Tokens
30% - Partnership Tokens
10% - Airdrop Tokens
17% - Future Liquidity
4.6% - Current Liquidity
7.8% - Circulating

The large non-circulating supply is retained by the Firn multisig. While we are still a relatively young project all of these allocations will remain in the multisig, for maximal security, until we are ready to actively parse them and control several multisigs. At some point the team will hold no more token than the alloted 30%, which will be divided between team members. There will be no lockups of the multisig tokens until we are slightly more established and have reached some critical milestones.
While this structure is slightly uncommon in crypto it is relatively standard in tradfi corporations. Having more fluid controls over the token at this point allows us to do things like offer 50% bonuses to early investors.
We renounced our token contract ownership few days ago, so there will never be any new tokens minted. Because $FIRN is a token which pays dividends any token ownership is very much akin to being a part owner of Firn Protocol. Again, the fees are paid based on the size of the circulating supply.
For example, If LunarDAO were to choose to invest $50,000 right now, they would receive ~5000 $FIRN (worth $75,000). At the current circulating supply that amount would grant the DAO access to ~7% of all Firn fees generated.

bil · May 1, 2023, 2:44pm

One of the criteria I always consider when investing is determining the answer to the question, would a fork of that be as successful. I am thinking if Firn token gets the network effect of this series of tools, would similar protocols with no tokens (or with alt-tokens) also be successful enough. I understand the developing team and initiators must be handsomely paid in order to encourage development but personally think 30% is a lot for the reason I mentioned above (it will be forked and the forks will also work as good as original). Am I missing something? Is liquidity necessary for your protocol to work?

Grav · May 1, 2023, 3:34pm

Understandable, right now our front-end is not open-source, making it essentially impossible to fork us. At some point we will open-source the front-end, but that won’t happen until we are very well established in the space. A similar protocol with no token (or with a governance token only) would likely be less successful. The dividend token model provides users with an avenue to reclaim some of the fees they pay, and it also drives adoption of the service. In the case that a fork happens with no token, the devs would be paid 100% of the fees, not just 30%. We are not retaining 30% of the token so that we can sell the token for profit, we are retaining 30% so that we are able to profit from the fees generated by the protocol.
I think the confusion comes from the standard fundraising model in crypto being the “governance token”, which is pretty much just a worthless token which devs sell to make money. Governance tokens have no inherent value, and so we have gotten used to ~5% team tokens. $FIRN token has inherent value, and holding the token is the only way the team can collect fees.
We could have chosen to go with the governance token model (or have no token) and collect all of the fees ourselves, but the dividend model allows investors to earn passive income. Without the dividend model any gains on the DAO’s investment in Firn would be solely dependent on a hope that the token value would increase.
We believe our tokenomics are significantly better than many other tokens in the space, that said, we still need to earn money from our work. So the tradeoff is that investors get significantly more value for their purchase, but the team holds a larger portion of the total supply. Does that clear things up?

ogma · May 2, 2023, 7:55pm

I wonder what allocation you all think shall be on the voting proposal for Firn?

Here is an escrow @Grav was sharing.

serinko · May 2, 2023, 9:55pm

I will look into the escrow and share my thoughts asap.

moonshadow · May 3, 2023, 1:32am

I think to have a balanced portfolio we could put 25% of thr current treasury in Firn, 25% in Mel staking.

Then, as new proposals are made (dark.fi? Navcoin?) We can allocate 25 to these as well. By then, we’ll be ready for another raise and hopefully have another good second round.

It would be great if each project isn’t just a speculative investment but one that generates revenue.

ogma · May 3, 2023, 12:17pm

Firn has these dividends which is very good for the DAO. We can see it similarly like the DAO VOX - like shares. Here the shares are not exposed to a speculation by themselves, instead equal to a fragment of the treasury net asset value, $FIRN is a share of how big % of the fees the DAO collects.

ogma · May 3, 2023, 12:18pm

Once we move with DarkFi towards some deal talk, imo shall announce that and make another raise. With the DAO size we cannot execute as much as we aim to do. Same with Mel. Mel has a minimum of 100k.

serinko · May 3, 2023, 12:33pm

I agree 100% with both - not throw all the ETH towards one project and make another raise before the possible support of DarkFi or Navcoin.

In TG and the last meeting there was a talk about the supporting the stewards, is there a proposal anywhere?

ogma · May 3, 2023, 1:05pm

Given the Mel proposal cannot proceed with the funds we have, DarkFi and NAvcoin is for later talks, maybe smth like $30k investment to $Firn can be a good figure to discuss.

ogma · May 6, 2023, 9:07am

FIRN PROTOCOL INVESTMENT PROPOSAL.

Open for a discussion:

github.com

lunardao/lip/blob/main/lip-0003.md

---
Title: LIP-0003
LIP Category and Type: Investment – Network Token Transfer
Contact: Grav
Date: 2023-05-05
Status: proposal
vote date: 2023-06-01
---
# Summary
_Firn Protocol_ is offering _LunarDAO_ an investment opportunity in the form of an OTC sale.
The proposed investment is in the amount of $30,000 worth of $ETH in exchange for $45,000 worth of $FIRN token.
Both spot prices will be calculated on some fixed, pre-approved date (for example, the date of the vote).
If the proposal is accepted, the purchased $FIRN token will be locked in a _Team Finance_ vault for a period of 12 months. During this lock period, the tokens will nonetheless accrue fees; these fees will be disbursed directly to the control of the LunarDAO treasury.
LunarDAO and Firn Protocol will work closely to grow the value and reach of both parties.

# Problem
The recent sanctioning of Tornado Cash and shutdown of Aztec Connect has left the Ethereum ecosystem without widely used privacy services.
Moreover, even these services—when they were available—had significant technical shortcomings, which Firn overcomes.
The proposal will provide value and returns to DAO members, and advance the DAO’s goal of funding, and making widely available, privacy solutions of superb quality.

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ogma · May 6, 2023, 6:16pm

The time for the vote is setup by Firn in ~3 weeks, which gives a lot of time for discussion.

Besides that in TG was shared an idea about a Lunarpunk Future event with several cryptographers discussing some of the deep tech, so users can make a better picture. This seems to be a supported way to go.

With everything shared prior to the formal LIP, I am in favor of Firn proposal for investment and close partnership. I see Firn in similar position with the DAO/ We are the platform to bring people together, build a squad and scale it up to a movement, Firn is one of the needed solutions for that movement to have the protection needed. When I say movement I mean anyone who does not comply with data extraction by the governments, regulations and other oppressive matters.

Grav · May 22, 2023, 3:10pm

Hi all, after speaking with Cap we have come to a decision on how the funds will be used if the DAO approves our proposal:

$25k - Will be spent on receiving a full audit of our contracts from BlockSec
$20k - Will be added to Firn contracts to increase the privacy of the service

Please let me know if you have any questions of comments.

Grav · May 24, 2023, 3:38pm

Please see below the OTC sale contract. This contract was reviewed by the DAO stewards as well as members of the Hedgey Finance team, and verified to be sound and secure.

github.com

firnprotocol/contracts/blob/lunar/FirnLunarDAOEscrow.sol

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT

pragma solidity 0.8.17;

import "./ERC20.sol";

contract FirnLunarDAOEscrow {
    address payable public constant LUNAR_DAO = payable(0x59F77dC848C2E45B5954975ee1969e7A22fA25F6);
    address payable public constant FIRN_MULTISIG = payable(0xa14664a2E58e804669E9fF1DFbC1bD981E13B0dC);
    ERC20 public immutable firnToken = ERC20(0xDDEA19FCE1E52497206bf1969D2d56FeD85aFF5c);

    uint256 public constant VESTING_DATE = 1717214400; // 01-06-2024, at 04:00:00 GMT. 1 year from vote date.

    uint256 public constant ETHER_AMOUNT = 36417 * 1e15; // 36.417 ether.
    uint256 public constant FIRN_AMOUNT = 4888 * 1e18; // FIRN: $13.81. take $67,500 / that. round up.
    bool public dealStatus = false;

    receive() external payable { // receive ether, i.e. as a payout from Firn fees.

    }

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ogma · June 1, 2023, 7:53am

Within 12 hours LIP-0003 will be submitted to vote

It is a substantial portion of the treasury, please read carefully and double check.

LIP-003: lip/lip-0003.md at main · firnprotocol/lip · GitHub
Escrow contract: FirnLunarDAOEscrow | Address 0xF6c9D03b76B845f6e3B9AbA22af4fB51856a58A6 | Etherscan
DAO proposal - Multi-call proposal builder: DAOhaus Admin

Steps

Update LIP of the contract link and calculations - Firn PR, LD Stewards merge
Publish a blog post about this investment proposal - Stewards on it
Get one last review of the new contract
Build the proposal
Announce + share

Building the proposal

In the builder UI enter name, desc and link to the last LIP version
Action 0
- target address is the escrow contract 0xF6c9D03b76B845f6e3B9AbA22af4fB51856a58A6
- value is $45,000 USD / $1,891.95 USD/ETH = 23.784ETH in Wei 23784000000000000000
- Function executeDeal()
Per governance an Investment proposal has 0.5% management fee, that will be part of the proposal as Action 1
- target address is the contract DAO 0x747da68facd1459e9d9b8f928418da30769d3ba1
- function mintShares()
- Value = 0
- param Address is Stewards’ multi-sig safe: 0xAb501a8Eb58c9780eb04D683feB504fcE391A2DD
- param Amount is 0.5% worth of $VOX = (total_vox / 0.995) - total_vox = (3712.53 / 0.995) - 3712.53 = 18.655 $VOX in Wei = 18655000000000000000

Feedback welcome!

zero · June 2, 2023, 8:53am

Firn protocol invest proposal submitted

The proposal to invest in Firn protocol has been submitted yesterday and is open for voting 72h.

Proposal:
https://admin.daohaus.fun/#/molochV3/0x1/0x747da68facd1459e9d9b8f928418da30769d3ba1/proposals/16

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/lunarpunksquad/status/1664405704063549444?cxt=HHwWiIC8jeyKlJkuAAAA

ogma · June 8, 2023, 3:01pm