What’s the most important thing for a growing blockchain to truly establish itself in the DeFi space?
A hyper-targeted, like-minded community of DeFi experts having extensive experience in traditional finance as well as the Ethereum ecosystem, who have been in that ecosystem ever since its inception in 2015, and know all the nuances, intricacies, merits and demerits of the said ecosystem. Those who can, from their learnings thus far in DeFi 1.0 and TradFi in general, ideate, introduce, incubate, mentor, and help model the new generation of DeFi protocols on the NEAR protocol in the present era of DeFi 2.0.
Let me introduce you to exactly what I’ve described above: ShineDAO
Presenting to the NEAR Ecosystem: ShineDAO
Maximizing the success of a decentralized future requires more than just capital. The core value of decentralized products comes from the community of stakeholders and their network effects.
The Shine protocol was designed to encode incentivized relationships and align interests between projects, supporters, and contributors while sustainably growing the DAO treasury and SHN token price.
[Note: SHN is the official token of ShineDAO. Find more info about it here.]
Mission
ShineDAO is a self-governing community on a mission to fund and support the most promising Web3 & DeFi innovators.
Vision
ShineDAO connects cohorts of innovators with supporters and contributors to build a decentralized future in a trustless multi-chain environment.
Overview
The key products offered by ShineDAO are:- SEED, and
- SWAP
SEED
SEED allows Web3 and DeFi projects to request funding support from ShineDAO supporters (veSHN holders). Contributors facilitate the SEED proposal process and coordinate the SEED event upon approval from supporters. Supporters collectively approve the project they are interested in supporting through ShineDAO.SEED event allows supporters with necessary veSHN balances to purchase tokens. Their veSHN balance also impacts their individual allocation. Project tokens are distributed to supporters over a negotiated vesting period, to align incentives long-term.
Supporters pay a fee which, together with the weekly yield from the treasury, is used to compensate for the efforts of contributors in sourcing projects and facilitating the process, while creating a strong incentive to lock SHN in the veSHN contract. Thus, there is no conflict of interests between supporters and contributors.
Besides capital, projects can expect feedback, advice, and ideas from their supporters.
SWAP
SWAP allows Web3 and DeFi projects to get execution support from the talents & advisors network or allocate resources for open bounties. Every individual in the talents and advisors network is screened, and either has extraordinary achievements from their past positions or has proved themself by contributing to previous ShineDAO open bounties.To incentivize individuals in the network, projects can request to swap their (often illiquid) project tokens with SHN and define milestones. Contributors facilitate the SWAP proposal process and coordinate the SWAP event upon approval from supporters.
Supporters collectively approve the project they are interested in supporting by allowing them to swap their tokens with SHN and access the talents and advisors network. To ensure long-term alignment, project tokens are vested to the veSHN holders and expand the DAO treasury.
Treasury
The Shine treasury generates returns by having its assets fully deployed and utilized through yield farming. SHN in treasury grows in value due to buy pressure from the buyback mechanism, the inflow of new supporters looking to get into SEED, and supporters looking to benefit from SWAP. 50% of tokens in SWAP will be vested to the treasury directly. veSHN holders can exercise governance over all assets in the treasury.Governance & Voting Escrow (ve) Style Tokenomics
veSHN as a governance token enables community participation in controlling:- Accepting projects for SEED
- Accepting projects for SWAP
- Distribution parameters
- Assets in treasury
Facilitation of this process is done through continuous approval voting whereby HODLers of veSHN (Supporters) create and participate in various initiatives and funding proposals.
- Governance interface: Snapshot
- Details about the veSHN token: veSHN
- Benefits of becoming a Supporter: Supporters
Our Standards
Being Brave
ShineDAO ventures to go where no man has gone, to sail uncharted territories, and change the status quo of traditional finance. United, we have the strength to challenge incumbent ideas and structures. We have the willingness to do the things that matter - even if those things represent a substantial challenge.Empowering Each Other
We believe in empowering the individual, rewarding initiatives, and encourage self-development as well as experimentation. If you are strongly convinced about something, the easiest way to get others on board is to start the first steps yourself: show up often, prove you can deliver value, and others will follow suit!Collaborative Learning
Building or learning things alone and in isolation is not a conducive environment at all. Not only is your impact minuscule, but your learnings don’t reach their fullest potential either. We believe that together we can make DeFi bigger than ourselves and help in the NEAR protocol’s widespread adoption while doing so.The Problem we’re addressing with ShineDAO
ShineDAO helps early-stage projects find their purpose and realize their vision through incubation, mentorship, funding, support, and execution in Web3.0.
Early stage crypto teams require a certain mix of resources to develop their project in a quick and sustainable way. They need:
- Capital to cover costs (audits, individual salaries, deployment costs, legal audits, …)
- Advisors that possess expert knowledge,
- Early-stage users that can provide feedback,
- Ability to build trust and credibility,
- Ambassadors helping with exposure,
- Resources to meaningfully reward the early community of contributors.
Traditionally, these projects seek VC funding to obtain these resources and scale up their development.
The current system with VC funding hybrids has an inherent conflict of interests between the token and equity holders. VCs are seldom interested in acquiring tokens in a potential project but rather equity in an established entity. Friction can occur if the opinions of equity holders are different from token holders. In essence, you end up with two separate systems of governance, where one system has to win.
We see this as a “tug of war” where the project founders are the rope, pulled between two major forces.
The Solution we offer at ShineDAO
Our solution is simple: a decentralized, community-driven funding and support mechanism for all the new-age BUIDLers in web3.0 and DeFi.
Choosing the right fundraising platform as an early-stage team is difficult, and we believe that maximizing project success requires more than just the provision of capital. Furthermore, we want to be true to DeFi and enable a way for projects to grow outside of the centralized system.
As explained in the Overview section previously, through our SEED and SWAP solutions, we bring together like-minded individuals from various walks of life to contribute their efforts towards a single idea - beginning from conception to fundraising and ultimately execution.
SEED: Why raise funding from ShineDAO supporters?
- Capital for your project from DeFi and Web3 founders, devs, designers, bridge builders, community managers, and influencers
- 1 agreement, 100+ individuals with “skin in the game”
- Community of engaged early adopters
SWAP: Why get execution support from ShineDAO contributors?
- Access to 100+ ShineDAO frens (vetted individuals in talents and advisors network)
- Ability to utilize own illiquid tokens to incentivize contributors
- 1 agreement, 100+ individuals with “skin in the game”
This is how we envision NEAR’s up-and-coming DeFi Ecosystem, powered by the ideals of ShineDAO - a community-first approach from the beginning till the end.
The Impact of ShineDAO on NEAR DeFi
At ShineDAO, we believe we’ll set the new world truly free with the power of DeFi. And we will achieve this side by side with the NEAR protocol.There will no longer be a requirement for the latest DeFi projects and their innovators to go seek funding from centralized entities. A BUIDLer would be empowered to realize their original vision for the product they’re innovating forced management, limited decision-making abilities, or loss of equity.
Our community-driven model helps promising DeFi innovators in the NEAR ecosystem achieve the following with their projects:
- Self-governance and funding to realize their true vision for the project.
- Preservation of equity and/or project tokens ownership.
- Improved access to funding from investors who are like-minded, reducing conflicts of interest and maximizing project growth. (More about this here)
- Exposure to a wider community of diversified, skilled, and experienced DAO contributors and their network effects. (More about this here)
- Discovering and creating networks with similar BUIDLers who are innovating other breakthrough DeFi projects via the Shine Incubator.
- Consultation on their product by top DeFi experts, along with advice on shaping their own governance and tokenomics.
Some of the projects who’ve already had the good fortune to be exposed to such advantages after being incubated by ShineDAO have been described below along with their links (if anyone wants to get in touch with them for testimonial proof).
DeFi Options DAO
DeFi Options is an open source decentralized options trading platform targeted at Layer 1 and Layer 2 chains, allowing users to buy, sell, and write cash-settled European call/put option tokens.Their flexible structure allows traders to access or spin up their own on-chain peer-to-pool options trading liquidity pool where they control the rules (i.e set traded underlying assets, select price oracles, define pricing models, determine trading spreads, adjust permissions for traders and LPs, etc).
Find out more about DeFi Options DAO here.
Kassandra DAO
Kassandra is a decentralized autonomous organization that governs a set of tokenized data-driven investment funds, bringing a new class of investment products to the DeFi ecosystem: actively managed investment baskets without compromising the pillars of decentralization.
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For Managers: Kassandra is a plug-and-earn solution to port complex money management strategies to decentralized ecosystems, saving time and costs when compared to the traditional market, helping managers to raise funds without the need for complex infrastructure.
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For Investors: Kassandra democratizes access to robust data models and quantitative analysts leveraging portfolio optimization and potential gains.
How the NEAR DeFi Ecosystem will Benefit from associating with ShineDAO
Association of the NEAR protocol with ShineDAO would result in the amalgamation of two highly esteemed, driven communities to bring about a new era in NEAR DeFi.
With its well-established cross-chain relationships with the leading DeFi protocols out there at the moment, ShineDAO can provide the NEAR ecosystem with the following salient advantages:
- Exposure to the latest high-quality DeFi and web3 projects being launched in various chains across the crypto ecosystem, straight from the ShineDAO Hunting Guild & Partnerships Pipeline.
- Potential of NEAR’s adoption and migration by all projects mentioned above.
- Building multi-chain relations with top DeFi protocols associated directly with ShineDAO or indirectly associated via our Supporters, Contributors, and Frens Network.
- Cross-marketing and promotion of NEAR across all of Shine’s social and marketing channels.
- Introducing the NEAR ecosystem to top DeFi and TradFi experts in the ShineDAO ecosystem and their wider Frens Network.
In return, we see the following benefits from associating ourselves with the NEAR ecosystem:
- Adapting the Shine Launchpad to be able to support our own projects launching on NEAR.
- Winning market share as NEAR’s one and only DeFi Launchpad for launching a lion’s share (if not all) of the DeFi projects launching on NEAR.
- Building connections with projects applying for grants on NEAR to get incubated by the Shine Incubator.
- Onboarding some senior advisors from the NEAR ecosystem onto ShineDAO (technical, business development, system design, growth, etc.)
- Cross-marketing and promotion of ShineDAO and our incubated projects and partner projects across the NEAR ecosystem’s marketing channels.
The ultimate handshake between ShineDAO and NEAR would result from establishment of a NEAR/SHN Pool by allocating some NEAR tokens from NEAR treasury and SHN tokens from Shine treasury.
ShineDAO Roadmap for NEAR Protocol Integration
Milestone 1: Smart Contract Compatibility for NEAR Protocol
V1 of ShineDAO protocol allows community members to pool together capital for approved project, and distribute tokens through (V1) vesting schedules to align incentives long run. We have already launched projects on Polygon and Avalanche. The goal of Milestone 1 is to compensate the Rust developers (suggested by @FritzWorm ) to allow this process to happen on NEAR.Requirements for the smart contracts are:
- Bridge between Ethereum/Polygon and NEAR
- Tier mechanism in the smart contracts
- Ability to modify the tiers in smart contracts and the relative caps/tiers
- Ability to modify which address collects the raised funds (or the address where the raised funds go will be the address that did the initial deployment.)
[Note: Smart contract repository can be accessed here.]
Milestone 2: WebApp 2.0 Launch
We will improve UX of existing features that allow our community to achieve common goals in trustless environment:- Launchpad with tier overview
- Voting escrow (veSHN) locking & staking
- Claiming vested tokens and staking rewards
- Improved wallet connect (design and ability to support NEAR)
- Redesigned project detail page
- Updating design of Degen News & moving it to the dashboard
- Updated contributor onboarding (ability to automatically track and reward contributors)
We will also introduce additional features like:
- Quests and bounties overview
- Referral system
[Note: Frontend repository can be accessed here.]
Milestone 3: Growth - Launch 3 New Projects on NEAR DeFi
We are looking to incentivize existing and new community members to drive growth initiatives.We will be focusing on:
- Content creation
- Blog articles on Medium,
- PR pieces on Yahoo Finance and related websites,
- Videos on YouTube,
- Infographics for Instagram,
- Podcasts on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, &
- Twitter threads
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Business development / Partnerships (DAOs and projects that can bring value to projects launching on NEAR)
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Paid cross-promotional ads on social channels
- Reddit,
- Twitter,
- YouTube,
- Instagram, &
- Influencer marketing
- Twitter,
- YouTube,
- Instagram,
- TikTok,
- Telegram, &
Adding a link to the website