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Starting a second Web3 thread focused on DAOs here. Will go much slower since experiments are much more complex. My first thread is here.
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Gonna make a thread of my ongoing slow journey (emigration? perhaps…) to Web3, along with my covered wagon full of Web1 and Web2 stuff. Including NFTs, DAOs etc. So if those topics annoy you, you can mute this thread.
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First big idea for me is that everybody immediately overindexes in the “decentralized” in the acronym. It’s the “autonomous” that’s key. In fact decentralization may end up being a very tunable knob.
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Okay first DAO experiment underway. I claimed the handle vgr on and completed KYC (drivers license, proof of residence via bank statement, and interestingly, a “liveness” test using my computer camera).
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I’m starting with Colony because I consulted for the founders and briefly in 2017, and took part of my fee in governance tokens which I should receive soon. This will allow me to experiment with staking and stuff. So preferred candidate.
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My main serious experiment target will be finding something suitable for the so of course that’s not my call to make alone. Participants in our Monday morning (8AM Pacific) blockchain roadmap study group will be involved in evaluating and picking a platform.
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Colony runs on the xDai chain, which is an ethereum compatible L2 sidechain with a stablecoin currency called xDai. It recently merged with Gnosis, makers of fine multisig safes. Via some sort of mysterious DAO-DAO merger. Translation — a kinda railroad siding where fees are low.
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There seems to be some disagreement on definitions and xDai is apparently more of a separate chain altogether with eth compatible addresses. You can apparently “bridge” tokens from ethereum main net to such sidechains/bridged chains in some mysterious way.
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There’s a whole mess of tokens here that I don’t understand. DAI is the original ethereum token of the Maker DAO, a stablecoin. xDai afaict is a 1:1 bridgeable thing that trades on its own cheap chain. You buy Dai with ether and then bridge it over to xDai or something.
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Anyhoo, I’ll figure it out at some point, but for limited kyc need, the colony people sent me 0.01 xDai simply by asking, about 1c worth, and that was enough to complete various signings and representations needed to get set up. So punting on learning all this bridge stuff.
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This is a bit of a side quest I won’t get into since L2s, sidechains, bridges, and stablecoin s are general infrastructure used for more than DAOs. Goal is to learn just enough to play with DAOs cheaply. Sub-penny play sounds good. But here’s a diagram to help confuse you.
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Ok, pausing here for now. Request: If you are part of a DAO, post a reply to this with a link and short description of what it’s about so both people reading this thread and I have some working examples to look at and think about.
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Continuing DAO adventures. Managed to buy some DAI and bridge it over to xDai on the Gnosis/xDai through something called a "bridge." This was *extremely* janky. The bridge had trouble recognizing the DAI in my account properly, but eventually I managed to get it across.
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xDai is the native currency of the ethereum compatible xDai/Gnosis chain (the name is because the two merged recently). Many complex dApps live on such compatible chains because they offer much lower fees (pennies instead of 10s of dollars).
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Dai is a stablecoin of the MakerDAO on Ethereum, which is used to create the derivative xDai coin on the Gnosis chain. This is done through a bridge contract that locks up Dai and releases xDai and vice versa. The screenshots are from the bridge application.
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I bought $100 worth of DAI on Coinbase and sent it over to my Metamask. Since it's an ERC-20 token it can live on Ethereum so you just send DAI to your ethereum address. That cost 7DAI so now I had ~93 DAI (=$93, since it is stable at 1:1) in my metamask. So far so good...
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The bridging process made me first "approve" a spending limit (50 DAI to xDai) and then pay separately to actually send the Dai to th the bridge contract thereby releasing the xDai on the Gnosis side. This may have been a mistake on my part.
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The instructions didn't say anything about a 2-step approve/transfer process, each with its own fees. So I paid about $14 and $9 in 2 transactions to do the bridge transaction. If you're keeping track, I've so far spent about $32... and I have $50 worth of xDai now on Gnosis.
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The Gnosis chain uses the same address space as the Ethereum main chain, just on a different blockchain. So your tokens simply live at the same address in a different city sort of. See in the screenshots below the network name is different but the address (0x25...) is the same.
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But now, having spent $32 to move $50, I am hopefully in the Land of Cheap Transactions and the 50 xDai will hopefully last me a long time.
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The reason for me exploring Gnosis/xDai in particular is because operates on xDai, and they recently did their token sale, in which I got a bunch of their CLNY token for having done some consulting for them in 2017-18.
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But you need xDai to do anything on Gnosis, including in my case claiming my CLNY and my profile on the "metacolony" that governs the Colony DAO software project. Fortunately the good folks at Colony sent me a few pennies worth of xDai, enough to cover my bootstrap needs.
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Well, I signed up for Colony, got my CLNY, and made noble plans to set up a DAO there soon, but of course, first I wanted to do the base, degen thing and see what my CLNY was worth. Also my first plan to acquire some more xDai was to sell a bit of my newfound CLNY riches. BUT....
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Turns out I didn't actually have enough xDai left after my bootstrapping to even pay for the trade... the Colony people had sent me 0.01 xDai (1c), and I'd spent about 0.0065 already, and I had 0.0035 xDai (~0.3c) left. Not enough xDai to sell CLNY to get more xDai 🤣
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Anyhow that was a good excuse to learn all this fancy "bridge" technology. So now given that the average tx on xDai seems to be about 0.2c, and I have $50 worth, I am good for about 25,000 tx if I don't spend xDai on anything else.
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Anyhow, now I'm all set up to try some adventures on Colony and other attractions in Gnosis land (recommendations welcome).
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But an interesting realization here: microtransactions are real now! For a couple of decades now people have been fantasizing about being able to cheaply move pennies around, now you can! I'm gonna try and do a bunch of penny-scale transactions next just because I can.
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Another really fun thing going on here is having the same address on multiple networks which feels very sci-fi. Like China Mieville's City and the City which I started reading but didn't finish (it is about 2 cities that somehow occupy the same space)
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