The following is a reflection on the one year anniversary of Inverse Finance DAO from contributor, Akarin.
Late last year there was a message put out to CT: “Apply to join Inverse DAO”. A google form was linked.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1340639606853808129
I had never been involved with a DAO, and I was curious to know what it was all about. The form requested contact information, an address for the airdrop, questions about previous experience, skills, and how I would like to contribute. I wasn’t sure how I could contribute, but I wanted to get involved so that’s what I said. Later, it was revealed that responses were in the thousands. Nour Haridy, the founder and sole core dev reviewed each application.
The resulting subset received the INV airdrop on December 25th 2020. That is what I consider the founding date of the DAO. Some early contributors (transparently) received more, but the majority received 80 INV. Ultimately, after all was claimed (and revoked unclaimed/seized) there were 409 INV holders — now known as the Original 409, or 409’ers. And that is how Inverse DAO launched. The decision to airdrop the protocol token to applicants rather than random individuals or fully to a core team was brilliant. Possibly a novel approach in DeFi at that time, it resulted in a highly invested group of DAO participants. But there was a catch — in another stroke of brilliance by Nour, the INV token was actually untradable.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1358218794611671040
This meant that only the initial shortlisted applicants and core contributors were able to hold the token. Membership was exclusive, and we had ourselves a core community.
Nour wasn’t done yet. The airdrop had one more condition imposed: participation was required.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1359566245557805060
One of the biggest challenges of DAOs is active participation by members. A DAO is only as good as its members’ contributions — particularly in voting on proposals. In an attempt to solve this, Nour decided to make the INV token seizable (by DAO vote) from inactive members. A number of snapshot ‘roll-calls’ were held, and those who failed to participate (or had failed to delegate or to vote on prior proposals) had their 80 INV tokens seized.
The combination of active participation, untradability, and a core set of holders was magical. The DAO was one of the most active — it set records for voter participation. The community was highly engaged and debated wholeheartedly on various topics from selecting the protocol logo to the highly controversial tradability wars.
There are many more stories to tell, and I’m sure I’ve missed some excellent ones. A year is a tremendously long time in crypto and so many amazing things have happened since Inverse Finance launched (including tradable INV, Anchor and Dola, the first DAO m&a, the new governance contracts, the DAO’s first full time employees). Suffice to say that the past year has been huge and the DAO is only just getting started. Happy first anniversary, Inverse Finance DAO!
As we reflect on the past year, we are excited to see where Inverse Finance can go from here. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Inverse DAO!
