MetisDAO releases the roadmap for the second half of the year, introducing a new governance structure: Common and Eco Node

Author: MetisDAO

Original Title: MetisDAO Foundation 2nd Half Year Roadmap 2022

Compiled by: Guo Qianwen, Chain Catcher

The vision of the MetisDAO Foundation has never changed since its inception: the foundation is committed to building robust infrastructure, empowering the Web3 economy, and providing reliable support. Over the past 12 months, we embarked on a journey of "building, failing, and learning," and the panorama of the future is increasingly revealing a clear framework. The foundation is also collaborating with developer teams within the community to utilize a bottom-up approach to transform infrastructure into tangible products, which can be demonstrated at three levels.

• Smart L2 Layer ------ is a robust, scalable, and cost-effective centralized technical infrastructure. It is an implementation layer that is secure enough for everyone to use; intelligent enough to handle sudden surges in user traffic; and robust enough to support the operation and stability of DApps and the Web3 economy.

• Reputation Power (RP) ------ is the most fundamental decentralized social infrastructure in the Web3 world, used to prove the social origins, trustworthiness, and participation of members across multiple chains/ecosystems/metaverses, as well as their social distance from specific fields.

• Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC) ------ is a decentralized collaboration framework that supports and assists individuals in collaborating within the Web3 world. It is individual-centric, on-chain, based on reputation power, and has an open framework that allows community members to co-build.

With the optimization of networks and infrastructure, the launch of new products and large-scale adoption will be the key focus for the second half of 2022.

To achieve a correct start, we will begin with adjustments to the basic organizational structure.

Decentralization and Governance Reform

Decentralization has always been a core focus of the foundation, and we have been exploring what form or degree of decentralization we want to achieve. We have also witnessed many use cases and practical results in different projects.

Most projects create a DAO, manage funds through multi-signature wallets, and make decisions through votes from DAO members. Community members submit proposals, initiate votes, and influence the decision-making process. Typically, two of the most popular scenarios occur:

• The project team opens part of the decision-making to the community; however, people must "bribe" whales to pass proposals, and token holders with a small amount of tokens have no real say in the decision-making process. As a result, this remains a centralized process.

• The project is entirely owned by the community, but since most community members are merely token holders and do not directly participate in the project, although everyone can ostensibly participate in project operations and governance, they lack genuine concern for the project. This leads to either significantly reduced efficiency or the project losing direction, as most community members only care about short-term returns. Some projects are attempting to address this issue through representation, but there is a lack of methods to determine the criteria for qualified representatives. Why would community members delegate their voting rights to people they do not know, or to those unrelated to the project, or simply because they are famous in certain fields?

Governance in the Web3 space has made significant progress; why not present something newer?

The MetisDAO Foundation will experimentally apply a dual-layer governance structure ------ Common and Eco Node, to explore more possibilities.

Common

Common members can propose suggestions. Anyone in the community can create a DAC and become a Common member by staking Metis tokens, accumulating veMetis for future decisions. You can invite others to join your Common to increase voting power. When it comes to specific decisions, you can freely choose which Common to join, and if you are dissatisfied with the decisions of that Common, you can exit; if you choose to exit, the related veMetis will also be revoked.

In this way, everyone can exert their influence, or freely choose which Common to support, providing a way for token holders with a small amount of tokens to compete with whales.

Eco Node

Eco Node will be the second layer, with voting power determined by reputation power badges.

Common members can grow into Eco Nodes by contributing to the development of the Metis ecosystem. There will be a list explaining the relevant "contributions," such as bringing TVL, generating transactions, introducing business potential clients, assisting in technical development or marketing, etc. These contributions will be recognized and validated through various reputation power badges. When Eco Nodes make decisions, the RP power generated by these badges will be counted in the voting system.

Practice

Under this dual-layer governance structure, the following practices will occur:

1) Common members can propose Metis Improvement Proposals (MIPs).

2) After passing the threshold, Eco Nodes will make the final decision.

Starting from the third quarter, the foundation will begin to experiment with this governance structure, and we plan to fully implement it over a 12-month transition period.

In the third quarter, a small number of Eco Nodes on the whitelist will be included in the scope for experimental launch, and executable MIPs will also be limited. The whitelist will be opened to more participants in the fourth quarter, and the categories of participating MIPs will also be expanded.

The Eco Nodes on the whitelist in the third quarter include:

• Smart L2 Layer

• Web3 Identity: Reputation system for Web2 and Web3 users

The Eco Nodes on the whitelist in the fourth quarter include, but are not limited to:

• DEI (DAC Economy Initiative): Establishing infrastructure to support the sustainability of the Web3 economy, including reputation power systems and DAC frameworks.

• Metis Studio: An incubator for Web3 applications.

• Genesi DAC: Investment fund for the Metis ecosystem.

More detailed arrangements and documents will be revealed later. Any Common dedicated to marketing, business development, liquidity provision, consulting, and other fields can start contributing and accumulating relevant RP badges now.

Technical Development

One of the main features of the MetisDAO Foundation is that the team utilizes cutting-edge technology for innovation, developing practical and user-friendly technology. Recently, the foundation has integrated with MemoLabs distributed storage and pioneered the Smart L2 technology genre, which means the foundation can accelerate the development of L2 technology, provide the lowest transaction costs, and bring technology to a broader audience. More innovations will emerge in the second half of 2022.

Fully Decentralized L2 Layer

In the L2 infrastructure layer, the Metis L2 team is addressing one of the most challenging aspects of the traditional Optimistic Rollup structure, which is the heavy reliance on a sequencer to process all transactions. This design is highly centralized and poses a significant risk of a single point of failure, forcing people to trust that the team will not act maliciously rather than trusting the code.

The Metis L2 team will launch a set of mechanisms in the third quarter to achieve the decentralization outlined in our technical white paper, including staking validators, an open peer-to-peer network, and launching a sequencer pool.

The Metis sequencer pool will be open for community participation. Smart contracts can choose the next sequencer, ensuring that the sequencer positions are effectively rotated rather than having one sequencer do all the work. The Metis L2 team will release cloud deployment code for main nodes and peer nodes, enabling everyone to run Metis nodes securely and efficiently.

At the same time, the Metis L2 team will continue to develop Smart L2 technology, constantly seeking top-tier technologies (including decentralized storage, ZK Rollup, etc.) to integrate into the infrastructure, making the Metis Smart L2 layer more secure, cost-effective, efficient, while also being highly scalable and eco-friendly.

Also in the third quarter, the Metis L2 team will integrate with BLS aggregators, which are smart contract wallets that use BLS signatures and aggregate transactions to reduce fees.

The team is also continuously working on the design of on-chain fraud proof rollups, with plans to release them in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Polis: A Portal Connecting Web 2 and Web 3

Polis is dedicated to facilitating the large-scale adoption of Web2 businesses, allowing Web2 businesses and users to enter Web3 in a more straightforward and direct manner.

In the third quarter, the Polis team will provide and enhance basic support for the reputation power system, enabling projects and developers to deploy RP smart contracts and issue reputation power badges. Polis will also integrate with BLS wallets to offer more user experience options (combining multiple operations in a single transaction), allowing end users to avoid paying any fees.

Also in the third quarter, Polis will further integrate with MemoLabs' decentralized storage solution, allowing users to store NFT data in decentralized storage by paying with Metis.

In the fourth quarter, Polis will assist Web2 developers with no-code deployment, one effort being to provide smart contract templates and complete reliable smart contract API support. Some multi-network login integrations and expansion options are also in the planning stages.

Web3 Product Incubation

Web3 is human-centered; no matter how grand the construction of Web3 is, you need some basic elements, such as how to track every person/wallet based on on-chain activities, how people collaborate with strangers in the Web3 world, and how these collaborations affect participants' credentials.

To support the prosperous development of the Web3 economy, the MetisDAO Foundation is incubating two main Web3 products: the reputation power system and the DAC framework.

Reputation Power: Decentralized Web3 Credentials

The reputation power (RP) system being incubated by the MetisDAO Foundation achieves social traceability in the Web3 space, providing everyone with a rich background of each member's social origins. Through the RP system, everyone can glimpse the participation level of other members in the multi-chain ecosystem and understand their social distance from specific fields.

• Social credentials in Web 3.0: Each member will embark on their RP journey by minting unique social NFTs, which will serve as a medium to store all social interactions of members in the multi-chain ecosystem.

• Achievements and participation rewards: All DApps can design and issue NFT badges. Each NFT badge represents a member's activity achievement or recognition of their participation. All members must meet the standards set by the DApp to qualify for NFT badges.

• Credibility levels: Members can start accumulating reputation power recorded in their social NFTs. This number can record members' contributions and participation in the ecosystem.

The MetisDAO Foundation aligns with Vitalik's value proposition described in his paper "Decentralized Society": seeking the "soul" of Web3, and the soul-bound tokens (SBT) he defines. The Metis RP team will realize this as a set of tangible products, including:

• Polis backend: For DApp developers to deploy NFT badge smart contracts and issue NFT badges.

• Matrix Station: DApp developers can distribute NFT badges to different users through various strategies.

• Matrix: User interface for minting users' social NFTs, showcasing users' social participation and capabilities.

In July, the Beta version of the RP system will be released, and invited DApp developers can deploy NFT badges on the following chains: Ethereum, Andromeda, Stardust, and Rinkeby, designing different tiers of DApp NFT badges. Whitelisted users will be able to mint social NFTs and check their personal information on Matrix. In the third quarter, the RP team will release the MVP version.

In the fourth quarter, the RP team will begin to build an ecosystem that allows multiple social and Web3 DApps to utilize RP, develop their businesses, and multi-chain deployment is also being considered. At the same time, more social elements will be introduced, combining with multiple RP source data, including other decentralized social identities in different ecosystems, while optimizing the definition algorithm for reputation power.

DAC 2.0: An Open, Decentralized, On-Chain Collaboration Framework for Everyone

Metis community members must have experienced DAC 1.0, which remains a closed system with very few functions. DAC 2.0 will evolve into a portal ------ a gateway to decentralized collaboration tools and new collaboration mechanisms based on reputation power.

In July, the DAC team will launch a new Portal user interface beta version, with basic functions including creating DACs, staking, managing members and funds, recognizing reputation power badges, accumulating veMetis (voting rights), and voting. The MVP version will be launched in August.

However, the foundational framework supporting the new portal has been fundamentally reorganized, evolving into an open framework that allows third-party developers to develop and launch their DAC applications in the third quarter. These applications under development include bounty and reward markets, task boards, communication, NFT minting, etc. Reputation power will be deeply integrated into the collaboration process, especially in scenarios involving collaboration establishment, performance review, and arbitration.

With open standards, documentation, and APIs, along with marketing and incentive programs, the DAC team expects the DAC MApp store (similar to Apple's App Store) to open in the fourth quarter, allowing community developers to submit applications and workflow templates and earn revenue based on usage or subscriptions. Building the ecosystem will be a focus in the fourth quarter, and the DAC team hopes the DAC Portal can become a place for projects, communities, and individuals to collaborate and develop in the Web3 space.

Ecosystem Development Towards Large-Scale Adoption

With the enhancement of the Metis L2 infrastructure, including documentation (https://docs.metis.io), Faucet (https://faucet.metissafe.tech/), Explorer (https://andromeda-explorer.metis.io/), Oracles (Chainlink, DIA, Witnet, API3), Random Number Generators (API3, Witnet), etc., the MetisDAO Foundation will establish the optimal L2 layer to enable decentralized applications, businesses, and new ideas to launch and operate on Metis.

Although the market is bearish, builders have never stopped! To better support innovative builders, attract large and mature projects, and establish a thriving ecosystem, the foundation will continue to build ecosystem development plans in the second half of 2022, focusing on the following.

Builder Mining

The builder mining program is dedicated to encouraging long-term builders in the Metis ecosystem and rewarding them based on their contributions. Based on feedback from the community and builders, the builder mining program will continue to evolve, incorporating more elements into the reward system, including TVL, users, marketing exposure, etc. Exclusive builder mining rewards will be reserved and transferred to Andromeda, the Metis L2 layer, and will be distributed based on new standards.

Web3 Funding Projects and Genesi DAC

The development of truly Web3 applications remains quite challenging; we believe it is not simply about migrating Web2 applications to the blockchain and issuing tokens. The foundation views Web3 as a self-sustaining economy rather than a series of unrelated applications; it should be decentralized, individual-centric, and designed based on reputation power, embedded with native, sustainable economic models.

To better support innovation in the Web3 space, the foundation will launch new funding projects starting in the third quarter of 2022, targeting the metaverse/gaming space, new collaboration models, Web3-based DeFi, and Web3 infrastructure.

Genesi DAC, as a core booster for the development of the Metis ecosystem, will be more closely involved in these innovative projects and provide funding, networking, and industry resource support.

Community Ecosystem Governance (CEG)

The CEG project is an important part of Metis's decentralized structure, empowering the community to make decisions about the onboarding of new projects. For projects newly joining the Metis ecosystem, this is also a great way for them to engage and interact with Metis community members while launching their projects. In the past few weeks, 15 projects have passed the CEG process and become officially recognized community-validated projects (CVPs).

Starting from the third quarter, the CEG project will continue to evolve, providing more conveniences for projects completing the CEG process, such as dedicated marketing support (Twitter, Twitter Spaces, AMAs, media articles, etc.), bonuses, builder mining rewards, etc.

Participants in the CEG project (including projects and community members) will also be awarded different reputation and influence badges.

The MetisDAO Foundation will support the development of Eco Nodes

As described in the governance structure, Eco Nodes will play a key role in the development and governance of the Metis ecosystem. The MetisDAO Foundation will coordinate these initiatives and collaborations while providing support, funding, and even incubation for these nodes. Eco Nodes will operate independently. The MetisDAO Foundation will assist the following Eco Nodes:

• DEI (DAC Economy Initiative)

• Metis Web3 Identity

• Metis Studio

• Marketing-specific Eco Nodes

• Liquidity provision-specific Eco Nodes

With clear goals and actions, we are building the future of Web3. Thank you for your continued support, and let us witness the future of the new structure together.