The ApeCoin DAO committee is about to undergo a reshuffle. Can the "OP camp" add another strong player?

Source: Sharon, BlockBeats

Today, several KOLs from the crypto industry are participating in the election for members of the ApeCoin DAO Special Council. Among them, over 20 nominees include core member 0xAndy.eth from the BAYC Taiwan team (@0xAndy_eth) and co-founder of ApeTownio Balou.eth (@BalouBAYC).

According to official news from ApeCoin DAO, this election will select 3 nominees to join the ApeCoin DAO Special Council, starting a new round of community governance from January 1, 2024.

Image source: ApeCoin DAO

More noteworthy than the election is this special council and the recent frequent actions of ApeCoin DAO.

The council once gathered stars, now the community discusses its salary issues

Regarding the ApeCoin DAO Special Council, many current community members have expressed dissatisfaction, but the previous special council was once "star-studded."

In March 2022, ApeCoin DAO and ApeCoin were launched simultaneously. ApeCoin is the native token of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (hereinafter referred to as BAYC) NFT ecosystem, issued by Yuga Labs, while ApeCoin DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization specifically for managing token-related affairs. Any holder of ApeCoin is a member of ApeCoin DAO, making decisions together on fund allocation, governance rules, partnerships, and other matters.

Initially, to promote decentralization and community-led governance, the Ape Foundation was established, acting as the steward of ApeCoin, tasked with managing the decisions of ApeCoin DAO and handling daily administration, record-keeping, project management, and other affairs to ensure the community's ideas are implemented smoothly.

The Ape Foundation also established a special committee, the ApeCoin DAO Special Council, specifically responsible for overseeing the foundation's managers and managing DAO proposals and community services.

This special council initially consisted of 5 members, with a term of 6 months, after which DAO members would vote annually on the board members. At its inception, this special council was indeed "star-studded."

The initial committee members included Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, FTX venture and gaming head Amy Wu, Sound venture head Maaria Bajwa, Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu, and Horizen Labs CEO and legal advisor Dean Steinbeck.

However, on November 20, 2022, ApeCoin (@apecoin) officially announced on social media that Maaria, Dean, and Amy had resigned from their positions on the ApeCoin DAO Special Council and would not run again in the upcoming election.

Although the ApeCoin DAO Special Council continued to operate after losing three star members, discussions about the salary issues of the council members have recently emerged in the community.

On October 20, according to the Snapshot page, the ApeCoin DAO community initiated a vote on the proposal to "reduce the special council members' salaries by 50%" (from 20,833 ApeCoin per month to 10,417 ApeCoin per month) proposal. The proposal indicated that, from a financial perspective, this move could potentially save ApeCoin DAO up to 104,165 ApeCoin per month.

It is noteworthy that the voting ended on October 26, and although the result was a rejection, the gap between supporting and opposing voices was not large (58.22% opposed, 41.78% in favor), indicating that many community members indeed believe that the salaries of the special council members should not be too high.

Supporters of the proposal argued that the special council's work is not about expanding or increasing the token's value; it is primarily administrative work: "So the performance of the token, whether good or bad, I believe is not important to them. Therefore, in my view, attracting talent with high salaries is somewhat in a gray area."

Opponents of the proposal pointed out that "salary reviews should be conducted after determining the expectations of the review committee, time/hour/functions, and the type of people you want to attract… The current salary may be considered extremely low and unable to attract talent… Cutting salaries is easy, but without context and the goals we are striving to achieve, it merely scratches the surface."

New Proposal from ApeCoin DAO: Possible Deployment of ApeChain on Optimism

Beyond discussions about its special council, BlockBeats has noticed that there are many noteworthy aspects in the recent proposals from ApeCoin DAO.

On November 22, Ben Jones, co-founder and chief scientist of Optimism, proposed that ApeCoin DAO could develop and maintain its L2 network ApeChain on the Optimism Superchain.

Ben Jones stated that this would help ApeCoin DAO easily deploy and maintain, while ApeCoin DAO could express opinions on the Optimism platform, such as actively participating in governance, helping to guide the future direction of the Superchain, and creating revenue streams and innovation opportunities.

On the same day, a new proposal appeared on the ApeCoin DAO website, aiming to appoint a dedicated team to deploy, manage, and operate ApeChain.

The proposal states that the team will support Layer-2 rollups, focusing on deploying ApeChain on Optimism as part of the Optimism Superchain ecosystem, and plans to become a core contributor to the Optimism Foundation. The proposal emphasizes that Optimism has committed to supporting ApeChain with up to 20 million OP through milestone-based token grants.

The recommended team mentioned in the proposal is also star-studded, similar to the founding members of the previous ApeCoin DAO Special Council.

The proposal hopes this team will consist of former Ethereum Foundation developer Nicholas Lin, technical co-founder of Velodrome Finance Jimmy X, former chief engineer of Olympus DAO Indigo, former protocol architect of OlympusDAO Fully, co-founders of Solend Exodia and Rooter, Solend CTO Nope, Solend founding backend engineer Dasichuan, former Two Sigma engineer Ripleys, web3 game/metaverse builder Jackie Lee from AnotherWorld.gg, co-founder of X Marketplace Bradley, founding member of MetaCartel Ventures Lumberg, and DeFi OG MachiBigBrother.

Meanwhile, the proposal also mentions that costs related to the deployment, management, and operation of ApeChain can be addressed by launching the ApeChain (AC) token or requesting ApeCoin grants in other ways. If the DAO chooses to launch the ApeChain token, the ApeChain team will be responsible for raising funds to finance all operations, and the AC token will be distributed as a governance token to ApeCoin stakers.

As of the time of publication, the proposal has not completed voting and is in the "preliminary discussion" stage. However, observations indicate that community members' comments are generally supportive of the proposal, with some members suggesting that they should emulate the recently popular gameplay of Blast. Will ApeCoin DAO pass this proposal? Can ApeChain advance smoothly? We will continue to monitor the situation.