Coordinape is thrilled to announce Gift Circles can now be created by anyone! To learn more about how to start a circle for your DAO or team, check out our docs here.
This article will explain where we came from and what's next as we decentralize Coordinape and move Gift Circles fully on chain.
Coordinape was developed for Yearn by its community members.
We saw an opportunity to decentralize the grant giving process to contributors, and bootstrapped our beta as a proof of concept.
We designed our MVP using web3 authentication and a central database - allowing us to experiment and iterate on our UI.
Over the last six months, Yearn has conducted eight epochs using the Coordinape beta. As other DAOs learned about what we were up to, they asked to try it too. We opened the application to select groups, and have since honed and improved the experience of giving - thanks in a large part to the active use and feedback of nearly 50 DAOs.
<add metrics> <add graphic?>
Today, "Coordinaping" has become a well loved community process for DAO compensation. After rapidly adding features and iterating on our v1, we're ready to open Coordinape Gift Circles to everyone.
We're also having trouble keeping up with all the requests! But, the Coordinape story is just beginning. We are excited to continue to add features and build in exciting ways (our roadmap is extensive), most immediately with a stepped approach to Gift Circles moving on chain.
Our roadmap will introduce several smart contracts that increase the ability of DAOs and contributors to fully own their gift circles by leveraging trustless on-chain architectures. These contracts are already being developed in parallel, and will begin to deploy soon.
Here's what we plan to do...
In Coordinape's current app distributing funds is a manual process, with Gnosis Safe and Disperse App being popular ways to use our CSVs for distribution. Soon, we will integrate our first contract element with Coordinape: the ApeVaults.
ApeVaults are Ethereum mainnet vault contracts that can be minted by a DAO to hold currency or native tokens in escrow and be claimed by Coordinape contributors when an epoch ends. These contracts will allow for yield farming with Yearn, multisig based security features, budget management and gas saving features for withdrawals.
We believe ApeVaults are the first major step towards bringing Gift Circles on-chain.
The next contracts will move circle authentication and circle ownership on-chain. Our Circle contracts are specialized ERC-721s that can be minted by users on EVM-compatible L2s and side chains.
Using Circle NFTs, contributors can control authentication from their own wallets. Circle "Badge NFTs" will allow decentralized authentication control and more trustless circle management. The NFTs can grant specialized admin roles and vouched onboarding, along with DAO growth and management functions.
Badges will be part of our Decentralized Identity (DID) plans, which will roll-out in tandem with Gift Circle core offerings.
GIVE, in our off-chain gift circles, are simple markers in a database.
We aim to move the the gift giving engine on-chain, allowing fully trustless processes of gifting and claiming on L2s and side-chains. Along with customizable normalization strategies for circles, our GIVE contracts will will be highly interoperable - allowing Coordinape to grow as a DAO tool primitive and web3 lego.