Landshare Development Update — DAO Deep Dive and Token Changes
The decision to launch the Landshare DAO represents a fundamental shift in how the platform operates. Rather than just a new feature, the DAO can be seen as a reinvention of Landshare at a fundamental level. By opening up our features to a decentralized voting model, we hope to empower LAND holders and improve the platform’s ability to adapt and change as dictated by community sentiment.
In this post, we will go deeper on why we are transitioning to a DAO model, how it works, some of our goals for the future, and an update for the LAND Token. If you are unfamiliar with the Landshare DAO, be sure to check out our feature preview article or the overview video below:
Why a DAO?
Our decision to move to a DAO model is rooted in our belief that decentralization and autonomy are fundamental in the blockchain space. To this end, the Landshare DAO puts key platform components such as token emissions, staking incentives, marketing campaigns, and fee structures under the control of a decentralized voting model.
At the heart of this change is the belief that the future of the platform should be in the hands of $LAND holders. Going forward, any modifications to the platform’s smart contracts must be voted on and approved by the governance protocol. Unlike many DAOs, all contract interactions happen autonomously — a direct result of DAO votes — and do not require an intermediary to implement them manually.
To understand how the DAO creates genuine decentralization, let’s go into greater detail on how the process of creating, voting, and implementing proposals will work.
How the DAO works
The Landshare DAO builds on our existing Snapshot governance protocol, allowing anyone who holds at least 100 LAND to create a new proposal at any time. Using the SafeSnap plugin, the governance proposal can directly change vault rewards, burning tokens, or altering the minting rate.
The DAO can be thought of as having 3 components, similar to separation of powers in a government:
- The Legislative Branch, which is Landshare Token holders who propose and vote using the Governance Protocol
- The Executive Branch, which is core team members who moderate proposals and veto those brought forth by malicious actors
- The Judicial Branch, which consists of Reality.eth and an arbitrator contract
Legislative Branch: Governance protocol
In this comparison, the community acts as the legislative branch through the Governance Protocol. The existing Landshare governance protocol is how the community members can create new proposals which, if passed with a majority vote, can be executed autonomously.
The power of the Governance Protocol lies in the Treasury contract. The treasury is a multi-sig wallet that not only controls all the treasury funds allocated to the DAO, but also has direct and exclusive control over staking contracts and token minting. Transactions can only be executed by the treasury contract with a passing governance proposal.
Let’s try to simplify it with an example:
- A member of the DAO wants to increase LAND staking rewards from 1600/day to 1700/day.
- The user creates a proposal which is submitted to be voted on. This proposal is tied to the staking reward change transaction.
- The proposal is voted on by the community and passes with a majority of the vote.
- The outcome of the proposal vote is verified on-chain using Reality.eth (covered below)
- The staking reward change can now be executed by any member of the DAO.
Executive Branch: Administrators
Landshare’s core team act as the Executive Branch, which has to power to veto malicious proposals. Administrators are not able to unilaterally execute proposals through the treasury but can reject them at their discretion.
The administrators also have other authorities delegated by default, such as the ability to manage and conduct the marketing bounties approved by the DAO. The Governance Protocol is able to vote to remove the administrators’ power entirely, if there is a desire to do so.
Judicial Branch: Reality.eth and arbitration
The Landshare DAO will utilize Reality.eth, which acts as a decentralized oracle for the outcome of proposals. This is necessary because the Snapshot votes occur off-chain, and contract interactions occur on-chain. Reality.eth acts as a decentralized oracle that resolves an off-chain vote on chain. For more information on how Reality.eth works, check out their documents here.
If the Reality.eth module fails to produce the correct outcome of the proposal, anybody can request arbitration. During this process, the core team will become the arbiter of the proposal’s outcome. While we generally do not believe disputes will get to this step, the ability to arbitrate is a failsafe that ensures the outcome of proposals will always resolve correctly.
If the DAO so chooses, the arbitration authority can be transferred to a decentralized model or removed entirely.
If you’d like a more detailed breakdown of the interactions between Gnosis Safes, Snapshot, and Reality.eth please see here.
While this process may seem complicated, most of what’s been explained above happens behind the scenes. For the average end user, it as simple as creating or voting on proposals using Landshare’s existing Governance Protocol.
Our goals for the DAO
Now that we’ve covered why and how the DAO works in greater detail, let’s look forward to the future and talk about some of the things we’d like to see as a result of the DAO.
Enhanced flexibility and responsiveness to feedback
The DAO comes will come with an update to our token and staking systems that allows for greater flexibility. The community can adjust rewards, staking incentives and emissions based on feedback, market conditions, and other factors with a simple governance proposal. There will no longer be a need to deploy entirely new staking contracts.
Other possibilities, such as going cross-chain, will also be made much easier with this update. The DAO allows, if a determination is made to go cross-chain, for the community to perform the bridging through the treasury and choose which chain(s) to bridge to.
Community engagement
With the DAO, each LAND holder has direct input on the platform’s outcome. Community members can earn LAND Tokens through grassroots marketing efforts on social media, affect change through proposals, and even craft new proposal ideas not covered in the initial presets. In short, holders who engage will have a much more direct impact on Landshare than ever before.
True decentralization and autonomy
We have gone to great lengths to ensure that the Landshare DAO is truly open and decentralized to the greatest extent possible. While many DAOs simply have voting systems controlled by the developers, the Landshare DAO takes a different approach. As explained above, community members can make platform changes and manage platform funds entirely autonomously. To this end, we’d like to see the platform continue moving toward decentralization and autonomy, with as many holders as possible playing a vital role.
LAND Token contract migration
We’ve talked about why we’re going towards a DAO model, how it works, and some of the benefits a DAO brings. The only thing left to discuss is how the Landshare Token fits into the newest update.
In order to implement the DAO, and have it be fully autonomous, we had to start from the ground up with new smart contracts. The current infrastructure and setup of the current token contract is simply not compatible with the ambitions of creating a truly decentralized DAO. A new contract also makes it easier for Landshare to go cross chain, control emissions, and much more. For these reasons, the LAND token contract will move to a V2 contract that has the proper infrastructure set in place.
Will tokenomics change as a result?
No. token supply, max supply, burned tokens and all other aspects of tokenomics will remain the same, other than a small additional mint for liquidity incentives to ensure stable migration. The current total supply of LAND Tokens will be re-minted and all previously burned tokens will be burned. Liquidity will be bootstrapped at the beginning of the migration to maintain the same price as the V1 Token.
How will migration work?
Our goal is to create the most seamless experience for users possible, and so we have created a special migration page that lets you easily migrate to the V2 token in a single environment! Our migration page makes migrating your tokens as easy as 1–2–3–4 by just following a few simple steps laid out.
After you’ve finished the few steps, the migration is done and your tokens will be re-staked in the new vaults, earning the same returns as before. A full guide with pictures will be released shortly before launch.
Closing thoughts
The Landshare DAO and migration will launch together and are in the live testing stage of development. In other words, we are very close to completion, but want to ensure everything is ready to go. As always, we will provide a release date as soon as we have one. Development of the DAO will also continue after launch, so if there are proposals, changes, or features that you would like to see, feel free to reach out to us or present your ideas to the community!
