Introducing District Staking

Launching Meme Factory to and through the Aragon Network

From the earliest conceptions of the district0x project, it was decided that districts would exist as entities on the Aragon Network, staking DNT to perform governance functions at that layer. As the initial discussions, design, and planning around Meme Factory unfolded, it became clear that with a slight rearrangement to the development schedule, we could ensure that Meme Factory launches at the same time the Aragon Core platform is ready to deploy on the Ethereum Mainnet. Beside the obvious benefit of avoiding having to refactor later to incorporate Aragon after the network launch, (as originally planned), this also affords us a special opportunity to charter new territory in governance and community development.

By leveraging Aragon and establishing an entity for Meme Factory before its deployment, the various polling techniques offered by Aragon can be utilized by district0x Network Token holders to decide on the final implementation designs for Meme Factory. This will include, among other things, layout of the home page, or the size and shape of applicable memes.

In short, Aragon remains a pivotal governance layer upon which district0x will execute its vision. In the post below, we’ll describe how we plan on utilizing Aragon Core to establish a Meme Factory entity, conduct community polling to complete the designs for Meme Factory, and issue a new ERC20 token, DANK, used for a token curated registry within Meme Factory.

Staking, Voting, and Polling

To conduct polling thus far, the district0x Voting dApp has utilized a token-based signaling mechanism where any address holding the district0x Network Token (DNT) can sign a transaction to the voting contract, thereby signaling the entire DNT balance held on that address towards their particular choice for any district proposal. This system borrowed heavily from CarbonVote.

As a departure from this implementation, to participate in voting rounds for Meme Factory’s launch, token holders will have to “stake” their DNT to the district’s respective Aragon entity for the duration of the round in order to have their vote counted for that round. Unlike CarbonVote, this requires funds to actually move from an address the user controls to one the voting contract controls.

Staking

By staking DNT, participants will receive an immediate disbursement of an equivalent number of ballot tokens in return with which they can vote in each round of polling on the Aragon platform. These ballot tokens are non-transferable, and are unique to the district’s Aragon entity.

At any time, users can choose to stake additional DNT or choose to reclaim their DNT and forfeit any active ballot tokens and right to continue voting. Following the conclusion of the last round of voting, all staked DNT will be returned to stakers automatically.

Voting

Immediately upon receipt of ballot tokens, stakers can begin voting on any open polls for the district. The ballot tokens can be reused across all open polls for a district, without detracting from a voter’s balance. Any vote can be changed at any time while the poll remains open by submitting another transaction.

Polling

Polls will initially consist of multiple choice style votes. Each poll will have a different element of the design process up for contest with a one week voting period followed immediately by the next voting period.

Meme Factory Community Polls

Below we’ll describe the planned rounds of voting for each community designed feature for Meme Factory’s launch. DNT holders participating in this process that vote and remain staked through the duration of all voting rounds will receive a new token, DANK, which will curate the Dank Registry within Meme Factory.

Meme Format

Across the spectrum of social media there are quite a few different sizes and shapes required to submit memes to various channels. Even among sites geared specifically towards sharing memes, there is no accepted standard for memes. We will choose some of the more popular formats currently in use (instagram, r/dankmemes, etc.) and allow the community to pick their favorite from a list.

Website Theme

In designing Meme Factory, we’ve chosen to deliberately prototype more color combinations than we typically would, breaking as free from our current color palette as possible. We’ve groomed through each to find the best pairing with our entire vision for Meme Factory. We’ll present a list of all the themes we’ve put together for choosing.

Homepage Lists

The homepage for Meme Factory will contain a few gallery-style lists of memes. But whether it will be the freshest memes, dankest memes, or rarest memes will be left up to the token holders to decide. The homepage will display what voters find the most interesting.

Logo of Token

The DANK token is a community owned and issued content curation token. As such, it seems only fair and proper to allow the community a chance to design and decide on the logo for the tokens. We’ll have a few mocked up ourselves, and will also host a contest to allow community submissions. Stay tuned for more details!

Back-of-meme Design

Each meme that successfully makes it into the registry and to initial issuance has a specially designed graphic attached to the “back” of the Meme (click to turn over) to signify its certified dankness. Just like the token logo, we plan to source some submissions from the community in addition to brewing a few of our own for voters to choose from.

More details on the specifics of the polling schedule and community design contests will be released in the coming weeks.

DANK Token

The DANK token is an ERC20 token used by curators to interact with the Dank Registry within Meme Factory in a variety of ways:

New Memes applying for issuance on Meme Factory must pay a deposit in DANK

Memes can be challenged for inclusion in the registry by paying an equivalent deposit in DANK

Token holders can signal in favor or against any open challenge by using DANK

The parameters of Meme offerings (for example, the duration of sales, or the maximum starting price/supply) can be raised to a vote and reconfigured by DANK holders

Likewise, the parameters of the registry itself (for example, the percentage needed to “win” a vote, the duration of a challenge, or the percentage of a forfeited deposit split between the challenger and winning voters) can be raised to a vote by DANK holders

DANK Issuance

The DANK token will be issued to stakers participating in the Meme Factory Community Polls. Users who stake DNT to the Meme Factory entity will receive one scored “point” for each DNT they vote towards a given issue. Multiple votes with the same staked DNT will score multiple points. For instance, staking 100,000 DNT, and voting in three of four rounds will result in 300,000 points accumulated. Unstaking will result in a “reset” of points for that Ethereum address.

At the conclusion of all voting rounds, accumulated points are finalized for token issuance. When DANK tokens are issued, the portion reserved for the Meme Factory Community Polls will be distributed in direct proportion with the number of points assigned to a particular address.

In doing so, we can hope to seed Meme Factory with curators who have a track record of participation.

What’s Next?

In the coming weeks we’ll be finalizing all the details of the staking and voting interfaces using the newly posted ERC900. When this is ready we will announce the final schedule for the voting periods as well. As we draw closer, each successive development update will contain more details on the design and progress of the parts of Meme Factory that aren’t left to a vote.

We could not be more excited to get the community involved with the lead up to deployment of Meme Factory.