“That which feels deeply familiar today was once a design choice of yesterday. What we know as ’normal’ is merely the status quo, and it can always be reshaped.” – Unknown

TokenDAO has been established to propagate a new name service- Token Name Service (TNS). By using TNS, tokens, assets, brands, companies, or communities can aggregate key data and multiple internet names under their own short and unique token symbol. This makes it easier to reach their products and services in various contexts like browsers and wallets. In today’s world, users access a variety of data, products, and services over the internet from a company or community on a daily basis. These include token addresses, token prices, web app URLs, community forums, social media accounts, GitHub repositories, code packages, logo images, and so on. A unique token symbol assigned to a token, a company, or a community can now become their single internet name and data aggregator for their users.

In this post, we discuss how TKN incentives and a simplified DAO work model can help token symbols be a more convenient way to access data, products and services.

Replacing internet names with unique symbols

Tickers are established data aggregators

The ticker is an established data aggregator in the financial world where users are familiar with companies based on their tickers on exchanges like NYSE and NASDAQ. In addition to providing access to financial data, tickers have become popular symbols for many companies. Ex. GME, BBB, QQQ. With TokenDAO, communities can establish presences for their well-known token symbols in the crypto token universe (for example, ETH, USDC, DAI, UNI, LINK, etc.) by making them unique within TNS, and helping communities store critical information on the blockchain, such as token addresses and official price oracles.

Token symbols are better than domain names

We think short and unique token symbols (tickers) are better alternatives not only for accessing financial data like token prices, but also for resolving web (or dweb) domains, too. Due to the uniqueness of token symbols and the ease with which they can be entered manually in a browser or wallet, they can be a better choice for internet users than regular ICANN domain names and decentralized ENS names. When users enter the full domain name uniswap.org, they may easily make a mistake and end up on a clone web app created by a scammer and lose money. It is now risky to search for highly recognized brands like Metamask or Uniswap on search providers such as Google. This is because scammers pick up the top ad slots to serve scam links. Getting to the right website without falling into scammers’ hands is getting harder every passing day. Token symbols like UNI for accessing the Uniswap DEX and VOTE.UNI for accessing the Uniswap governance portal from the browser navigation bar improve user safety. A scammer would never be able to purchase or own typos for UNI on TNS, such as UNL or UMI. Before any of their on-chain data or web app URLs are initialized within TokenDAO, each community must instantiate their token symbol using transparent governance processes. The TNS dataset is open, published on-chain, and updated with checks and balances, so at worst, users will be misdirected, but would never end up on blatant scams.

In order to make it easier for users to access their data and web properties safely and efficiently, tokens, brands, organizations, or communities should establish their own well-known short and unique token symbol within TokenDAO. As long as the main Uniswap project is active, TokenDAO will never let another project get the UNI token symbol within its dataset.

TNS will be censorship resistant and transparent

In a way, crypto is a revolution in transparency and composability; it rewards censorship-resistant conventions. TNS namespace and its dataset are hosted on blockchain-based virtual machines, which provide both censorship resistance and transparency - two of the most required features of any namespace. Namespaces stored on blockchain are the most secure - they will never be hacked by malicious actors, are always maintenance-free, and never become offline.

Token symbols should be assigned automatically by consensus

As a matter of common sense, everyone would agree that Google and the products it wants to market should be represented by the token symbol GOOG or the name GOOGLE. Getting a name or token symbol assigned for free from the TNS namespace could be enough to get a brand or community a secure presence online.

Users suffer real transaction costs when reaching their favorite product or service online due to mis-assigned names within any namespace (DNS or ENS). The burden on users increases if a domain is not used for the right purpose within a namespace. By selling premium names, domain squatters and TLD owners who won auctions a decade ago make a significant profit today. This is done by forcing brands to register multiple names to protect their brand across multiple TLDs to get online. TokenDAO standards and incentives now allow communities and companies to focus on establishing their products. They will always receive a free and unique token name or symbol relevant to them from TNS.

Swat the squatters

Token symbols are instantiated by TokenDAO and remain free forever. The removal of the need to purchase token symbols, and the assignment of them to brands and communities following their establishment, removes the entry points for squatters who normally enter with a low-effort name purchase from a name service.

As a result of the incentive system established by TokenDAO, participants are able to police the namespace and keep it free of name squatters. A namespace is a public good, and when managed as a public good, communities can focus on building their brand knowing that their preferred token symbol will be present for them without even having to pay a fee. Developing rules and incentives is necessary to help everyone police namespaces as public goods, remove name squatters, and make way for real brands and companies to get their desired names.

Free and unique symbols for autonomous assets and communities

With the advent of AI and crypto, the world is moving towards autonomous assets, organizations and services, many of whom need an internet identity, ephemerally or permanently, but do not have the infrastructure or trust structures which allow a single person to own or maintain a domain name continuously on behalf of the autonomous asset, organization, or service. Crypto makes it very easy to deploy autonomous services and assets that need minimal or no maintenance to exist forever. TokenDAO can easily allocate free names from TNS to serve these new types of future organizations and help give them an easily accessible and secure presence online.

TKN Incentives Model

TokenDAO incentive programs are primarily focused on compensating participants for the work that they do to monitor and maintain the TNS namespace and the on-chain dataset on behalf of the TokenDAO. To help work participants accomplish their work effectively and get paid for it while serving the needs of the TokenDAO ecosystem, we propose a governance model that cuts down on typical DAO bureaucracy. We present the following governance model as a draft for consideration and it can be operationalized after a broader round of feedback has been received from TokenDAO participants and individual organizations and communities wishing to have a presence within the TNS namespace for their assets and products.

No DAO proposals or voting

TokenDAO participants publish clear RFCs. Any service provider may request to take on one or more of these RFCs. All RFCs that have been accepted are placed into the next work cycle which lasts for 15 weeks. The goal is to maintain the TNS dataset, develop open-source products that will help TokenDAO enhance its network effect, and create open-source products that utilize the TNS dataset.

Work Cycle

A bucket for the distribution of TKN tokens for a single work cycle is created at the beginning of the cycle. TokenDAO seeds each bucket with TKN tokens and distributes shares to service providers according to their RFC bids. By the end of the cycle, service providers will be able to submit their work output to TokenDAO. Buckets would be automatically finalized at the end of the work cycle and payout the TKN held within them according to the percentage of shares each service provider owns. It is not possible for TokenDAO to cancel any of these payouts, regardless of the quality of the work performed by the service providers. TokenDAO can also add a percentage of revenue generated from paying customers to the bucket at the end of a work cycle so bucket share holders can receive an additional payout. TokenDAO participants can stake TKN to vouch for service providers and resolve contention for RFCs when multiple service providers vie over a single RFC.

Repeated Games

Service providers working on an accepted RFC for the cycle have full guarantee that they will be paid out at the end of the cycle but will still put up their reputation at stake for the next cycle if they are unable to accomplish the work they have accepted in their RFCs in the current one. With short cycles, everyone involved on both sides of the RFC can adjust their tactics quickly, update their private reputation scores looking at delivered work and its quality when starting the next work cycle. TokenDAO does not have to setup streaming contracts or long term vesting contracts like other DAOs and can quickly adjust tactics for how it accepts RFCs from service providers based on observed results and immediate needs. Work is modeled as repeated games. Those who contribute with maximum efficiency in a cycle increase their allocation in the next cycle and those who do not meet their own work targets drop off from subsequent distributions. Everyone is welcome to make their own private reputation calculations and use the information to negotiate for the next cycle(s).

Work Cadence

Work cadence over a year is setup as a series of work cycles setup that pay out TKN incentives and cooldown periods in between. A maximum of 3 work cycles with each set to a 15 week duration is recommended per year and about 1 week or more of a cooldown period before the start of the work cycle to allow RFCs to be setup by TokenDAO.

TokenDAO Possibilities

An organization today typically manages multiple usernames across many SaaS products along with their primary domain name to enable users to access a wide range of assets and portals. A blockchain virtual machine offers general purpose durable storage and compute services, allowing a token symbol to point at a number of services simultaneously, both centralized, such as IP addresses and usernames, and decentralized, such as tokens and smart contract addresses, without running a server. The token symbol and data stored on-chain can be used by an organization to:

• point to a web domain (with browser extensions)
• point to organizations’ git repos
• point to code packages published by an organization
• point to social media channels and community forums
• point to an organization’s financial data, such as its stock price, trading volume, etc.

In a secure manner, users can resolve a variety of URLs in a variety of contexts without trusting intermediaries by using a token symbol. For all sizes of organizations and communities- both within and outside crypto- TokenDAO will assemble all these pointers under a single name or symbol, permanently under the community control, permanently for free. With the right incentives, TokenDAO can build a large and valuable dataset that can be trusted by all brands, companies, and communities. As developers can build on top of a curated on-chain dataset of names and associated data, many new opportunities arise.

Open Token Trackers

A token tracker is a valuable tool that serves as a gateway to the financial universe. It provides key data such as prices, market caps, total value locked, total supply, etc. TokenDAO can assemble the base dataset that can be used to power many token trackers across a wide range of verticals. In contrast to opaque submission forms on centralized websites like CoinGecko that make it difficult or impossible for users to update token information on their centralized dataset, tkn.xyz shows how a decentralized token tracker can safely add an open edit button. With the TokenDAO dataset, incentives can be designed to supercharge the edit button.

With the TokenDAO dataset, incentives can be designed to supercharge the edit button not only on tkn.xyz but many more vertical token trackers that are yet to be built over the dataset. By helping quickly assemble changes submitted by anyone to any token name on the blockchain, the token community can effectively filter the updates to eliminate spam and errors in a transparent manner until they are deemed safe to publish. Additionally, TKN work incentives could be used to build token tracker interfaces across multiple verticals.

Decentralized token lists

A token list is an effective method of categorizing and packaging token symbols for easy consumption by web apps and smart contracts. In addition to maintaining datasets for token symbols, TKN incentives can also be used to curate token symbols into decentralized token lists. TokenDAO’s primary goal can be very straightforward- maintaining a scam-free token list on-chain that products like Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) can incorporate securely without having to do the continuous monitoring themselves or trusting a centralized provider like Coingecko. Incentives can be set up for curating token lists, transparent selection criteria can be used, and discussions can be held openly. The token lists are published on-chain to eliminate any centralized failure points. Because the data is present on-chain, smart contracts like DEXes or Lending protocols can also be setup to automatically allow users to interact with tokens that appear in a particular token list. By eliminating the need for governance within them to update their own list of supported token symbols continuously, they may become more autonomous. TokenDAO can create incentives that solve this problem once and for all, for the shared benefit of all projects.

Long tail assets

Getting the cryptosphere to achieve its full potential requires securing our token name management processes in advance of the next million assets being deployed on-chain in the coming years. This is an immediate need. TN incentives can be targeted as crypto’s adoption improves, so those who deploy or learn about an asset on-chain can quickly establish its presence within the TNS namespace in the quickest manner possible. The most efficient and fastest way to maintain the token symbols for the long tail of assets would be to combine incentives with the open and transparent TokenDAO process.

Secure Name Resolution

Due to the lack of open processes, centralized providers such as Google Search are unable to keep up with scams. Users searching for token names get scammed with scam links embedded in the ads they serve. When users enter domain names incorrectly they end up on phishing sites. Having unique names that resolve to token assets everywhere- in the browser, wallets, et cetra- is beneficial to everyone. Short and unique names make the resolution process more secure and less error-prone. Phishing websites cannot target users who have made a typo with short names. TokenDAO incentives are critical to ensuring service providers process token symbol updates in a transparent manner. This is done with multiple independent checks and balances in the token name dataset. As a result of TokenDAO incentives users could resolve the information they need in browsers, wallets, or web applications using token symbols present in TNS while receiving a baseline level of security.

Summary

By incentivizing Token DAO participants to do the continuous monitoring work, TKN will help TNS reach consensus among token symbols, maintain a comprehensive database of information for each token symbol, enforce the rules and processes of TNS, neutralize name squatters, and filter out erroneous or malicious updates through open and transparent processes allowing users to reap maximum benefits from the public good name service.