Proposal for Reopening COW Airdrop Claiming

Governance Inactive Proposals
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I’ve been in the Gnosis ecosystem since the ICO in 2017. I’m still holding the initial investment because, despite the ups and downs, I have never stopped believing in the strength and integrity of the community that includes CowSwap protocol. As a GNO holder, I was eligible for the 5% airdrop. In addition, because I strongly believe in the CowSwap project, I decided to lock my GNO in order to be eligible for the second 5% vested airdrop.

In order to stay updated, I checked on Medium these 3 articles “Step by step guide for claiming vCOW in Gnosis Chain”(1), “Step by step guide for claiming vCOW in Ethereum” (2) and “CoWs together, strong! Welcome vCOW token to the CoW Ecosystem!” (3) in February. The Medium for these were published on February 11th and included details on claiming VCow, but there was no deadline for claiming reported in them. This relaxed me and, because of the tax timeline, I decided to postpone claiming. That official guide made me confident about the absence of any deadline and thus it misled me to miss the airdrop.

Concerning the effectiveness and quality of communication, please also notice that there’s only one specific post on Twitter cited below (4) at 17.10 CET on March 24th. The post was made about 24 hours before the deadline and clearly announced the existence of that deadline for claiming. Unfortunately I didn’t notice it in time.
There aren’t any tweets about the claim deadline from Gnosis Twitter accounts.

Based on aforementioned points, it is clear that communication of the deadline was poor and wasn’t widespread enough outside Discord. The information given by the team was also misleading, in reference to the official step-by-step guides and to the article “CoWs together, strong! Welcome vCOW token to the CoW Ecosystem!” on Medium, which were already cited without any deadline reported in it. Based on the volume of interactions in Twitter and Discord concerning missing the airdrop, it seems that there is a high likelihood of many people having unintentionally missed the event. This issue is also the main subject in another proposal on Gnosis Dao forum (5) that further highlights its importance that currently has 26 votes and many well grounded comments.

All things considered, an airdrop is actually an investment that serves to create a community, to drive its engagement and to sustain its interest over time. If the airdrop did not reach everyone who wanted to partecipate, in reality you did not save money, but the investment cannot be considered completely successful. It’s clear that genuine project’s supporters need governance tokens to participate in the Dao’s decision-making process.

This proposal is in the early stages. We could say that we are still in the brainstorming phase. Despite that, I want to propose extending the possibility to claim the entire airdrop’s token amount for all eligible people that missed to claim. In order to avoid dumping behaviour, in that case the airdrop’s token amount claimed could be linearly vested for a period of time. We are also open to modify this proposal and adding more options in order to match the needs of the community.

This approach will provide an advantage to CowSwap because it will further nurture and tighten the bonds of the community on top of which the protocol is built including a residual extra option to avoid counterproductive behaviour by linearly vesting the original airdrop amount for a reasonable amount of time. I think that by offering advantages for CowSwap and showing faith in the long-term success of the project that we could reach the necessary consensus for reopening the airdrop’s claim in order to strengthen the great CowSwap community.

References

  1. Step by step guide for claiming vCOW in Gnosis Chain | by CoW Protocol | Medium

  2. Step by step guide for claiming vCOW in Ethereum | by CoW Protocol | Medium

  3. CoWs together, strong! Welcome vCOW token to the CoW Ecosystem! | by CoW Protocol | Medium

  4. https://twitter.com/MEVprotection/status/1507027056370110468?t=PBZ5O6vfC0B03Qkyy8XheA&s=1

  5. Should GnosisDAO use more cowbell? - #2 by blumenthol - Governance - Gnosis

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I agree that the goal of the airdrop should be to get tokens in to the hands of loyal users and those who take a true interest in the project, but as mentioned, just handing out the tokens to those who didn’t pay attention will not be a good idea as there is definitely a percentage that really do not have authentic long term interest in the project and would promptly dump the tokens. At the same time locking recipients into vested tokens ensures that they won’t be immediately sell, but it doesn’t necessarily put them into the right hands, i.e. they could be dumped as soon as available and only prolongs this. The best in my opinion would be to give those who missed out another opportunity as before, based on authentic usage. If users start to use or continue to use cowswap they will become more aware of the protocol and will be more likely to stick around long term.

I think that many token holders will initially hesitate thinking that those who missed out didn’t have enough interest to pay attention to the project, but doing another snapshot to again determine authentic usage and only making those eligible who missed the initial airdrop would give those who missed out another chance while alleviating the worries that it is just a free handout to those who likely don’t care. At the same time it will drive usage and attention to the protocol and in the end could give tokens to those who do really deserve it.

5 Likes
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It’s very unfortunate that you and some others missed the deadline to claim your vCOW tokens. It’s duly noted that the communication didn’t reach everyone.

As a little remark, the two “step-by-step” blog posts you are referring to do in fact mention a deadline for token claiming several times. For example:

In the event of having qualified only in the airdrop, the guide states that the UI will tell you the amount of tokens issued for governance purposes and the deadline to claim. See picture:

1552×1428 203 KB

In the event of qualified for investment options and airdrop, the guide states that the UI will tell you the amount of tokens issued for governance purposes, the deadline to claim the tokens, and the deadline to claim the investment options. See picture:

1574×1552 237 KB

Additionally, the deadline has many times been discussed and communicated in both Discord and Twitter. Discord had a programmed CowRobot bot that stated the exact deadline for claiming whenever users asked “wen token”, also with help of our amazing cowstars, the deadline was many times communicated on Discord.

It’s true, however, that communication via Twitter was more sparse The deadline was only mentioned in some tweets, like this one

https://twitter.com/MEVprotection/status/1496916492335857664?s=20&t=tCZaumyoEt2OUOr5jpqL2g - where it was mentioned that the claiming expires in about 4 weeks - and the

one with the final call to claim that you pointed out in your thread.

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Proposal: Reopen the COW Airdrop Claiming indefinitely but entitle the claimers to only the Investment option with vested tokens.

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What I mean in the proposal is that in the three aforementioned articles on Medium on February 11 there’s no date of March 25, 2022, as the deadline for claiming. You also admitted that the communication on Twitter was sparse.

Anyway as I highlighted in the proposal, what really matters is that an airdrop is actually an investment that serves to create a community, drive its engagement, and sustain its interest over time. If the airdrop did not reach everyone eligible who wanted to participate, in reality, you did not save money, but the investment cannot be considered completely successful. It’s clear that genuine project supporters need governance tokens to participate in the Dao’s decision-making process.

In addition, as proof of long-term interest in CowSwap, please notice that many of us who missed airdrop decided to lock our GNO in order to be eligible for the second 5% vested airdrop., a sign of genuine involvement that indicates that we deserve a second chance.

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As proof of long-term interest in CowSwap, please notice that many eligibles of us who missed airdrop had decided to lock our GNO in time in order to be eligible for the second 5% vested airdrop., a sign of genuine involvement that indicates that we deserve a second chance. We want to be part of the CowSwap community

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i agree whit this. Reopen the COW Airdrop Claiming, only the Investment option with vested tokens.
Because only a week was a short time to make a decision for buying investment option or not.

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Good points. I think it would be nice to find a balanced and shared solution that can make our community stronger and healthier. We are open to dialogue

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Definitely not supporting this whatsoever. :-1:

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This is an interesting “proof of care”.

Personally, I bought some GNO and locked them to be eligible for the additional airdrop, only to miss the deadline (which I do feel was poorly communicated) and end up with nothing.

It should be pretty clear on-chain which users did this same thing.

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Personally, I bought some GNO and locked them to be eligible for the additional airdrop, only to miss the deadline (which I do feel was poorly communicated) and end up with nothing.

If you did lock your GNO then you will indeed receive COW. Not sure why you think you ended up with nothing? You were not able to lock them after the deadline passed.

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Basically you would assess who should get a second chance based on their current activity?
I like the idea… But if we clearly communicate what the expectations are to be eligible, then those users would likely just do enough to fullfill the criteria and there’s again no guarantee they wouldn’t dump. Another option would be to simply assess the users’ behaviour since the airdrop until now, but this would likely leave out everyone who received an airdrop based on their GNO holdings. [interesting fact: the rate of CowSwap users dumping COW is significantly higher than the rate of GNO holders]

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Yes but not let the exact terms be known as before. Instead of having the tokens vested for a long time you could instead say that activity will be taken not of between now and the next 6 months(just an example time frame). How exactly authentic usage is then determined will only be made known after the fact. This way you ensure they are committed for a time duration, and also using the protocol.

It is also interesting to know that GNO holders seem to behave differently. That is promising but at the same time doesn’t necessarily imply that a GNO holder actually uses cowswap. Doing it this way would make sure that they not only believe in holding but that they also personally know the use of the tech. We see that much of the activity that first came because of the airdrop ended up sticking around, seen below in the increase of returning blue users.
image

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Strongly against this proposal. As I understand it, the unclaimed tokens are now in the DAO treasury. This proposal would effectively make the DAO poorer. Richer DAO allows for more integrations, building, incentives, partnerships etc via governance. If there is no additional fundraising mechanism tied to this proposal, I truly cannot see how this is beneficial to the DAO.

I would also be disheartened if this is the next proposal to go through governance, when there is plenty of great discussion which has already been live on the forum and garnered significant attention. Contributors who are not stuck in the past, and instead are trying to do the DAO good should have their opinions listened to and weighed on, surely. It’s time we move on from the airdrop and instead focus on valorizing the value of the $COW token.

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To be clear, CoW airdrop is one thing, CoW options is something different. People invested funds buying this options. If we want to go back in that we need to change much more than just opening the window. For instance we probably would need to reallocate what wasn’t bought because some of us didn’t buy more because we didn’t had that chance, meanwhile I’m still holding the airdrop. If someone already sold their airdrop why should they be allowed to buy the options they didn’t buy in the first place?

The issue here is about the airdrop that people didn’t claim in time. Let’s just keep the debate on that issue. Something I really don’t like about people that missed the 6week claiming window is that they clearly didn’t use CowSwap at all while the window was open. Otherwise they would check on the UI how many tokens they could claim and they would see the deadline. It was there and it was all over discord. Also this people didn’t even check this forum and more stuff going on.

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Investing and marketing is many magnitudes higher “caring” than simply attending discord, also who put at stake his Gno by locking them has shown attachment to the project.

All of them have the skin in game and deserve to receive the first airdrop.

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Why reopen the claim process, since the claiming has been open for weeks? I dont know the point of distributing $cow for ppl who dont really care about the protocol. Why not reuse the unclaim token as treasury? We have enough selling presure rn, no need for more, kek

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A lot of people who missed the airdrop is involved in depth in the project in many ways.

Investing and marketing is many magnitudes higher “caring” than simply attending discord, also who put at stake his Gno by locking them has shown a clear attachment to the project.

All of them have the skin in game and deserve also to receive the first airdrop.

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Attachment to GNO project, not necessarily to CowSwap. I’m not a GNO holder, in fact I never traded GNO, I only followed Gnosis at “distance” but I really see the value in CowSwap and that’s what I started following more closely. I don’t say Gnosis isn’t relevant, it is, but staking GNO != CowSwap attachment.

Anyway, people with “Skin in the game” can’t say they didn’t know about a deadline, it was clearly stated here => GIP-13 (Phase 2): CowDAO and COW Token - GIPs - Gnosis

Claiming is time limited to the date specified in each allocation (2 weeks for investment options; 6 weeks for airdrops).

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Don’t you think is too much of a punishment for simply missing the deadline?

Just give us the simple airdrop. It is amazing how many opportunists want to abuse an innocent lapse by those that missed the airdrop.

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