VDP-55 VitaDAO <> AthenaDAO Partnership

Proposals Archived Proposals
1

Motivation

AthenaDAO is a decentralized collective to fund women’s reproductive health research & drug discovery. Many of the core contributors came out of VitaDAO to focus primarily on funding research in that space.

AthenaDAO shares a lot of similarities in how it is structured, operates, and wants to fund research, and is fundamentally also a longevity research DAO with a more concrete therapeutic focus.

We propose a “DAO2DAO relationship” between VitaDAO and AthenaDAO to formalize a partnership that would benefit both DAOs from a incentive, marketing and branding standpoint.

Goals

The primary objective of this DAO<>DAO relationship between VitaDAO and AthenaDAO is to ensure that both DAOs are working together efficiently towards their shared goals. This relationship will allow both organisations to benefit from each other’s resources (talent, capital, etc.), reach new audiences and grow their communities.

Implementation

Science

  • Partnerships of sharing deal flow between VitaDAO and AthenaDAO, potentially exploring co-funding a project together.

Operations

  • Regular syncs among the core teams of both DAOs, as well as among specialised sub-groups such as working groups
  • Collaboratively work on shared issues around legal, tokenomics, governance, tech, operations and other domains
  • Create a channel that is synced/mirrored between both DAOs’ Discord servers

Marketing

  • Commit to co-organising events and/or conferences
  • Commit to collaborate with content distribution on Twitter, Medium, YouTube and other platforms
  • Commit to referencing the other DAO during relevant public engagements

Finance

  • Tracking of contributions made at the intersection of the two DAOs which could potentially result in individual allocations from VitaDAO to AthenaDAO contributors in $ATHENA and vice versa from AthenaDAO to VitaDAO contributors in $ATHENA in the future

  • Commitment for exchanging 50k $VITA now, to receive either 1.5% of $Athena or 1,2x the $ value in $athena once it has a token (comparing the price of $VITA at the date of receiving $ATHENA to calculate the amount of tokens VitaDAO receives) depending on which is higher. This small 20% premium is calculated given that VitaDAO already exists, and is liquid, while Athena has execution risk and might not have a liquid token, so that risk needs to be somewhat reflected in the proposal. Both tokens should be locked for at least 4 years based on a social agreement, but we should allow them to be used for liquidity provisioning (eg. VitaDAO might want to use them to provide liquidity between Athena<>VitaDAO)

Next steps

  • This proposal also obviously needs the approval of the AthenaDAO community, given they don’t have a governance token yet, approval by more than 50% of the active contributors should suffice to count as sufficient pre-governance approval.

Resources

  • Agree
  • Agree with revisions
  • Disagree

0 voters

2 Likes
2

Great proposal! Love to see synergies between fellow DAOs in the biotech ecosystem :blush:

Just wondering, what is the justification for 50k $VITA and will the locked price of $VITA be disclosed? The bracketed portion is a little confusing too. Maybe we could word it like this? (VitaDAO will receive a proportion of $ATHENA respective to the price of $VITA, at the time of exchange)

Also, I think you forgot to put the proposal to a vote! :vulcan_salute:t5:

5 Likes
3

Yes great points! Think we should vest each others tokens for at least 4 years (updated the proposal to reflect it)

3 Likes
4

VitaDAO is on a roll with these DAO2DAO relationships. Questions/observations:

  1. Is the 50k amount being paid out in tranches contingent on the fulfilment of some pre-meditated milestones. If yes, what are these milestones and what does the expected payout schedule look like. Also, what constitutes failure as far as payouts are concerned?

  2. What constitutes failure in general? Under what circumstances will the DAO be considered defunct?

  3. What is AthenaDAO’s valuation here and what % equity will VitaDAO own? Are we modelling this engagement after the WAGMI grant by going for a 6.9% stake

  4. What is our DD strategy. Do we evaluate the team behind the project and calculate risk and diversification, among other things, that VitaDAO accrues? The team bit may be easy here as most core team members at AthenaDAO are VitaDAO contributors. What is our risk mitigation strategy in addition to (practically) incubating AthenaDAO

  5. What is the benefit of creating a separate DAO as opposed to funding women’s reproductive health research and drug discovery through VitaDAO. Is the focus area so dissimilar that it warrants its own DAO and, at the same time, somewhat overlapping so that collaborative funding can occur in the future? One benefit I can think of is access to grants that are strictly for organizations working on women’s reproductive health and also, in this case, for women founders. We may have to engage AthenaDAO’s core team for a response here

3 Likes
5

Excellent questions Hamza, updated the proposal to incorporate some of these ideas, especially around clarifying a fair deal, given VitaDAO gives 50k of Vita for the likely, but uncertain exchange for future Athena tokens. Milestones imo don’t make sense as this is just a partnership and token exchange, but the tokens should be vested for 4 years.

1 Like
6

Hamza thanks for the questions! I am replying below with the original question for clarity.

Is the 50k amount being paid out in tranches contingent on the fulfilment of some pre-meditated milestones. If yes, what are these milestones and what does the expected payout schedule look like. Also, what constitutes failure as far as payouts are concerned?

  1. I think you are contextualizing things from the Bio.xyz and they are simply different deals.
  2. I believe the proposal came forth as a collaboration with VitaDAO to help support some of our initial initiatives. Including having our first abstract approved for the Asian Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality conference, which will be on DeSci and how it can help researchers.
    A lot of the work AthenaDAO will do will involve a certain amount of promotion and awareness that will naturally flow back to VitaDAO.

We are tapping into new communities that VitaDAO/web3 has less exposure to. For example researchers, clinicians and patient communities in reproductive health. And more importantly, women. The idea is to pool resources and not duplicate effort, as well as make this a collaborative effort.

  1. And why think of our failure already? :frowning:

What constitutes failure in general? Under what circumstances will the DAO be considered defunct?

Again, the theme of failure. There is a great article from Harvard Business Review on women getting demotion question. Might want to look it up! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

We are talking 50k of Vita token, it is not 500k USDC, I don’t see unmitigated risk is with all the awareness that we will bring to VitaDAO. We could easily define immediate ROI in terms of awareness. Never mind that in our succeeding the VitaDAO would win. Wagmi all the way!

What is AthenaDAO’s valuation here and what % equity will VitaDAO own? Are we modelling this engagement after the WAGMI grant by going for a 6.9% stake

We don’t see this as WAGMI deal at all.

What is our DD strategy. Do we evaluate the team behind the project and calculate risk and diversification, among other things, that VitaDAO accrues? The team bit may be easy here as most core team members at AthenaDAO are VitaDAO contributors. What is our risk mitigation strategy in addition to (practically) incubating AthenaDAO

I think the team has proven themselves in their competencies. Not sure this applies here.

What is the benefit of creating a separate DAO as opposed to funding women’s reproductive health research and drug discovery through VitaDAO. Is the focus area so dissimilar that it warrants its own DAO and, at the same time, somewhat overlapping so that collaborative funding can occur in the future? One benefit I can think of is access to grants that are strictly for organizations working on women’s reproductive health and also, in this case, for women founders. We may have to engage AthenaDAO’s core team for a response here.

VitaDAO’s mandate in longevity biotech research. Though we would align in ovarian aging, there areas like PCOS and endometriosis that fall well outside the area of research VitaDAO focuses on. Resources to tackle longevity research would be watered down by “owning” yet another huge area of research that exists with a completely different ecosystem. To plainly say it, yes they are dissimilar.

In terms of optics, why would women want to join an organization where the entire core team, and 90% of the community are men? You know I love you all guys, but not a good look. It would feel like you are trying to profit from women’s research, or women in general. Is that the look you want? Does it not make more sense to say we are a family of DAO’s supporting each other on different competencies and areas of focus?

Longevity also puts off a number of people because of the branding and communication problem we have all been collectively tackling, notice AthenaDAO is focusing on reproductive health, not longevity.

AthenaDAO needs to exist separately because we need to create the space and mechanisms in which researchers, clinicians, and community members want to engage and can be best served.

I hope this answered your questions!

2 Likes
7

For those voting “disagree”, what would need to change for you to be in favor of this proposal?

3 Likes
8

I think we need to call this deal off. 2% was not ideal, much less 3%. It was already a very advantageous deal for VitaDAO at 2%, at 3% it is impossible. We will figure out other ways of collaborating, I am sure!

9

I’m open to anything, we could also remove the token swap, and just explore a partnership proposal without token swap or similar.

10

I think that would be the best way! It’s going to end up being more laborious for everyone but we can explore partnerships in a case by case basis.

11

I think Athena might benefit from having governance in Vita and vice versa for aligning incentives and community, but ultimately just an option if relevant for AthenaDAO. Happy to exclude it if not desired.

12

Thanks Laura for answers and Vincent for keeping the conversation going. At this stage it might make sense to just support AthenaDAO with governance, operations, and other needs. We can consider swaps later when things have settled down a little bit. This doesn’t force us to come up with a fictitious valuation at least

1 Like
13

agree, although this proposal doesnt really, it just proposes to provide them with 50k of locked/vested vita, in return for 60k of athena, or 1% if thats worth more… imo just a straightforward and easy way to align incentives between both daos, but i’m agnostic, just thought it would be the best early way to align incentives between both. And imo there is less incentive for VitaDAO resources like ops, gov etc to flow into Athena without clarity around incentives, and co-governance right by each other, but could be wrong.

2 Likes