Original author:Jack(0x137)，BlockBeats

Original author:

With these questions in mind, we interviewed the founders, multi-signature holders, and key members of the PandaDAO community.

first level title

PandaDAO's Short Journey

Before we get into the conversation, let's take a look at the development timeline of PandaDAO.

PandaDAO started with a very simple idea. At first, Panda teamed up with several engineers from Tencent Byte, and wanted to be a big data search engine to provide query, retrieval and association services after formatting various information data. After having an idea, several developers started preliminary work such as ES architecture design and K8S cluster construction.

At this time, the team was just an interest group in the community, and everyone focused on product development and iteration. Later, as more and more people joined, the team had the idea of ​​establishing a project. After a heated discussion in the community, PandaDAO was born.

After the establishment of the DAO organization, the team spent some effort designing community governance, writing white papers, and financing plans. Panda stepped in to lead the way, and the developers continued to code in peace behind the scenes. In April, the newly established PandaDAO opened financing on Juice Box, and the very popular Cult DAO launched a proposal to invest in PandaDAO. After hearing the news, many people started FOMO. Before the proposal was passed, PandaDAO reached the soft cap of fundraising. In the end, PandaDAO raised a total of more than 1,900 ETH in this fundraising, far exceeding the team's expectation of 500 ETH.

However, the cooperation between the two communities did not materialize. Some people who came in because of the FOMO of the proposal regretted it and began to seek refunds. Afterwards, the team wrote a proposal, and the community voted to pass it. The engineer put down his work to do the refund contract and audit work, and refunded nearly 500 ETH to the community.

After the refund, the team hopes to exchange ETH for stable currency and generate income through DeFi. The original proposal was to replace ETH with UST for fixed income strategy. However, the proposal encountered some obstacles in the community. Some people believed that ETH should be kept and not exchanged. After a heated debate, the treasury multi-sig holder 0xAA rejected it due to potential risks. In accordance with the requirements of the multi-signature, the team disclosed to the community the corresponding risk and risk control management plan of UST, and revised the proposal again, first replacing ETH with DAI. Not long after, UST crashed and the community escaped.

From here on, most of the team's time and energy were shifted from product development to governance. A lot of manpower and time were spent on the corresponding contract writing, security audit and revenue plan design.

By May, the community already had a large number of stablecoins, while the crypto market was not very prosperous. At this time, some people in the community proposed that they hope to use the funds from the treasury for Token repurchase. The team felt that a lot of funds in the national treasury were idle, and the community did not need so much funds, so they agreed.

The repurchase price was set at US$0.005 at the beginning. Initially, core members conducted open repurchases in open markets such as Uniswap, and repurchased PANDA Token worth more than 500,000 US dollars. However, many people in the community are worried that there will be insider trading. After discussing in the community, the team decided to write a repurchase contract, put all the repurchase funds into the agreement, and let everyone go to the contract and exchange stable coins.

At the same time, the community believes that it is necessary to take advantage of the hot NFT market and make its own community NFT. Panda initially vetoed the proposal, but at the insistence of the community, agreed. After discussing with the team, Panda hopes to combine NFT with the repurchase contract to do something different.Finally, Random Panda Club (RPC), PandaDAO's community NFT, is designed as an NFT DEX protocol endorsed by PANDA assets, repurchased and contracted. RPC has an NFT liquidity pool, where anyone can mint or replace their own NFT at the original price, and the protocol charges a corresponding handling fee for each interaction, providing endorsement and value-added for the entire NFT series. Holders can also withdraw at a fixed price through the repurchase contract (BlockBeats note, RPC mechanism see "》）

What to buy in a bear market? PandaDao NFT——RPC project analysis

After several months of development, RPC was launched in mid-August along with the repurchase contract. The protocol interaction data is very good. The anchor price rose from 50,000 PANDA to 58,000 PANDA, an increase of about 20%.

But then the situation took a sharp turn for the worse.

On August 15, the repurchase contract was officially opened. The first recharge of 300,000 US dollars was exhausted within 8 hours. Subsequently, the team recharged the contracts several times during the period from the 15th to the 28th, and almost all of them were exchanged immediately. Seeing this, the team immediately stopped the repurchase, stopped recharging the contract, and had a quarrel with some members of the community. The panic and division in the community escalated rapidly.

But panic and a divided community didn't give the team much time. On the 14th, after the last recharge, the team stopped buying back completely. The community fell into chaos, some members sold a large number of tokens in their hands, and some accused the team of Rug Pull. Finally, after several discussions, the dissolution and refund proposal opened for Snapshot voting on September 21st. On September 24, the proposal was passed by the community, and the largest DAO organization on DeWork announced its dissolution.

first level title

Founder Panda: "The biggest success of a DAO is to give the founder to the DAO"

Panda is the founder of PandaDAO. Before that, he worked in network security. After entering the encryption field for 17 years, he has accumulated some quantitative experience. After the establishment of PandaDAO, Panda has always been the soul of the community. Together with the engineering team, it developed two products, Pansight and Random Panda Club, and participated in the drafting and resolution of most proposals in the community.

Panda：Jack: How did PandaDAO land?

In fact, at the beginning of PandaDAO, we were working on some data formatting issues. At that time, several development engineers worked on this thing together, and it was still at the end of last year. At that time, I didn't even think about calling it PandaDAO. I just formed an interest group, not a DAO organization yet. In the process, we joined the People DAO, and later it became bigger and bigger, and more and more people joined, so we established a DAO organization.

Panda：Jack: Before the establishment of DAO, what did the Panda team mainly do?

It was mostly development work at the time. We mainly do some data cleaning. From personal websites, such as the interface on Twitter, we crawl the data on a large scale. After crawling and cleaning, then see how to use the data. (Interview note: Pansight was influenced by previous work.)

Panda：Jack: But XDash in the community mentioned that Pansight did not find a good market fit. What does Panda think?

I agree with what XDash said, his evaluation of the product is very objective. I basically agree with the problems he mentioned, but the reason why this situation still happened in the end is because there is no time to do product update iteration and development later.

Panda：Jack: Indeed, I checked on Pansight two days ago, and the aggregation of information is still in July.

Yes, we have not done any updates and iterations in this area since then. You can understand that basically all core developers have been focusing on the governance level or governance tools since July.

Panda：Jack: Why did PandaDAO create Random Panda Club later?

RPC was also born out of chaos. At that time, the NFT market was still in a relatively FOMO stage. At that time, the community already had FOMO sentiments. They believed that NFT was so popular that as the largest DAO organization on DeWork, it must issue its own NFT project.

But I don't think it should be sent in such a hurry. Although it is true that mint can be completed quickly, one key point is that you have not changed the industry. You may have just issued a bunch of PFPs. When NFT holders have losses, there is no way to take care of them. This is a very crucial point. So when we were discussing in the community, (the proposal) was rejected by me.

But the slogan of our community is "What people want, what Panda build". Since the community wants it, we will make one. So later, with limited energy, I made the ERC-1155 Genesis NFT. This NFT is airdropped for free, and only a small part is around 0.02 ETH, mainly to make up for the reimbursement of Gas fees during contract deployment. At that time, there were 333 airdrops in total, and the rest were sent directly to the black hole address.

But later, because the number was too small, the community began to hype each other, and the FOMO sentiment was too serious. At that time, the highest price of the free airdrop Genesis NFT was pulled to 0.8 ETH, and it stayed at 0.5 ETH for a while, until the bubble came, and it returned to a very low price.

Panda：Jack: When did PandaDAO start having problems? where is the problem?

For me it was after starting the repo scheme. Since almost April, some invisible mines have been planted. By April, there were already a large number of stablecoins in the community, and the entire encryption market was not very prosperous. Someone mentioned at that time, can some funds be transferred from the national treasury for repurchase?

What I thought at the time was that (the national treasury) didn’t need that much money, because our initial target value was only 500 ETH, and then jumped directly to 1900 ETH, so much money didn’t mean much to us , a lot of funds are idle. At that time, I wanted to use a large amount of funds for Token repurchase and then destroy it.

At that time, we set the price in the range of 0.005. Initially, there were repurchases in Uniswap and other open markets, and more than 500,000 US dollars were repurchased. But some people in the community were worried about whether there would be insider trading. After encountering this problem, we stopped the repurchase. Since everyone is more worried about insider operations, then write a contract directly, put all the repurchase funds into the agreement, and everyone will send the Token to the contract and get back the stable currency.

But then I overlooked a problem. According to the circulation of Token at that time and the number of stablecoins held by the community, repurchase at the price of 0.005 is actually not a big problem. But later, on the one hand, Token is increasing this circulation, because developers and community mod members, the income they get is distributed with PANDA Token as an incentive. At the same time, another point is that your stablecoins are also being consumed. So in fact, there is no way to support the repurchase price later.

I didn't find it at the time, other Core members didn't find it, the multi-signature people didn't find it, and all the voters in the community didn't find this logic bug. After the problem was discovered, (the team) put a stop to this aspect of the behavior. This repurchase is not something we can afford, and it also caused the community to collapse and fall into a death spiral.

Panda：Jack: So the main problem for PandaDAO is this buyback plan?

After communicating with MC79 and other people that day, I thought, this is not simply a question of repurchase. I think the deeper reason is that this DAO is becoming less and less like a DAO organization, it is more and more like a centralized organization, or more like a Web2 company. Many people are asking for my opinion, asking for my thoughts, and wanting me to make a decision, and everyone is unwilling to pay for the decision they make.

At the same time, what we are thinking about (most of the time) is not where the product is not perfect, what new products in the industry or in the market can be used for our reference, it is no longer a discussion of these issues, it is all about governance issues. I have to take care of the interests of everyone, including the interests of Core, developers, and Token holders, all of which are decided by me alone.

Panda：Jack: Some community members want the team to recharge the contract as soon as possible. Why didn't Panda choose to do so in the end?

Because at that time everyone had discovered that the calculation of the repurchase amount was wrong, and we were too optimistic about the market at that time. At the beginning, we thought that the PANDA circulating in the market was 700 to 800 million. I thought that if I put more than one million US dollars in it, I wouldn't be able to hold on for a month. But the real thing is that after recharging, it will be gone in seconds. After persisting for more than half a month, you can see the K-line chart. At that time, it was 0.005. It was strong for a period of time, and it was all supported by the repurchase contract.

At that time, the total amount of Tokens circulating in the market should be around 700 million. If the repurchase rate of 0.005 is still maintained, all treasury funds are thrown into the repurchase contract, and there may still be about 200 to 300 million tokens that will not be repurchased. After discovering the problem, we stopped the repo.

At that time, I was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, after you recharge it, most of the circulation on the market can indeed be repurchased. But how to survive after the repurchase (bear market)? This is a very critical question. And there are some developers who quit all their jobs and come in full-time. They also need salary every month. If all the funds are transferred to the repurchase contract, I can’t guarantee that the developers will be safe for the next year. of.

It's very difficult, you can't make 100% of people happy, you can only say that you take care of the interests of most people. On one side are NFT holders and Token holders. They hope to start the repurchase, so that the currency price can perform better as soon as possible, forming a relatively large arbitrage space. On the one hand, the core developers are worried that after the repurchase is launched, it will be very difficult in the future, and even the rights and interests of a small number of people will be sacrificed, and all subsequent conflicts will be passed on to the Core team that wrote the proposal.

Panda：Jack: So when MC79 and other community members came to Panda, the treasury funds had already started to dry up?

Yes, the buyback funds started to dry up, and then there was more panic in the community. At that time, everyone was less concerned about the subsequent product development, and more concerned about whether there was money in your repurchase contract, which was similar to the feeling when Luna crashed. At that time, if you continue to recharge it, the problem will actually be more serious.

If it was still going on at the beginning, I think it was a relatively irrational behavior. If you continue to recharge it at that time, the refund may not even reach 0.003 in the future. At the same time, the contract has also reached the upper limit of repurchase, which is almost 2 million US dollars. If you want to continue to deposit money into it, you must re-issue the proposal.

Panda：Jack: One of the doubts raised by community member MC79 is that the salary allocated to developers by the treasury during this period is a bit high? What does Panda think?

There are two types of developers in our community, the first is full-time and the second is part-time. The part-time job type is more based on the weight of the task he leads. If the difficulty coefficient of the task is high, it will give a correspondingly higher Bonus. And in the early stage, we tried our best to use community tokens as incentives for part-time developers.

There are two incentives for full-time developers, one is PANDA Token and the other is stable currency. The stable currency (reward) is around 4,000 US dollars, and the PANDA Token will be locked. This part of the PANDA Token cannot be moved, until the community sends a proposal saying that it can be moved, and the funds can be used. Now that the community is facing disbandment, the more than 50 million Tokens locked by everyone have all entered the destruction process.

Panda：Jack: When the treasury money started to dry up, did you consider lowering developer salaries a bit?

This is really a drop in the bucket. Because there are only six or seven full-time developers in the entire community, the development salary of 20,000 to 30,000 is the average price of the market.

Panda：Jack: The community has problems and finally disbanded. Who is more responsible?

All have. I wrote the proposal. As the initiator of the proposal, I may not have noticed the corresponding risks brought about later, and I must be responsible. The voters did not read the content of the proposal, and everyone cast the same vote because everyone only thought about short-term solicitation. The multi-signers did not find any problems with the proposal, whether the repurchase amount was set too high, the multi-signers did not notice. Then, as a Core member, when I sent out the draft, I didn't check whether I could meet these standards based on the draft, and everyone didn't read it.

Everyone has a corresponding responsibility, I have it, everyone has it.

Panda：Jack: Were there any decisions you regretted throughout the incident? If you could turn back time, what would you want to change?

there must be. When we made the repurchase proposal, the direction was wrong. We should not repurchase according to the stablecoin (anchor), or (repurchase funds) should be repurchased in small batches every month according to the rate of return obtained by the community. Someone also mentioned that we should send a separate proposal when Ethereum was $800 to buy back all the ETH raised at that time, and then make a permanent refund. In fact, I could have done it at that time, but I didn't do it.

These are several business levels. If we say that time goes back and then forward, it may be said that after the financing is completed, then after it is converted into a stable currency, and then it happens to be during the big dive of Ethereum. At that time, the community should be completely autonomous and should no longer rely on me personally. All the funds should be bought into ETH, put into the repurchase contract, and then let the community self-govern, which should be done at that time.

Panda：Jack: Why did Panda decide to disband in the end?

Disbanding is also for the better development of the community. Because at that time, I had already discovered that the fundamental problem was not simply a repurchase problem, but more problems appeared at the governance level. Although it is a DAO, it is becoming less and less a DAO.

Mr. Xiao Feng, chairman of Vientiane, also said that there is no so-called "founder" in a DAO community, only the so-called "sponsor". As a DAO promoter, I should not control this community. But although I have tried my best to decentralize my rights, the community is still guided by you. You need to ask for your consent to do anything in the community. It is already wrong to start from this, so I think it should be radically cured.

At the same time, a DAO should allow anyone to exit and enter freely, but I found that PandaDAO is no longer like this. For example, if you want to join Core members or other groups, there will be a series of approval procedures, which is cumbersome, and there is no way to make contributions freely, and the entire DAO is very closed. So I think disbanding is the best for it, and it is also the best solution I can do so far.

Panda：Jack: One solution proposed by MC79 is to reorganize the core team. There is no need to disband it. What does Panda think?

I have thought about what MC79 and others have said, whether to completely separate the previous team from the Core side. However, after thinking about it, I think there is still a problem. Where is the problem? Even if you pull out all the cores, everyone’s opinions still have to be asked to you. This is the most critical point.

Panda：Jack: Does the community cease to exist after disbanding?

It should be said that after the dissolution, it can only be said to be completely autonomous. Because you are just the initiator, in fact you have no way to control his life or death. Just the previously created Discord channel and server, as well as Twitter, will be logged out.

Panda：We got a lot of Tokens in front of Core, almost more than 40 million PANDA, which are basically pledged and unlocked. I made up some more, almost 50 million PANDA. All have been transferred to the multi-signed treasury and will be destroyed in a unified manner.

Core member PANDA collection and transfer

image description

State treasury PANDA destroys contract records

Panda：Jack: What about the future of Pansight? Is it still being maintained?

There is no maintenance at present, because the main energy now is to confirm the refund contract and the entire refund process, and open it as soon as possible. After this incident, everyone's minds have calmed down, and they don't need to worry about governance work anymore. They may spend most of their time reviewing and summarizing the previous product development process, and then look at what needs to be updated. Includes some updates on direction, product and technology.

Afterwards, it will be in the form of a small team (to develop Pansight), and everyone may return to a part-time job status. After the dissolution, they need to find a job again. I think the next step is to make a directional adjustment, that is, whether you want to do data deep processing, format and clear things, or do Alpha information alarms, and then you need to make a directional choice.

Panda：Jack: Has Panda participated in the new DAO formed by MC79?

I haven't joined the new community yet, and I don't have the right to speak. This is very good, and it completely gives him autonomy. In the past, we have always been in the relationship between the operator and the trader. I was the operator of the previous community, and others were traders. I did not manage the entire community, but joined the community as a trader.

But after this time, everyone has become an operator, and everyone has to consider the newly established community. How should the multi-sign treasury be established? Where does the treasury's future funding plan come from? How should the RPC protocol work? At this time, the identity has been completely changed, which can be regarded as the realization of the goal I wanted to achieve before, so I completely gave myself to the DAO.

Panda：Jack: Is it true that the failure rate of domestic DAOs is higher?

I don't think we can talk about domestic and foreign countries alone. There are quite a lot of overseas DAOs that have failed. Everyone is exploring in this field. It’s just that in China, it is more like an interest group. Maybe you don’t have too many financial and interest entanglements in the early stage, so naturally you don’t think about the distribution of cakes. However, once domestic DAOs involve the distribution of interests, it will become quite complicated. This is true.

Panda：Jack: It is indeed a pity that PandaDAO has been disbanded from the largest DAO organization on DeWork.

I don't feel sorry. Because now that the community is fully autonomous, no one knows how the community will develop in the future, and I have no right to speak. Everyone is now in a period of chaos, very similar to the moment when ConstitutionDAO was disbanded. When it was disbanded, everyone was thinking about what to do. Before disbanding, some people dumped a large number of People Token, some held it all the time, and some went to form a new community.

Note from BlockBeats, at the end of the interview, Panda expressed his hope to convey his voice to the original PandaDAO community through BlockBeats. See the original paraphrase at the end of this article.

first level title

Multi-signature holder 0xAA: "PandaDAO disbanded and refunded, at least a good start"

0xAA is a core member of PeopleDAO and a PeopleDAO multi-signature holder elected by the community. PeopleDAO provides the initial incubation resources for the PandaDAO community, and the PeopleDAO multi-signature also serves as the PandaDAO treasury multi-signature to review and execute the financial proposals of the PandaDAO community. 0xAA played an important role in rejecting the UST mining proposal and preventing PandaDAO from being involved in the Luna crash disaster.

0xAA：Jack: Does 0xAA participate in the decision-making of PandaDAO?

I mostly act as one of the multisig people, executing their community proposals and multisig transactions. They have 18 Proposals, and there may be about 100 multi-signature transactions. Because we (PeopleDAO) hope that each sub-DAO can develop relatively independently, and we don't want to affect it. During the incubation process of PandaDAO, we provided some initial financial support, as well as some talent support, including developers from the community. At present, PeopleDAO is also incubating some web3 public goods projects, such as Lost Children of Benin Cit, a research organization determined to solve the problem of human trafficking in Africa.

0xAA：Jack: Can 0xAA analyze the reasons for the problems in PandaDAO from your own perspective?

I think it is a comprehensive problem, plus the pessimistic rendering of this bear market.

The first is about refunds. In the middle of PandaDAO, many people wanted to exit because of the bear market. Then PandaDAO launched a refund proposal at that time, and each PANDA was refunded at a rate of 0.005 DAI. This refund is set too high, because you may think that not so many people will refund at first, and then set the amount according to the market price. However, there were too many refunds later, and it was later discovered that this excessive amount could not be sustained. In this way, many people think that there is a problem with the reputation of the team, and distrust between the community and the team begins. The increase of distrust may lead to the breakdown of consensus, and then more people hope to withdraw. This is the first one.

The second is the issue of governance. The community may feel that their voices are too small. There is a review system in the middle of PandaDAO's proposal, which is a review team composed of 14 people to review each proposal. In fact, many DAOs have such a system, because if you have too many proposals, there may be too many voices, and the really useful proposals may be drowned out. However, the review team of PandaDAO may have too few people selected from the community, so the community feels that many voices cannot be heard.

0xAA：Jack: What is the composition of the review team?

One part is the core of the core team, and the other part is selected by the community. The proportion of the number of people may be less than 50% recommended by community members (I am not sure about this figure). There must be something wrong with this, I think it is a system design problem. If the future DAO (new PandaDAO) is to be done again, the proposal process needs to be made more decentralized, at least to allow all community members to have a sense of decentralized participation.

0xAA：Jack: MC79 believes that if the repurchase contract is recharged earlier, there will be no crisis of trust. What about 0xAA?

This view is wrong. Because the amount of refund is set too high, if the people in front exchange it, the people behind will not be able to redeem it. Therefore, the refund at that time was not a long-term solution, and the treasury did not have so many assets to support the refund.

0xAA：Jack: Is disbanding the best solution?

Yes, I think this is the consensus of everyone, the community members want this, and finally the team hopes this way. I also agree with their disbandment, that is to implement according to the results of the proposal. I think that 99% of Web3 projects may end up being mostly failed projects, or projects that cannot maintain a good community. Investors' funds are not guaranteed, and the founding team may run away with (funds). I think PandaDAO (dissolution refund) has at least made a good start. Even if there is a consensus problem between the community and the (team) core, refunds can be made in this way of liquidation.

0xAA：Jack: Will the problems encountered by PandaDAO appear in other DAOs?

Perhaps most DAOs are actually very centralized in terms of governance, so there are (trust) issues between the community and the (team) core. The solution after People DAO is to provide a governance layer (system optimization) when we incubate sub-DAOs. The People DAO conducts statistics every month or every week to see if the opinions of the community have been conveyed to the (team) core, and to continuously optimize the system.

0xAA：Jack: Has People DAO encountered similar governance issues?

People DAO currently does not, because our proposal is a very free approach. The second is that we did not issue Token. The People Token was issued by the Constitution DAO before. We just used it, so there is no conflict between investors and the core team.

0xAA：I heard about this, and it was also done by MC79, some big players in the community and community members, and I think it is very good. After the project party is disbanded, all assets can be refunded. You can choose to refund at any time, or you can take PANDA Token to build an autonomous DAO. I didn't go in, but I think it's pretty good. Whether successful or not, I think it is a good attempt.

first level title

Community member MC79: "When something goes wrong, the team needs to have the spirit of a strong man breaking his wrist"

MC79 is PandaDAO is a very recognized PandaDAO "big community". When there was a problem with the repurchase contract and panic spread in the community, MC79 worked hard to communicate with the core team to maintain community harmony and confidence, and even bought back a large amount of PANDA Token for the community at their own expense.

MC79：Jack: Why did you join PandaDAO in the first place?

I bought PEOPLE before, and I have always liked the form of DAO. I feel that this form should be a form of "future company". And Panda has personal charm. I used to follow some of Panda's tweets on Twitter. I think he is a better person and his personality is more like mine.

So when PandaDAO issued a 0.005 repurchase announcement, I thought it was an opportunity to follow the old path of People, so I rushed in at that time. The market price at that time was a little lower than the repurchase price, but when I went in, I was already collecting directly against the repurchase price, and I didn’t actually make a profit.

MC79：Jack: What is the main job of MC79 in the community?

I don't. Even if I am the largest holder in this community, I am more active in the community, and everyone recognizes me. I have been involved in this matter from the beginning to the end, and most of them are private chats with pandas, so I still understand the situation better.

MC79：Jack: According to MC79, what are the main problems of PandaDAO?

I think it's mainly a problem with the repo. At that time in May, some large investors felt that the currency price had been falling, so they proposed to use the method of repurchase, similar to PeopleDAO, to support the currency price and confidence in PANDA. At that time, they reported it to Panda in the community, and finally Panda agreed. When the proposal was agreed, Pandora's box was opened. Everyone thinks that this mechanism with bottom support is very good, and it may revive the confidence of the market, at least it inspired me.

In fact, according to the original idea of ​​Panda, I guess if it is only for repurchase, the problem should not be too big. But it may take a relatively long time to make a repurchase contract, or it may be that Panda wants to use it on (RPC) NFT. So on the same day that NFT was issued, the repurchase plan was started.

But because of the previously promised repurchase price of 0.005, it can be said that it has been tied to a chariot, and it can only be done with the repurchase price of 0.005. This led to an unlimited repurchase in the end, and the entire national treasury was not enough because of the announcement and wages (expenditures). And now it is a bear market, if everyone sees that your treasury is not enough, you will definitely run more and more, and finally it becomes a run.

MC79：Jack: When did MC79 start reporting community issues to Panda?

Probably around August 30th. The repurchase contract we opened on August 15 has been recharging since then. But after I saw that the recharge had been repurchased on August 30, I was a little anxious. I hope that Panda will recharge as soon as possible to give retail investors some confidence. So starting from August 30th, I chatted with him privately and suggested that he recharge as soon as possible.

MC79：Jack: When did the community find out that there was a problem with the repurchase contract?

In fact, some people in the community should already know about it, but they don't say it. (Community) A large number of people trust Panda, so they did not carefully check the data on the chain, nor did they consider whether the amount of treasury and Token is enough to support it.

After I persuaded him on August 30, he didn't answer me much, but told me (repurchase) would be later. At that time, I thought it was okay. After all, I just finished recharging on August 30, so I don't think there is a big problem. By the time of the 31st, some people in the community who had no time to leave started to quarrel, demanding to recharge the repurchase contract. Under such circumstances, on September 2nd, because I was worried that these people would cause the collapse of the entire community, I first used my own funds to help the team do a part of the buyback, which made a few particularly noisy ( Members) repurchase and leave first. After all, many people in the community will follow suit. If there are always people making trouble there, it is easy for everyone to run away.

MC79：Jack: Has the team notified the community in the form of an announcement?

No. So the community is dissatisfied with the team's handling, which is also the reason. At that time, Panda said in the community and in the group that I will block you and prevent you from walking freely. If you want to leave, you can exchange them in the market (at the market price). Because those noisy people do not hold RPC, they are just some old people in the community, and they have long wanted to leave.

So Panda should actually be angry, or he actually knows that the repurchase amount cannot be fully supported. In short, it was delayed from August 30th to September 14th before starting to put 500,000 US dollars in the repurchase contract, but I also communicated with him several times in the middle.

Of course, I didn't know that the treasury was not enough to support it at that time, but I was very anxious and said that you should put the money into it as soon as possible, otherwise there will be constant disturbances in the community. Because RPC's external publicity is a permanent guarantee, then you can't let it (unable to repurchase) cause you to lose credit. At that time, I was only worried about a run, and I didn't think that the treasury was not enough to support it.

MC79：Jack: What asset is the RPC guarantee based on?

Panda’s original idea was to bind stablecoins to go out, because if you don’t go out from stablecoins, it is equivalent to a dual-currency DeFi. So in fact, everyone knows very well that there must be a 0.005 guarantee in the end. I think the idea of ​​Panda at the beginning is that no matter how bad the issuance of NFT is, there will be some income. If there is this income, the treasury is actually enough to support it. But when we issue NFT, the treasury does not have any Ethereum income in the end, only the income of PANDA, and most of the income of PANDA is bought by these old people.

MC79：Jack: From MC79's point of view, did the team make any mistakes in handling the whole thing?

In my opinion, there are a few key points that could actually be done better. The first one is on August 30th. If it were me, I would have paid more money, and there would be no window period for the (repurchase contract). Because although many people want to leave, there are still many retail investors after all. If you can maintain your confidence as soon as possible, I believe it will not collapse so easily.

The second is from the perspective of the team. I think that when you find that the national treasury is empty, you need to deal with it with the spirit of a strong man, that is, to issue an announcement as soon as possible to inform the community of our current situation, and then let the community make a choice. , instead of procrastinating again and again, so that one's reputation has reached the lowest point. When everyone in the community discovers this problem by themselves, it is difficult to cover up. So you can either rush forward to fight, or inform as soon as possible, so that everyone has a choice.

And on the 14th, everyone has found that the treasury is indeed not enough, and I am still communicating with him. I hope he can cut the salary of the team, modify the incentive plan, or reorganize the Core team. If you are willing to reorganize, then someone from the community (the core team) can first help find some loopholes that caused this incident, and second, at least some people in the community can remain. And if you are willing to cut your salary now, if you can raise funds or release other products well in the future, the community will agree to get more rewards. This is my idea, I didn't think about disbanding directly, I didn't have this idea.

MC79：Jack: What do MC79 think is the core team reorganization?

In the current Core team, I know that there are about 11 people, 8 of whom are in technology, which is the technology recruited by Panda, and the remaining 3 are representatives selected by the community, but I think this allocation is very unreasonable. First of all, if all decisions are made by these 11 people, then 8 people must be able to hold power, right? Of course, there is a meeting room that can make proposals, but any proposal needs to be reviewed by the Core team even after the meeting room passes it. Only after the Core is passed can the Snapshot be voted on. Then this is equivalent to the entire rights are controlled by Core.

MC79：Jack: How does MC79 view the decision to disband?

I was very angry when I first heard the news of the disbandment. At that time, Panda directly issued an announcement. I think it has not reached that point. You should announce the situation to the community, and then let the community choose. Panda was disbanded directly according to a clause in the original white paper. I was quite angry at the time, but after thinking about it for a few hours, I feel that this is indeed the "least bad" way. Because if the announcement is made to the community, the team may be under a lot of pressure, and the community will almost certainly be everyone who will blame them. Some people may be able to stay, but most people will definitely leave. It might be better for everyone to disband in this way.

MC79：Jack: What's the mood in the community about the disbandment right now?

There are still some people who are willing to believe in Panda. Of course, there are also many slanderous voices, saying that they are corrupt or run away. But in my personal opinion, it is actually not right. Panda is actually just a selective mistake, because there is a problem with the product, and it is really difficult for you to make up for it in a bear market. I personally think that Panda is a person with ideas, not the kind of person who will run softly.

MC79：Jack: After the whole incident, how about the loss of community members?

If it is based on Ethereum, the loss is indeed not particularly large. However, everyone’s anchoring psychology must not be based on Ethereum. Many people have lost 70% (dollar denominated). I am better, because a large part of my funds were bought when it was relatively low So at the current price of about 0.03, I will probably lose about 40%. Some people who don't pay much attention will throw and smash the market in that market. Most people who still have coins are still waiting for this refund contract.

MC79：Jack: Why do you want to form a new PandaDAO?

I still have a little influence in the community, and everyone still recognizes me, and I don't want PandaDAO to die out like this, so I still want to get people together again, and then see how far the community can go.

MC79：Jack: The main direction of the new PandaDAO?

At present, some of our small partners are also re-communicating with Panda, and we currently intend to continue to run RPC. Because at that time, the main reason why RPC could not continue to operate was also the problem of this repurchase. The repurchase was stuck, and the treasury did not have enough money, so there was no way to do the repurchase. But it’s different now. Now we have made a guarantee for the refund contract, so the logic of RPC still exists. As the only NFT in the market that uses Ethereum to guarantee the bottom forever, I think it still has its own value. After the refund, if those who stay are willing to continue, then we will move on.

MC79：Jack: Where will the funds for the new DAO treasury come from? Who will manage it?

We are now electing the multi-signature of the treasury, and then these people who are willing to stay will do this multi-signature treasury. As for the source of funds, I thought about it for a while. Now that RPC is running again, it only needs an initial reward. We plan to use the method of donation, that is, large households and even Panda are willing to donate, and we donate part of the money to make a reward pool to make RPC work again. But after the RPC is running, its handling fee can be replenished back to the treasury, so that it can be rotated.

MC79：first level title

epilogue

epilogue

On September 29th, after several rounds of security audits, the PandaDAO refund process officially started. From a simple idea of ​​"doing decentralized data media", to issuing Tokens, designing repurchases, and launching NFT agreements, becoming the largest DAO organization on DeWork, the development and changes of PandaDAO in the past year have exceeded the expectations of everyone in the community. Its success is surprising, and its disbandment is also embarrassing.

After experiencing the incident of PandaDAO, we can't help thinking, how should a DAO maintain its original intention and development direction? How should the entry and exit of members be controlled? And how to balance different values ​​and interest distribution in the community?

After interviewing various members of the community, it is not difficult to find that the biggest problem of PandaDAO is that the community has accommodated too many members with fundamentally different values ​​and interest goals under the condition that the governance mechanism has not yet been perfected. A DAO organization that wants to be a decentralized data media not only attracts developers, but also attracts many Token and NFT traders for speculative purposes. This also made the development of the community deviate from the original direction, and the distribution of benefits became more complicated, and finally the problem broke out completely through the imperfect governance mechanism.

In fact, the PandaDAO incident is not an isolated case. Many current DAO organizations will more or less encounter similar problems. As Vitalik said in an interview, "The hardest job in Ethereum is not technical development, but satisfying everyone in the community." How the community is governed, how products are developed, and how benefits are distributed, all of these reflect the long road ahead for the emerging organizational form of DAO. But although the dissolution of PandaDAO has added some pessimism to the bear market, the exploration of DAO should not stop.

Finally, we end with Panda's words to the community:

"I think that at this point today, although it is not perfect, I still hope to say something to some DAO members who are still there through BlockBeats.

Although we said that we did some things right before, there were also things we did wrong, whether it was core members, other operations teams, developers, or even other ordinary community members. But no matter what, the entire community is now facing disbandment. I would like to say sorry to everyone for some incorrect decisions made before. I am sorry. As a Leader, I also have some corresponding responsibilities for some wrong things done by DAO.

But I think disbanding doesn't mean it's going to die. After disbanding, it will form a complete, decentralized autonomous organization, after which no one needs to consult anyone's opinions, and they can build whatever they want in the DAO community. They can contact engineers to do various things they want to achieve, like traders, they can connect together, and then do various transactions, and the same is true for investment. The entire DAO organization will be more open, more autonomous, and more balanced in power.

First of all, I think DAO is a trust-free network. For this, we have written out the refund contract, and all people can refund based on this refund contract, which basically belongs to a transparent and trust-free network. For other colleagues, I think we should avoid some of the paths we have traveled as much as possible, and don't operate DAO as a company. DAO is not equivalent to a company, but it is not equivalent to an interest group. It should be a new organizational structure. Some small partners and colleagues who are DAOs may need to pay attention to this point. At the same time, the founders of DAO should not have too much interference and control over the community. These are some lessons and experiences that I think colleagues can learn from.