YAM Replanted: A Fresh Start

Abstract

We believe that YAM has the opportunity to become a DAO that is unique, flexible, and modular, which leans into the open source ethos and allows for good ideas to come from anywhere. YAM does not need to re-create old models of organization or simply copy other DAOs, but can try for something better and create a truly open source organization that allows anyone to build on top of it as long as they follow the rules prescribed by its members.

YAM Replanted proposes to modify and clarify the organizational structure of the DAO in a way that provides the flexibility and accountability needed to achieve this vision and provides a framework for how YAM stakeholders can deploy capital and fund projects effectively. It does not attempt to answer where the DAO should deploy capital as that is a question that must ultimately be answered by the token holders themselves. While this document cannot answer this question, it can hopefully provide token holders the tools to answer it and then purse the vision defined by the answer.

The Basics of YAM

Insipired by Yearn and Ampleforth, the YAM token was created in August of 2020 as a fair launched rebasing token with the goal of creating a DAO owned and managed treasury. The treasury lives on the Ethereum blockchain and is managed by YAM token holders. Stakeholders can submit a request to the YAM governance contract to use or spend the funds in the treasury.

The initial supply of YAM tokens was given away to ecosystem participants who owned and deposited one of 8 different DeFi tokens in a week long distribution event. Since it's founding, the treasury has grown to hold ~$5 Million in assets and has operated as an on chain decentralized organization (DAO). The rebasing mechanism was turned off in December of 2020 after a broad community support to do so.

YAM has funded work on a myriad of projects including a synthetic assets platform built on UMA (Yam Synths), a treasury management framework (YAM treasuries), a protection protocol (Yam Protection), to an NFT art curation and metaverse gallery (MoFY). Some of these projects are still under development, while others are not.

While the YAM experiment has had many successes, the downsides of an open, flat, and decentralized organizational model have caused frictions. These are not issues that are unique to YAM, and many DAOs have struggled to deal with them. Product development in an unstructured environment has been difficult and general participation in governance and in the organization has been lackluster.