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Governance FAQ

What is the Unlock DAO?​

The Unlock DAO is the decentralized organization of token holders that govern and control the Unlock Protocol. Unlock Inc. is one of the stakeholders on the DAO, and we expect other organizations to emerge and eventually lead some efforts independently of Unlock Inc.

Governance happens through proposals.

What is a proposal?​

A proposal is a blockchain-executable transaction: it is code. This means that proposals can only trigger "on-chain" actions. For example, a proposal could be "The DAO pays X tokens to address.eth", or "Change parameter P of smart contract to be K", but it cannot be "The Unlock Inc. team needs to travel to conference Y", or "John Doe needs to purchase UDT tokens on the Coinbase exchange".

What is the lifecycle of a proposal?​

Proposals start as discussions and conversations. We suggest using Discord but they can happen anywhere as long as they are visible by all token holders. These conversations can be initiated by any community member. In the beginning, proposals are discussed between community members with the intention of making voting easier and straightforward by increasing awareness.

Once a relative consensus has been reached in the community, a community member will submit the proposal for votes, in the form of executable code.

At that stage, every delegate can vote in favor or against the proposal.

If the proposal gets approved by a majority and if a quorum has been reached, then the proposal will get executed after a time lock period.

Where do governance discussions take place?​

Governance discussions can take place on our Discord in the “Unlock DAO” section. Any community member can discuss the protocol and governance anywhere they want but we suggest having these discussions in the open to gather feedback and buy in.

What is the Unlock Protocol Token (UP)​

The Unlock Protocol governance tokens, also known as UP tokens, are the governance tokens for the Unlock Protocol. Holders of UP tokens collectively form the Unlock DAO.

Here is a full FAQ and description of the UP tokens, including tokenomics.

UP tokens were previously known as Unlock Discount Tokens (UDT).

How do I vote on governance proposals?​

Voting for the Unlock DAO happens "on chain" thru the governor contract. To send their transactions, delegates can use any front-end application that supports the OpenZeppelin Governor contracts, like Tally). Voting on a proposal is only available to delegates with the balance of tokens they had at the time of the proposals' submission.

How can I help the Unlock DAO?​

As a community member, I can help grow the adoption of the protocol, either by deploying a membership contract (a lock) and selling memberships or by purchasing other creators' memberships (keys). I can also reach out to my favorite creators and community and suggest that they use the protocol.

If I am a developer I can write code and plugins for platforms and applications to integrate Unlock... etc.

As a token holder, I can either delegate my votes to another member of the community or make sure I vote on proposals myself.

How do I delegate my tokens?​

If you want to have a say in the Unlock DAO, but don’t feel you have the time or ability to keep up with ongoing off-chain and onchain proposals and their related conversations and votes, you can delegate your votes to someone who will vote them on your behalf. This guide shows you how to delegate off-chain and onchain voting power using Snapshot and Tally.

Is it possible to become a delegate and not currently hold any UP​

No, delegation is the act of assigning the votes from address weighted by the number of tokens that this address owns. If you don't UP, the weight would be 0 :)

Is there any minimum UP holding threshold for delegate consideration​

No, even owning 0.000001 UP is enough to delegate.

What is Unlock Inc. (aka Unlock Labs)?​

Unlock Inc. is the company that wrote the first versions of the Unlock Protocol. It is now just one of the many stakeholders of the Unlock Protocol DAO and community.

What can the DAO ask Unlock Inc. to do?​

Nothing :) Because Unlock Inc does not "exist" on-chain. Similarly, Unlock Inc. cannot ask other members of the community to do "things" through the DAO.