Returning Value to ANT Token holders via Buyback

Not quite, because it was bought back below book value, the difference between book value and the price at the time of purchase is then gained by the treasury / BV.

Example 1 - Buyback at Book Value

  • Book Value = $1
  • Buyback Price = $1
  • Difference between BV & Price = $0
  • Token is burnt, there is 1 less supply
  • BV stays the same.

Example 2 - Buyback below Book Value

  • Book Value = $1
  • Buyback Price = $0.60
  • Difference between BV & Price= $0.40
  • The token is burnt, so there is 1 less supply
  • BV increases, that $0.40 is now shared between remaining supply’s BV

I am stoked to see these discussions taking actual shape.

As I outlined in Exit and Voice having an exit mechanism is an important first step. As discussion is starting to get focused we can push further structure around it maybe in a new thread:

  • rage quit vs buyback - sentiment here feels more on the buyback side but maybe a signalling vote as the forum is very easily Sybil-ed (a Snapshot temperature check can be a shortcut)

  • Exit tax as proposed by @alex-arca (at 5%) with the implication well articulated by @ant_holder (I personally think the 40% example is a bit rich, but will assume this is just to illustrate a point)

  • What to do with the ANT that’s bought back - I personally love the idea of @luis to just burn it as it is the cleanest path

Calculating the BV per ANT is going to be probably the most contentious part. I think it deserves a thread in its own, where we hash out:

  • Getting a more complete picture of the current assets and liabilities of the treasury
  • Getting a more specific insight into the $40M Swiss tax provision - its a massive chunk that needs to be explored in more details
  • Are there illiquid assets and what to do with those
  • The ANT supply - I personally disagree with @alex-arca calculation. Removing the ANT held by AA from the supply makes sense in dissolution. As Alex himself points out - this is not a dissolution. Attributing 0 BV to the future token holders compromise the purpose of these ANT reserves as an incentive mechanism. Moreover insisting that is the case can push AA to rush in distributing those prematurely before an adequate mapping of which stakeholders should be incentivised, just to be able to preserve the value of the incentives.[Making a point around the contentiosness of the topic. Ideally would want to have this discussion in a separate thread]

I firmly believe that giving the discussions more structure will help us move faster in shaping up actual proposals that can go up for voting.

How shall we proceed with the discussions?

  • Keep going as is
  • Two new focused threads - one on exit (RQ vs BuyBack + parameters) and one on BV per ANT

0 voters

If we go for the new threads I will set those up and link all relevant existing ones, or someone else can volunteer, just flag it so we don’t end up with forked threads again

P.S. giving 24 hours for voting

I think the treasury should be transferred to the dao first before the dao makes any decisions.

Thanks for sharing your perspective. Just to make sure I understand your recommended course of action.

  • Do we just chill around until AA transfers the treasury and only then start discussing a potential exit mechanism and/or lock-weighted voting?
  • Do you see something else productive and proactive you want to spearhead and coordinate around in the meantime?

Apologies if I am missing the point of your statement

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Thank you for the response ser, I’m fond of your frankness towards both sides.

I should have elaborated:

We should do whatever results in the AA transferring the most value to the dao. If that means not binding ourselves into some outcome that causes them to assess taxes / risk differently, then yes sit on our hands (assuming they will transfer the treasury relatively immediately)

Preferably they would just transfer the treasury and no longer be responsible for it’s use. Then the dao decides what it wants.

Greetings from TempleDAO. We are believers in Aragon’s mission and are excited to witness these invigorating community discussions around how to create sustainable value for token holders and Aragon partners.

We note that buybacks have been proposed in this discussion as a way to reduce the imbalance between returning value to token holders in the present while building for the future. We also acknowledge the legal uncertainty around buyback implementation as a way to return value.

TempleDAO experienced a similar schism last year over the best way to grow and manage our community Treasury. Arising as a technical response to these passionate debates, Temple developed a novel liquidity management contract that could prove useful to Aragon under the current circumstances–RAMOS (Randomized Automated Market Operations Service).

What is RAMOS?

RAMOS is a set of on-chain contracts that provides liquidity and price stability within a normal 50:50 pool on a DEX such as Balancer through automated market operations (AMO). In short, RAMOS will single-side withdraw the base token (potentially ANT in this case) when the token price in the pool falls below a target price threshold to restore the price back to the nominal range. The second token can be DAI, WETH, or whatever the DAO decides should be paired with ANT. The operating parameters of RAMOS can be changed through a governance vote. Alternatively, the parameters can be immutable. The RAMOS contract calls are automated via OZ Defender or another automation framework.

Why is RAMOS better?

By using RAMOS, the Aragon Treasury can ensure that there are no idle funds sitting in a redemption or bonding contract. Funds deployed to RAMOS are always collecting swap fees as well as farming gauge rewards where applicable.

RAMOS is fully-audited, highly scalable, and robust. It has managed a 8-figure TEMPLE::DAI liquidity pool on Balancer for almost half a year without any issues. It has robust randomization features that mitigates arb attacks from bots in the same pool. The price target can be set and applied stochastically with a single RebalanceUp operation.

How does RAMOS Return Value to ANT Holders?

RAMOS does not directly buy back ANT tokens from holders. It is a Balancer LP farmer like any other except that it follows certain liquidity provision guidelines set in advance by the DAO. There is no central authority that decides how much TVL RAMOS should control at any given time, nor the timing or frequency at which transactions will occur. RAMOS operates and maintains ANT liquidity continuously in a way that is flexible enough for no-touch day-to-day operations for an extended period from days to years, yet amenable to updates to any of its operating parameters with no need to redeploy.

Summary

RAMOS is a novel liquidity provisioning tool that can accommodate any price floor target and market liquidity depth policies without direct buybacks. It does not suffer from the adverse impact of arbitrage and idle funds. We believe that RAMOS can help Aragon find and reach an equilibrium with its token holders like it did for the Temple community, and we stand ready to help with implementation.

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Thanks for reaching out @Lux.Temple, is it essentially a smart balancer pool?

What fee does Temple take for the use of the protocol, also what level of assets have run through the smart contracts so far.

Look forward to learning more about Temple.

Hello ser thank you for your questions! We recently redeployed RAMOS in April due to changing the paired token from bb-a-USD to DAI. In the past 30 days approximately $2.2M in volume has passed through the TEMPLE::DAI pool. Similarly, when TEMPLE was paired against bb-a-USD, the total volume for a 3-month period from December to March was approximately $6.2M.

TEMPLE::bb-a-USD LP

TEMPLE:DAI LP

RAMOS was built by Temple so we are not charging a fee for our internal use. Temple would be happy to discuss the fee structure and provide technical documentation in a TG or Discord group DM (my contact info is below), but I can say that we are highly motivated to see RAMOS adoption by Aragon. We are ready to share technical documents and the Github repo.

TG: @luxaverse
Discord: lux.temple#0654

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Thanks to everyone who voted! Creating the two threads to hopefully facilitate a more structured dialogue

Exit options here:

Treasury size and book value here:

Hey all, Just wanted to flag that your calculations are off here @alex-arca you need to use the total supply as these tokens do exist, they are ANJ that can be able to convert to ANT at any point.

Moves the BV in your calculation down to 4.43

Thought this would be helpful for other discussions.

I am using the max supply from Etherscan. I am also subtracting out the ANT owned by treasury from both-sides. If there is more supply than the 43,166,684.99587610… please let me know.

Additionally @dcfgod mentioned that it is worth discussing and agreeing upon a method for calculation the calculation. I am using the method that is typically used in a dissolution since i think that should be the hurdle and what has been typically used in the past. If there are any concerns about that or other methods to use, we should discuss here.
image

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IMO this calc should be the absolute lowest number as it completely ignores all ANT enterprise value

Also curious what people think of closing the window to transition from ANT1 → ANT2?

@AClay if we want to consider all ANT supply as “with claim” then we should also change contributor salaries to 100% ANT and preserve the eth/stables/btc because there’s no other use for that ANT

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Has team gone further into the RAMOS solution? I think it’s pretty good and can be healthy for long term token design

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Just trying to make sure we have all the correct numbers. I do not know if it is possible to close the window, the ANT has been minted and will always be claimable from the smart contract from my understanding, that is also the case with ANJ.

There is no more supply, sorry think this was the confusion when I divided the 176 million by 43 million I got 4.09. I agree that the number is the lowest it can be. There is value being produced by the teams now, they have only had 9 months so far in the current form, and the future value should be in the calculations. Some clarity on the 40 million would be helpful.

As soon as the next set of proposals come around would be more than happy to discuss the split, I think the split in ANT should be much higher.

I have been looking at RAMOS along side other solutions.

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Great answer really appreciate it

Also did you know we announced a cutoff date for ANJ which was 2 years ago but never did the cutoff. Could we cut this off now, and burn the ANT in the migrator?

thanks!

Our team has generated a RAMOS technical specifications document for your further review. We would love to continue the discussion in a group setting.

RAMOS Specifications

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That was for the higher rate bonus for locking for a year, the second lower rate was always meant to continue.

A lot of the smaller holders may not have exchanged due to the gas fee and does not make sense at the lower prices, would be basically taking money form the pockets of the smaller holders, I am very against that.

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please show the messages / news that state the second rate was supposed to continue? Thanks

I will leave you to go back and check the votes etc @AntHolder. This comes back to, in my opinion, minority vs majority protection. The easiest thing to do would be to find a way to airdrop ANT to all of those addresses, not cancel it to squeeze some more profit.

The fact it would continue is pretty clear though.

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Yeah the contract will run as long as Ethereum runs it! A different thing though is hosting the frontend, which I think no one expects for it to be maintained indefinitely.

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