🌍 Behind the scenes
EarthFund platform update 07/11
Learn more about everything we’ve done in the last seven days, including big backend developments, more progress on our product rollout, and early-stage work on new UX and functionality.
👋 We’re EarthFund, the decentralized platform using blockchain, DAOs, and crypto to give you more of a voice in the shape of tomorrow.
This is post #2 in our new weekly update on everything that happens behind the scenes at EarthFund’s (distributed) HQ.
Continuing the Phase 3 launch of the EarthFund platform
Last week, the main objectives for our development team (our in-house team in collaboration with Labrys) were to finalize the Solidity code that rounds out the bespoke contract library that the Earthfund platform uses.
On top of that, we continued the Snapshot integration and did more work on improving the core functionality of the platform.
Here’s a little more detail on everything that has gone into that 👇
Getting ready to accept donations in 30+ ERC-20 tokens
1. Finalized test cases and ensured as close to 100% test coverage as possible over the contract
Smart contract security is of absolute importance to our project because once a contract is deployed it is immutable and cannot be changed.
To ensure security, we test the contract using a suite of programming tools and libraries. We’re also tapping into some of the brightest minds in the industry to make sure we’re prepared for all variable scenarios that could break the program.
2. Deployed the smart contract to the Rinkeby Testnet for testing within the full suite of contracts
Our smart contracts are now deployed to the Rinkeby Testnet for testing. We do this with every contract not just to check the programmatic coverage, but to ensure the contract does everything we want it to.
Building and testing dynamic cause treasuries
Tested that donations are accurately landing in the right spot
Integrating the web app to donate to a cause’s treasury is great and fulfills EarthFund’s main goal of allowing causes to raise the funds they need through crypto donations.
But if we want to build a platform that really helps people change the world, we can’t box them into just one way of doing things.
As such, the EarthFund contract is scalable and allows causes different ways to run treasuries (more details coming soon). So, we need to make sure the contract is operating correctly in every scenario.
Implemented 0x’s token swap to automatically convert donations to USDT
Soon, you’ll be able to donate any ERC-20 tokens to any cause on earthfund.io.
And to keep treasury management as simple as possible, the platform will automatically swap the donated coins into USDT at the current equivalence and then add the donation to the treasury.
Why convert to USDT? While we’ve partnered with Coinshift to allow for intuitive treasury management with first-class UX, adding all ERC-20 tokens straight to the wallet still required users to have a base understanding of the crypto market and make collective decisions on when to liquidate.
While we know there are a lot of benefits to causes holding many different tokens, the main drawback is that makes the treasury management process complicated and bloated. Ultimately, this reduces efficiency and undermines our goal of streamlining cause management.
Instead, with every donation automatically converted to a stablecoin pegged to a tangible, familiar currency (the US dollar), you can see exactly how much you still need to raise before you can fund a project without having to decipher the fluctuations of the market. In other words, it’s just simpler for everybody to understand. And ultimately, that’s our MO at EarthFund.
Tested the automated token swap vigorously
We spent a large chunk of the week running test cases against the implemented automatic swap. It’s incredibly important to use that the integration is accurate and functions under all possible scenarios.
This meant measuring factors such as slippage as well as programming dust handling to ensure tokens are not lost and that the 0x implementation always got the best available price.
Preparing the Snapshot integration for all causes
Implemented the calculation that decides your voting power
Calculating Voting Power against your wallet is super important for ensuring fair, democratic votes.
Not only did we need to make sure that people should only be voting on the things they have permission to vote on, but the UI needed to make sure that users who have no voting power aren’t confused as to why.
Implemented voting
Nothing groundbreaking here on a technical level, but you’ll be able to vote with your NeverAlone tokens from Wednesday.
Implemented the ability to change your vote
Changing your mind when presented with new information is a cornerstone of democracy and good decision-making. That’s why we’ve developed a UI that lets you see your vote and adjust it if you want to. (Within the voting period, of course.)
Made vote tallies visible to users
We’ve made sure that voting totals and information are always available and visible to users when they vote. This includes a list of voting history for complete transparency on every community decision.
Implemented voting periods
We’ve made sure that the UI always indicates to the user if they can still vote or not based on the voting period.
Clear proposal templates and information
Carefully reviewing proposals is crucial for a healthy, efficient cause. That’s why we’ve made sure that all of the information from the proposal is front and center not just on the EarthFund platform, but on Snapshot (using images and Markdown to optimize Snapshot in a way that no other DAO does).
Optimized the proposal and funding process
Made it simple to create a proposal
Users are now able to submit a proposal to causes on the platform. (For funding for a project, to start a fund, etc…)
These proposals aren’t just shown on the EarthFund platform (with simple UX and an on-page Snapshot integration) but are also pulled directly to Snapshot for complete transparency and trust.
Implementing a first-in-first-out funding queue into the smart contract
One of the unseen challenges of the platform was making sure that funding was sent out in order.
What if two fund budgets are approved, but the cause doesn’t have the budget to fund either yet?
Now, when a project is awaiting funds, the first voted should be the first served. Using a First-In-First-Out style queue system, a programmatic queue has been implemented on-chain to allow for the immutable records and security of that queue.
This is yet another technological first for a DAO platform.
What’s happening this week?
As we launch Phase 3, this week is all about auditing, reviewing, and tweaking before moving to Phase 4 of the rollout.
Getting the donation/grant router perfect
Audit Review: once received, the external security audit of the smart contract will be reviewed and actioned if needed.
Deployment! 🚀 Deployment of the smart contract will happen this week and it will be integrated into the EarthFund platform.
Finalizing the dynamic treasury
Deployment! 🚀 The Treasury contract will be deployed in parallel with the Donation Router as they work hand in hand to achieve a dynamic treasury and grant distribution.
Making sure everybody can vote
Allowing for comments on each vote: This is a big feature. Voting yes/no on projects doesn’t allow for nuance or improvement.
Projects rejected because they don’t quite make the cut are treated the same as scam projects or projects with no merit.
To build an ecosystem that places a premium on quality proposals, we’ve built a custom comment functionality on the EarthFund platform that lets you add a comment or rationale every time you vote.
(Note: comments aren’t a held function within Snapshot, so we’re developing and hand-building a solution. Another first for a DAO platform. 🙌)
Allow uploading of images to proposals: infographics, diagrams, marketing collateral… all of these can really help a proposal communicate clearly why it deserves funding.
But uploading images to Snapshot isn’t intuitive.
So we’re building a solution that automatically pulls images from the EarthFund proposals, adds them to an S3 bucket, and adds them to Snapshot proposals.
This way, wherever you decide to read the proposal and vote, you’ll have all the information.
Continuing to improve how easy it is to use EarthFund
Last week, we began work on UX improvements for some of the core features of the platform. Our in-house product team will continue to work on these over the coming days too.
Getting governance tokens: right now, community drop, Uniswap and staking are all in the same place on the platform. This isn’t entirely intuitive (especially for new users) so we’re working on tweaks to make the whole flow more streamlined and clear.
Note: we’re also exploring the idea of two kinds of cause: a donations-only cause where governance tokens are always swapped for 1Earth and funds are always raised through donations, and a DEX cause where tokens can be sold on a DEX and treasury tokens can be liquidated to fund extra projects or things the cause wants to do. This is still in planning at the moment, but we’ll update as we go.
Start a DAO: the ultimate end goal for the platform is that every cause that joins the platform can get set up automatically. That means everything from the cause landing pages to the smart contract to the token minting and (if chosen) the DEX listing all happen automatically from the back-end. This will allow us to scale much faster, so right now, we’re building the flow and functionality of setting up a DAO before we work with our in-house dev team and Labrys to start building it out.
Rewards, rewards, rewards: getting rewarded for doing good is a core element of the EarthFund platform. Unlike the traditional yields from staking, EarthFund gives you guaranteed payments in USDT just for joining a cause and voting on issues. That’s why we’re currently working on emphasizing the role and value of the rewards on the cause landing pages so that you can see at a glance how much you’ll be able to claim and when.
Adding contributors: a small but important tweak, we’ve made it super simple to add contributors to your project when you submit a proposal for funding or to set up a cause. That way, you can make sure your team is all assembled and ready to answer any questions the community has.
Getting ready for Dr. Lucy Tweed’s Carbon Removal Cause 🌳
Last week was a big week for Dr. Lucy Tweed’s cause.
Work began internally on branding, positioning, and getting her cause ready for a community vote (coming soon) to be approved on the platform.
We also worked with Dr. Tweed to prepare an investment deck to send to people who might want to partner up or donate to her cause.
(In fact, Dr. Tweed already has meetings booked with various groups to promote and discuss her cause and raise awareness, from high-profile individuals to Twitter Spaces in the Web3.0 niche.)
Here’s a little sneak peek 👇
Rolling out with Chopra Foundation
Our team had a weekly meeting with the Chopra Foundation to get together on some initiatives and start organizing a regular co-hosted Twitter space.
We also discussed coordinating events and meetings at EthCC next week, where the Chopra team and Adam, our co-founder, will be meeting up and spreading the word about EarthFund and the NeverAlone token.
Getting warmed up to fundraise in September
We’re in the very early stages of getting ready to start fundraising after September 15th, 2022.
(Why September 15th? That’s the deadline for government filings so we’re sure we’re in the strongest position to get agreeable terms.)
To do this, we’re starting to refresh our investor deck and are speaking to lawyers about reorganizing our corporate structure to allow for outside investments.
Help us spread the word
There are lots of ways you can help us this week!
- Help us spread awareness about what we’re building.
We’re in a bear market. We know how hard it is not to check the charts and worry. But like Jillian Rothman from Warner Music said at NFT NYC last week:
“We keep saying internally that it’s not a bear market. It’s a build market. From our perspective, it’s actually a really good time to invest, especially in the people who are sticking around and who are in it for a real purpose.”
If you can do anything to draw attention to what we’re building — all the new features that have never been done before, our bigger mission (crypto for a better tomorrow), all the work that’s going in to build a really one-of-a-kind product — then we can help make sure that people know that we keep building, keep improving and keep delivering, despite the market conditions.
2. Have your say in the Mental Health and Wellbeing’s first vote
On Wednesday, the Mental Health and Wellbeing cause launches its first vote to fund further development of PIWI, a mental health chatbot that has already helped almost 100,000 people struggling with their mental health.
- A sample of 3,522 people were experiencing suicidal thoughts in their conversations with Piwi and were de-escalated through the help of on-call crisis counselors.
- 95% of those in need reduced their symptoms of anxiety and depression, equivalent to outcomes of 1 to 15 therapy sessions.
- 22% of people reported a 50% reduction in depression symptoms,
- 24% reported a 50% reduction in anxiety symptoms.
(Once development is finished, the project will be open-sourced too, to help people all around the world.)
From the very first project the platform funds, we really will be helping to build a better tomorrow. 🙌
3. Help us spread the word about Dr. Tweed’s new cause (and get ready to vote)
Our last ask is that you help us shout about Dr. Tweed’s cause.
Internally, we’re super excited about the Carbon Removal cause. But Lucy doesn't have the name recognition of somebody like Deepak or the Chopra Foundation.
So in the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing more news, more insights, and more ways you can interact with Lucy.
If you’re interested in green tech, carbon capture, and reversing mankind’s effect on the planet, then drop a like on her tweets, retweet them, follow her on social media, share her stuff… it really does all help raise awareness of the exciting work that Lucy has planned.
(Oh! And also, don’t forget to stake your 1Earth so you can vote on adding the Carbon Removal cause to the platform!)
And, of course, you can also:
- Get 1 friend to join our Telegram community
- Tweet about EarthFund or interact with us on social media (got to feed those social media algorithms!)
- Ask us questions — we’re always available to answer questions in Telegram. (And if our community team doesn’t have the answers, we’ll get them for you.)
Until next week, thanks for being part of this journey with us!
Let’s build a better tomorrow, together.
New to EarthFund? Here’s everything you need to know 👇
Start a world-changing DAO with its own token.
Join a community of like-minded people.
Donate crypto to change the world.
All from one place.
EarthFund takes power from centralized organizations like governments and global charities and gives it to communities dedicated to causes.
It allows everyday people like you to affect change. And using crypto and the blockchain, it lets you have a voice in decisions and fund the causes you believe in.
Powering it all is the 1Earth token, an ERC-20 token that can be staked in exchange for governance tokens that give you a voice on the platform.
By buying the token and joining the EarthFund DAO, anybody in the world will have a vote on how the EarthFund treasury is used to fund planet-saving projects around the world.
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