Bunchd Governance

The Bunchd platform will be governed by the Bunchd token. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll refer to the Bunchd Governance token as just “the token” for the rest of this document. This document outlines the long term vision of Bunchd governance. It’s expected that the governance parameters will change over time as we iterate towards a healthy balanced model.

Token Purpose

The token will grant true platform ownership and voting powers to token holders. Easy to say. But, what does that mean in practice?

Vote to Extend the Platform

Token holders will be able to vote on extending the system. Lets take a moment to understand what Bunchd is at a high level. The core of Bunchd is intended to a protocol for storing, assessing, and valuing creator content. The components, at a high level are

1. Content management - Storage and delivery of content in a generalized shape.
2. Access control - Granting granular access to bits of content, and other parts of the creator swarm.
3. Subscriptions - This is an extension of the ACL, but will be a primitive of the protocol. Who can see what, for how long, and for what reasons.
4. Social weights - Putting shape to the interactions between content, creators, and users. What content is valuable, what creators create value.

This whole section could use its own technical document huh 😅

This system is intended to be hacked on and extended. For instance, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to take the content management layer, and the access control layer to create a headless CMS. However, this example lacks a bit of inspiration, and doesn’t grow the platform. So, lets try again..

Let’s imagine a developer team identifies Bunchd creators are struggling to get found, and creates a tool where creators can grant access of their media libraries to an incentivized curation platform. The idea of incentivized curation takes off and becomes the way new creators are getting discovered. However, on this new platform our curators aren’t getting rewarded ownership in Bunchd and interactions aren’t being captured by the social weights layer. The development team could propose to Bunchd token holders to allow deeper access to the core of Bunchd. Curators could become vested for attracting fans, and the curation platform would help better define the value of content by gaining access to the social weights layer.

From a technical standpoint this might look like: Blessing the platform canisterIds into trusted canister list. Pushing an audited wasm into spawner canister which deploys the swarm under the hubs control.

Vote to Distribute Funds

The genesis mint will allocate 100_000_000 token into a community chest. Token holders will be able to propose to distribute these funds for different purposes. Vesting a powerful creator, funding a creator initiative, raising funds for future development are all potential options. We might imagine a group of artists who need a particular feature could propose to hire a developer team to build out specific platform features.

Moreover, creator platform revenue will go back to the platform, which is owned by the token holders. Token holders will be able to vote to distribute excess capital.

Vote on Platform Changes

Token holders will be able to vote on general platform changes. Think fees, rules, moderation, changes to the token itself. Who the primary developers are.

Wait, change who the primary developers are?

Once established it is expected that changes to the DAO will be restricted. Changing token / governance code will require a code audit, and vote - no developer rug pulls. As for the rest of Bunchd, for ease of development the DAO will grant controller access to all the platform canisters. In the future a similar vote method could be built in for the rest of the dapp.

The development team will be vested in Bunchd DAO. This is important, the DAO can “Fire the development team” by revoking controller access, and take back control of the developer mint. However, team members will still be vested, and thus not incentivized to take down the network with them. In a way, the development team are actually just employees of the DAO. Should these employees be deemed “underperforming” they can be fired.

Pay for the Platform

Running Bunchd will cost money - no surprises here. Cycles have a well defined cost. The most expensive bits of IC computation are well defined. The cost of hosting an individual creator can be calculated pretty well. For the low price of 1SDR we can emit 3,846,153 wbl messages (less data) into some future analytics pipeline. Hosting costs, and access to specific features will cost Bunchd first - which will be deducted from the creators balance. Remaining fees will need to be paid by the creator, although some free tier will exist. Presently, these fees will go into the governance treasury.

In the future it is possible to bake in some burning mechanism to counteract a future inflationary one. This is a living system.

How are Tokens Minted?

Recall, the cost of an individual can be calculated with a high degree of confidence. So, we can also calculate the platform value of an individual creator (with some extra work). Excess value brought to the platform will mint Bunchd. The exact parameters are TBD, but even once “finalized”, the parameters are expected to change over time to reflect changes in the landscape.

Generally, the high level formula will be:

Platform Value Added - Cost to the Platform = Total Bunchd Minted & Deposited to User

This might seem painfully obvious, but from this, an interesting inventive mechanic emerges. Consider, we don’t want the low level Bunchd protocol to be a Walled Garden. It could be, but properties of the IC would make this incredibly obnoxious to implement. Instead, generally it should be open, and restrictive only where needed.

Patreon and OnlyFans both have strict rules requiring all creators to capture payment and do business through the built in tools they provide. We might describe their model as:

Payments Received * (100% - Platform Fee %) = Total Payment Received

The more you earn, the more fees the platform captures. If the platform lacks the features you need, you’re not allowed to push your fans elsewhere for those features. At some point users actually become incentivized to leave and take their audiences with them.

Contrast this with Bunchd, where we are instead saying: The more value you bring to the platform, the more you are rewarded (less your cost to the platform). The “value you bring” is calculated by using the protocol. Meaning,

• Creators are incentivized to use the protocol instead of forced to use it.
  • Creators who circumvent the value capture mechanics just don’t get rewarded.
• Creators are incentivized to be vocal about extending the protocol to enable more value capture.
  • Moreover, they have the resources to make this change actually happen.

Consequently, this model also lends itself towards a natural trend in the creator space: Spend more time creating better content at a lower volume. Which, supports the idea of content bundling.

• Groups of creators can produce more valuable content, more frequently, through collaboratively serving audiences.

Finally, another interesting side effect of this formula is it rewards archiving only valued content. Creators are incentivized to only keep content around for as long as it is meaningful to their fans.

Why would I want to hold Bunchd Tokens?

Creators - Earn ownership in the platform you’re using to make a living, and generate long-term returns just by growing a platform that rewards you for doing what you love.

Developers - Grow the value of your holdings, and earn even more by extending the Bunchd Protocol to capture and put shape to creator value.

Investors - Stake a claim in the future of the creator economy by investing in the long term success of authentic content generation.

Fans - Grow your investment just by subscribing to your favorite creators, sharing their content on the web, and getting your friends in on the content you love.