Key concepts
This page defines every core idea of COLLAB in a few sentences, in the order they build on each other, and points to the page that explains each in full. It is for anyone new to COLLAB, and a quick reference for everyone else. Shorter definitions of more terms are in the Glossary.
The DAO and its members
DAO
A COLLAB DAO is a group that decides together on GenesisL1: a lab or research group, a university department or institute, a company, a non-profit, or a consortium of any of these. On chain it is six contracts created together by COLLAB's factory, which nobody owns, its creator included. It acts only when its members' proposals pass. See How COLLAB works.
Treasury
The treasury is the DAO's address and its vault. It holds L1, ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, sealed CIPNFT data and GL1F Model NFTs, owns the tokens the DAO issues, and is the only account that acts for the DAO. Anyone can send it funds; only a passed proposal can move them. See The treasury.
Shares
Shares are the DAO's own token, an ERC-20 with 18 decimals, and they carry its votes: one share, one vote. Founders receive the first shares; after that, new shares come only from votes under the critical rules. Founders choose whether members may transfer shares to each other. Members are the accounts that hold shares, apart from the treasury and infrastructure the DAO excludes, such as a pool; a frozen member keeps their shares but cannot vote with them or move them. See Members and shares.
Voting power
Voting power is what your vote weighs on a proposal: your own shares, plus shares delegated to you whose owners do not vote themselves, read at the block before the proposal was submitted. With a holding period, each part counts with the lower of two readings. Shares held by the treasury, by frozen members and by excluded accounts carry none. See Who can vote.
Delegation
You can let another member vote with your shares. Your own vote always overrides your delegate's for your shares, whoever votes first, and delegation goes one level deep. See Delegation.
Proposals
Proposal
Everything a DAO does starts as a proposal: a type, a title, an optional description, and the exact actions the treasury will carry out if it passes. The governor stores a fingerprint of the actions, so what executes is exactly what members voted on. See Proposals and voting.
Proposal types
Each of the 13 proposal types may call only specific functions on specific contracts, from a Signal, which does nothing, to a Raw transaction, which may do anything. The DAO's call policy checks every action against its type when the proposal is submitted. See The 13 proposal types.
Standard and critical rules
Every DAO has two sets of voting rules. The critical set is at least as strict as the standard one, and applies to proposals that change the DAO itself or cannot be undone: always to Governance rules, Constitution, Membership, DAO signature and Raw transaction, and to whatever else the DAO marks critical. See Standard and critical rules.
The vote
Deposit
A proposal needs a deposit in L1 before members can vote on it. The proposer pays part of it when submitting, anyone can add the rest, and voting starts once it reaches the DAO's minimum. Deposits are refunded afterwards unless the DAO's rules forfeit them, for example when a proposal is vetoed. See Deposits, refunds and penalties.
Quorum
Quorum is the share of all voting power that must vote, Abstain included, for a result to count. A vote that misses it ends as No quorum. See How votes are counted.
Pass threshold and minimum Yes
To pass, Yes must be more than the pass threshold share of the votes that are not Abstain. The minimum Yes, where a DAO sets one, also requires Yes from that share of all voting power, so a proposal cannot pass on abstentions and a handful of Yes votes. See Abstentions and the minimum Yes.
Veto
No with veto counts as No, and when it exceeds the veto threshold share of all votes cast, the proposal is Vetoed, however many vote Yes. It is meant for proposals that are harmful or abusive. See The three tests.
Timelock
A passed proposal waits for its timelock before it can run. Nobody can stop it then; the timelock is warning time, so everyone sees what will happen before it does. See Timelock and execution window.
Execution window
After the timelock, anyone can execute a passed proposal during the execution window: the treasury performs its actions and whoever executes pays only the network fee. If nobody does before the window closes, nothing happens. See Execution.
People and outside contracts
Representatives
Representatives are people the DAO appoints to handle routine work without a vote each time: editing the description, the logo and the links, posting announcements and, with the operator power, running calls governance pre-approved. Beyond those calls, they cannot spend from the treasury or change the rules, and members can replace them at any time. See Representatives.
Key stewards and key epochs
A contract cannot keep a secret, so a DAO holds its sealed data through key stewards: up to nine elected people who keep the DAO's private decryption key. A key epoch is one generation of that key, proposed by a steward and activated by a vote; a new epoch replaces the key. Stewards can read everything the DAO has sealed. See Sealed data with CIPNFT.
Integrations
Integrations are the outside contracts a DAO chooses to work with: GL1F collections for machine-learning models and CIPNFT contracts for sealed data. The founders choose them, and a critical vote changes them. Their administrators sit outside the DAO and keep powers of their own. See Integrations.
Constitution
The constitution is the DAO's founding text, in Markdown: its purpose and the rules members agree to. Version 1 is recorded at creation; each amendment is a critical proposal that adds a new version, and every version stays on-chain. It records what members agreed; the contracts enforce what the DAO can do. See The constitution and announcements.
Identity
Title
A DAO's title, its name, is chosen at creation and never changes. Titles are not unique: two DAOs may have the same one. See The title is permanent.
Web address
A DAO's web address, its slug, is the permanent, unique name in its page's address, such as /dao/open-proteomics-collective: 3 to 48 lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, starting with a letter. It is the DAO's identity, where the title is not. See The web address.
Logo and description
A DAO's logo is a 128 × 128 PNG of up to 512 KB, and its description Markdown of up to 256 KB. Both live in the DAO's profile contract and are rewritten in place when representatives or a proposal change them, so editing never grows the chain's state. See The logo and The description.
Tokens and markets
L1 and wL1
L1 is GenesisL1's coin: it pays network fees and deposits, and is what the treasury holds first. wL1 is its wrapped ERC-20 form, which pools use; DeSciFi wraps and unwraps it for you.
DeSciFi
DeSciFi is COLLAB's built-in exchange: constant-product pools whose swap fees can be collected without withdrawing liquidity, one-sided launch pools for new tokens, lock boxes for LP tokens, and a router for swaps. Anyone can trade and provide liquidity; a DAO does so through proposals. See Swap on DeSciFi and Pools, liquidity and locks.
Verified tokens
Anyone can create a token with any name. A site vouches for L1, wL1, the tokens its operator lists as verified ("Verified by this site") and tokens issued by a DAO the site features. Every other token carries a warning, "… is not verified by this site.", and a token opened from a link is checked before you can trade it. A token issued by some other COLLAB DAO is named with that DAO's web address, but is not vouched for. See Swap on DeSciFi and Staying safe.
Related
- How COLLAB works: the contracts, the website and the server.
- Glossary: short definitions of more terms.
- Proposals and voting: the life of a proposal.
- Create a DAO: putting the concepts to use.