Hello all and welcome to the second edition of the Monthly Eco Community digest where we cover the developments, updates and happenings relevant to the Eco Protocol. It’s been an exciting month since our last update! The very first community generated proposal was submitted and passed in the Community Governance flow and the Eco Team is gearing up for an exciting publicity push! (More on that below.) Also, the Trustee group has experienced multiple Monetary Policy cycles and are providing their initial feedback while the broader community is ramping up activities and projects designed to get $ECO and Points moving around our Discord server again!

This month has been all about test driving the primitives of the Eco Protocol to see what works and how they can be improved in the coming months!

Building On Eco

February has been a big month for shipping! In the past weeks we are proud to announce the Beta launch of the following tools built on the primitives of the Eco protocol.

• Tender Wallet

  • Developed by community member @flarcos, this wallet is designed to allow community members in Discord to transfer $ECO between accounts gaslessly and instantly, effectively neutralizing the costly Layer 1 gas fees associated with onchain activity!

• ECO ID

  • The ECO ID Playground platform created by @jeremie and @LinaHello allows Eco protocol participants to create their own reputation attestations based on the ECO ID system.

• Consensus Bot

  • Two of the biggest challenges facing any decentralized community is incentive alignment and consensus building. Enter the Lazy Consensus bot built by @yulston. This bot (which has recently gone live.) is designed to reduce the friction and time spent by Layer 3 members in aligning on point distribution activities.

• Ecollective Governance

  • Voting on Layer 1 is expensive. The introduction of the first Ecollective (ecollective.eth) will allow community members who wish to participate in Eco Governance the ability to do so for free via Snapshot! It’s been in test mode by our Beta Test users this most recent governance cycle but will be introduced to the wider community in the coming weeks. #KYEP

Note: These are all community produced tools and not explicitly recommended or endorsed by the Eco Association. As with everything in Web3 users should do your own research and make sure you are taking every precaution when choosing where to engage with your wallets or funds.

Introducing Eco to the World.

Thanks to Peter Hopkins, Eco Inc Education and Content Lead, for this section of the update.

It’s time to share the story of $ECO with the broader world!

As always, that means meeting people where they are and then blowing their minds one step at a time.

As we gear up to share the $ECO story with the media, podcasts, and crypto/economics influencers, we’re positioning $ECO as the world’s “first decentralized rewards currency”—designed to address the shortcomings of existing rewards programs (random devaluations, complex terms, and arbitrary expirations) while also enabling pro-consumer features like transparency and independent governance.

The wider world isn’t (yet) ready for a new, independent global currency—and that’s okay.

But they can understand the structural problems with rewards programs:

• Worldwide, rewards programs boast a combined market value in the hundreds of billions

• They’ve morphed into a form of private money—managed in the narrow self-interest of their issuers, not the interests of the people who hold them (i.e. us)

• Rewards credit cards have quickly outpaced cash as people’s preferred payment method.

• Reward points—and the fees that sustain them—represent a regressive, unnecessary tax on consumption.

• They enable a wealth transfer on an unprecedented scale from poor to rich—and from all consumers to financial middlemen.

With that in mind, we’re positioning $ECO—and its initial use case as the native rewards program of the Eco app—as a long overdue tool that counters this global-macro “skim from the top.”

This is just the first part of the $ECO narrative. It’s a starting point for a much broader conversation about what money truly is—and what it could be.  ** **We’re excited to work with the Eco community to advance that grander narrative one chapter at a time.

It’s time for an inclusive, expansive dialogue about what a better, more aligned money could be.

Trustee | Monetary Policy Updates

Thanks to Eco Trustee @Elena for this section of the update.

In the month of February, trustees completed the second and third Eco Monetary Policy Cycles. The fourth monetary policy cycle concludes March 3, 2023.

For the second Eco Monetary Policy Cycle, the Trustees voted to continue the policy set in Cycle 1 - 5% lockup interest for 30 days. 8 proposals submitted, see the summary from @Mikeweb here and here. 19 trustees committed their vote and 14 successfully revealed their votes resulting in 64% “trustee turnout”. Trustees received feedback from the community that the Lockup interest rate wasn’t high enough to cover gas fees, while that was addressed in a few proposals, ultimately the winning policy was the same as the first cycle, as many trustees expressed interest in seeing more data before changing course.

For the third Eco Monetary Policy Cycle, the Trustees voted for 5% lockup interest for 120 days. See a summary from Mikeweb here and here. 9 proposals were submitted, four duplicate submissions for the second highest scored policy: 5% lockup for 30 days, a continuation of the policy set in Cycles 1 and 2. Due to the Borda count voting method, the main finding is that creating more entries for the same proposal actually reduces its chances of winning. Trustees discussed if it makes sense to combine duplicates of identical proposals or keep them separate. Expect an update in future cycles for how Trustees handle duplicate proposals. This policy cycle also included the World's First AI-Generated Monetary Policy proposal, written with the support of ChatGPT. You can read more about it here.

For the fourth Eco Monetary Policy Cycle, there are 9 proposals submitted.

What we’re reading:

• 8 Trends, Corporate Rebels (h/t @yulston),

• Deep Dive into Crypto Asset Ownership, Into the Block

• Up To Four-fifths Of Crypto Trading Could Be Phony, New Research Shows, Forbes

• Federal Reserve Bank’s Research on Bitcoin’s Resilience to Macroeconomic news

Community | Culture

There’s lots going on with the Ecommunity as always! Our Layer 3 group has really come alive in the past few weeks with challenges and bounties rolling out designed to build engagement, entertain and foster culture with our new and existing community members. If your not already in jump into our Discord and check out the #community-activities channel to learn more and participate!

Additionally, the community run @ecolyte Twitter and @ecolytes Instagram accounts have been building engagement on social channels at a rapid pace this month. Huge shoutout to @ihar and @ValeraValera for operating them!

Last but not least, we were very excited to see the first ever instance of real world transactions happening in $ECO! *Eco Generation *was a community run auction organized by @olgateb featuring artwork from some of the children of our parents in the community. This was the first of (hopefully) many more instances of community based, organic use cases of $ECO for the exchange and sale of goods and services natively in our community. A huge thank you to everyone who participated and for making this event a reality, it was a great time and an incredible first for our community!

Crypto | Tradfi Updates

Thanks to Eco Community Manager @Rob | Eco Inc for this section.

Crypto

• The Stablecoins Are Coming, Actually, They’re Already Here! — thread from Patrick Hansen

• G’day Mate!  — Making Crypto Safer for Consumers in Australia

• Dobroye Utro! — Russia’s Sberbank Will Introduce DeFi Platform on Ethereum

• FTX Creditor List Lookin’ Like a CVS Receipt  —  FTX Creditor List Published

• Silvergate Bank Probed Like a Martian Rock Sample — DOJ Probes Silvergate’s Dealings w/ FTX

• Old Guys Yelling at Crypto to Get off Their Lawn — Charlie Munger | Jamie Dimon

• Who Pressed the Pause Button on BUSD? — thread from Paxos

• SEC Pulls the Rug on Kraken’s Staking Service — press release from SEC

• Shiver Me Silvergates! Citadel Reveals Big Stake in Silvergate — report from Reuters

• Robinhood’s Crypto Trading Volume Goes Brrrrr in January — report from The Block

• CoinBASEd: Coinbase Drops New L2 — thread from Coinbase

Recent Hacks/Hack Updates:

• Orion Protocol Exploit — Orion Protocol Loses $3M in Trading Exploit

• Azuki Attack — Azuki Twitter Account Hacked

• Bonq Exploit — BonqDAO Exploited

TradFi

• CPI Declines Year-Over-Year, but comes in higher than expectations — Chart from Lyn Alden

• Treasury Yields ATHs — report from Forbes

• First Time in History, More “Built-for-Rent” Units Started Quarterly than“Built-for-Sale” — data presented by Bill McBride

• China’s PBOC Injects $92bn — thread by tedtalksmacro

Final Words

So many of the projects and tools that we have been working on these past few months were launched (if only in testing) over the month of February. It has been an exciting and challenging month for our builders, our Trustees and our Layer 3 groups as each has encountered similar coordination and consensus building challenges that are the hallmark of any decentralized organization. The process of learning how to work together is a challenge that should not be discounted. I’m very encouraged by the progress that we have made in the month of February the opportunity to build on those successes as we head into March! #themoonisnotenough

Welcome to the first Eco Community update. This publication is a bi-monthly digest that covers all of the events, developments and news relevant to the Ecoverse.

Every few weeks we’ll be updating the community about key aspects of the Eco Protocol including Trustee Communications, Monetary Policy decisions, implemented EGPs (Eco Governance Proposals), community projects and events as well as themes from the broader markets that are relevant to Eco. This is a community first effort with various members taking responsibility for each section. I’m writing this introduction and will most likely have a hand in production for the near future, but the ultimate goal (as with all other aspects of the Eco protocol.) is to hand this off to our community to maintain and grow once its up and running.

So…if you’re a community member looking to get involved in Eco and this kind of work speak to your interests feel free to reach out!

I also want to thank all of the contributors to this first update, @Elena, @Rob|Eco, @Rohit | Eco Inc and @ildar utebaev there’s a lot going on in the Ecoverse and it’s great to have team of committed members help us stay on top of it all!

Now let’s jump in!

Trustees & Eco Monetary Policy Updates

Thanks to Eco Trustee @Elena for this section of the update.

The first Eco Monetary Policy Cycle was a success in terms of Trustee engagement both in discussions around the proposals and on-chain voting.

• 15 total proposals were submitted. @Mikeweb summarized a few of the proposals here. Twelve proposals were discussed in the Trustees Private forum, of those, six were shared in the Eco community forum. For future cycles, Trustees discussed the possibility of coalescing around fewer distinct proposals as opposed to many similar proposals as well as standardizing how proposals are shared with the community, be it on Discord or the Forum.

• Once the proposal phase concluded, 19 trustees committed their vote and 17 successfully revealed their votes resulting in 77% “trustee turnout”. @MikeWeb summarized the results here:

• @Dave |Eco is organizing several calls this week for Trustees to share learnings and discuss the upcoming cycle. We will report any relevant updates in the Trustee-Community Discord channel.

• What we’re reading: Deep Dive into Crypto Asset Ownership from Into the Block, How might we create a monetary constitution for Eco? from Stablecoin Labs, Denationalization of Money by Friedrich Hayek.

Governance | Proposals

To date, all Eco Governance Cycles have been used to propose and deploy critical protocol updates identified by the Eco Currency Team and via an ongoing Immunifi bounty program. They have been universally supported by the community and have all been implemented smoothly. To review the list of passed proposals and updates head to our Forum.

Partnerships | Growth

Thanks to Rohit Krishnan, Eco Inc Growth Lead for this section of the update.

As we begin to find our footing in the open markets (both crypto and traditional), it's time to turn our attention towards making $ECO ubiquitous as an actual currency to save, share and transact with. The goal here is simple: increase $ECO’s GDP. This is an audacious goal and to hit it we have to move towards it intentionally and methodically, step by step. That's what we will be focusing on this year. We will begin by finding ways for you to earn, save and spend your hard earned $ECO. This means focusing on offering even better traditional benefits within the Eco App (imagine better rates or boosts within your banking app), and also introducing a larger selection of merchant partners.

We’re also excited to explore more ways to build this economy with the whole community: to start, we’d love to start developing a marketplace where we can buy and sell from each other, planting the seeds of the Economy.

While we’re cooking, we’d also love to hear from you! If you have a burning idea of what you would like to use $ECO for, or even new exciting ways we could introduce $ECO to new markets, we’re all ears!

Community | Culture | Events

Thanks to Eco Community Members @Lilishka and @ildar utebaev for this section of the update.

There have been a number of qualitative structural changes in Eco Discord since the launch of $ECO. We are now open to the world and welcome new members! Everyone can find opportunities to get involved in the community, and we'd love to help you do that! We came to Eco to win, and we will win together!

What does this Season hold for us?
For the start of the First Season, The Eco Association  allocated 1,000,000 $ECO, which will be distributed over the course of three months in the form of Points. Season 1 began January 4th 2023 and ends March 31st at 23:59 UTC.

Accumulate Points by participating in Eco community challenges and bounties, then exchange them for $ECO at the end of the Season. (or later, when it suits you) For more details see here.

In order to avoid transaction fees, the Points-based reward system has been brought back with the option to exchange the points for $ECO at the end of the season.

At the end of the Season a snapshot of the each participants' balance will be taken to record everyone's current balance, then balances will be reset and the game will start again. Point holders will have the right to claim $ECO from the communal pot based on their Point balance from the previous Season(s).

To incentivize maximum participation and optimal results, at the end of the first Season the Eco team may adjust the scope of the reward, either increasing or decreasing the amount based on community performance. Everything will depend on the results of Layer 3 coordinated work, and of course, on each participant.

We'll be launching a number of interesting activities very soon, #KYEP!

New Roles.

At the beginning of January, 59 Ecommunity members were given the Layer 3 role.

Layer 3 members manage and distribute the budget allocated by the Eco Association in the first Season (1 million $ECO) for organizing events that maintain a high level of culture within the community and attract new users.

All decisions regarding the budget allocation structure within the community are voted on and made by the majority of Layer 3 members. Each member of the Ecommunity has the opportunity to get the Layer 3 role being active and participating in the development of the project. Also, this role is not permanent, members can be added or removed via a majority decision.

New Opportunities.

The Team of Trustees, after reviewing a large number of proposals, voted in favor of the first Monetary Policy that includes $ECO staking capabilities. 

Anyone can lock in their $ECO tokens for 30 days and get 5% APR (that's about 0.41% for 30 days of staking).

See the Proposal here - https://governance.eco.org/account

All transactions are made in Ethereum network.

Importantly, once tokens are staked - they become unavailable for other uses. If a staked tokens are removed before the end of the 30-day staking period, the tokens are subject to a penalty that corresponds to the percentage rate.

Tools Built on Eco

We would like to thank several members of our community for excellent technological solutions. @flarcos, who created a BOT that will allow community members to transfer $ECO token inside Discord without transaction fees.

Right now the bot is in the final stages of testing and we look forward to using it. Also our dear friend, @yulston has created a BOT that will simplify the decision-making process for small grants and speed up the process of voting and promoting ideas within the Eco system.

You can learn more about this great solution here.

Great idea for an ECO ID verifier from @Jeremie.

An ECO ID interface site will be available to users and it will allow basic attestation by verifiers, so that anyone can become a verifier and create ECO ID attestations.

There is a wide range of opportunities to use ECO ID to begin building reputation. It will allow community members to attest to identity, build governance systems, use decentralized social networks, build recommendation systems based on attestations, provide access to various products and paid sites (purchase of subscriptions), business projects, stores selling attestations.

The ability to revoke attestations will also be very useful feature, as access or status can actually reflect real time status and change if needed.

The Ecommunity is open to everyone and is a space for like-minded and crypto enthusiasts! There are many interesting collaborations and events ahead of us.

Crypto | Tradfi Updates

Thanks to Eco Community Manager @Rob | Eco Inc for this section.

Crypto

• Immutable X seeing phenomenal growth.

  • Will on-chain gaming become a mainstay as opposed to a grifter fad?

• Uniswap Labs announces on-chain foreign exchange model.

• Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) is approaching launch—Documentation | Twitter Thread

• MakerDAO estimated to earn ~2% annual yield on USDC deposits after approved deployment of $100M USDC on Yearn— Twitter thread

• Genesis, one of the largest crypto lenders has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Jan 19th. They owe over $3.5 Billion to more than 50 creditors.

• Coinbase Director Conor Grogan alludes to Binance front running prices on tokens in a recent Tweet thread

• Binance stored user funds with collateral in “error”

Recent Hacks/Hack Updates:

• Address associated with $323 million Wormhole exploit that occurred in February is swapping assets.

  • Most notably a consolidation into ETH then initiating a swap for 95,630 ETH ($157.2 million @ time of swap) into Lido’s staked ETH (stETH) via the DEX aggregator OpenOcean.

  • The stETH was then swapped for 86,473 wrapped staked ETH (wsETH), which is Lido’s liquid staked ether derivative.

  • The user then took out a $13 million DAI loan which = ~ 7,989.5ETH via KyberNetwork which can be seen on-chain here

  • Wormhole responded with an on-chain message offering a $10 million dollar bounty award “for the return of all stolen funds” in an on-chain message.

  • Here’s a funny song about the event for the audible/visual/comedic learners from songadaymann.

• North Korea’s Lazarus Group confirmed by FBI as group behind the $100M Harmony Hack—same group who allegedly had hand in Ronin bridge hack.

• Raydium exploiter moves $2.7 million to Tornado Cash.

Fear & Greed Indexes:

• Bitcoin Fear & Greed Index

• Ethereum Fear & Greed Index

• Ultra sound money data.

TradFi

• US Government hit its $31.4 trillion debt limit

• Inflation – Overall inflation for Dec. dropped to 6.5% from 7.1% in Nov on an annual basis. Sign that things are moving in the right direction aka rate hikes are slowing down the economy.

• CPI – Consumer Price Index data came out Thursday, January 12th and almost immediately impacted the stock market.

• Mild Recession? Soft Landing? What comes next?— Kyla Scanlon provides a diligent take

• NYSE briefly Halts Trading for 81 stocks for LULD (Limit Up-Limit Down) A mechanism intended to prevent trades in National Market System (NMS securities from occurring outside of specified price bands (Nasdaq Trader).

• PYMNTS has identified 4 emerging trends shaping EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) Banking Sector in 2023:

  • UAE and Saudi Arabia Lead MENA Neobank Wave

  • African Banks Collaborate w/ FinTechs

  • European Banks Doubling Down on Sustainability

  • Banks Called to Connect to CBDC Systems

Fun Reads

Arthur Hayes macro outlook - https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/bouncy-castle-1b92183c61a1

PayPal and Mastercard Dissect ‘Cooperation in a Fragmented World’ at Davos - https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2023/mastercard-holiday-gifts-and-get-togethers-drove-retail-sales-in-december/

Final Words

Like everything we do at Eco, this first edition of our Community Update has been a group effort and I’d like to thank all of the contributors one more time for making this publication possible. Keep Your Eyes Peeled for another Community Update in two weeks time. To learn more about Eco visit our Website and if you haven’t already make sure to join our community in Discord and follow us on Twitter for the latest updates and developments in the Ecommunity!