<aside> 🗣 tldr; $INDIE is our token. It is a soulbound ERC-20, and represents actual DAO membership shares. $INDIE is primarily used for governance, upside distribution, and community incentivization. Net $USDC earnings are distributed to $INDIE holders at the end of each season. [See raw smart contract data]

</aside>

Overview

$INDIE is the official ERC-20 token for IndieDAO, and is designed and developed to operate in a specific way that provides the most utility and benefit to Indie members and the community. This is not a vanilla ERC-20 token, so read more to learn why and how we built our token this way 👇🏼

Firstly, we provide strategy consulting to a variety of clients for their token launches and membership programs, and there is no one-size fits all. Each project and community has unique needs, and the best part of web3 is the ability to leverage value from standardization while also composing custom behavior where it suits each use case.

Primary principles:

• $INDIE SHOULD NOT be a speculative token used by external actors to “bet” on Indie
• $INDIE SHOULD BE leveraged primarily to govern the community in the best interest of its members
• $INDIE SHOULD BE leveraged secondarily to enact a fair and healthy means of upside distribution

$INDIE core functions:

• Used to vote for DAO governance issues (on Snapshot)
• Used to claim a pro-rata percentage of DAO earnings each season
• Used to token-gate access to DAO internal functions
• Used to incentivize collectively beneficial behavior

Seasonal $INDIE Process

• Beginning of each season:
  • Strategy committee creates a budget of $INDIE for each committee for that season depending on the overall DAO objectives
  • DAO votes in the $INDIE budget
• During each season:
  • Each committee designs and manages their own way of distributing $INDIE to members for their contributions for that season
  • Special one-off $INDIE proposals can be created by a member and voted in by the DAO (Indie LCA Bylaws 12a-vi)
• End of each season:
  • Each committee reports the breakdown of their $INDIE budget across members to the strategy committee
  • Strategy committee submits a breakdown of the total new $INDIE issuance per member for the DAO to review and vote in
  • Core team signs transaction to mint new $INDIE according to proposal
  • The current pro-rata percentage of $INDIE tokens per member is snapshotted on the dividends/token smart contract for that season (e.g. if you hold 3% of all $INDIE, you will be entitled to 3% of dividends for that season)
  • Strategy committee subtracts any liabilities, internal budget, and emergency fund from the DAO Treasury (which has grown during the season from the DAO reward portion of project fees), then sends the $USDC amount to the dividends/token smart contract for distribution
  • A portion of the dividends is withheld from each Indie according to tax laws per the w8ben or w9 and sent to a special purpose tax multisig (0x416F47957801431cff0D995326F6059Cb353C11f) managed by the strategy committee (eventually this will go to a 3rd party to process federal and state tax liabilities)
  • Indie members can call a claim function on the dividends/token smart contract to receive their share of $USDC dividends for that season

Membership & Dividend Eligibility

$INDIE holders must first become an Indie member (Indie LCA Bylaws 5a). At the end of each season, members are marked as either active or inactive, based on the membership activity criteria in the Bylaws: