What is ShapeShift's FOX Token?

The FOX Token is an ERC-20 Token created by ShapeShift 一 now ShapeShift DAO 一 in November of 2019. The FOX Token serves as the governance Token for the ShapeShift DAO allowing holders of the Token to vote on proposals relating to the treasury of the DAO and other essential governance matters - such as adding features and integrations to the platform, approving partnerships, workstream budgets, and other initiatives. In addition to leveraging their governance abilities, Token holders can also utilize several unique DeFi strategies to maximize the benefits of owning FOX. The total capped supply of FOX is fixed at 1,000,001,337 Tokens which ensures FOX will never become an inflationary Token.

Governance

The goal of the ShapeShift DAO is to become the world's most influential crypto organization by building a digital asset platform that delights, protects, empowers, and inspires those around us. Our vision is a borderless financial system built on open, decentralized protocols. FOX Tokens are a tool that the community can use to achieve this mission by funding proposals and bootstrapping network effects through voting. One FOX Token is always equal to one vote. As the ShapeShift ecosystem expands to include more revenue-generating opportunities for the DAO via affiliate partnerships, validator revenue streams, and new projects like FOXy, effectively managing the delegation of the DAOs funds and resources become increasingly critical to our success as an organization 一 so go vote!

The ShapeShift DAO is powered by SafeSnap (SnapShot + Gnosis Safe), which means community members can vote on proposals with zero gas fees, and the result of those votes can trigger on-chain transactions from the DAO's Gnosis Safe - view the ShapeShift SnapShot. Initially, a multisig safeguard controlled by ShapeShift DAO full-time contributors has been implemented alongside SafeSnap to mitigate the risk of a malicious proposal stealing funds from the DAO's treasury. Intended as a temporary protective measure, we look forward to working with the FOX community to transition complete treasury control to the community of FOX Token holders. 

You must hold FOX Tokens in your wallet when a proposal goes live for the Tokens to count in the snapshot. Being an ERC-20 Token, FOX Tokens can be held on any Ethereum based chain and participate in available DeFi opportunities within those ecosystems 一 check here to make sure your FOX counts in the Snapshot vote. As FOX continues to expand into more chains and DeFi opportunities, the SnapShot voting strategy will continue to be updated to grant one vote for one FOX wherever feasible. Voting is super easy - click here for the step-by-step on voting! 

The current ShapeShift governance sequence is as follows:

  1. Incubation: 3-day minimum. Post your idea in the relevant Workstream on the forum to obtain feedback from the community. No specific template is needed
  2. Ideation:  5-day minimum. Post a draft proposal in Proposal Discussion. Proposals must follow this template and include a yes or no poll. They may continue to be refined based on community feedback during this stage
  3. Voting: 3-day minimum, 60-day maximum. If a draft proposal has more upvotes than downvotes, it can be posted to the Boardroom for an official vote.

Click here to view more details on the governance process.

Tokenomics

Treasury

The ShapeShift DAO treasury is endowed with over 200,000,000 FOX Tokens and over $3 m in other Tokens - click here to view the DAO treasury. The DAO is also set to receive approximately 250k FOX per day via its Sablier stream through June 1, 2024 - view it here. The Sablier stream and Gnosis safe are not a comprehensive representation of the DAO’s treasury as it misses items like FOX/HNY LP that the DAO holds in a joint multisig with 1Hive on Gnosis. The DAO continues to earn revenue through affiliate partnerships such as the integrated Yearn vaults in the new open-source web app and revenue from validating on Cosmos and Osmosis. The Treasury Management and Diversification Committee is continuously adding new income streams and working to diversify the treasury by implementing long-term strategies to benefit the DAO and its community. 

In the four months since the TMDC's inception, Shapeshift DAO's treasury funded our Tokemak reactor with FOX, issued a FOX/USDC Olympus Pro bond ー which brings roughly $10,000 into the treasury daily. Additionally, the TMDC has invested in an early-stage lending protocol (Silo Finance) and leveraged ShapeShift's Fuse pools on Rari to bolster our stablecoin reserves. Thanks to these revenue streams, Shapeshift DAO is able to offer USDC as a payment option to contributors. The growing reserve of stablecoins in the treasury also means the DAO is better positioned to weather a hypothetical long-term bear market.

Token Distribution

In the summer of 2021, ShapeShift airdropped $98,000,000 of FOX Tokens (340 million FOX Tokens) to all past users of ShapeShift (around 900,000 addresses) and an additional 120,000 addresses on several well-known DeFi protocols. This airdrop was 34% of the total FOX supply allocated to customers and the DeFi community. The active (unlocked/unvested) supply at the time of the airdrop, approximately 438M FOX, is roughly 75% in the hands of the community:

  • 10M + 
  • 75M + 13M held by ShapeShift. Of this, 15M was allocated to the first round of liquidity mining rewards.

All other buckets are on a three-year vesting period.

In addition to the 34% of total FOX supply allocated to prior ShapeShift customers, the 65 current employees of ShapeShift as well as ShapeShift AG shareholders (during the decentralization period) received 32% of the total supply of FOX Tokens to help support them through the transition to a DAO. The remaining 24% was distributed to the ShapeShift DAO Treasury (of which FOX Token holders have agency over) and 7.5% to the Foundation. The Foundation supports the DAO in achieving its mission of complete decentralization while also stewarding the legacy centralized infrastructure for beta.shapeshift.com and the ShapeShift mobile app until these can be sunset and replaced with decentralized alternatives. Lastly, 1.3% of the total FOX supply was allocated to the company to use as it wound down. 

The total capped supply of FOX is 1,000,001,337 Tokens. Why is there 1,337 more than 1 billion FOX? The initial FOX distribution breaks down as follows:

Total Supply: 1,000,001,337 (no inflation)

  • 340,000,000 (34%) granted to the ShapeShift customers and DeFi community via airdrop
  • 320,000,000 (32%) granted to employees and shareholders
  • 242,000,000 (24%) granted to ShapeShift DAO (governance treasury)
  • 75,000,000 (7.5%) granted to the Foundation
  • 13,000,000 (1.3%) retained by ShapeShift (centralized) during decentralization process
  • ~10,000,000 (1%) already in circulation with >21,000 holders

Leveraging FOX

There are many opportunities available to FOX Token holders across the DeFi landscape. These opportunities use single-sided staking, liquidity providing, liquidity mining, and lending/ borrowing. Below is a summary of the current incentivized FOX Token liquidity programs::

Single-sided staking:

Liquidity Providing and Liquidity Mining

Lending/Borrowing:

Want to learn more about these different opportunities? Click here to read in-depth about all the opportunities FOX Token can offer. 

FOXy

While the primary function of the FOX Token is to vote on community governance decisions, a rebasing Token called "FOXy" will soon allow FOX holders to earn yield on their FOX Tokens. FOXy will be a single-sided staking contract provided through ShapeShift on Ethereum mainnet that will enable users to exchange 1 FOX for 1 FOXy. Using the deposited FOX, the DAO will then implement various DeFi strategies 一 such as staking the FOX on Tokemak 一 and issue FOX rewards to FOXy holders. Additionally, the DAO plans to share a portion of revenues generated from DAO activities with FOXy holders. Combined, the rewards from DAO revenues and the rewards earned from DeFi strategies such as Tokemak should make FOXy the premier way to earn yield on FOX staked single-sidedly. FOXy provides accessibility to users who might hold smaller amounts of FOX and want to participate in the available DeFi opportunities but are unable due to higher gas fees on Ethereum.  It is scheduled to be launched on the 31st of March 2022. 

ShapeShift DAO recognizes that the FOXy contract will likely be useful to other DAOs. We look forward to deploying additional yield-bearing governance tokens soon after FOXy is launched.

What Could Our ShapeShifting FOX Be Up to Next?

ShapeShift was formed to help drive the mission of borderless, decentralized finance forward. FOX Token represents our DAO and its dedication to this mission. We will continue to build upon and expand FOX Token utility in the months ahead through additional DeFi integrations and the deployment of our FOXy contract. 

ShapeShift users will continue to enjoy the advantages of a steadily-growing community and service while having the agency to participate in the cutting edge of self-sovereign finance.

More to come!