Moloch Summoning Guide
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!
Moloch whose blood is running money!
Moloch whose code is a coordination mechanism!
The Moloch DAO contract was deployed on Feb 14th (Valentine’s Day — Moloch is nothing if not a romantic) at ETH Denver and has been live for over a month. Since the launch, 22 founding members have been summoned to Moloch and donated 100 ETH each for a total of 2,200 ETH (~$300k USD).
Now the guild is open for the broader community to join. To become a Moloch member, you need to either contribute some funds or deliver work that is aligned with Moloch’s goal. If you are interested in summoning to Moloch by contributing either funds or work, here are the steps.
To read more about how Moloch works, check out the White Paper, Github. or visit the Moloch DAO site at https://molochdao.com/.
Step 1 — Find an existing Moloch member to be your summoner
Moloch! Moloch! New Moloch members need to be voted in by existing members. We designed Moloch DAO in such a way that only existing members can create and submit proposals to prevent spamming attacks. Find an existing member here or here. You will need an existing Moloch member for Step 6 to complete your membership proposal.
If you wish to join as a member by making a sacrifice, then you need to negotiate with the existing member who will submit your proposal in advance about the number of shares you are requesting and the amount of tribute you are offering.
Tribute and voting share conversion rate is not enforced at the protocol level and entirely with social consensus by current members. The current convention is 1 ETH : 1 voting share conversion rate and 100 ETH as the minimum tribute amount.
The group is still figuring out if the minimum requirement should be lowered. There is still a good chance you can be voted in with a lower tribute amount if you can convince current members of your value-add. Once an existing member submits your proposal, you will be summoned only once a vote is passed.
If you wish to join as a member contributing work, proceed to Step 6.
Step 2 — Set up a Gnosis Safe (or hardware wallet)
Once you’re in Moloch DAO, you cannot change your member address without ragequitting and re-joining, so pick a secure multi-sig wallet or hardware wallet. We recommend using Gnosis Safe.
You don’t always need to use the multi-sig or hardware wallet when you interact with Moloch in the future. You can use your member address wallet to set a delegate key later which can be your Metamask or other mobile wallets for more convenient access to vote or submit proposals.
Moloch whose soul is electricity and the Gnosis Safe!
I’ll be using the Gnosis Safe as my member address wallet throughout this guide. You can, of course, use the regular Gnosis multi-sig or a hardware wallet of your choice.
- Download Gnosis Safe mobile app and browser extension here.
- Create a new Safe, unless you already have an account.
- Follow the app’s instruction to create a secure password and back up your recovery phrase in a secure way.
- Link the mobile Safe to the browser extension by scanning the QR code displayed in the browser extension
- Unlike a regular mobile wallet, setting up a new Safe wallet requires deploying a multi-sig smart contract to the Ethereum network — so you’ll have to pay for the gas cost for the contract deployment. Send the required minimum amount to the address shown on your screen. Please don’t transfer the tribute ETH to the Safe just yet! We need to exchange the ETH for wETH first. Moloch’s first iteration only supports wETH — ETH is not supported. This removes the DAO contract from the need of interacting with an external contract to convert ETH to wETH for added security.
6. Once the minimum required funds deposit is received, your Safe set up is complete.
Step 3 to 5 are for people who wish to join by contributing funds only. If you wish to join by doing work, you can skip these two steps.
Step 3 — Convert ETH to wETH (for tribute members only)
This step is for members who wish to join by contributing funds only. If you wish to become a member by contributing work, you can skip this step.
wETH is simply ETH wrapped in an ERC20 standard. ETH and wETH are always exchanged at a 1:1 ratio. You can use this contract to wrap and unwrap ETH/wETH. Since wETH is widely used in DEXes, many of them, such as Rader Relay or DDEX, provide users with an easy UI interface to wrap and unwrap ETH/wETH for free.
Here we are using Rader Relay to convert your 100 ETH tribute into wETH. You can also use other methods of your choice.
- Go to https://app.radarrelay.com
- Connect with the wallet where your 100 ETH is stored. I am using Metamask.
- Click “WRAP ETH” and enter “100” as the amount, click “WRAP”, approve the transaction on your wallet. Wait for the transaction to confirm.
4. Now you have successfully wrapped 100 ETH into wETH!
5. Now the wETH is in your Metamask wallet. To view the wETH balance, go to Metamask, click the menu button on the top-left corner, click “ADD TOKEN”, search and select “wETH”, now you can see the 100 wETH is there in your wallet.
Step 4 — Send the 100 wETH to your Moloch wallet
Now we are going to send the 100 wETH to the secure wallet you just created in step 2, this will be your Moloch wallet. Here I am using a Gnosis Safe. If you completed step 3 using the same wallet you plan to use for Moloch, then this step is not necessary.
In Metamask, click on wETH in the token list and send the 100 wETH to your Gnosis Safe address. Wait for the transaction to confirm.
On Gnosis safe, go to Menu -> Manage Tokens -> Search and select WETH. You should be able to see your WETH balance.
Your Moloch wallet will be your member key forever (until you ragequit). Once you’re a member we recommend setting up a delegate key address (eg. Metamask), so you don’t have to use your Gnosis Safe or hardware wallet for voting on proposals.
Step 5— Approve Moloch DAO to collect tribute from your wallet
This step is only for members making a tribute.
Please do not send wETH to Moloch contract address. It will get lost!
To apply to join Moloch, the applicant needs to first approve the DAO to collect the tribute using transferFrom, then a Moloch member can submit the proposal for existing members to vote on.
- Go to https://molochdao.com/
- Connect with your Web3 provider, either Gnosis Safe or Metamask. Make sure you only have one of them enabled
- Click on “Approve wETH” on the home page
- Enter your tribute wETH amount.
- Click “Submit”, confirm on Metamask or Gnosis, and wait for the transaction to confirm.
Step 6— Ask the existing member to submit your proposal
Once you’ve completed all above steps, an existing member can submit the proposal on your behalf. This step should be completed by the existing member that is nominating your membership.
To create a new proposal, members need to put down a 10 wETH deposit (like collateral) and approve the Moloch tribute to collect the deposit from the new member’s address or delegate key address. Once a proposal has passed the grace period and been processed, the 10wETH deposit will be returned to the existing member.
- Go to https://molochdao.com/
- Connect with your Web3 provider, either Gnosis Safe or Metamask. Make sure you only have one of them enabled
- Click on “Approve wETH” on the home page
4. Enter your the deposit wETH amount.
5. Click “Submit”, confirm on Metamask or Gnosis, and wait for the transaction to confirm.
6. Click “Proposals” on the home page
7. Click “New Proposal”
8. Enter the details of the proposal and submit the proposal.
For new members committing tribute, enter the Shares Requested and Tribute Offered.
Under Proposal Description, enter the new member’s answers to a few brief questions on their background in the space and their vision for the Moloch DAO, to ensure vision alignment with other Moloch members. The existing member should paste a link to an IPFS hash of the answered questions. We used https://www.prototypal.io/ipfspad/ to save the answers to IPFS.
Questionnaire:
1. How can you contribute to Moloch?
2. What kinds of projects do you want to see get funded?
3. What have you worked on in the Ethereum space?
4. Name one project you like and one you dislike, provide reasons for both.
5. What excites you about ethereum? Moloch?
For new members contributing work, enter the negotiated amount for Shares Requested and 0 for Tribute Offered.
Contributors should similarly answer a brief questionnaire and have the existing member paste a link to an IPFS hash of the answered questions under Proposal Description. We used https://www.prototypal.io/ipfspad/ to save the answers to IPFS.
1. What work do you want to accomplish?
2. How does your contribution fit into Moloch’s goal — accelerating and sustaining ETH 2.0 development?
3. Amount of shares/ETH you hope to receive
4. Milestones and timeline
You’re all done being summoned!
As a member of the guild, you’ll be able to vote on how DAO funding is distributed and summon new members. Together we can solve coordination failures and sustain Ethereum development!
Thanks to Cassandra Shi for writing this guide. 👹
