What’s going on Wealthies!
We appreciate everyone who has joined us early on this journey. We will accomplish greatness together, believe that!
When we’re sitting here 10 years from now bigger than Bank of America, it’ll look like a no-brainer that a system focused on minimizing extraction and maximizing value, captured more value than our banking incumbents. But until then it’ll take a group of revolutionaries, and wild thinkers crazy enough to think we can usurp the big boys, to blaze this path.
And that is exactly what we are… Trailblazers. So Let’s blaze!
I know we’ve talked a lot about WHY we are building BankDAO, but it’s time to share more on HOW we will go about executing.
Season 0 of the BankDAO roadmap can be characterized by two words: Development and Education.
Development:
The initial BankDAO product is a neobanking platform. We began development in October 2021 and we are about 8 weeks away from v1 completion. We have taken a hybrid approach to development, outsourcing the banking component to a development shop and building the learn-to-earn protocol in-house. The development shop we have partnered with specializes in building FinTech solutions. They have worked with Capital One, Wells Fargo, J.P Morgan Chase, Visa, and American Express. They know what they’re doing!
What is a neobank?
Neobanks are FinTech (financial technology) applications that leverage software to provide streamlined online banking services. Neobanks offer various financial products such as checking, investing, and saving products. They typically partner with an existing bank to insure these financial products. Popular neobanks include Chime, Current, and Varo Bank.
So how do you build a neobank?
The most streamlined route is to leverage a Banking as a Service provider. We have partnered with an established provider, who offers complete banking processes, such as payments or deposit accounts through API.
API Definition: API is the acronym for Application Programming Interface, which is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. Essentially our partner has built a product that allows our app’s embedded products to talk to the backend bank.
You typically have 3 layers to the Banking as a Service stack. The top layer is the brand, in our case, BankDAO. The middle layer is the actual banking stack provided by our Banking as a Service Provider, and the base layer is the bank license holder.
On the top layer, we manage the customer experience, creating the user interface the customer interacts with.
Our partner will offer multiple banking capabilities as a service through API, such as Payments, Compliance, Risk Management, Financial Crime, Deposit Accounts, and Transaction Ledgers.
And finally the final layer, we have partnered with Blue Ridge Bank as our License holder. We are essentially renting their license out as a service. This ensures we embed compliant financial services into our customer experience, also providing FDIC insurance on all fiat deposit accounts.
Our v1 product will include a fiat checking account, savings account, and a defi high yield account. Users will also receive a BankDAO debit card.
Learn to Earn
The entire user experience will center around our Proof of Learn protocol. Proof of Learn simply states that education is at the heart of building wealth. We began the development of the protocol last month, working with 5 developers with frontend, backend, and blockchain experience.
Proof of Learn is the foundation to token distribution within the ecosystem in addition to being the means to distribute equitable opportunity to the community.
Essentially there are two primary stakeholders within the ecosystem: Users and Seeders.
Seeders will seed the community with opportunities. In v1 Seeders will primarily be educators. Anyone is eligible to become a Seeder. Via our web portal Seeders will post an educational opportunity, I.e The Basics of NFTs, fill out all relevant information, then the opportunity will push to our internal review process conducted by our vetters committee. Once an opportunity is approved, it will post to the application where users can then opt-in.
On a high level, Users earn tokens for attending opportunities and Seeders earn tokens for hosting opportunities.
We will break down the details of our tokenomics in our light paper dropping later this month!
Legal
Legal is probably the most important component of Season 0 development. We have spent the last 6 months taking time to deeply understand the regulatory environment surrounding DAOs and tokens.
We have already established both our C-corp and 501(c3) non-profit entity which the non-profit committee will work under. We will establish the legal entities for the DAO at the end of season 0.
In the BankDAO ecosystem, we will utilize a quadripartite structure decentralizing the legal structure to segregate the legal risk.
Education
The theme of Season 0 is education, education, education!
Education is the means to build our community. We will leverage various channels such as our discord, newsletter, and Twitter spaces to host conversations centered around the generational wealth-building opportunity web3 presents. If you’re not a crypto native, we want to onboard you to web3. It’s an addicting rabbit hole we must say!
As we build our community it’s imperative we first understand how the system is broken.
Essentially we can define the problem as such:
Big banks have not been committed to serving everyday people by providing affordable banking services that empower people’s life and work. Too much emphasis has been put on protecting traditional revenue streams, and not enough on servicing the customer.
So what’s the solution: it’s simple, creating a banking institution that allows users to capture the value they create.
The only way to create a bank for the people is to create a bank by the people.
After we have established our minimum viable community, which simply is a strong core of individuals who have bought into the mission and vision, we will conduct our public NFT sale which will lay the foundation for our collective governance. Stay tuned for more on governance structure coming soon :)
Ultimately, this is just the first step in a long, prosperous and meaningful journey. We have 4 major banking milestones on our roadmap.
- Launching our neobanking platform
- We will eliminate the outsourced middle layer of the banking stack, building a direct relationship with a partner bank
- Our welcome to the big leagues moment!! Applying for our very own bank charter!
- Reimagining the brick and mortar banking experience, launching Wealth Houses. Wealth Houses will be communal spaces of value creation. But we can cross that bridge when we get to it.
Until then we have work to do! So Let’s build!
