Jeff Dorman is the CIO at Arca, which is currently engaged in a fascinating standoff with Gnosis, a token project in which they have a position. Arca is asserting that Gnosis has delivered little value to tokenholders and has proposed that they perform a tender offer for GNO tokens with the assets held on their balance sheet (which exceed the capitalization of GNO). Covered in this episode:
- The original purpose of Gnosis as laid out in the whitepaper
- Why Gnosis only sold 5% of their tokens in the initial sale
- How Gnosis's dutch auction backfired
- How the original objective to create a prediction market failed
- The history of Gnosis' non-core products and expenditures – and why they don't accrue value to GNO
- Under what circumstances pivoting is permissible – and when it isn't
- The existence of obligations towards tokenholders, even if implicit and unstated
- What should a well-codified arrangement between tokenholders and token issuers look like?
- Jeff's view of whether the utility theory of tokens is still valid
- The substance of Arca's proposal to Gnosis, and their preferred resolution
- Arca's proposal around a tender offer to buy back GNO at a fixed price with treasury assets
- Why large investors exerting themselves in governance benefits smaller shareholders
- How Arca's GNO position is similar to the ESG movement
- Arca's response to the rebuttal that tokenholders have no rights
- Arca's leverage to achieve a positive outcome – and willingness to litigate
- Whether explicit security tokens like Arcoin and INX will converge to tokens with equity-like characteristics
