The proposal is available here. It is recommended to read it in the forum where proper formatting is available.

The proposed deployment code for this proposal is available here and an audit is available here.

What is CowDAO envisioned to be?

CowDAO is an open organization of developers, traders, market makers and many more community members aligned with its vision. CowDAO is focused on fair and decentralized trading systems - in particular, building, maintaining and advancing the Cow Protocol. Cow Protocol technology powers a network of traders and solvers, enabling trustless and efficient peer-to-peer trading. Leveraging batch auctions as a key concept uniquely positions Cow Protocol as native trading infrastructure for discrete-time settlement layers like Ethereum and enables fair and accessible trading to its users.

Vision

We foresee a future where increasingly all kinds of assets will be tokenized on Ethereum and other decentralized blockchains, where everyone - individuals and collectives - can have full custody of their tokenized assets. CowDAO’s vision is a decentralized future where digital assets can be traded in a fair, efficient and reliable manner among people and communities around the world. Our mission is to build a protocol that becomes the most user friendly and price effective way to exchange digital assets, enabling all users to trade securely and know their trades are protected.

We are determined to make Cow Protocol the foundational liquidity hub for trading digital assets by applying continuous innovation, cultivating intellectual bravery and by expanding the CoW Protocol ecosystem - inviting the brightest minds to join the community.

Values and Principles

This section should not limit the scope of what CowDAO can pursue or achieve. The community should keep iterating on its values and principles to best reflect each and every member individually and the DAO as a whole.

Below are work in progress principles that we propose should guide the way we behave as a community and help shape the decision process for CowDAO.

Universal Simplicity

The goal of Cowswap is to allow easy access to the decentralized economy across all levels of experience, the Cowswap community will focus on simplicity and high quality user experience across DeFi and Web3.

Decentralization and Access to everybody

Cow Protocol is permissionless for anyone to access with no discrimination. The Cowswap community will reward alternative UIs and gateways to the protocol in order to ensure easy worldwide access and usability in accordance with applicable laws.

Open Collaboration

CowSwap should be a core part of Ethereum and Web3, we believe this can be achieved by openly collaborating with other teams, protocols and communities in the decentralized ecosystem. Education, information sharing and aligned partnerships are key drivers to build out the CowSwap ecosystem.

Proposed Governance Parameters for CowDAO Launch

• CowDAO proposals will be discussed on CowDAO’s dedicated Forum, consisting of two phases: forum discussion and snapshot voting.

• Final approval of proposals will be made through vCOW token voting on the cow.eth snapshot space that will be deployed upon GIP-13 successfully passing.

• A maximum amount of 560M vCOW tokens will become available, out of which it  is estimated that up to 350m vCOW tokens might  be used  for voting initially. A quorum is proposed that would require roughly 10%  of this supply for approving CowDAO Improvement Proposals (CIP). This is defined by a set limit of  35m COW tokens required to vote YES in order for a proposal to pass.

• Additionally, in order for a proposal to be approved, YES votes should account for >50% of total participating votes. (simple majority)