One of the most important aspects of a successful DAO is voting on issues that impact all members of the organization, and Blockchain presents a natural progression to the voting process.
Technical Demonstration:
OpenZeppelin provides a library of smart contracts code that is community-vetted and has been thoroughly tested in production, making it an ideal starting point for any developer looking to get started with writing smart contracts. They provide battle-tested implementations of the ERC (Ethereum Request for Comment) standards.
This project is a simple DOA using OpenZeppelin Governor, which is provided specifically for DOA applications. Here is the scenario:
Members of a DAO (Token Holders) called ‘Direct-Democracy’ want to build a gym. They need to create a proposal to vote (Governance) on that, if approved, will release predetermined funds from a communal bank (Treasury) to a builders cooperative (Recipient). This money will be transferred after a time delay (TimeLock).
First, let’s define the roles simply:
- Token Holders (Voters) → The people who will cast the votes on proposals.
- Treasury → A community bank where the budget is stored.
- Recipient → Once a vote is approved, the money will be released to this entity.
To achieve this, we will need 5 smart-contracts on the blockchain, let’s define them:
1. Token (ERC20Votes) → The cryptocurrency which the voters will own, and need to own to be members of the DAO and able to vote on proposals. In our example this token is called ‘govEVMOS’.
2. Treasury → Where the funds are stored. The votes are to decide what to do with these funds.
3. Recipient → Where the funds will be sent to once a proposal has been approved. In our example, the builders cooperative.
4. Governance → Where proposals are created. In our example, there is an encoded function that will call on the treasury contract to release the funds.
5. TimeLock → A time delay imposed by the governance before firing the encoded function, if the proposal passes.
Vesting Contracts
VestingWallet (contracts/finance/VestingContract.sol) handles the vesting of native EVM tokens as well as ERC20 tokens for a given beneficiary. Custody of multiple tokens can be given to this contract, which will release the token to the beneficiary following a given, customizable, vesting schedule.
Functions
Function Name
Action
Description
Can only be called by the owner?
createVestingSchedule
#UpdateAction
Have the role in creating a vesting schedule for the user
True
revoke
#UpdateAction
Revokes the vesting schedule for a certain user
True
withdraw
#UpdateAction
Contract Owner uses this to withdraw any remaining tokens that don't get vested
True
release
#Update Action
The vested investor can call this to retrieve the tokens that gets unlocked in accordance with the vesting schedule
False
getVestingScheduleByAddressAndIndex
#Read Action
Returns the deatils about the vesting schedule
False
computeReleasableAmount
#Read Action
Returns the releasble amount of tokens from vesting schedule at the giving time
False
getVestingSchedulesCountByBeneficiary
#Read Action
Returns the beneficiary of the vesting schedule
False
getVestingIdAtIndex
#Read Action
Returns the vesting schedule id at a given investment index
False
getVestingScheduleByAddressAndIndex
#Read Action
Returns all vestign schedules infos based on beneficiary and the investment index
False
getVestingSchedulesTotalAmount
# Read Action
Returns the total amount of tokens that are vested
False
getToken
#Read Action
Returns the address of the vested token
False
getWithdrawableAmount
#Read Action
Returns the amount of tokens that can be withdrawable
False
computeNextVestingScheduleIdForHolder
#Read Action
Returns the vestign schedule id for an beneficiary based on the next investment index
False
getLastVestingScheduleForHolder
#Read Action
Returns the latest vesting schedule for a beneficiary
False
computeVestingScheduleIdForAddressAndIndex
#Read Action
Return the vesting schedule id for an given address and a given investment index
False
Parameters
1) createVestingSchedule
Parameter Name
Explanation
_beneficiary
This parameter represents the vesting beneficiary, basically the early investor that choosed to buy in the seed phase and have his token vested
_start
Represents the start timestamp of the vested period
_cliff
Represents the cliff period of the vested period, basically a lock period, for example if a vested period of 1 year have a cliff of 6 months it means that the first 6 months when the tokens unlock the beneficiary will not be able to withdraw anything but after that 6 months period end the beneficiary will be able to withdraw the tokens for the all 6 months
_duration
The duration of the vested period
_slicePeriodSeconds
Represents what amount of tokens gets unlocked per second
_revocable
A boolean that gives the owner the ability to revoke or not the vesting schedule for the beneficiary, if the value is set as True, then the owner will have the capabilities to later revoke the vesting schedule from the beneficiary, if it's set as False, the owner will never be able to revoke the vesting schedule from beneficiary
_amount
The amount of tokens that will be vested
2) revoke
Parameter Name
Explanation
vestingScheduleId
Represents the id of the vesting schedule, it's a form to identifie an unique vesting schedule
3) withdraw
Parameter Name
Explanation
amount
Reperesent the token amount that the owner wants to withdraw
4) release
Parameter Name
Explanation
vestingScheduleId
Reperesent the unique vesting schedule id that is use to indetify the vesting schedule for a particularry beneficiary
amount
Reperesent the token amount that the beneficiary wants to retrieve, it have to be equal with the amount that the vested schedule have uncloked so far
5) getVestingScheduleByAddressAndIndex
Parameter Name
Explanation
holder
Represents the beneficiary
index
The index for a particulary vesting schedule for a holder
6) computeReleasableAmount
Parameter Name
Explanation
id
Represents the vesting schedule id
7) getVestingSchedulesCountByBeneficiary
Parameter Name
Explanation
_beneficiary
Represents the beneficiary of the vesting schedule
8) getVestingIdAtIndex
Parameter Name
Explanation
index
Represents the index of the investment the beneficiary makes
9) getVestingScheduleByAddressAndIndex
Parameter Name
Explanation
holder
Represents the beneficiary of the vesting schedule
index
Represents the index of the investment the beneficiary makes
10) getVestingSchedulesTotalAmount
No Parameters.
11) getToken
No Parameters.
12) getWithdrawableAmount
No Parameters.
13) computeNextVestingScheduleIdForHolder
Parameter Name
Explanation
holder
Represents the beneficiary of the vesting schedule
14) getLastVestingScheduleForHolder
Parameter Name
Explanation
holder
Represents the beneficiary of the vesting schedule
15) computeVestingScheduleIdForAddressAndIndex
Parameter Name
Explanation
holder
Represents the beneficiary of the vesting schedule
index
Represents the index of the investment the beneficiary makes
Main Flow
Contract Owner creates a vestign schedule for an investor calling the createVestingSchedule function.
A beneficiary can keep track of his vesting schedules by calling getVestingScheduleByAddressAndIndex, this will return all the infos
After the cliff period have ended, an beneficiary can call the relase function to release the unlocked amount of his tokens.
If all the vesting schedules are finished and there are still tokens in the contract, the admin can call the withdraw function and retrieve the unvested tokens.
[OPTIONAL] The contract admin can call at any time the revoke function, to revoke the vesting schedule of an beneficiary, basically removing his vested tokens.
How to calculate
The formula for calculating the vested amount is vestedAmount = vestingScheduleAmountTotal * (vestedSeconds / vestingScheduleDuration)
vestingScheduleAmountTotal = Represents the total amount of tokens that are vested over the vesthing schedule duration
vestedSeconds = Represents the total amount of seconds that have passed since the start of the vesting schedule
vestingScheduleDuration = Represents the total duration of the vested schedule (ex: 12 months, 15 months, 24 months, etc...)
Example:
vestingScheduleAmountTotal = 40000
vestedSeconds = 2629743 (seconds in a month)
vestinScheduleDuration = 63113851 (seconds in 2 years)
=> 40000 * (2629743 / 63113851 ) = 40000 * 0,04166 = 1666,4 -> the amount of tokens that unlock per 1 month