A guide to DAO voting for $OCEAN holders

A guide to DAO voting for $OCEAN holders

Note: Your $OCEAN tokens must be on the Ethereum network (ERC20) in a hardware or metamask type wallet (i.e. not on an exchange) to be able to vote. Click here for more details.

As an $OCEAN token holder you can influence how funds are allocated to promote the growth of Ocean Protocol.

We’re going to provide you with an intro to the Ocean DAO, show you how to research DAO projects and give you a step-by-step guide to casting your first votes!

Quick Access

What is the Ocean DAO?

The Ocean DAO is made up of people contributing towards the growth and adoption of Ocean Protocol. 

Entry into the Ocean DAO is entirely voluntary and members can join from anywhere in the world. The basic conditions for DAO members is that you:

  1. Are aligned with Ocean Protocol’s mission and vision.
  2. Your efforts positively contribute towards the Ocean Protocol Ecosystem.

Why should I vote in the Ocean DAO?

Every month hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of $OCEAN tokens get allocated towards promoting the growth of Ocean Protocol. 

If these tokens get allocated well, the chances of your investment in Ocean Protocol becoming successful increase significantly. 

What are DAO proposals?

Example DAO proposal on Port

DAO proposals are descriptions of projects that DAO members want to work on. Anyone can submit a proposal providing it meets the project criteria

Proposals can cover a broad range of activities including technical and non-technical. 

DAO proposals are voted on by $OCEAN token holders once a month. Proposals which receive enough votes get the funds they requested in $OCEAN (paid from Ocean’s treasury).

If you want to submit your own proposal, you can find the proposal template here and you can view examples of other DAO proposals here.

How to find Ocean DAO projects

At any point in time DAO projects will be at various stages of development as shown in the diagram below. You can support projects at any stage (sharing posts, contributing etc) but DAO voting happens during the proposal phase only.

Ocean DAO project phases
  • Idea Phase – These projects are in the process of developing proposals and refining their ideas. These discussions normally happen on Ocean Protocol’s Discord
  • First Proposal – These are people or teams submitting a proposal for the first time. Each round some funds are held for them to help encourage new entrants to the Ocean DAO. 
  • Multi-Proposal – These projects have received more than 1 proposal, they are likely to be more well established and have a lot more information publicly available about their progress and track record (e.g. project website, social channels etc). 
  • Scale & Exit – Ideally, the best outcome for the DAO is that successful projects will become financially self-sustainable and can exit the DAO. This will allow room for new projects to enter. 

Diving into DAO projects on Ocean Pearl

Ocean DAO project overview on OceanPearl

Ocean Pearl is building the front end for the Ocean DAO. While the voting experience is currently split across a few different websites, Ocean Pearl is consolidating this over time and is the best place to start. 

Fun fact: Ocean Pearl is also a DAO project. You can see their first proposal here

You can learn more about every project and see how much funding they have received here: https://oceanpearl.io/projects 

Reviewing active Proposals & Asking Questions on Port

Ocean DAO proposals on Port

You can review proposals, provide feedback and ask questions on Port. This is the place where proposals get submitted, reviewed and discussed. 

To find the newest proposals just select the latest round from the dropdown box.

Selecting current voting round from drop down on port

If you don’t see many proposals for the round don’t worry, they often won’t start filling up until close to the proposal deadline (which is the first Tuesday of every month at 23:59 GMT). 

If you’re looking for a quick overview of all the projects the best place to do this is on Ocean Pearl.

How to cast your first Ocean DAO votes

Voting is FREE. You don’t need to spend your Ocean tokens to cast a vote and it won’t cost you anything in transaction fees. 

1 Ocean Token = 1 Vote

Supported Networks for $OCEAN DAO voting

Currently voting is supported for $OCEAN tokens that are on the Ethereum network (ERC20) ONLY and must be in one of the following locations (these are being expanded over time):

  • In your privately held Ethereum wallet (Metamask, Hardware etc)
  • Ocean Protocol marketplace
  • Sushiswap
  • UniswapV2
  • Bancor

Voting happens at the beginning of each month – see the voting calendar for key dates.

Step 1 – Review proposals on Ocean Pearl

Ocean DAO voting on Ocean Pearl

A summary of the voting round can be found on Ocean Pearl, it will update as new votes come in.

  1. Head over to https://oceanpearl.io/dao-voting 
  2. Click ‘vote now’ next to your favourite proposal 

Step 2 – Connect to snapshot.io to cast votes

Connecting wallet to Snapshot for voting

Voting is done using Snapshot and it’s a very similar process to using any popular DEX such as Uniswap

Snapshot works by taking a record of how many Ocean tokens each wallet has at a specific point in time (by scanning the blockchain). 1 Ocean token = 1 vote and you can vote YES or NO for DAO proposals until you run out of votes.

  1. Connect your wallet to Ocean’s Snapshot
  2. Cast your votes by voting YES or NO

That’s it!

We’d like to thank the DAO members who vote YES for Ocean Missions, without your support we wouldn’t be able to create posts like this! 🙏