Vision & Mission

The ALANA Project is a diverse community that empowers creators and builders by guiding them into the decentralized world of the future. We achieve this through a multi-pronged approach by fostering a supportive and inclusive community, freely accessible educational resources, and collectively built products that educate in a fun and entertaining way on all interconnected topics of the onchain world. The products built within the community are a core part of creating a circular economy within and beyond the community.

Impact

The impact we aim to have is three-fold:

1. By lowering the barriers to entry and ensuring a clear understanding of why onchain technology can empower creators and builders, we help increase the overall adoption of these technologies. This will help them realize their full potential by utilizing the tools to their advantage and creating even more innovative use cases. We do that by creating free, entertaining, and collaborative resources to which we actively invite.
2. Secondly, we are committed to building a self-sustaining community. Therefore, we built high-quality and innovative products in a collaborative way that aims to show tangible use cases for Web3 technology and therefore inspire others to do the same.
3. The third layer of impact comes from the research and development of The ALANA Project as a decentralized organization. We do investigative research and build social-layer tools and resources to foster community interactions along a healthy and balanced growth sentiment. Learn more about that by diving deeper here.

Organizational Design

Originally, stellaachenbach (founder) created ALANA as a 3D avatar to give a face to the Web3 Revolution. As ALANA grew more popular among fellow designers and creators, stellaachenbach decided to utilize this attraction to evolve the once personal project into something more impactful. Since then, and with the support of many contributors and partners, it has transitioned from a very centralized project to a continuously decentralized one, run by various members of ALANA's community.

While ALANA's Manifesto is the base NFT and symbolizes our collective values. It is also used to gain access to community channels and interactions (access criteria coming soon). For those who seek to join on a more serious basis, there are three different levels of memberships we have composed and voted on:

• Nucleus Apprentice | 0x69de3e32b4f3156e3319588aa51363c9fa52069d
• Nucleus Specialist | 0xbf5e7b87fec098bbadc9fc35ca610b8ea02eecb5
• Nucleus Guardian | 0xcaf40bdae5816b770d3b91e415fbc9097a126fbb

All membership NFTs for the different levels of roles in ALANA are distributed via Unlock Protocol on OPMainnet and upon personal onboarding conversations with the active Nucleus Guardian in charge.

Token Engineering

Since the beginning of The ALANA Project, we have been determined to continuously decentralize the project and build a token economy around it to guarantee its longevity. But we were missing three important factors:

1. A cohesive branding from the former personal project to one that encapsulates and represents the community. You can find the successfully developed Branding Guidelines here.
2. We had to gain sufficient knowledge about the design process of a token economy. We did this by joining the Token Engineering Academy and completing most of the available modules. An example here is the public profile of founder stellaachenbach.
3. We had to establish and vote on an organizational structure that enabled fairness and equality based on contribution, not financial investment. As mentioned above, we did so by designing various tools that promote transparency and by meticulously defining stakeholder roles.

Over the past two years, we have worked hard and successfully on all three factors and started in Q2/2024 with our token evaluation. We know several Web3-based projects have failed due to badly designed Tokenomics, so we are taking appropriate time to work through a detailed process. With our acquired token engineering skills (three team members have attended the Token Engineering Academy successfully), we are carefully evaluating the token along the Tokenomics Design Canvas.

However, throughout the evaluation process, we became aware that more common token models share a strong focus on being used within an AMM (automated market maker)/ DeFi-related applications. Since The Alana Project is oriented toward educational empowerment and aims to foster intrinsic motivation, we had to adjust several components and develop tools on top. We want to avoid that our designed system tips the balance and ensures that only active contributions are valued.

In a nutshell, The Alana Project aims to bridge the aforementioned gap by developing a Tokenomics model for a Web3-empowered community project that is advancing token engineering through three key pillars:

1-KPI-based Token Emission Schedule

As mentioned above, the $ALANA token is meant to be a reward (payment) for all active contributors in the value creation process. It is an incentive to stimulate work and activity across a dispersed group of people who maintain the integrity of the project and create products all aligned with the mission and vision. Therefore, fixed emissions or built-in mechanisms to increase the token supply may not align with the project's purpose.

This problem led us to discuss how contributions can be measured if contributed by different actors and for various tasks. How can we capture performance, impact, and growth from a single contribution and in comparison to others? Our proposed solution is called “Contribution Calculator” (ongoing work in progress), a tool that correlates the individual work input into points, which will be used to determine and calculate the amount of $ALANA token that a contributor can claim at the end of a season. As a consequence, we came to the conclusion that our token emission schedule needs to be KPI-based. On the demand side, the $ALANA token is influenced by the number of customers using or holding it.

Regarding governance, most discussions in the current ecosystem center around token concentration and token price, with resources and motivations spread across various stakeholders. This leads to governance discussions and the difficult task of balancing financial power (in connection to token-based voting), expert power of the core team (in connection to agenda setting), and the inclusion rights of creators and various other stakeholders.

Since The ALANA Project is meant to be a platform for creators and builders, we do not want investors or speculators to gain significant governance rights by simple token accumulation. From a token engineering perspective, the question to be solved is two-folded:

• How can we implement a governance mechanism that safeguards the influence of creators and contributors (governance token)?
• How can we implement a tradeable token that can be used as a means of payment for the products and services that The ALANA Project offers (utility token)?

To solve this predicament, we suggest separating the $ALANA token and a membership NFT with governance rights. As mentioned above, membership NFTs can be earned by actively contributing to the project on the aforementioned three different levels. We call this "proof-of-work." This membership NFT comes with different governance rights (defining the decision space) in accordance with a contributor's role in The ALANA Project. Furthermore, this NFT can be infused by staking the $ALANA, leading to more voting rights connected to the distinguished role.

2-The "Dedication Flywheel"

Beyond the aforementioned, we want to incentivize three elements in ALANA and potentially reward:

1. The continuous willingness to learn and improve one's skill with The ALANA Project (as a creator and builder)
2. The "holding" and use of our onchain products and tools
3. The ongoing participation in ALANA activities that support and help the community (Keyword: Ultimate Supporter)

For all three of these actions, we suggest reward emission, which we call the "Dedication Flywheel," to reward commitment and loyalty as virtues.

3-Social Layer of DAOs

Successful token engineering requires collaboration and the sharing of diverse perspectives. While there are already many tools that DAOs can use for the technical and managerial part of project development (like DAOs as a Service), there is hardly any information or guidance on how to develop the social layer of DAOs or communities.

In the making of our tools and the experiences gathered (as a currently token-free community), we decided to build a guide for the foundation of a decentralized social infrastructure that includes:

• A case study and documentation of the founding process and organizational development
• The full report of a survey about the social aspects of living and working the "DAO Lifestyle"
• The Development of an open-source “Social Layer DAO Canvas” that can be freely utilized beyond our community. This tool will be a website-based modular guide to help others build and foster their community in the same manner we did and continue to do.

We are convinced that social infrastructure will foster a collaborative environment where best practices are developed and disseminated, driving innovation and ensuring the sustainable growth of the contributors.

In sum, The ALANA Project aims to further develop token engineering (on Optimism) by providing a blueprint for creative commons and work cooperatives designed along the framework and principles of Token Engineering. By connecting a newly developed contribution calculator to the token emissions, a membership-based governance process (valuing futarchy), and a practitioner guide to handling the social layer of DAOs, we want to create a more inclusive, secure, and innovative future for token engineering. That is why we seek funding (for the first time) to bring this vision to life and to drive meaningful progress in communities beyond our own.

Active Members

List of the currently active members of this specific working branch participating in weekly meetings and tasks:

• @stellaachenbach
• @lutra
• @greyscale
• @cyberdani
• @smugdangercat (anon)
• @nonkelbach
• @lepidope