CoWs together, strong! Welcome vCOW token to the CoW Ecosystem!

The GIP-13 proposal passed and it is now time to celebrate the birth of vCOW, the token for the CoW Ecosystem, a critical component to empower traders so that together we can all light up the dark forest.

“The wait is over CoWs!! By the power vested in me by the CoWmunity, I now declare this moment as the birth of the vCOW token” Master CoW

Tl;dr

• Master CoW’s dream has always been to give back to the community that contributed so much to this project. By launching the governance token vCOW we are handing over true ownership to the community (>50k addresses).
• vCOW is a governance token and therefore will be non-transferable in the beginning. This means you WILL NOT be able to sell it immediately after claiming. However, it is up to CowDAO members (YOU) to vote on whether making the token transferable complies with applicable laws.
• Claiming takes place on either Mainnet and/or Gnosis Chain. Where you can claim is NOT related to your activity but ONLY to the amount of vCOW Tokens you are eligible for under the airdrop criteria. (Besides for Smart Contract wallets as the wallet address is not necessarily the same one across chains). Users eligible for 10,000 vCOW Tokens or less will claim on Gnosis Chain. They are also sent 0.1xDAI each to cover their gas costs. Everyone else can claim on Mainnet.
• Airdrop: airdrops are dropped to users who have earned a CoW-POAP, traded on either Ethereum &/or Gnosis Chain, and to GNO holders.
• In addition to receiving the airdrop, some users also have the option to invest and buy additional vCOW tokens. These Investment Options were dropped and offered to traders and to GNO holders. GNO holder options let you buy vCOW with GNO. Trader options let you buy vCOW with ETH on Mainnet and with xDAI on GnosisChain.
• The 📸 was taken across all categories equally: block 13974427 for Ethereum & block 20024195 for Gnosis Chain
• If you exercise an Investment Option, the amount you invest WILL BE VESTED linearly over 4 years. This means that you WILL NOT get the amount immediately after investment.
• When exercising your investment option, you are presented with the opportunity to choose a % amount to invest. Note that claiming the investment options is ONLY POSSIBLE ONE TIME and thus, if you don’t fully claim it, you will not be able to reclaim the % you leave uninvested.
• You will be able to claim the airdrop and investment options all within one bundled transaction.
• Want more vCOW? GnosisDAO is vesting 5% vCOW to users locking their GNO until February 15 here: lock.gnosis.io

Happy CoW, Happy life

How do the tokens fit into the CoW vision?

The CoW Protocol mission is to make markets both more efficient and fair by building the ultimate batch auction settlement layer. As we are offering users best prices, we are aiming to become the foundational liquidity hub for trading digital assets.

Master CoW’s dream has always been to give back to the community that made this project special, this is why the vCOW token is conceptualized as a governance token. CoW Protocol now becomes a cowmunity owned project via the CowDAO. The token & CowDAO aim to ensure that the protocol isn’t captured by rent seekers, and that it stays neutral to the core players of the system, the traders.

What is the purpose of the vCOW token?

CowDAO believes in creating a global trading ecosystem of the people, by the people, for the people, that shall not perish under any threats. The crypto dream has never been about creating an instrument that can easily be put in a box, but about creating global assets that can govern and manage these new decentralized global networks.

This is why the vCOW token is conceived and launched as a governance token, and it’s non-transferable at first. That’s right, when you claim the airdrop, you will receive a token that cannot be transferred out of your wallet.

This is not an error, but an intended practice, as airdropping a governance token at first is essential for the ecosystem to build the right forces to form around it. Once the token is in your wallet, the vCOW token will entitle its holders with voting rights in the CowDAO. It is up to CowDAO members to vote on whether the token should be made transferable or not.

The main purpose of CowDAO is to govern and curate essential infrastructure components of the CoW Protocol ecosystem, including:

• System Parameters — CowDAO will be in charge of all system parameters such as the objective function for solution scoring and solver slashing conditions.
• Treasury holdings and Protocol revenue — Allocation of treasury holdings, distribution of Protocol revenue and investing into ecosystem projects.
• Staking — CoW Protocol solvers will be incentivized to compete for providing best solutions by capturing value for participation. This could come in the form of trading fees, solution token rewards or both. Solvers could be required to stake COW in order to participate in solution submission.

If you are interested in learning more about the governance process, make sure to sign up to the CowDAO forum and participate in this exciting new cow-venture.

Token drop

CoWmunity of free traders that want to get the best on-chain prices at the cheapest execution costs, while being protected from the dangers of the dark forest, today is your day. As a gesture of cow-preciation to our users, GNO holders, supporters and many more members of our awesome CoWmunity, the vCOW token is now live for you to claim.

Click here to be redirected to claim your vCOW. To add vCOW to your wallet, here are the corresponding contract addresses below:

• Ethereum: 0xd057b63f5e69cf1b929b356b579cba08d7688048
• Gnosis Chain: 0xc20C9C13E853fc64d054b73fF21d3636B2d97eaB

The threshold for claiming on Ethereum or Gnosis Chain has been established at: 10,000 vCOW tokens. Thus,

• If you are eligible for > 10,000 tokens, you will be eligible to claim on Ethereum Network. **Make sure you read this step by step guide before you proceed to claim.
• If you are eligible for ≤ 10,000 tokens, you will be eligible to claim on Gnosis Chain Network. In order to make it easier for you to claim in Gnosis Chain, and benefiting from the substantially lower fees of the network, eligible users under this category will receive 0.1xDAI. **Make sure you read this step by step guide before you proceed to claim.

Note that for Smart Contract wallets such as the Gnosis Safe, given that the wallet address is not necessarily the same one across chains,you will only be able to claim in the network where you were awarded the tokens, regardless of the amount you were airdropped.

As laid out in the GIP-13, the 1 Billion COW initial token supply has been distributed among the CoW team, the CowDAO treasury, the GnosisDAO, the CoWmunity investment options, the CoWmunity, the CoW advisory and the CoW team investment partners.

Whilst airdrop holders directly have full control over their full claim, investors & GnosisDAO & the core team are receiving their vCOW tokens under a 4 years linear vesting schedule. Here’s a high level view of how the token distribution schedule looks like:

Note that the linear vesting over 4 years unlocks the corresponding amounts for every Ethereum block, until it reaches the final date. This means that once the initial claim has been made, the 4 year vested amount will start to unlock consequently and proportionally for each Ethereum block. For more information on what vesting means, please refer to the following link.

What type of users got the drop?

Are you wondering about the criteria for the CoWdrop qualification? The official criteria was laid out in this tweet thread, but here is the recap:

COWMUNITY AIRDROP

Our CoWmunity has been dropped 10% of the tokens, plus another 10% in the form of investment options.

The following community members are eligible for the airdrop:

CoW POAPs

Users who have been awarded a POAP, but not all are equally valuable. Some that are most special are the ones for our CowStars and User Test Participants. Note that we say “awarded” and not “owns”, since we know that there have been secondary markets for these POAPS. We only took awardees into consideration.

Power Traders

A Power trader is someone who has traded on either Ethereum mainnet (before block 13974427) or Gnosis Chain (block 20024195) with a minimum of 3 trades, with at least 14 days between the 1st and the last trade, and for a minimum of 1K total volume. Note that stable to stable coin trades only by factor 0.1

Traders

A trader is someone who has traded on either Ethereum mainnet (before block 13974427) or Gnosis Chain (block 20024195) at least once for a total of 1K USD or who has done at least 5 trades. Note that stable to stable coin trades only by factor 0.1

GNO Holders

A GNO holder is someone who held at least 0.1 GNO on either Ethereum mainnet (before block 13974427) or Gnosis Chain (block 20024195). They were eligible for holding GNO on Mainnet and/or GnosisChain, and for running GBC validators. In addition, all the following LP token holders were accounted for: Balancer v2 (mainnet), Uniswap v3 (mainnet), Honeyswap (gnosischain), Symetric (gnosischain), Sushiswap (gnosischain), Elk (gnosischain), Swapr (Gnosischain)

INVESTMENT OPTIONS

The following community members are eligible for investment options, GNO Token holders (proportionally to the GNO they were holding at snapshot) and CowSwap’s Power Traders (as classified in linked tweet) will be given the opportunity to buy additional vCOW.

Power Traders

A Power trader is someone who has traded on either Ethereum mainnet (before block 13974427) or Gnosis Chain (block 20024195) with a minimum of 3 trades, with at least 14 days between the 1st and the last trade, and for a minimum of 1K total volume. Note that stable to stable coin trades only by factor 0.1

GNO Holders

A GNO holder is someone who held at least 0.1 GNO on either Ethereum mainnet (before block 13974427) or Gnosis Chain (block 20024195). They were eligible for holding GNO on Mainnet and/or GnosisChain, and for running GBC validators. In addition, all the following LP token holders were accounted for: Balancer v2 (mainnet), Uniswap v3 (mainnet), Honeyswap (gnosischain), Symetric (gnosischain), Sushiswap (gnosischain), Elk (gnosischain), Swapr (Gnosischain)

For those of you wondering about the referrals done through the affiliate program, we have not forgotten about you. It is expected that soon a proposal will be submitted to CowDAO, proposing a reward for our strongest advocates!

CONCLUSION

At CoW Protocol, it’s core to our mission to reduce inefficiencies where possible. We don’t want you to spend your ETH on tx costs, and certianly not for airdrop claims either. Airdrops often burn millions of USD in ETH. To avoid this, we decided to make smaller airdrop sizes available on GnosisChain where gas costs are marginal, and allocate users additional xDAI to cover their gas costs. If your investment options & airdrop size are larger than the established threshold, you will claim on mainnet, since the amount is large enough for it to be reasonable. That said, in order to also reduce the amount of fees you will spend, we have enabled the possibility of combining the different types of claims all at once. Meaning that if you are eligible for airdrop & investment options, you can claim them all at once.

We are 🚀over the moooo 🐄 with excitement about the launch of vCOW and its potential to empower our CoWmunity of traders to co-create the future of the best Settlement Layer for Decentralized Trading. We want your participation as we build out CoW Protocol’s infrastructure, develop technology and unite to protect users from the dangers of the dark forest.

I CAN SEE PARADISE THROUGH THE CoWS’ LIGHT 🎶 — Master CoW

About CowDAO

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.

Check out our website https://cow.fi/

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