Ampleforth’s $FORTH Governance Token — How to Claim & What is It?
On April 21, 2021, Ampleforth announced the launch of the $FORTH governance token for the Ampleforth protocol.
The launch of the $FORTH governance token is an important step for the project’s path toward decentralization and is the mechanism by which the Ampleforth community will use to oversee Ampleforth’s evolution.
Let me explain👇
How to Claim $FORTH?
Claiming $FORTH is super simple and very easy.
All you need to do is:
- Go to https://www.ampleforth.org/governance/claim/
- Connect the wallet you used to interact with Ample on-chain before the snapshot block taken on 03/30/21.
- Click “CLAIM” and confirm the claim via your wallet.
- Note — Make sure you have enough $ETH in your wallet to pay for the gas fees associated with your claim.
That’s pretty much it.
PS. You might encounter this error when trying to claim:
How to solve it:
1. Clear cache and cookies, and try again or try with another browser.
2. Stop doing other things with your metamask in other browser tabs.
Who Can Claim $FORTH?
Anyone who interacted with $AMPL on-chain before the snapshot block taken on March 30, 2021, is eligible to claim $FORTH tokens and must do so by April 16th, 2022. This gives eligible users 1-year window to claim and after this date, unclaimed $FORTH will be placed in a community-governed DAO.
15 million $FORTH have been minted at the genesis and this initial supply will be available immediately and claimable by the community, participants, and key contributors. In the future, $FORTH will have inflation set at 2% annually.
$FORTH Distribution:
- 67% to the $AMPL community (that’s a bigger % allocation than $UNI!)
- 33% to early backers (the core development team, advisors, supporters, and the Ampleforth Foundation)
$AMPL Community Allocation
The number of $FORTH community members are eligible to claim is determined by three factors, each represented with points. The more points you have, the more $FORTH tokens you can claim.
$FORTH Allocation Factors:
- Past, on-chain interaction with AMPL = 1 point (max)
- Geyser program participation (per day) = 1 point
- Negative rebase hold (per day) = 1 point
You are eligible to claim $FORTH if you participated in any of $AMPL’s Geysers (1 point per day), have wallets that have interacted with $AMPL on-chain (maximum of 1 point per wallet), and if you’ve held $AMPL during negative rebase periods (1 point per day).
Through these claimable factors, more than 75,000 users are eligible to receive $FORTH tokens and become founding members of Ampleforth’s governing body.
What is $FORTH?
$FORTH is the governing mechanism that oversees Ampleforth’s evolution.
$FORTH is the governance token of Ampleforth. It will be used by the community to vote on parameter changes to the core $AMPL protocol and as a tool to steer the continued evolution of the Ampleforth ecosystem.
The Ampleforth protocol is governed through a series of sequential steps that involve proposals and ideas that surface on Discord or public forums.
Anybody, whether they’re a $FORTH holder or not, can pitch ideas and participate in Ampleforth governance discussions.
The $FORTH governance token is only utilized in the later (but most important!) parts of the process being off-chain signaling, and binding on-chain voting.
$FORTH holders may vote with their tokens directly, or delegate to another address who may vote on their behalf.
That being said, $FORTH operates much like other forms of governance tokens and is actually an extension of the Compound Governance system, which is a respected benchmark in the DeFi space.
Why a Separate Token?
Why create $FORTH when there’s already $AMPL? Why not just use $AMPL itself for voting?
Ampleforth gives 5 reasons why:
1. $FORTH Keeps $AMPL Philosophically Pure
$AMPL is a base money with an elastic supply based on sound economics. It’s a simple and pure monetary asset with inherent value. It’s not collateralized and its value isn’t derived from anything else.
If voting capabilities were implemented in $AMPL, it would add non-monetary utility and possibly distort where its value derives, and thus create price distortions from non-monetary demand.
2. $AMPL Wants to be “Put to Work”
$AMPL is intended to be used as money and as a composable collateral asset in DeFi. Using $AMPL for a non-monetary use case such as governance would take away from $AMPL’s original vision and could lead to biased governance outcomes and large market movements.
3. Freedom of Distribution
$FORTH is being distributed to members who supported the Ampleforth network long-term and through all market conditions. $FORTH tokens are being rewarded generously to those who accrued time and played an active role in the protocol, not by balances.
The aim of this governance token distribution is to strike the right balance between day-1 degree of decentralization, system safety, and agility.
4. Freedom for Future Incentives
$AMPL is defined by its elastic supply policy and non-dilutive nature. Changing these fundamental qualities would mean $AMPL would no longer be $AMPL.
The $FORTH governance token, however, is free to be inflationary. This inflation can be used to still run and incentivize geysers 10 years into the future. Or it can be used to pay for infrastructure fees, oracle costs, etc.
5. Technical Efficiency
$AMPL is a monetary asset and works best if it's liquid. Not needing to keep track of delegation or wallet snapshots keeps $AMPL transfers lean and cheap.
Happy governing!
