Long Live Dogira

It’s been a long journey, but after 23 individual snapshot proposals ratified, a full audit on our new $NOVA Token from Paladin Blockchain Security, and the development of our own Polygon->Ethereum and Dogechain->Ethereum bridge, Nova DAO has at long last, been unveiled and launched — and joining it is Studio Nova, our reformed Dogira Studios entity.

This Medium is primarily to serve as a bookend for Dogira, and Dogira Studios; detailing our End-of-Life (EoL) supports for the $Dogira Token, and covering off the new structure of Nova DAO/Studio Nova.

Within the next few days, we’ll be launching a second article which will be focused towards the fun stuff — everything we’re developing, how we’ll be growing our DAO, and answering all of your burning questions submitted via the Nova DAO Telegram.

Housekeeping: Dogira EoL

First up, a little housekeeping; if you’re currently holding $Dogira tokens, you can bridge and convert these to $NOVA tokens via our homepage at https://novadao.io. Bridging is supported both from Polygon, and Dogechain.

Remember that this process is only possible for a maximum of three months (90 days) from the deployment of our bridge; meaning there’s now only around ten weeks left to bridge your tokens over, at the time of writing.

At this point, all bridged and awaiting tokens will be automatically burned to the dead address, making it impossible for any token conversions to continue beyond this date. Any $Dogira tokens used in the conversion process to $NOVA are automatically burned.

Note that tokens purchased from $Dogira’s community-provided LP, or retrieved from breaking any LP Pairs after August 19th 2023 will not be honoured for conversion to $NOVA Tokens.

The $Dogira token itself is immutable, and will continue on indefinitely on the Polygon network, as the community token that it was originally launched as by the first Dogira Team. Users wishing to remain with the Dogira Community are under no obligation to bridge their tokens; however, please keep in mind that Dogira Studios/Studio Nova will not be developing any new products under the Dogira banner, with all resources now effectively contributed to development under the Nova Banner.

Additionally, please remember that any LP provided by the community is in no way guaranteed by Studio Nova, Nova DAO, or otherwise.

EoL Support for the $Dogira Token will officially end following the cessation of bridging services from $Dogira to $NOVA. At this point, the $Dogira contract will be renounced, and any tokens held by the Dogira Deployer will be burned.

If it’s not clear from the above — $NOVA and $Dogira are two entirely separate tokens. A 1:1 conversion is being offered to existing $Dogira holders over a three month period; following which, all tokens reserved for this conversion process (both on the $NOVA and $Dogira side) will be burned. Following this, there will be no relation between the Dogira Community/Token, and Nova DAO/Studio Nova.

In the event of any community members providing (and locking) a significant amount of LP, ownership of the Dogira Telegram and Twitter accounts may be transferred to those parties on request. Note that the transfer of any assets to new parties does not confer any approval of, or endorsement of any parties, tokens, products, or otherwise.

Out with the old..

The concept for Nova was born from a range of the projects and teams that Studio Nova (formerly Dogira Studios) had the pleasure of working with since our foundation; a DAO which is fully governed by use of a token that did not benefit (or become beholden to) any pre-sale buyers, or large third parties such as VCs out of the gate.

Along with user autonomy, we also wanted to ensure there was ample safety — leading to the formation of our Nova Council, comprised of a mix of long-term community members, Studio Nova, and proven industry SME’s whom we’ve had the pleasure of working directly with in the past.

The Nova Council are tasked with holding the keys to the Nova Treasury multisig — containing all assets owned by Nova DAO, and all smart contracts operated by Nova DAO.

Studio Nova provides the development arm of Nova DAO, while maintaining an independent LLC status — ensuring that as we did during the bear market, we could act as third-party/consultant developers on a variety of projects to ensure that no funding or finances was required from our community-owned entity; while fostering relationships with amazing projects across the space.

Lastly, Jesse Hudson stepped in to act as our legal advisor throughout the formation process of Nova DAO — and continues to work alongside our Council in ensuring that our respective focuses can remain on growing our community, and developing on everything we want to build. Jesse is working directly alongside Ciefa as our in-house legal and compliance SME, allowing our Council to further grow the skillsets that are made available to building the future of Nova DAO.

The Legal Jargon Side

(Don’t worry, there’s a brief explainer afterwards — but the below is the officially binding part!)

Nova DAO is registered as Wyoming Series LLC, with all Council members acting as signatories under the LeXpunK DAO Defense Protocol.

The Nova Council retain veto powers in the event of any actions which would endanger the security of the DAO (such as flashbot voted proposals). The use of any veto powers requires a majority approval rate across all Nova Council members. Along with acting as representatives of Nova DAO and our Community, the Nova Council are tasked with ensuring that the long-term safety of Nova DAO and our wider community comes first and foremost; and must exercise their best possible judgement in any cases where relevant.

Note that Studio Nova, and the Nova Council have no authority or ownership over the $NOVA Token. Activities such as partnerships or listing requests should be made directly to the Nova DAO, by the relevant token holders.

$NOVA is a token on the Ethereum Network. All tokens carry risk. The value of tokens fluctuate, sometimes dramatically. The price of a token may move up or down, and may become valueless. Studio Nova have no level of control over Nova DAO, or the $NOVA token. Studio Nova takes no responsibility for any losses incurred while trading, or holding $NOVA tokens. The $NOVA token has been developed according to decentralized standards, and does not contain any functionality for pausing or rewinding any transfers, or otherwise. Ownership of $NOVA tokens or any products/tokens as released or developed on by Studio Nova does not imply or confer any investment, ownership, or stake within Nova as a studio, company, entity or otherwise.

Products developed by Studio Nova for publishing under the Nova DAO banner will require ratification via Nova DAO Snapshot, with all details in regards to license sharing/transfers, protocol fee shares/breakdowns, and any requested or due fees being contained within said Snapshot vote. Nova DAO assumes any legal responsibility for any products deployed, with any stipulations being made present in the aforementioned Snapshot vote. DAO Community members are free to discuss, or re-negotiate any terms proposed within any product or publishing agreement presented via Snapshot.

Legal Jargon: In Simpler Terms..

(Note: this is a quick breakdown of the above, and may not cover all points, or clearly communicate the intent above — as such, for all legal intents and purposes, please refer to the above section!)

Nova DAO is its own entity, registered as a Wyoming Series LLC. Studio Nova also stands alone as its own entity, registered as an LLC within the Republic of Ireland.

Products developed by Studio Nova do not inherently belong to Nova DAO. Products and any associated licenses are transferred to Nova DAO following a Snapshot proposal being ratified by the community.

At this point then, Studio Nova would deploy, and maintain any products on behalf of Nova DAO. In the event of any legal requests or otherwise, these would need to be received by, and processed by Nova DAO. Studio Nova, acting under a service provider agreement with Nova DAO, would in turn only comply with any relevant legal orders received and processed by Nova DAO, under the appropriate laws as are relevant in Wyoming.

As an example of how this could play out;

Consider if in this constantly shifting legal landscape, an EU directive is introduced which bans individual or corporate deployment of NFT contracts, or interacting with NFT markets. Studio Nova, operating as an Irish LLC, would be bound to any EU laws or directives which were introduced.

However, Studio Nova may still operate as a service provider to Nova DAO; developing, and/or deploying any smart contracts or software which remains legal under Wyoming law, and any associated Federal laws. Following this, Nova DAO (the owners/operators of any product launched) would not be subject to any EU laws or directives which could otherwise disrupt operations.

While the above is an extreme example (we sincerely hope our lawmakers wouldn’t introduce any directives to that effect), it’s worth considering all other types of software or smart contracts which could be developed under Nova DAO — such as ones which may feature for example, predictions markets, or games of chance.. or rumoured EU directives such as the potential requirement for a “kill switch” within smart contracts.

Wyoming has to date, proven to be DAO and Crypto friendly; and when operating in a constantly shifting legal landscape, our highest priority is ensuring that Nova DAO can continue growing its respective community, while Studio Nova can ensure that resources are continually primed towards development — rather than either side being bogged down in trying to navigate the tides of lawmakers playing catch-up with an industry that shows no signs of slowing down.

For its part in this relationship, Nova DAO can look forward to unique products developed under its banner — coupled with protocol fees, token utility, and/or revenue share where applicable. Studio Nova further benefits then from having an engaged and growing community, essentially serving as constituents and collaborators towards our current, and future product developments.

Development moving forward

Over the past year or so of development at Dogira Studios/Studio Nova, one thing became extremely clear — we’ve communicated this before, but here it is again for good measure:

We massively over-scoped on Discovery.

To a near impossible degree. Throughout development we built towards a huge open world map, fully re-worked stats/quest systems, in-built prediction markets, item/accessory overhauls, clans, additional species/creatures, hosts of mini-games, additional tokens… the list goes on. And that’s before we even consider the fact that we wanted to rework the entire frontend client to be mobile-first, and accomplish all this without needing to redeploy any of our core contracts (thus invalidating our audit).

We’ve drawn a line under Discovery, and have instead begun focusing our efforts towards taking the content that worked, and re-forming them into smaller and more digestible titles for what’s essentially a 2-person team.

And of equal importance, we want to ensure that our future builds are all focused towards generating real yield and revenues — both for Studio Nova, and Nova DAO.

We fully understand and accept the frustration that was born from Discovery, and its associated pushbacks. Studios are defined by their releases, and over-ambition led us towards development hell — ultimately resulting in a product that when finished, would not have been up to our standards regardless.

Throughout this process, Studio Nova grew massively in experience; both in working and designing on Discovery’s would-be systems, and in having the opportunity to work alongside other teams and projects throughout the bear market. While the ideal close to this story would simply be the release of Discovery, consolation can be taken in knowing that the time wasn’t wasted; Studio Nova survived through our ability to work in contracting and consulting roles with other teams and studios, and our experience throughout this time has forged a stronger team for it.

Now, on to the more dovish news — there are two standalone Gooeys titles in the works at Studio Nova. One title has already been teased on our homepage, with the other yet to be revealed — we’ll be telling all in our next Medium article.

The Battle of the L2s / Why Ethereum?

We chose to launch on Ethereum as with the advent of modern L2s in the shape of Optimistic and ZK Roll-ups, along with technology such as Chainlink’s CCIP, the ability for highly secure Multichain operations are finally becoming reality.

Ethereum remains the main source of liquidity and volume when it comes to smart contract chains, ensuring that $NOVA can reach the largest possible audience; while snapshot functionality allows us to ensure that any future planned rewards or airdrops can be carried out with ease across multiple chains.

However, we are of course aware that Ethereum is not suitable for demanding GameFi functionality. As such, while $NOVA remains at home on Ethereum until native/safe bridging methods can be deployed to other supported L2s (at the behest of DAO ratification), our GameFi products will continue to be developed on high-speed EVMs.

Thankfully, things such as protocol fees and revenue splits can easily be carried out cross-chain — as can our aforementioned rewards, airdrops, or incentives to existing $NOVA holders.

While the team are uninterested in engaging with paid listing services/CEXs, we are open to speaking with the right potential partners for making $NOVA tokens available for trading on their platforms, in order to mitigate Ethereum’s high gas fees where feasible. We’ll provide further updates on this if and when such information becomes available — and will note that any potential listing which requires $NOVA tokens as liquidity will need to be approved and ratified by Nova DAO.

Alright! So what’s the good news??

We can promise you, there’s a lot. We wanted to get the legal, and more difficult stuff out of the way first. We also wanted to prime this Medium to allow for our community to ask any follow-up questions for publishing in our next Medium article, which we hope to make available later this week.

Before we wrap up this bookend for Dogira, we’d like to thank everyone who stuck with us throughout our time with Dogira, and through the thick and thin that came with it.

Dogira was an enigma of a token. Launched by anonymous individuals, and only discovered by our current team at Studio Nova when we picked up on a major exploit in Dogira’s original contract — which an anonymous (later made un-anonymous) founder had been exploiting.

The individual was ousted, and all funds were recovered. The community grew massively throughout this time, even as anonymous founders left having secured their own profits from their launch — or, unfortunately as it often goes in the mania stages of a bull market — anonymous founders who simply lost interest, and wanted to return to the casino.

Taking over as a Lead on a token we never designed nor launched was never going to be an enjoyable, or an easy task. Especially when our numbers dwindled down to only 2, forming what would later become Studio Nova. For one, we weren’t wild on either the Dogira name nor the logo, but hey — we’ve finally gotten away from that one!

Dogira was turbulent, and volatile. But as the two team members who stuck through and kept on developing both to keep Dogira alive, and our Studio above the water, I can say — it was worth it.

Despite the horrors that bear markets bring, our team managed to thrive — we connected with some incredible projects, the people behind them, and worked in the trenches on the systems that propelled them. Along with getting to work alongside these teams on a contract/consult basis, we forged relationships which we can now take into our new era at Nova.

Most importantly, we’ve become more adept at our individual trades — and are confident on bringing a new lease of life to Nova, added to by the skillsets made available to us through our newly formed Nova Council.

Dogira is dead — Long live Nova!

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Home: https://novadao.io