IIP: 120
Title: Launch Forefront Social Token Index
Status: Proposed
Author(s): Forefront DAO, 1kx, Carlos Gomes
Created: 11/08/2021
Purpose
To provide the industry with an investment product providing passive exposure to the social token sector.
Objective
The FF Social Token Index is a digital asset designed to track tokens’ performance within the social token industry. It aims to incorporate projects and communities that have significant usage and show a commitment to ongoing maintenance and development.
Below is a snapshot of the index we have been tracking the past 6 months.
Motivation
“My view, as I’ve stated many times, is that social/community tokens are going to be one of the biggest changes to global business models in history.” ~ Raoul Paul
In 2021, the total market cap of key social tokens surpassed $580m, a ~615% growth from 2020. The amount of addresses holding social tokens grew by ~200% from 6000 to 19,000. This year alone Coinvise has helped more than 280 communities and creators launch a social token.
Social Tokens have potential to become the next ‘big-thing’ in crypto, yet there will be thousands of them. Investors of all sorts will need a curated list, and Forefront is best positioned to provide that service. Over the past few months we have been inundated with requests to provide an investment vehicle.
The FF Social Token Index is our response to that demand, offering investors with a professional product providing exposure to the social token sector. It gives them passive access to a vehicle which captures value-weighted upside from the most promising social token communities and projects.
In terms of user demand, here are two prominent voices from CoinDesk and the Real Vision Group commenting on the industry and index:
Forefront’s Unique Value Add
Forefront brings a strong reputation and expertise to the table and has an audience which represents many of the core personas this index seeks to serve. Forefront’s platform is the leading insight aggregator across the social token landscape.
The social token index would not be launched in isolation; Forefront has developed an entire ecosystem providing industry-leading research for beginners and investors alike.
We have built a social token marketplace offering detailed breakdowns of each social token featured in the index, providing both on-chain and off-chain data.
Forefront’s FF Daily provides links to the day’s best articles enabling serious investors to stay on top of market trends. Meanwhile, our FF Newsletter curates the week’s best articles and insights.
Our FF Learn platform provides background information, educational material and deep dive case studies into some of the most successful social token projects. Forefront profile pages curate the leaders in the space, offering brief summaries and serving as a portal for those looking to dive deeper.
Criteria, Methodology & Composition
Token Inclusion Criteria
Forefront has a collection of criteria to determine which tokens will be included into the FF Social Token Index. The social token industry is evolving quickly, exploding with new business models, and growing fast. Forefront is uniquely positioned to track this growth and has developed the following criteria for inclusion:
Token’s Descriptive Characteristics
- The token must be available on the Ethereum blockchain.
- The token must be associated with a decentralised social community.
- The token must be listed on Forefront’s Marketplace and adhere to Forefront’s Marketplace selection criteria.
Token’s Supply Characteristics
- It must be possible to reasonably predict the token’s supply over the next five years.
- At least 5% of the five-year supply must be currently circulating.
- The token’s economics must not have locking, minting or other patterns that would significantly disadvantage passive holders.
Project’s Traction Characteristics
- The project must be a clearly established social community operating towards a shared goal.
- The project must have at least 500 unique token address holders.
- The project must have a large community (2000+ Discord members and/or Twitter followers).
- The project must have been launched at least 60 days before being able to qualify to be included in the index.
- The token must have a minimum fully diluted market cap of $25 million.
For those interested in diving deeper, including comparing a few of the methodologies we are testing, Forefront is tracking a variety of social score and liquidity metrics available here. We have also developed a Dune Analytics Dashboard here.
Index Composition
The current index composition, as of December 31, 2021 looks as follows:
Rally ($RLY) - 25.00%
Whale ($WHALE) - 18.27%
Ash ($ASH) - 17.76%
Friends with Benefits ($FWB) - 12.64%
Adventure Gold ($AGLD) - 10.88%
BanklessDAO ($BANK) - 4.30%
Metafactory ($ROBOT) - 3.54%
Yup ($YUP) - 2.81%
Global Coin Research($GCR) - 2.14%
Forefront ($FF) - 1.51%
Weighting = Sqrt Market Cap Allocation * Liquidity Factor * Community Score Factor
Forefront proposes using a square-root market cap weighting with a liquidity and social score multiplier.
With the explosion of innovation in the sector, we thought it was important to offer investors greater diversification and exposure to newer projects (relative to a pure market cap weighting). Furthermore, each token’s respective weight will be capped at 25%. Excess weight for a given token will be redistributed to the remaining components of the FF Social Token Index on a weighted basis. This will provide stability and ensure a diverse portfolio.
Liquidity is an important consideration in the nascent social token sector and we look forward to working with the Index Coop methodologists to determine appropriate liquidity thresholds. The social score multiplier enables Forefront to use its industry expertise to discount the weighting of an underlying token if there are questions or issues. surrounding its community.
Rally ($RLY)
Rally is a platform for creators and their communities to build their own independent digital economies.
Whale ($WHALE)
$WHALE is a social currency (cryptocurrency) that is backed by tangible and rare Non-Fungible Token (NFT) assets, while embodying scarcity through definitive limited issuance.
Ash ($ASH)
$ASH is a social currency backed by curated extinction. The value, the utility and the identity of $ASH is balanced by its users.
Friends with Benefits ($FWB)
Friends with Benefits is the ultimate cultural membership powered by a community of our favorite Web3 artists, operators, and thinkers bound together by shared values and shared incentives.
Adventure Gold ($AGLD)
Loot is randomized adventurer gear generated and stored on-chain. Stats, images, and other functionality are intentionally omitted for others to interpret. Loot DAO is a community initiative of Loot Project to govern $AGLD.
Bankless DAO ($BANK)
Bankless DAO is a decentralized community focused on driving adoption and awareness in bankless money systems like Ethereum, Bitcoin, and DeFi.
Metafactory ($ROBOT)
MetaFactory is a community-owned culture studio and marketplace focused on the creation and sale of digi-physical goods that celebrate crypto. Artists of all types are invited to create products that promote their art, community, project, protocol, token, etc.
Yup ($YUP)
Yup rewards valuable likes across the web. Curate anything, earn rewards for accuracy, and gain status in topics that interest you. It integrates with every site and platform, providing a universal influence score for every user, content, and URL.
Global Coin Research ($GCR)
Global Coin Research is a social token for the Global Coin Research community of readers, writers, investors and community members. Being part of the $GCR community provides members high-quality and direct access in the crypto space, ranging from content and analysis on Global Coin Research website to community events with executives and founders, and exclusive deal flow.
Forefront ($FF)
Forefront is the leading insight aggregator across the social token landscape. Forefront is built as a tool to aid in the curation of resources, data and insights on how to navigate the ever-changing social token landscape.
Market Research
Size of opportunity
Ultimately, this index could be the preeminent social token crypto product. We expect that this portfolio is appealing for the vast majority of crypto participants as everyone will want exposure to social tokens.
The combined market cap of the proposed index is just over $1.6 billion (with Rally accounting for $800m). This was a mere $170 million 90 days prior. The social token sector is growing fast and it’s not unreasonable to expect a sector market cap north of $5 billion in 2022.
Differentiation
FF Social Token Index is different from any product in the crypto ecosystem. The FF Social Token Index will be the first large passive-index opportunities for investors to get access to the Social Token revolution.
There is nothing comparable on the market.
With respect to the proposed DAO Revolution Index (DRI), the products will be quite distinct. Forefront’s Social Token Index includes creator tokens, brand tokens, and social DAO tokens. It is a ‘pure’ play on the social token sector.
However, there will likely be some overlap as the DRI proposal indicates a focus on DAO infrastructure, DAO developers and creator DAOs.
Go To Market Strategy
Forefront has a full suite of tools that will be employed when the product launches.
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Frontend to Track Social Token Index. Users will be able to track the index, its underlying tokens, and have access to a suite of on-chain and off-chain analytics.
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FF Marketplace. Forefront has built a best-in-class marketplace for the social token industry offering deep insights, analytics and research.
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Writers Program. Forefront consistently publishes high quality essays from internal and external authors. Including the Index at the bottom of each essay is a strong possibility.
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Newsletter. Our weekly web3-focused newsletter has 7000+ subscribers at ~45% open rate, making it one of the most engaging in the space. We have already been including Social Token Index updates and received great feedback.
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Podcast. We host a weekly podcast covering ecosystem roundups and hosting high-signal members of the web3 community. We plan on mentioning the product in each of these episodes.
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FF Learn. We plan on publishing a guide on the Social Token Index and a tutorial for purchasing, providing liquidity, etc.
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Twitter. Following in the footsteps of MVI methodologists, we plan on publishing weekly Twitter threads to our 18k+ followers discussing the status of the social token market, performance of the index, and more.
Liquidity
Forefront is actively working on solutions to liquidity constraints for the underlying tokens in these early days of the social token sector. We look forward to continued discussions with the Index Coop community around appropriate liquidity thresholds (eg. acceptable slippage per trade size) for this index product.
With respect to liquidity for the trading pairs of the proposed index, we envision a combination of Forefront, Index Coop and external partners providing initial liquidity.
Index Maintenance
The index is maintained monthly in two phases:
Determination Phase
The determination phase takes place during the third week of the month. It is the phase when the changes needed for the next reconstitution are determined.
- Circulating Supply Determination: The FF Social Token Index currently references CoinGecko’s circulating supply number. The circulating supply is determined during the third week of the month and published before the monthly reconstitution.
- Additions and deletions: The tokens being added and deleted from the index calculation are determined during the third week of the month and published before monthly reconstitution.
- Weighting: Any token that has a weight greater than 25% during the determination phase will have its weight capped at 25%. Any excess weight will be redistributed to the remaining components of the FF Social Token Index on a weighted basis. This same process will be repeated for every token exceeding the 25% allocation cap.
Reconstitution Phase
The index components are adjusted, added and deleted as per the instructions published after the end of the determination phase. New index weights, additions and deletions are incorporated into the index during the monthly reconstitution, which will take place on the first business day of the month. As assets tracked by the index grow, the reconstitution window will expand to more than one day to lower the reconstitution’s market impact.
Streaming Fees
We propose a 60/40 streaming fee split with 60% accruing to Index Coop and 40% accruing to Forefront.
We also propose a streaming fee of 125bps.
Access to Social Token Communities for Index Holders
The Social Token Index would be primarily geared towards investors seeking passive exposure to the growing social token market, not necessarily someone seeking access to the communities. As the index methodologists, we do not believe we are in a position to create new forms of access on behalf of tokenized communities, taking that autonomy away from the communities themselves. However, there is a possibility of communities providing access to index holders, and that is a conversation we are excited to raise with communities that end up in the index.
About Authors
Forefront is the leading insight aggregator across the social token landscape. Forefront is built as a tool to aid in the curation of resources, data and insights on how to navigate the ever-changing social token landscape.
Copyright
Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.