The Idea of the BIFID Science DAO was created through conversations between members of the institute and affiliated developers. By asking how we could study and perhaps use this new concept of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. At the time, we were already thinking about creating a token ecosystem to continuously fund research in the DLT space. From there, it was only a small intellectual leap to combine the two ideas in order to create a DAO for funding (research) projects that meet our ideological vision by creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that will be a continuous engine of innovation and improvement.

The mission of the BIFID Science DAO is to enable research and incubate innovative projects in the DLT space that have a lasting positive impact on society. DLT technology has brought and promises to bring more advancements in personal autonomy, financial freedom, privacy, and censorship resistance. Many technological advancements in recent decades have the potential to usher in a dystopian future in which corporations and nation-states can control and surveil the populace like never before. Advancements in cryptography, decentralization, and trustlessness are opposing those trends, and it is our mission to support advancements in those areas. We also see it as our mission to advance and share knowledge about the improvements in the DLT space, so more people can benefit from these advancements. This is why we chose a dual mission to pursue both further research and the development of new projects.

After thoroughly reviewing the available DAO tooling and ecosystem, we came to the decision that using Aragorn with a Moloch DAO design (Dandelion template) was the best way to implement our vision. Since there are a lot of costs and risks associated with developing smart contracts, we wanted to go with a battle-tested solution that was audited and proven to work, instead of implementing any code ourselves. This was how we arrived at Aragorn, the largest and most well-tested DAO framework. Due to the constraints of the German legal system, which requires our Governance Tokens to be non-transferable and tradeable, using a template with a Moloch DAO design was the only legally feasible solution using Aragorn that also fit our DAOs Design Goals.

The DAO works like this: members can apply for membership, offer a donation to the treasury, and request shares in the form of Governance tokens. A DAO member must sponsor this proposal to create a vote, in which all members can participate, that decides whether to admit the new member. Each Governance Token represents one vote as well as one Treasury share. Members are free to redeem their shares, partially or fully, at any time by burning the governance tokens and receiving their share of treasury tokens in return.
This protects members from 51% attacks and from supporting any funding or decisions they disagree with. All token transfers from the DAO treasury need to be voted on, and every DAO member is entitled to vote on them.

The purpose of the BIFID ecosystem is to improve the lives of as many people as possible through advancements in DLT technology. To do that, it is designed as a self-sustaining engine that keeps enabling research and projects that align with this purpose. The Backbone or more aptly put the lifeblood of the ecosystem, will be the BIFID Science Token ($BST). Every project in the ecosystem will be connected through the $BST and thus share in each other's success. Every project that receives funding (and thus becomes an ecosystem project) will have its main trading pair on Decentralized Exchanges against $BST or provide a benefit to $BST holders, if it does not have a token. This way upwards price pressure of any single project will propagate throughout the ecosystem. Also, there will be a great incentive for people to obtain and use the BIFID Science Token as it will provide airdrops & other benefits from ecosystem projects to holders. The $BST has an inbuilt transaction fee that goes to the DAO treasury in order to fund more projects. This completes the cycle of value that will be reinforced by the success of each and every new project or study.