Welcome to Mooney Monday, a weekly update from MoonDAO! In this newsletter, we'll provide you with the latest news on space exploration and the progress of the MoonDAO community.

Whether you're passionate about space, blockchain technology, or just curious about the future of space travel, Mooney Monday is for you. We hope you enjoy reading our newsletter and that it motivates you to become more involved in the MoonDAO community and help us make space exploration accessible to all.

Bite-Sized Space News

• On December 17th, South Korea successfully positioned the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) into lunar orbit. KPLO, which was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in August 2022, will study the Moon's surface and features starting in January 2023 using six scientific instruments, including a terrain imager, a Wide-Angle Polarimetric Camera, magnetometer, a gamma-ray spectrometer and a camera provided by NASA, called ShadowCam, which is able to see inside permanently shadowed regions on the Moon and will help plan future crewed and robotic missions there. The spacecraft will provide new insights into the Moon's surface composition, mineral makeup, and terrain evolution, as well as the nature and extent of protection offered by magnetic features from space radiation.
• ​Nigeria and Rwanda have become the first African countries to sign the Artemis Accords, a set of principles for countries working together on the Moon. The Accords, which were developed by the United States and seven other countries during the previous administration, lay out guidelines for international participation for sustainable exploration of the Moon. The 10 core principles include peaceful purposes, transparency, interoperability, emergency assistance, registration of space objects, the release of scientific data, preserving outer space heritage, space resources, deconfliction of space activities, and orbital debris. The Accords are open to any country to sign and are not legally binding. They currently have 23 signatories.

Space Trivia

Who was responsible for formulating the three laws of planetary motion?

Keep reading for the correct answer.

MoonDAO Updates

Gitcoin Passport

We have officially introduced Gitcoin Passport, a tool for securely identifying users in online voting, as a requirement when voting on our Snapshot proposals. However, some MoonDAO members have encountered issues, primarily related to not yet having their passports ready prior to votes going live. You must have your passport linked and ready to go with the requisite stamps, prior to any vote being posted.

These measures are necessary for ensuring Sybil resistance and the security of quadratic voting, as has been laid out by the MoonDAO constitution. When using quadratic voting, we must strive to ensure that people are not creating multiple wallets to increase their voting power and manipulate the outcome. Although these measures may also create barriers for legitimate voters, so we must strike a careful balance in terms of what we require.

Our Gitcoin Passport requirements are kind of the bare minimum right now with social media accounts (Twitter, Discord, and Google – all tools we use frequently within MoonDAO) along with a record of an ETH transaction more than 30 days ago. The community will discuss adding additional stamps in the future to further deter bots and duplicate accounts.

​Set up your Gitcoin Passport here.

MoonDAO 101.xyz Badges

​MoonDAO’s 101.xyz badges are now live! 101.xyz is a hub where educational and onboarding materials can be housed and include quizzes on the material and badges that certify that you have passed the test. By completing these little courses, you can earn an on-chain badge connected to your wallet. All 101 badges are non-transferrable ERC-721 NFTs that are issued on the Polygon network.

MoonDAO has now launched six 101.xyz courses that will teach you about MoonDAO and also about space exploration. These badges may be used in the future to provide special access to certain materials, special discord roles, and more, but for now, it is just a fun way to demonstrate your knowledge – so go check out our MoonDAO 101.xyz courses and earn your on-chain credentials. Translated versions of these courses are in the works.

Be sure to collect all six of the badges!

Town Hall

​Listen to today’s town hall with some important governance updates and also an interesting conversation with Anastasia Stepanova, who shared insights about her multiple experiences serving as an analog astronaut on missions that simulate what it is like to travel or live in space.
​
Anastasia participated in a mission called SIRIUS in Moscow, which involved living in isolation for four months while being monitored by cameras and subject to more than 80 experiments in order to study the effects of long-term space travel on psychology and physiology. She also participated in shorter missions to MDRS in the Utah desert and Flashline which is located on an uninhabited island in the Canadian Arctic, where she served as a health and safety officer and crew journalist. During this extremely remote mission, the crew had to be prepared for potential polar bear encounters and the possibility of difficult rescue or evacuation in the event of an emergency.

Anastasia is now studying at the Colorado School of Mines in a program focused on space resources, including the extraction of resources from the moon's regolith. During the town hall, we discussed some of the major challenges that need to be addressed before humans can sustainably live and work on other planets including medical technologies, food production, and stress management.

Active Votes

​MDP-59 MoonDAO Mascot Design Contest​

Six submissions to the DeWork bounty were chosen by the Community Guild to move forward for a Snapshot vote where we will select a winner to be the official MoonDAO Mascot. There are small Mooney prizes for the top three and we will be using Ranked Choice Voting to determine the overall winner.

​MDP-60 New Multisig Appointment​

This vote will replace an inactive member on the MoonDAO Treasury multi-sig with one of three possible members. All three candidates have been active since the early days of MoonDAO, and have demonstrated that they can be trusted over long periods of time. This vote will also use Ranked Choice Voting.

​MDP-61 Phase 2 Rewards Amendment Proposal​

Finally, this is a vote to ratify the proposed reduction in compensation for Phase 2, as previously discussed, or to uphold the previous vote results. The Senate has voted to reduce the Phase 2 rewards from the amount determined by the community in MDP-54 and 55. In the interest of saving our DAI and MOONEY in the treasury, they propose to voluntarily reduce the compensation down to DAI: 30.68% and MOONEY: 9.43%.

These numbers were calculated by doing an analysis of the votes using the quadratic formula for vMOONEY, as is described in our Constitution. Furthermore, since MOONEY has been a point of contention in the community, the Senate has decided to reduce it by an extra 50%.

MoonDAO Bounties

There are still seven open bounties on DeWork right now from our four guilds. Here is an interesting one to check out and potentially earn some Mooney. Be sure to join our DeWork bounty page to explore them all and stay up to date with future opportunities to work for MoonDAO.

​MoonDAO Rocket CAD​
25,000 Mooney
Open to Applications

That’s it for your MoonDAO updates this week. Join us on Discord to stay up-to-date with all the latest developments. Also, MoonDAO wishes you Happy Holidays for all those that celebrate.

Space Trivia Answer: B) Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician and astronomer who is known for his three laws of planetary motion, which describe the elliptical orbits of planets around the sun. These laws, which were based on the observations of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, are known as Kepler's laws of planetary motion and are considered some of the most important contributions to the field of astronomy. Kepler's laws of planetary motion are still used today to describe the motion of objects in the solar system.