The idea
A protocol by which commercial software products built on or branded as Arrow software return value to the DAO treasury through revenue share, brand bonding, and contribution-back requirements.
AIP-009 covers the analogous problem for hardware via per-unit manufacturing bonds. That mechanism doesn’t transfer to SaaS — near-zero marginal cost, single global deployment, monthly subscription revenue. AIP-006 funds software work but doesn’t define what happens commercially after a product ships.
Several DAO software efforts have meaningful standalone commercial potential. Quiver Hub generalised to broader ArduPilot operators sits in a ~$280–310M addressable market, with realistic capture in the low seven figures of ARR for a focused operator over 3–5 years. The Flight Tracker, simulation tooling, and analysis utilities have analogous potential. Without a framework, this value either accrues to outside MIT-license forks (DAO captures nothing) or remains untapped.
Core mechanism
Three relationship tiers:
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Sovereign Fork — license-compliant use, no brand, no revenue share.
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Ecosystem Partner — directory listing, ecosystem badge, light obligations.
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Bonded Operator — exclusive “Official Arrow [Product]” branding, OSS-halo endorsement on the partner’s marketing surface, cross-promotion in DAO comms, in exchange for ARROW bond plus tiered revenue share.
The OSS-halo distribution is the load-bearing carrot — for a niche B2C/B2B SaaS in this space, official-partner status could plausibly reduces customer acquisition costs which is what makes paying the DAO rationally preferable to forking unilaterally.
Implementation considerations
Scope — what counts as DAO software
A. Anything in the Arrow-air GitHub org (possibly over-inclusive: includes experimental repos, the AIP repo itself).
B. Anything funded ≥50% by DAO grants, bounties, or TCGs (clean economically, requires per-product attribution audit).
C. Per-product designation by GBC review (lightweight, requires explicit opt-in flow per product).
Likely answer: C, with B as a heuristic for what the GBC should opt in.
Revenue /Profit share structure
A. Flat % of net revenue (simple, predictable, punishes early-stage partners).
B. Tiered by ARR (protects pre-PMF partners, captures more at scale). e.g B: 0% below $50K ARR; single-digit % between $50K and $500K; low double digits above $500K
C. Tiered by DAO contribution ratio — % of codebase, % of brand value, % of community originated from DAO sources (fair in principle, administratively unworkable).
Bond mechanism
ARROW collateral staked by the partner, sized to a percentage of trailing MRR/ARR with a floor for pre-revenue partners. Slashable for brand misuse, false claims, non-payment of revenue share, or failure to backport critical fixes upstream. e.g: 5–10% of trailing ARR. Pre-revenue floor: modest enough not to deter participation.
Exclusivity
Default exclusive per product. Fragmenting the SaaS market for a single codebase into competing official-branded operators hurts customers (choice paralysis), operators (price war on identical product), and the DAO (smaller fragmented revenue per product). Carve-out: non-overlapping specialization — separate operators for distinct geographic, regulatory, or deployment markets (e.g., EU-sovereignty, on-prem/air-gapped, China-market) by explicit GBC or Snapshot approval.
Approval authority
A. Extend GBC mandate (lowest overhead, GBC already at capacity reviewing bounties and grants).
B. New Ecosystem Committee (institutional bloat).
C. Direct to Snapshot for every proposal (heavy for routine deals).
Combination: GBC reviews and approves routine partnerships below a threshold (tied to projected first-year ARR), with novel structures or above-threshold deals escalating to Snapshot.
Licensing posture — two tracks
A. MIT-licensed software: For these, the framework operates purely on brand, distribution, and ecosystem-membership leverage. No IP enforcement.
B. Software newly written under copyleft licensing (e.g AGPL or SSPL) :with a dual-commercial-license option administered by the DAO. Closed commercial use pays for the commercial license; open-source use stays free. Forward-going IP leverage without retroactive impact.
Dispute remedies
Standard escalation: public warning + cure period (e.g 30 days) → bond slash for unresolved violations → revocation of Bonded Operator status and brand rights → DAO re-grants “Official” status to another qualified partner. Relevant disputes are partner misrepresentation, non-payment, refusal to backport critical fixes, product abandonment.
Upstream contribution requirements
Bonded Operators required to contribute upstream: security fixes within a defined SLA, general improvements on a best-effort basis, parity for any reliability or core-functionality work funded out of partner revenue. Failure to comply triggers the standard escalation.
Contract term and renewal
Initial term: (e.g 12, 24,36 months) Renewal contingent on continued bond posting, revenue-share payment history, and upstream contribution record. Either party can exit at term boundary with a set window, e.g 90 days, notice; mid-term exit by the partner forfeits bond.