The DAO Treasury Taask Force (DTF) signal proposition was recently passed and the core proposition to finalize its creation is being drafted. After lengthy discussions with the task force, the community, and with coderdan, the DTF would like to request an initial 50,000 GHST budget. The 50,000 GHST budget would be transferred from the DAO Treasury to the 8 multi-signature Gnosis Safe. This budget will greatly expand the flexibility of the DAO in incentivizing and rewarding engaged community members, developers, creatives, and overall contributors. This budget will never be used to reward members of the DTF. The DTF’s core main initiative will be to form a proposal for overall use of the DAO Treasury by investing some of the $10 million DAI/GHST in yield bearing opportunities. With effective deployment of the DAO Treasury, even modest returns would more than pay for the DTF budget request. The DTF will ensure comprehensive accounting and provide community facing documentation to ensure transparency. Some potential uses for the budget include the following:
Reward community engagement and aarcade play
Reward game developers and designers
Reward community application developers
Reward and acknowledge community art contributions
Reward, acknowledge and grow content creators and general marketing efforts
Expand Aavegotchi and GHST’s opportunities for decentralized financial applications
The DTF is developing a structured plan and multiple potential pilot projects to best utilize these funds. We will work to develop tools to allow maximum transparency into the budget use. Expenses within this 50,000 GHST budget would not require a DAO approval in order to maximize nimble use of the funds. Any further budget requests beyond the initial 50,000 GHST would require a DAO vote
Finally, and somewhat tangentially, it is an option for the DTF to initially oversee the 100k staked GHST for frens passed in AGIP16 (Snapshot). This 100k GHST has not yet been staked and could be held in the DTF multi-sig wallet. AGIP16 specifically outlined the funds be used to reward aarcade engagement, so no other use would be considered while in custody of the DTF unless requested by a DAO vote. Ideally, the Aarcade DAO will materialize and the 100k GHST could be transferred from the DTF multi-sig to the Aarcade DAO.
We would really like community feedback on all aspects of this request. It’s a lot of work to grow and develop as a DAO, but effective Treasury use is an excellent step forward. We appreciate your support and hope for lots of feedback before the core proposition!
Loving the progress and your energy Dr! I sketched out a few quick thoughts below. They’re not all directly responsive to your post—but hopefully there’s some interesting ideas and observations to kick start discussion.
+++
50k GHST is a reasonable first budget. But the amount should be ramped up in the near future. There is waay more upside to growing the ecosystem and community than there is to growing or maintaining the treasury.
The DAO has a comparative advantage in generating revenue through a P2E ecosystem that is owned and developed by one of the most legitimate communities in crypto. DAO funds should be deployed heavy hand-idly in the coming months to ensure new members onboard into an excited and welcoming community with tonnes of activities, competitions and ecosystem developments going on.
It definitely makes sense to generate yield from farming using idle capital. However, the DAO has little to no comparative advantage in entering the farming business. Farming idle capital only makes sense as long as no opportunities are missed to deploy that capital for a greater return with no more risk. And the return-on-capital of growth initiatives could easily outperform the (say, 10%) APY from farming.
It could be interesting to use the initial 50k GHST to benchmark the rough return-on-capital for funding growth initiatives. If some galaxy brain is able to estimate the Metcalfe’s Law value of each new community member, the DTF could set KPI’s for treasury spending that would be needed to outperform a farming APY.
The development and designer angle could be funded from the budget using retroactive grants. It may encourage continued tinkering on projects that might otherwise never be built due to the formal funding request hurdle. Retroactive funding can also be a kind of feel-good marketing tool— for example, we could proudly announce that the degen crew who invented and developed Portal Wars were thanked by the community with a surprise 10k GHST.
Anyways, that’s all I had. I hope there’s something useful or interesting there. Good luck!
I’m glad you mention this. I also have similar thoughts for the role of the treasury. I’d like to see the GHST being put to good use to support key community members that help Aavegotchi thrive, and create a mutually beneficial arrangement for everyone.
I think one issue is that the treasury committee may not be the best incubator for originating ideas on where best to spend these funds. Rather, I think the treasury may better serve the community by inviting the community to request funding from the treasury for any community initiatives, similar to other grants DAOs.
I also think retroactive grants are a good idea, since it will project confidence in the community that useful additions to the community will be rewarded. Of course we need to be careful though, because retroactive rewards can easily be unfair since so much community work isn’t in our radar.