In the time since we sold, ETH has gone down by 12% ($1622 → $1437). In that period it’s been as high as $1700 and as low as $1390. ETH isn’t a safe asset for us to hold operating expenses in, and the reasoning behind that hasn’t changed since the proposal was passed.
ENS isn’t a financial asset.
We should definitely diversify our stablecoin holdings.
My own view is that the current depeg is largely a result of people panicking. This Twitter Thread by Adam Cochran does a good job of laying out Circle’s exposure and the likely consequences, and it seems highly unlikely USDC will go under or permanently lose its peg as a result of this situation.
That said, yes, we should definitely be diversifying our stablecoin holdings into more than one provider. I’d welcome input from professionals as to what a reasonable balance is; failing that we can at least put together a proposal for a simple mix of the major stablecoins.
To address the other issue: Yes, the shortest timeline the DAO can take action on is 9 days - 7 days for a proposal vote and a 2 day execution timelock. This can of course be changed in the future, but there are risks and tradeoffs of making either the voting period or the timelock shorter.
Another option would be to move the funds to a Gnosis Safe managed in a similar way to the endowment, with some privileged users (eg, the secretary or a multisig of lead stewards) permitted to conduct a limited range of operations such as swapping between stablecoins. This could be useful for cashflow reasons in any case; it does require vesting some trust in those individuals, but it can be configured such that they do not have custody of the funds, as with the endowment.