Good point, I’ve edited it to clarify that it intends to top it up to $16M.
This is a good question, but not a prerequisite for establishing basic treasury management and ensuring we have a solid runway in stablecoins.
No; the DAO has over $22M, but almost all of it is in ETH. Our expenses at present are a mix of ETH and USDC, but heavily shaded towards USDC.
We already have this data.
The services that were paid for are entirely served by automated smart contracts; they will continue functioning regardless of what state the DAO is in.
your total expense report = spending of WG1 + spending of WG2 + … + spending of WGN
the reason it’s not put together, is that there was noone with formal role to do it, there were no clear users of that information, and there was no framework where it should be plugged into. Framework would define the form of that information - how it structured sliced and diced
The substance is available - check the forum, you can see that there are budgets being proposed and approved
ENS core team spending is black box, because salaries are confidential, so it’s treated as lump sum of money
in fact these guys over here did the exercise to certain extent, I really don’t understand why is it causing difficulties
EDIT: Like so
You can extend this logic and present it in anyway which is applicable
If a multisig is to be used with a Zodiac Roles Modifier, it would be good to think about possible scenarios where alternative attributes to the preset are required in addition to those needed to carry out the usual operation of exchanging ETH for USDC and DAI.
For example, as part of the usual operation, the Manager Role preset will grant permission to:
Withdraw from the Controller of Record contract.
Wrap/unwrap ETH.
Exchange ETH for DAI or USDC via Cowswap (or any other DEX).
Send ETH, DAI or USDC to the DAO Timelock contract or the Endowment multisig.
It would be useful to contemplate additional functions in case of an ugly market scenario. For example:
If DAI loses its peg, it would be useful to be able to exchange DAI for USDC or other stablecoins immediately.
If USDC is exposed to any sort of attack, having the ability to switch to DAI or other stablecoins (or even back to ETH), would be convenient.
On the other hand, since these scenarios often occur without warning, it would be good to have an emergency protocol in place to be able to act promptly. Coordinating efforts is difficult and even more so within a DAO, so predefining roles and actions would also be a plus.
I was looking at zodiac modules and was trying to understand, all those potential functionalities can they be implemented by working with “standard” zodiac modules or would that require some additional customisations
I also would like more discussion around this point. I’m happy that we have a 2 year runway as part of this proposal, but i think this should the minimum amount that that the DAO retains. I’m not sure if there is an amount of audits/track record etc that would justify putting more than 50% of our treasury in any one entity’s hands.
At the very least, the default should not be to continually allocate excess funds to the endowment. The default should be that funds go to the DAO and then we need to actively decide to continue to allocate funds to the endowment if we are happy with their performance.
The issue with this is that the multisig (by design) won’t have access to DAO or Endowment funds - so it would only be able to do this for new income.
One small piece of custom code is required - a contract that takes the CowSwap order parameters as individual arguments and hashes them onchain. Without that, Zodiac can only approve all CowSwap orders or none, but with it it can approve only specific orders.
I think it makes more sense for the DAO (and the forthcoming treasury management subgroup) to assess this on an ongoing basis, rather than to try and set an exact threshold upfront.
Sure that’s okay, then I will simply state I think the starting ratio (approx. 30% in the DAO, 70% in the endowment) is too high, and so extra funds beyond the runway should not be swept into the endowment automatically as this is not really a neutral position, it means the default will be for the endowment to control an ever increasing percentage of our treasury. Having said that I hope the DAO will also conclude that this starting ratio is too high.
This proposal (about ENS’ core runway) should have been highlighted before the endowment discussion, currently it just seems to be confusing the topic. Understand this is only the first step, but the timing is making it hard.
Not only this, but over the course of this discussion the proposal has seen huge changes:
imo this should be being led by a treasurer or a treasury management subgroup, not one off posts about large amounts of ENS DAO treasury.
EDIT: Agree with below, me highlighting these changes as being the problem with the proposal when Nick edited it after my comments doesn’t make sense, +1, overall just a LOT in a single post with multiple ongoing treasury threads.
EDIT: Been corrected on the Working group vs Subgroup differentiation, but think how this subgroup is selected matters a lot - Making sure it’s non-biased, treasury literate individuals.
The reason there is no mention of a subgroup under the Meta-Governance Working Group is because subgroups are created by Stewards of that Working Group. The Stewards of a particular Working Group may choose use a method of appointment or election for the creation of a subgroup. A subgroup does not require a DAO-wide vote unless prescribed by the Stewards of that Working Group. Subgroups are not included in Working Group Steward elections.
Agree with Leon that the starting ratio is too high. I think most would agree that simple exposure to ETH past the 2 year runway of USDC would be a good bet medium to long term bet and hedge against a black swan event that could occur to the endowment.
Additionally, if one month the protocol fees don’t cover the need for working capital then the excess from prior months could cover it.
Earlier you responded to my message where I announced this rewrite:
Are you saying that the fact a draft proposal has been substantially revised is a reason to reject it? I’m not following your argument here.
The $16M would constitute a 2 year runway if registration revenue went to 0 and the entire endowment vanished; in realistic circumstances it’s a very conservative position. If our income in 2023 was 1/4 of what it was in 2022, we still wouldn’t need to touch the endowment or the runway, and if it was lower the runway would still last us longer than 2 years, as we would only have to make up the shortfall from it.
I think the right question is not “what proportion of funds are in the endowment vs our runway”, it’s “how much do we need set aside as liquid cash, and what should we do with the rest”? Given that a $16M runway would secure us against forseeable events for the short to medium term, I don’t see a lot of point in setting aside more funds doing nothing, when they could be helping to build ENS’s long-term future.
Does seem like the majority of responses here are slight objections at minimum.
I would propose this vote shouldn’t happen why Steward elections are going on (starting in ~3 days) considering the stewards are directly involved in this vote.
Also to confirm, the social vote would be around:
This statement: “The DAO shall at all times aim to keep funds equivalent to 24 months expenditures available”
This number: $16,000,000 USD
This structure: On an ongoing basis and at least monthly, the DAO shall ‘sweep’ newly earned revenue collected by the .eth registrar contract.
As well as being a early vote on the ETH > USDC conversion and Steward responsibilities.
There’s been discussions around amount and strategy, but I haven’t seen outright objections. There is a real risk of analysis paralysis; there is not going to be a solution that everyone is happy with; our job is to find the best compromise.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. The only involvement is a couple of mentions of “Lead Steward”, and their role is administrative. Why would it be necessary to delay this until after the elections?
I also misspoke with “Lead Steward” and meant to specify “DAO Secretary”; I’ll edit that.
The social vote is on the whole EP. The things you list are part of that, yes.
This is the justification behind all of the decisions recently on treasury management which scares me.
I’m saying this is the DAO treasury we’re talking about and one of the most important things we can vote on, being purposeful around when votes are happening (like two treasury management proposals at once) and who is involved in them (like the stewards involved in this process being up for re-election in 72 hours) really matter.
Taking months to decide on how to spend tens of millions of dollars seems fine, I’m more worried about these decisions being rushed than analysis paralysis.
