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.
The justification here is that the DAO currently has no treasury management plan. This would establish a policy that ensures a generous runway exists at all times.
Getting this passed before the impending endowment allocation proposal is in the best interest of the DAO because it mandates that the DAO can not commit all of its treasury to an investment strategy.
There could be an argument to have a mix of USDC and ETH or reduce the length of the runway, but at its core, this proposal is not a farfetched or innovative idea.
This implies that the timing is rushed to drive an outcome that would otherwise not happen if there wasn’t an election. This is a rational concern not the reality.
I’d suggest a proposal that limits proposals during the last month of terms, but then you just create a two-month lame duck period each year.
The DAO has been around over a year and we still have no treasury management plan. How much longer should we wait?
In general I’m fine with “this is going too fast”, but it should come with concrete examples of things that we need to slow down to do, or a concrete alternative plan. A vague “feels rushed” with no details is just an invitation to delay without changing the outcome.
Nobody is planning to spend tens of millions of dollars.
You mean like me explicitly outlining I think this vote should wait until after the steward election? Or that the last proposal shouldn’t have used ranked choice voting?
Because currently you quoting single words i’m posting to prove a point:
when clearly we’re talking about converting the treasury from ETH > USDC. Doesn’t achieve anything.
I’m more than happy to make a proposal on treasury management, but it would clearly and only define converting x amount of ETH to USDC. It would not outline a conversion, a ‘sweep’, a pledge to the endowment, etc, etc, etc.
I already responded to your request that it wait until after the elections to ask why you think that is an important criteria. What will the elections change about our need to manage the treasury?
You suggested we were “planning to spend tens of millions of dollars”. That’s not what is happening. I don’t see how pointing that out is unproductive.
You’re welcome to put forward such a proposal. I’m not sure what purpose is addressed by pretending this is a one-time thing, though, rather than addressing the ongoing need to do this on a regular basis.
Greetings ENS community! I’m Cameron Winklevoss, the Co-Founder of Gemini. We’ve always been big fans of the ENS project. Gemini listed $ENS in Dec 2021 and has featured it on Cryptopedia, our crypto educational resource. It’s great to see the DAO contemplating a more robust treasury management process.
With that said, I would like to put forth a request with respect to the following:
We’d love for the community to consider including the Gemini dollar (GUSD) alongside USDC and DAI as a stablecoin option in its primary timelock account. We believe this increased diversification of centralized stablecoin issuers further reduces counterparty concentration risk for ENS. The Maker Community recently moved $500m into a GUSD PSM for these same reasons (proposal here).
More info on Gemini and GUSD
Gemini Trust Company, LLC, the issuer of GUSD, is a New York trust company regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). There are no fees to create or redeem GUSD 1:1 USD on the Gemini platform and Gemini covers all gas fees to withdraw on-chain. The underlying dollars of GUSD are held at FDIC-insured banks, in money-market funds, and in US Treasury bills. Attestations related to the underlying dollars are published monthly by an independent registered accounting firm — BPM LLP — and GUSD’s Ethereum smart contract was launched in September 2018 and has been audited by Trail of Bits. ETH/GUSD and ETH/BTC pairs are available for trading on Gemini.
I don’t think there is analysis paralysis going on here. I think enough people have expressed discontent with the amount of money going to one manager at first that it is reasonable to amend that part of the proposal before going to a vote. If it isn’t then what is the kind of threshold you are looking for?
The amount has already been reduced from what was originally proposed in EP2.2.4, and ratified in EP2.2.5 with the selection of Karpatkey. If people still object, I’d like to hear what they think is a reasonable amount, and what we should do with the rest of the money. I don’t see much point in sitting on funds that we don’t need for the forseeable future and having them do nothing, when we could be building an endowment that ensures the long-term future of ENS.
