Proposal Information
Proposal summary: A moderate stream of funds (2,500 ANT/week) to fund the Executive Sub-DAO
Previous work on the proposal area:
The Executive Sub-DAO was bootstrapped by the Aragon Association with $25,000 worth of funding that has largely already been budgeted to pay for community contributions (accounted via SourceCred) and to bootstrap new initiatives.
Previously, a CFDAO was deployed and operated to provide a similar function for the community. It was shut down at the same time that the Floc and NEST programmes were, for reasons related to cost-cutting and a desire for greater product focus.
Proposal description:
The proposal enables any ANT holder with the required collateral to start a stream of funds from the Main DAO’s treasury (the Investment Vault) to the Executive Sub-DAO’s treasury (the Operations Vault), using SuperFluid.
This stream is set at 2,500 ANT / week (roughly equivalent to $50,000 month at the time of writing) or 14.88 ANT per hour. The stream also requires a 4 hour initial deposit of 59.53 ANT.
Upper and Lower Thresholds:
To prevent excessive accumulation or depletion, the proposal also enables any ANT holder to stop the stream if the funds in the Executive Sub-DAO surpass the equivalent of $150,000 USD, and to resume the stream if the funds go below $50,000 USD.
Proposal Rationale:
The Executive Sub-DAO’s mission is providing small pockets of easy access funding to community contributors and covering operational expenses as needed. Having to recurringly ask for funds from the Main DAO takes time away from working on this mission. Equally, having a large lump sum would create a temptation to make larger grants or otherwise risks confusing the mission of the Executive Sub-DAO. As such, a moderate but recurring stream enables the Sub-DAO to best serve the community.
A risk in this approach is diverting too much from a focus on the product. However, the fact that the Executive Sub-DAO is dogfooding creates incentives for focusing on product fixes as the pain points are felt directly. Also, part of the team partakes in strategy conversations with the Aragon Association, providing a bridge for knowledge sharing and strategic alignment. Finally, the precedent and warning that the CFDAO represents is well understood by the current Executive Sub-DAO members to avoid repeating that path.
Rationale for using Streams:
Streams enable recurring funding for the Executive Sub-DAO with minimal governance overhead (one proposal enables continuous funding).
And compared with pre-approved recurring transfers, stream accounting is rather simple using streams, as outflows are subtracted from inflows in the SuperFluid UI. Any surplus accumulated is then easy to budget as a reserve runway in case the inflows ceases or as an additional budget for 1-off grants. This is essentially automated accounting that’s reconciled by the second!
For context, see the literature on Beyond Budgeting that’s been revolutionising financial practice in the traditional world for over a decade and paving the way for similar practices in DAOs: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/finance/beyond-budgeting/
Rationale for using SuperFluid:
Compared to other stream suppliers (e.g Sablier), SuperFluid doesn’t require the lump sum of funds to be deposited before a stream is started. Equally SuerFluid streams are set without a fixed end-date. These two properties are essential for our use case as the Main DAO is currently funded using a Stream and as such won’t have availability of the funds to make any lump-sum transfers until later on and then we’d still be in a position of having to request another stream to be started over and over, creating significant governance overhead.
Limitations of any benefits mentioned above:
The current proposal will eventually require amendments as the funding needs of the Executive Sub-DAo evolve in the future.
Equally, the current proposal could lead to an accumulation of funds in the Executive Sub-DAO if this fails to deploy the inflows. As the Main DAO could still choose to cease or reduce the stream to the Executive Sub-DAO, the risk of exercise accumulation is seen as an acceptable trade-off to the governance overhead of constantly having requesting funds and the administrative overhead of budgeting for every cycle.
Expected duration or delivery date (if applicable):
Active until decided otherwise.
Team Information
Names and/or usernames, preferred contact method, and/or relevant social links for team members (Twitter, Github, Aragon Forum, etc.):
danielo#2815
lee0007#8152
Fortunov | Aragon#6678
Funding Information
Amount of ANT requested: 2,500 ANT / week
More detailed description of how funds will be handled and used:
budget breakdown; to be determined monthly by the Executive Sub-DAO members
the key categories are:
- rewards for Ambassadors’ contributions to the Aragon Network via tipping, bounties, and/or SourceCred
- bootstrapping new guilds via Coordinape or other mechanisms
- reviewing funding requests from the community for small pockets of funding ($15,000 or less)
execution approach; the use of funds will be determined by the Executive Sub-DAO members using Lazy Consensus as per the Aragon Network Charter