Authors: @Stastny & @SamB from Llama
Hey all - @Stastny from Llama here. Posting below some treasury runway analysis we pulled together for the DAO.
Bottom Line / TL;DR
According to our analysis, GitcoinDAO has the following runway under the scenarios outlined below (assuming current expense rate):
-
No Treasury Diversification
- 9.3 years of runway if token price remains flat
- 4.7 years of runway if token price falls 50%
- 0.9 years of runway if token price falls 90%
-
$3m Treasury Diversification
- 9.3 years of runway if token price remains flat
- 4.8 years of runway if token price falls 50%
- 1.1 years of runway if token price falls 90%
-
$15m Treasury Diversification
- 8.9 years of runway if token price remains flat
- 5.0 years of runway if token price falls 50%
- 1.8 years of runway if token price falls 90%
For more details on the runway analysis, you can access the report here.
Purpose of the Analysis
The latest $3m treasury diversification proposal is live on Snapshot.
In light of those discussions, we aim to provide an illustrative treasury runway analysis under various diversification, operating, and market price scenarios. Specifically, the runway analysis serves to inform the community regarding the impact of:
- Go-forward decisions about expenses
- The potential upside and downside impact of GTC pricing scenarios
- The pros and cons of stablecoin diversification
Treasury Makeup
Including unvested GTC currently held in the Gitcoin Vesting wallet, Gitcoin’s treasury stands at nearly ~$134m. The vast majority of this value is denominated in GTC, greater than 99.5%, as Gitcoin currently holds ~$650k in stablecoins and other tokens. Any diversification initiative, whether via venture capital raise or OTC, will come at a discount to today’s prices given fundraise precedent and likely sell pressure. For context, GTC is currently trading at $2.63 as of 7/5/22 close, down nearly 90% from the all-time high last November.
We estimate that a $15m stablecoin diversification initiative would lower the overall value of the treasury to $128m. This assumes $12m sold to venture investors at a 30% discount to today’s price and the remaining $3m sold OTC at an average 5% discount.
Kyle from Gitcoin is leading the strategic raise conversations with investors. In current market conditions, that has been difficult to pull through but we’re assuming that it is still possible for the purpose of this analysis.
Treasury Runway - Assumptions
There are four key assumptions to consider when estimating Gitcoin’s runway:
1. Treasury Make Up - Any diversification initiative will serve to decrease Gitcoin’s runway at today’s prices while raising its downside floor. The analysis assumes three treasury makeup scenarios: Status Quo (no diversification), a $3m OTC stablecoin diversification, and a $15m VC + OTC stablecoin diversification.
2. Average Monthly Expenses - Season 14 budget indicated monthly spend of ~$1.2m. The attached analysis sensitizes this spend to include a 50% decrease and 50% increase in average monthly spend.
3. Expense Denomination Breakdown - The analysis assumes that stablecoin assets are used first to fill expense needs with GTC backfilling the remainder.
4. GTC Price - While predicting future prices and market environment is impractical, analyzing various average future GTC price scenarios is instructive. The attached analysis includes three different average illustrative future prices for GTC: $0.25, $2.63, and $5.00. $0.25 is a GTC bear case, $2.63 was the current GTC price as of the time of this analysis, $5.00 represents a ~100% premium to today’s price.
Treasury Runway - Findings
Under existing conditions (no diversification, $1.2m monthly spend, today’s market prices) we estimate that Gitcoin has ~9.5 years of runway with the ability to stretch that out to ~14 years with significant expense cuts. An extreme bear scenario (GTC @ $0.25) would cut this runway down to less than a year.
The aforementioned $3m diversification scenario would do little to change these figures given the current size of assumed Gitcoin monthly spend. $3m in stablecoin would serve to fund DAO operations for roughly a quarter and runway would not be significantly affecte.
The aforementioned $15m diversification scenario would fund current operations for just over a year and decrease overall runway assuming a stable GTC price of $2.63 by roughly 3-6 months. However, if GTC price were to fall to $0.25, the diversification would nearly double runway in, providing nearly 2 years worth of capital to fund operations.
Note: All figures current as of UTC Close 7/5/2022.