I copy pasted create this voter guide from my old war buddy, @lefterisjp which was based on @krrisis and @owocki 's guide
It will be short. I am really pressed for time and have spent already a lot of time analyzing all the different proposals and trying to understand what they do, how much money do they need and what does the DAO get from them.
For me the funding requests in general were just too much… way too much. I come from the perspective of Giveth, Commons Stack and Token Engineering Commons and most of these proposals are asking more than their yearly budgets!
Don’t get me wrong, Gitcoin has launched much larger and more successful products than Giveth, Commons Stack and Token Engineering Commons, but I don’t understand how we can justify liquidating so many millions of dollars worth of our token for the next 3 months while watching the price go down 50% this week.
I strongly recommend that the DAO consider the economic repercussions of this… the liquidity is just not there to handle so many requests for so much money, these working groups. I voted no on most of these proposals because I feel they should address the current market conditions and be willing to be lean this quarter.
Requesting 1M for 1 month of work would be fine if you are a huge protocol with clear revenue streams or a solid economic path. But GitcoinDAO has none of that. Costs are just too high across the board, we have a ~30 mil market cap and are in really bad market conditions. Spending 1M a month is too much… but still that is the upper level of what might make sense to spend this quarter as we wind down spending… So that was the budget I was working with.
| Workstream | Recc | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| MMM | No | 800k? needs to be cut in 1/2 for me to vote yes on this budget, needs to scale down. |
| PGF | YES | This is one of the few working groups that is working to make an economic impact on GTC by creating token swaps with other DAOs to build more liquidity and it brings in actual funding, mostly to the Matching pool, but this is still great, I think it can bring in more $$ into the ecosystem than it costs to fund it, that said, i wish it were leaner |
| FDD | TBD | This is a tough one. FDD or some approach like them is needed for sybil defense for gitcoin grants. But it has reserves and needs to get leaner… I will likely vote no without a big change to its scope |
| Kernel | Yes | I think Kernal can be a revenue generator for the DAO, and they cut their budget a lot. I hope they follow through with profit sharing and maintain a strong Gitcoin Brand if this passes, if they don’t i would feel a bit betrayed… but if we reject this, I would totally understand if they cut the Gitcoin branding |
| DCompass | No | We need to cut scope given the market conditions. |
| Kudos | No | We need to cut scope given the market conditions. |
| MC | Yes | Reasonable request, MC is lean mean deving machine I will vote yes. |
| DAO Ops | No | We need this group but nearly 1M is just too much GTC to burn, they plan on hiring 3 new people and paying for lots of side things… this just isn’t the quarter for that, I would love to see them re-propose for 1/2 as much. |
Closing Thoughts
This is tough. It’s a tough position to be in and I hate to be seen as the bad guy saying no to so many people.
I voted yes on the PGF workstream but really would love it if they try to slim down this quarter and save those reserves for most of the year.
I voted no on MMM and People Ops, but only because their budgets were too high, these are important workstreams and they will re-propose with smaller budgets if they fail here, I HOPE.
There are 3 things making me say no so much here:
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The workstreams are asking for too much money across the board. As Stewards we all this governance stuff here pro bono because we believe in the vision. At the same time I am leading the budgets for many other orgs with very constrained funding. These are big teams, value driven and international. They all burn less in a year than most of the workstreams are asking for in a quarter. I don’t know if they all expect American salaries but considering the market conditions I feel a strong urge to say no to all this spending. Hire on upwork. I have found so many amazing people on upwork being paid $10-$15 and hour. They do amazing work.
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No organization can build everything. The past year Gitcoin DAO seems to have tried to build many things, spin off many workgroups and us the stewards have been saying yes, yes, yes to everything. This has to stop and the DAO needs to focus on its core goals. We need a serious budget and to prioritize. We have to say no to things
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Where is the Revenue? Where is the Demand? If we don’t have inflows, how can we justify the outflows? It’s amazing GTC is so high without any utility… hopefully that will change.
I am sorry if this disappoints some people. Let’s survive the bear market and build a strong economy together.
And thx again to @lefterisjp I couldn’t agree more with your Strong no approach.