Incident Regarding Mistransferred Treasury Funds

[Jimi]

Sorry to hear about this!

How do you all feel about doing test transactions for anything above a certain amount?

Obviously it’s a balance between this not slowing down ops too much & securely avoiding situations like this.

What do you think the number would be that enables a nice balance between those things? 50K? 100K?

[CryptoReuMD]

Yes my friend. I’m fully engaged with the team that it’s been growing for the good of the community. With a very aligned and ethical responsabilities as far as i can say and i know from all the tagged ones in this post.
I’d love to work with an internal workforce could be great, and a big opportunity to learn and discuss about what it’s the best for the different communities. As we can see in L2Beat for the pie that its being very popular we can have a spider web graphic with eight different values and align the projects inside.

[connor]

@CoachJonathan

I just posted the new request to Tally here: Tally | Gitcoin Proposal

This may not be the ideal place to share this but I’m not aware of discussion on this vote happening anywhere else, so posting here. I voted “Against” on this proposal - some people have reached out privately to learn why, so to be transparent I’ll also post in public.

First off, let me say I absolutely think we need to find a way to keep the MMM team compensated for both past and future work, I don’t want to see the workstream stuck with $0 for the season, and regardless of my vote I’m confident the proposal will pass given it’s basically at quorum already.

But I voted against it for a few reasons:

• There hasn’t really been any actual discussion (in public or that I’ve seen) about the issue, how to resolve it (financially) and the next steps, it was “hey this big mistake happened” and then “Here’s a new budget request”. The proposal says MMM “will be staggering their budget request from the rest of Gitcoin” going forward - what are the financial and operational implications of this?
• I don’t feel like any real ownership has been taken over the mistake (and I don’t think it’s Tally’s fault)
• I am still a bit unsettled about the $100k+ sent from the CSDO multisig to MMM of which there still hasn’t been any acknowledgment of it, unclear whether that was free gift or if it’s supposed to be paid back by this budget, if that will happen again, etc
• IMO some key stakeholders should probably abstain from voting on this

But most importantly with so little discussion or debate, does this go and set the precedent that any time in the future funds are lost, workstreams can just turn around and request more and expect to get it?

I hesitated to vote no outright because i knew it would ruffle some feathers, but frankly, it looks pretty clear this is going to pass regardless so it’s more of an ideological pushback. I <3 the MMM team and want the DAO to support you all but I also would like more transparency, accountability, and to establish clear processes.

@thedevanshmehta

Will the reduced amount negatively affect the workstream ? I wouldn’t want them penalized for no fault of theirs.

+1 need more info on workstream impact, new budget items, other funding sources in the interim (csdo) etc

@thedevanshmehta

Ideally it would have been nice to have a snapshot vote before the tally vote, with the options of keeping the same budget, increasing it or reducing it (with the multi-sig signers involved abstaining from the vote)

+100

[CoachJonathan]

@thedevanshmehta

Will the reduced amount negatively affect the workstream ? I wouldn’t want them penalized for no fault of theirs.

No, this should not negatively impact the workstream. Because of how MMM operates, MMM often ends up with a large surplus at the end of each season. Looking ahead, it is fairly easy to estimate that MMM will come under the amount that they’ve requested, hence the lower budget request.

@thedevanshmehta

Ideally it would have been nice to have a snapshot vote before the tally vote, with the options of keeping the same budget, increasing it or reducing it (with the multi-sig signers involved abstaining from the vote)

I think this is worth a larger discussion on how to treat situations like this. Technically a Snapshot vote was done to guarantee these funds, and now we had this situation + MMM is requesting a reduced amount that still will get them to the end of the season.

Maybe to move this conversation forward - what do you think are the pros/cons of running another Snapshot vote? What is the intention of doing that and what outcome are we hoping to achieve? Maybe let’s start there and we can get to the bottom of some sort of procedure we can put in place (and codified in our governance manual that I shared in a separate post).

[CoachJonathan]

Appreciate the thoughtful post, Connor. Would love to address a few of your comments and use your post to springboard the discussion that you’re seeing has been missing.

@connor

There hasn’t really been any actual discussion (in public or that I’ve seen) about the issue, how to resolve it (financially) and the next steps, it was “hey this big mistake happened” and then “Here’s a new budget request”. The proposal says MMM “will be staggering their budget request from the rest of Gitcoin” going forward - what are the financial and operational implications of this?

I think what would be helpful here is an actual discussion starter, maybe:

• Some questions to get us started pondering how to handle future situations like this
• A strawman for others to comment on and eventually arrive at a satisfactory conclusion

This would be super helpful to advancing the conversation.

@connor

The proposal says MMM “will be staggering their budget request from the rest of Gitcoin” going forward

I wouldn’t worry too much about this comment - this is almost a sidebar convo and Laura will be posting about this in the coming days to explain why MMM’s budget is not going up at the same time as everyone else’s.

@connor

• I don’t feel like any real ownership has been taken over the mistake (and I don’t think it’s Tally’s fault)

What would have you feel like “real ownership” has been taken? Are there any specific actions you’d like to see?

@connor

I am still a bit unsettled about the $100k+ sent from the CSDO multisig to MMM of which there still hasn’t been any acknowledgment of it, unclear whether that was free gift or if it’s supposed to be paid back by this budget, if that will happen again, etc

Apologies for not acknowledging this in the gov forum and only discussing this in CSDO channels. Funds were borrowed from the CSDO multisig in order to be able to pay contributors at the end of the month.

As soon as MMM receives funds for work completed in September, the full amount will be sent back to the CSDO multisig. @Sov had already flagged this and we will be creating new procedures around the use of the CSDO multisig moving forward to ensure transparency (that will ultimately be documented in the Governance Manual.

@connor

But most importantly with so little discussion or debate, does this go and set the precedent that any time in the future funds are lost, workstreams can just turn around and request more and expect to get it?

Would love your support on leading this discussion! If you have a place for us to start that would be super helpful and consider me your partner in driving this conversation and documenting its outcome for future implementation.

[carlosjmelgar]

I voted “Abstain” because my self delegated tokens wont make an impact on the decision and would be more visible in grey than in red.

Connor raises many valid concerns.

@connor

I don’t feel like any real ownership has been taken over the mistake (and I don’t think it’s Tally’s fault)

I thought these severance payments bundled with Devconnect expenses was a result of the mistake, but it is unclear. These could have been separated in sub bullet points for clarity.

@connor

I am still a bit unsettled about the $100k+ sent from the CSDO multisig to MMM of which there still hasn’t been any acknowledgment of it, unclear whether that was free gift or if it’s supposed to be paid back by this budget, if that will happen again, etc

+1 - With more clarity on the use of these funds, this vote does seem rushed and prevents proper procedures to be put in place through DAO participation. The idea of a DAO Guardians sounds redundant now that the DAO Infra Workstream (?) proposal (?) went up.

@jengajojo

I second this and is absolutely necessary from a decentralisation pov! For the actual implementation, while I have designed and delivered many delegates programs myself, for gitcoin we can perhaps start with a ‘Delegates QF Round’ each quarter or so and iterate from there?

Bullish on this idea. Leaning in favor of this being a community led initiative (as it aligns with new EIs), rather than this being caked into another workstream’s roadmap.

[CryptoReuMD]

@jengajojo

I second this and is absolutely necessary from a decentralisation pov! For the actual implementation, while I have designed and delivered many delegates programs myself, for gitcoin we can perhaps start with a ‘Delegates QF Round’ each quarter or so and iterate from there? What do you think

Up to. I think that self delegation sometimes it’s indifferent for the protocol but if we raise hands in the same way it’s more visible and valuable.

[thedevanshmehta]

@CoachJonathan

Looking ahead, it is fairly easy to estimate that MMM will come under the amount that they’ve requested, hence the lower budget request.

Thanks for the clarification, i was under the mistaken impression that gitcoin management reduced MMM’s budget for no fault of theirs and it would adversely impact their functioning.

@CoachJonathan

Technically a Snapshot vote was done to guarantee these funds, and now we had this situation + MMM is requesting a reduced amount that still will get them to the end of the season.

Yes my thinking was that the snapshot vote was for allocating a certain amount X. Changing that to another amount Y requires a fresh vote as there are budgetary implications.

[owocki]

gm all,

here is my proposal to prevent an incident like this from happening in the future: Gitcoin WalletGuard 🛡️

[CoachJonathan]

Hey everyone, I started a new thread to discuss governance we can put in place to create more clarity around how to handle situations like this moving forward.