[Passed]: Disengagement of Avantgarde as Treasury Asset Manager

[owocki]

Summary

This proposal recommends that Gitcoin DAO formally disengage Avantgarde Finance from managing Gitcoin treasury assets and conclude the current treasury management arrangement in an orderly and cooperative manner.

The decision reflects a strategic shift in how Gitcoin intends to manage treasury assets in 2026 and beyond, rather than a judgment on Avantgarde’s general competence or intent. The DAO’s needs, tooling, and risk posture have evolved since the original proposal was approved, and continuing with an intermediary-managed structure no longer aligns with Gitcoin’s strategic direction.

Context

The original Avantgarde engagement was approved to:

• Activate idle treasury assets to earn yield

• Extend runway via DeFi strategies

• Introduce professionalized treasury management and reporting

• Reduce opportunity cost of idle capital

These objectives were reasonable given the context at the time. However, the assumptions underpinning that decision no longer hold.

Rationale for Disengagement

1. Yield Without Intermediaries Is Now Feasible

Gitcoin no longer requires a delegated asset manager to access conservative DeFi yield. Since the approval of the original proposal, the ecosystem has matured:

• Battle-tested protocols now support DAO-native, non-custodial deployment

• Risk-managed yield strategies can be executed directly by DAO-controlled infrastructure

• The marginal value of an intermediary relative to fees and complexity has declined

In short: we can achieve comparable or better outcomes without an asset manager in the middle.

2. Strategic Alignment With 2026-Era Funding and Treasury Models

Gitcoin intends to explore next-generation funding and treasury primitives (including Octant-style mechanisms and adjacent models) that explicitly minimize intermediaries.

Maintaining a manager-controlled treasury structure:

• Constrains experimentation with new funding metas

• Introduces coordination and permission overhead

• Conflicts with Gitcoin’s long-term preference for credibly neutral, protocol-native systems

Disengagement creates strategic flexibility that the current arrangement does not support.

3. Reporting and Transparency Are Insufficient for Tokenholders

Despite being “on-chain auditable,” the current reporting experience has proven inadequate in practice:

• It is laborious for DAO participants to determine current positions and exposures

• Treasury state is not easily legible to tokenholders without specialist tooling

• Governance participants cannot quickly answer basic questions like “where is the money right now?”

4. Loss of Operational Continuity

The original point of contact and relationship owner on the Avantgarde side has moved on. Given the complexity and sensitivity of treasury management, this materially weakens continuity and increases coordination risk.

Rather than re-establishing context under a changed team structure, the DAO prefers to reset its approach.

5. Intentional Strategic Reset

This disengagement is part of a broader “new year, new systems” reset:

• Re-evaluating assumptions made during earlier market conditions

• Simplifying treasury operations

• Reducing dependency on third-party managers

• Aligning treasury mechanics more closely with Gitcoin’s core values

This is a forward-looking decision, not a retroactive critique.

Proposed Actions

1. Terminate Avantgarde’s mandate to manage Gitcoin treasury assets

2. Coordinate an orderly withdrawal of funds from managed strategies, minimizing disruption and unnecessary costs

3. Return all assets to DAO-controlled wallets or governance-approved infrastructure

4. Conclude the relationship amicably, with professional courtesy and no attribution of fault

Gitcoin thanks Avantgarde for their work and collaboration to date. This proposal reflects an evolution in Gitcoin’s treasury philosophy rather than dissatisfaction with any single party. The DAO believes this transition positions Gitcoin to better experiment, iterate, and lead in the next phase of public-goods funding.

Decision

Yes - disengage Avantgarde Finance and return all managed assets to Gitcoin’s treasury

No - keep Avantgarde Finance engaged as Gitcoin’s treasury asset managers

Abstain - choose not to vote on proposal.

[ccerv1]

Makes sense to me, I support this proposal

[LuukDAO]

In favor, as I believe the DAO has the capacity to manage this properly.

Let’s make sure that the basic tasks, such as holding dashboards and regular finance reporting, are executed by Gitcoin contributors + ensure we have some expert oversight when making treasury allocations and yield decisions

[MathildaDV]

I’m in favour of this proposal. I agree with @LuukDAO that the reporting cadence on finances should be released on a more regular cadence, which is up to the Gitcoin team.

[kyle]

I am also supportive of this. I agree that the complexity in managing and optimizing yield for the treasury has been greatly reduced.

[deltajuliet]

As it stands - I’ll be voting no on this proposal.

While the changing of hands at Avantegarde makes sense to improve or change the relationship, without a related plan as to what to do with the funds (moving to another provider or DAO treasury diversification strategy) we’re exposing those funds to volatility and market conditions without a dedicated plan. As proven by even this proposal, if the funds are returned to the timelock the community is looking down the barrel of 3-4+ weeks in order to execute any action that would rebalance the portfolio or take advantage of the market.

@owocki

Reporting and Transparency Are Insufficient for Tokenholders

AG has reported monthly on the funds and I’ve repeatedly presented the location of the funds and their amounts/portfolio. I haven’t seen a further public ask from the community, and the treasury state is also public. You can find the assets here.

@owocki

Return all assets to DAO-controlled wallets or governance-approved infrastructure

Are these being returned to the DAO or the time-lock (as per the voting options)? .. who would be the signers on the DAO controlled wallet if not returned to the time-lock?

@LuukDAO

In favor, as I believe the DAO has the capacity to manage this properly.

I appreciate your confidence here @LuukDAO but I disagree. In the year+ that the funds have been managed by AG, there have been no further proposals on managing the existing funds in the treasury nor any request for information or dashboards related to the org’s funds. This leads me to believe that this vacuum will remain that way until there is a proposed partner, committee/council or strategy.

I can appreciate the strategy in taking back control of the funds but without a plan to maximize the opportunity I think this proposal is only halfway there.

[owocki]

@deltajuliet

AG has reported monthly on the funds and I’ve repeatedly presented the location of the funds and their amounts/portfolio. I haven’t seen a further public ask from the community, and the treasury state is also public. You can find the assets here.

this is only a subset of the assets, where are the rest?

if im a casual consumer of gitcoin information, how would i find this info on an ongoing basis? why do i have to trust avantgarde? how do i see them onchain?

why does the gticoin tally show only $1m of assets? do you think its appropriate to have the wrong information about the state of the treasury in an official source like this?

I haven’t seen a further public ask from the community, and the treasury state is also public.

plenty of ppl asking here. how come no one one this thread can understand where the assets are ? do you think this is a good look for gitcoin that no one can find the assets? why is it even on the community to do investigative work to find the assets?

why wasnt this diligenced when avantgarde proposal was first passed? now all of a sudden we have a high bar for proposals on the other side of the coin?

[owocki]

@deltajuliet

we’re exposing those funds to volatility and market conditions without a dedicated plan.

i havent seen any information about how avantgarde has performed relative to market. i feel like we should have data on performance before blindly believing statements like this

[LuukDAO]

Thanks for providing some well-needed pushback on the thread. Your perspective is valuable and legitimate. I spent some time diving into things to give a more educated perspective.

First, I want to recognize Avantgarde’s work, as they played an important role in providing Gitcoin with the right exposure and guardrails during a year of high volatility in asset prices and overall changes at Gitcoin. Their effort, especially around providing a baseline Strategic Asset Allocation framework, has played a big role in getting Gitcoin to the point where it is now: relatively well-resourced to iterate and grow further despite volatility and market forces. I also believe their Dune Dashboard is quite helpful.

With that said, I do believe the time is ripe for Gitcoin to reassess its stance on Strategic Asset Allocation and yield generation—and that a small core team, with limited to no need for specialized skills or consultants, can manage the reporting and management of the treasury with relatively low overhead.

Strategic Asset Allocation

Below is an overview of the USD / GTC / ETH / Other token breakdown of Gitcoin’s holdings as of December 9th, per Owocki’s sheet. I manually reviewed all of the positions today and can confirm that most numbers are still comparable today, with small 1–5% deviations here and there.

	Value	USD	GTC	ETH	Other
Matching Pool	$13.8M	32,30%	0,3%	59.67%	8.07%
Treasury	$9.4M	72.02%	17.59%	4.73%	5.66%
Combined	$23.2M	48.44%	7.17%	37.34%	7.09%

The first decision for Gitcoin DAO to make is what overall Strategic Asset Allocation strategy it wants to incorporate across its holdings. This decision should be rooted in Gitcoin’s 2026 strategy and long-term plans.

Personally, I would lean toward increasing the overall USD exposure of the matching pool to the 50–55% range to increase budget predictability and Gitcoin’s capacity to generate yield.

Yield Generation

A key question to ask is: Should we be generating yield on our assets? To which I say the answer is 100% Yes.

Below is an overview of the approximate assets Gitcoin holds with Market Minimum APY (lowest risk options) and Low Risk options, showing that not actively yielding will result in at least $600k in missed revenue.

Asset	Approx. Holdings	Risk Free Rate	Yearly RF Returns	Low Risk Rate	Yearly Low Risk Returns
USD	11M	4%	$440K	6.5%	$715K
ETH	8.5M	2.5%	$212.5K	4.5%	$382,5K

The main value provided by Avantgarde at the moment is Yield Generation. When looking at the performance of the MP management, we note that Avantgarde is performing below its projected range of 7–15% APY and currently yielding ~3% on ETH and ~4.5% on USDC. Both are only slightly outperforming the lowest-risk market returns while including extra management and contract risk, and charging a 0.5% management fee and 7.5% performance fee. In short, we would do comparably or slightly better if we just parked our USD in super low-risk strategies such as Aave USDC or Spark Savings and our ETH in stETH.

Another key benefit of holding these assets together in a Gitcoin-controlled Safe is that it makes accounting and reporting much easier, ensuring the correct treasury balances show up in third-party applications.

The next question is: Does it make sense to engage a professional operator to try to realize low-risk but higher-yielding strategies? I would say not for now. However, as someone with 5+ years of yield farming experience who previously ran a DeFi fund, I am confident that the low-risk yields mentioned below can realistically be accomplished and are worth the effort—even when accounting for the minimal extra risk. This should be explored again in the near future.

My Recommended Steps:

1. Align on Strategy: Gitcoin Delegates and Stewards should discuss and align on an overall asset allocation strategy in line with our vision and plans. This could be achieved by voting on a 2026 Strategic Asset Allocation Framework. This framework would include parking the majority of Gitcoin’s yield-bearing tokens in the most adopted, lowest-risk platforms (such as Spark/Aave and Lido).

2. Unwind Positions: Submit the proposals for Avantgarde to unwind the yield positions they manage for Gitcoin, return any funds not under Gitcoin’s direct control, and revoke all access permissions.

3. Execute Swaps: Gitcoin Stewards and Safe signers execute the outlined swaps and deposits to match the Strategic Asset Allocation Framework as accepted by Governance.

4. Transparency & Reporting: Establish live accounting dashboards and quarterly reports created by Gitcoin contributors to ensure thatMatching Pool (MP) and Treasury data are always up-to-date and accessible.

[marco0808]

This proposal correctly identifies that the core issue is no longer access to yield, but how treasury state is understood, explained, and defended by the DAO itself.

One sentence stood out in particular:

“Governance participants cannot quickly answer basic questions like ‘where is the money right now?’”

Removing intermediaries is directionally correct, but it implicitly shifts a new responsibility onto the DAO:

the responsibility to produce deterministic, reproducible, and legible treasury reporting without relying on a third party’s narrative.

“On-chain auditable” is not sufficient in practice.
What matters for governance is:

• A fixed methodology
• Explicit calculation rules
• Clear scope of responsibility
• Outputs that can be independently reproduced from raw on-chain data

In other words, the challenge ahead is not treasury management, but treasury accountability infrastructure.

If Gitcoin is moving toward DAO-native treasury primitives and experimentation, having a neutral, audit-ready reporting layer becomes foundational-not optional.

This proposal is a strong step toward simplification. The next question is how the DAO wants to formalize responsibility and trust once intermediaries are removed.

[Avantgarde]

Hello Gitcoin community,

Following the recent discussions around Avantgarde stepping back from the Matching Pool and Treasury Management mandates, we wanted to share our perspective and clarify a few points that have come up over the past weeks.

• We had a clear reporting duty on the assets we were managing within the Matching Pool. We fulfilled this accurately and provided a Dune dashboard that reflected positions and changes over time.

• The Treasury mandate itself did not include a reporting dashboard as part of the proposal because it was straightforward: assets were deposited into an Enzyme vault with a live, publicly observable oracle, making performance and balances easy to verify.

• At no point did we take custody of the assets. All assets remained under the control of the Gitcoin DAO at all times.

• Some discussion has referenced poor reporting on assets that were outside of our mandate. We were never asked to manage, nor were we able to report on, assets beyond those we had been given permissions to. Those assets sat outside our responsibilities.

• There appears to be a growing view that earning “beta” yield is trivial and can be handled directly by the DAO. The events of Q4 2025 illustrated why this is not always the case: several well-known experienced DeFi managers suffered significant losses due to insufficient risk monitoring, while others avoided losses but faced liquidity constraints during redemptions. Throughout that period, we preserved Gitcoin’s capital, maintained liquidity, and continued to provide transparent and consistent reporting. These outcomes were the result of disciplined risk management rather than simply pursuing yield.

• Across the Matching Pool and Treasury mandates, we generated approximately $500k in annualized returns for Gitcoin. We have shared a concise summary table and happy to answer any questions from delegates directly or offline.

If the proposal passes, one option the DAO may wish to consider is a phased transition to Octant, with assets remaining under Avantgarde’s management during the handover period to reduce opportunity cost.

That said, if the community ultimately votes in favor of this proposal, we fully respect the decision for Gitcoin to proceed independently and genuinely wish the DAO well. Should the community decide at any point to revisit the conversation, we remain open to engaging.

[MathildaDV]

This proposal has passed: Snapshot