[PASSED] Exchange $100k USDC in matching pool funds for $100k Glo Dollar

📜 Proposals
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Thanks @CoachJonathan for moving the vote to Snapshot, and thanks @ale.k @robioreefeco @kyle and @annika for voicing your support here. If you haven’t voted on the snapshot yet, please do :slight_smile: !

If you’re reading this and still on the fence, here’s a 5 minute video by co-founder Jasper Driessens on why you should support Glo Dollar, the antipoverty stablecoin

@meglister although saddened by your vote, I understand your reasoning and decision!

Definitely - gitcoin is one of the first we approached, but the goal is to make this a widespread move away from just USDC/USDT. we’re talking to other DAOs and organizations, e.g. Polygon, BanklessDAO, and some DAOs have already adopted Glo.

Circle issues USDC under the cover of the same Money Transmitter Licenses (MTLs) as Brale.xyz issues USDGLO. Both issuers back their stablecoins with cash and short duration US Treasuries and cash equivalents (think money market funds holding short term treasuries). As far as where reserve funds are held, Brale holds reserves across several US financial institutions while Circle’s reserves are heavily concentrated in BlackRock and Bank of New York Melon.

You’re correct that part of the yield is going to Brale. When choosing Brale we compared multiple service providers and Brale offered us the best deal by far - zero yearly costs vs $150k/year minimum. Read more about our relationship with Brale on our website here.

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22

I am voting YES on this proposal. I shared some comments on the original proposal. My concerns were (mostly) addressed via the revised proposal and some of the other commentary here.

Is this on Gitcoin’s critical path? No. Is it the type of thing we should be spilling lots of ink over on governance forums? No. But those are sunk costs. To implement the proposal is just a few transactions.

I want this project to succeed. I want to see more stablecoin projects do cool things with their yield. And I think GiveDirectly is a great cause to support. So that’s why I’m voting yes.

UPDATE: I re-read the post and saw that there’s some marketing coordination requested of Gitcoin. Not sure what this would entail, but I’d like to keep it to the bare minimum if anything. Make the swap. Glo can say Gitcoin is a holder, Gitcoin can say its supporting Glo, etc. Maybe Glo does a blog / twitter thread that Gitcoin copy-edits, but that’s it.

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23

I actually didn’t notice that either. I’m not for this - we are constantly hit up by other orgs looking to use Gitcoin’s legitimacy to promote their project. As fantastic of a project Glo Dollar is, imo this is more of that same behaviour.

I’d be open to abstaining or voting yes if this is can be removed. Glo dollar can promote this as much as they want, but the marketing team should stay 100% focused on their commitments outlined in the S20 Budget Request and should not be taking on requests like this (it also doesn’t specify the amount of co-marketing which is problematic as well since the scope is undefined). Sorry for bringing this up last minute - only just noticed now.

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@ccerv1 @CoachJonathan our intention definitely wasn’t to distract the marketing team from their core focus, to me it just seemed like a logical part of the initiative to share Gitcoin’s contribution to reducing extreme poverty with the world by associating itself with GiveDirectly.

Happy to strike that from the proposal if that’s preferred :-)!

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Regretfully, I voted no on this proposal. I think the project is great and I’m definitely personally values-aligned!! Seeing the back and forth on this proposal, it feels like there are still a few loose ends of how this proposal might explicitly benefit the DAO’s goals and what resources are needed to make this initiative successful.

Happy to change my mind but I would want to understand what exact resourcing would be needed on our side to make this successful. If it’s as simple as @ccerv1 is stating then I could be a “yes” but the more lift needed from us, the more I’d like it to align to our roadmap.

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Glad to hear you think Glo Dollar is gerat and that you’re personally values aligned @Viriya :heart: !

With regards to resourcing it really should be as simple as @ccerv1 is stating with the striking of the marketing aspect of the proposal. Would be delighted if that means you change your no to a yes on the Tally vote :slight_smile:

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Glo Dollar is US regulated and 1:1 backed by a reserve of cash and US Treasuries.

Is there any proof of this assertion? Who is holding these reserve assets? Seems like a great idea, but are we all just blindly trusting that the assets are even there? In this environment it isn’t exactly easy to have an actual non-sketchy financial institution holding Treasuries and USD for stablecoin reserves…

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I looked into Brale.xyz, and there are no real details beyond a sort of spiffy website that doesn’t withstand any scrutiny. Are you just trusting that Brale is legitimate and bringing up Circle’s reliance on two of the largest firms as somehow being a negative to USDC? Where are the reserves held, and how do you know they are indeed there?

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This snapshot has closed and option 1 “Yes swap” has won.

The full text for the option was: Voting “Yes” to swap $100,000 USDC in the matching pool funds for $100,000 Glo Dollars.

Metrics:
2,914 unique votes
~6.5M GTC tokens cast.

Thank you to the author for the proposal and to all the stewards and GTC token holders who cast their vote.

https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/proposal/0xd43f0a882b581e41bea6c0b162f2eab3b425a8cea5cbfa6da65e11a21ce364be

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Curious about this as well. It is surprising that the vote was made without this information.

Would that not have been the priority when researching this topic?

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Thanks for looking into Brale.xyz closely @Lunacat! Selecting Glo Dollar’s issuer was a highly important decision to us. We diligenced Brale and chose them among a number of candidate issuers, including well-known US custodians.

I agree that their public website isn’t best in class, although I disagree that it doesn’t withstand any scrutiny. On their website you find their NMLS ID (#2376957) with which you can verify their money transmitter licenses: https://www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org/EntityDetails.aspx/COMPANY/2376957. Money transmitter licenses have to be obtained on a state-by-state basis, i.e. Brale went to tens of separate diligence processes (a multi-million dollar investment).

The MTLs require Brale to have recurring audits from third party firms which are reviewed by state regulators. This includes the reserve backing of issued stablecoins. It also includes Brale’s own financial condition, compliance audit, penetration testing, SOC2 audit, and smart contract audit. So Brale is definitely regulated, and you can verify this yourself.

In addition to the oversight from state regulators as described above, public third party attestations for Glo Dollar’s reserves are planned for December (with the first one covering November retroactively). They’ll be published at https://brale.xyz/stablecoins/USDGLO. The Glo Foundation also has audit rights over Brale.

They are spread across multiple US financial institutions. Brale does not publicly disclose them (makes sense, as most US financial institutions avoid crypto associations these days), but the Glo Foundation knows them. It is a diversified set of robust institutions, and one of the key reasons we’re working with Brale.

If you’re wondering how Brale is able to do this, it’s useful to consider the reputable team. Brale is headquartered in Des Moines, IA where the team has been building fintech products for more than a decade. CEO Ben Milne previously founded Dwolla, a company that facilitates over $50B in transaction volume annually. He also served as advisor to a prominent US government financial agency and was a board member at a regional bank. Brale was seeded by Scott Sandell (New Enterprise Associates), Albert Wenger (USV), and Matthew Prince (Cloudflare), all reputable investors. USV was also an investor in Ben’s last company, Dwolla.

I hope this addresses your concerns, but please do not hesitate to follow-up if you have further questions :slight_smile:

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32

Thanks @CoachJonathan and all the stewards who voted in favor of this proposal! We appreciate your support and willingness to embrace a novel approach to raising funds for a good cause via stablecoins.

We hope this is the start of a fruitful collaboration and that we may inspire others to follow suit. As @ccerv1 said "I want to see more stablecoin projects do cool things with their yield" :heart:

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33

I’m a bit late to the game here but also had a few questions around liquidity and markets, some already mentioned

I see on Coingecko the 24hr trade volume is ~$13k and the only two Uniswap markets have very low liquidity, selling <$100k USDC would more than drain every LP. So using Uniswap currently isn’t an option (for the initial swap or a hypothetical future swap out). I do believe your partner will exchange them 1 to 1 for USDC, but if there was an active/efficient OTC market you’d expect there to be more people leveraging the 1:1 swaps to arbitrage or add to the LPs, given there does seem to be some small fluctuations above/below $1. I expect this initial $100k USDC swap from Gitcoin into Glo would have to be done through this one specific OTC desk yes? And that those funds will go towards providing liquidity for clients doing the opposite trade?

A few sites report the market cap is ~$1m, not sure if that’s accurate but if it is then Gitcoin would be acquiring 10% of the supply. Would either side be concerned with this?

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Are these two alternatives the only ones worth considering? Ie. is the expectation to buy, hold, and then either sell or hold forever? I think there could be some cool ways to utilize the token a bit more, for example paying out matching funds in Glo. Can create more of an ecosystem and utility to it - but I also would have some concerns about liquidity and large sell pressure (grant owners need to pay their bills and fund their projects).

I think this is a really interesting idea and would be a fun experiment if expanded a bit, but I do feel it would be “safer” to take on once Glo Dollar matures more. Either way snapshot vote has passed so excited to see where it goes. Still wanted to ask a few questions though to alleviate any areas of concern.

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34

Update: Completion of USDC for Glo Dollar Exchange and Joining GloConsortium

Following the successful vote to mint $100K GLOUSD, we wanted to updated everyone that this has been completed. Thanks @garm for the proposal and effort to align our two communities. Read on for more details.

Successful Exchange of USDC for Glo Dollar

We are thrilled to announce that Gitcoin has successfully completed the exchange of $100k USDC for Glo Dollars (GLOUSD). This initiative is part of our strategy to diversify and optimize our treasury in ways that align with our ‘Gitcoin = Grants’ focus for 2024. Although this initiative doesn’t fall directly within our core mission, it is in harmony with our broader intents and mission to fund what matters. Glo Dollar’s mission resonates with Gitcoin’s values and objectives.

Gitcoin’s Involvement in Glo Consortium

Concurrent with this exchange, Gitcoin has also joined the Glo Consortium. The Glo Consortium is a collective focused on harnessing the potential of Glo Dollar to address global challenges. By joining this consortium, Gitcoin:

  • Expands its Ecosystem Presence: Enters a new collaborative space, broadening our ecosystem presence and engagement.
  • Holds Glo Dollars: Holds Glo Dollars as part of our treasury diversification, supporting Glo Dollar’s unique mechanism aimed at contributing to global social impact.

Future Updates and Community Engagement

We’ll ensure the community is kept informed about any significant updates concerning our role in the Glo Consortium and our Glo Dollar holdings. Your input and engagement are invaluable in these strategic decisions. We’ll continue to provide updates, especially regarding the use of these funds in our treasury, and we’ll revisit our next steps with the Glo Dollars in the next 12 months, as outlined in the original proposal.

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Thanks for that thorough update @kyle - we’re super excited this got finalized and that Gitcoin is joining the Glo Consortium. Onwards and upwards :slight_smile: !

A big thank you to everyone for voting, supporting, sharing feedback, and asking the tough questions. Your input greatly helped us to work toward a better proposal that’ll benefit both our communities.

With the swap completed, Gitcoin’s immediate impact is clear: with time, this $100,000 held in Glo Dollars is enough to lift 5 people out of extreme poverty.

But there’s a second –perhaps even more important– reason why Gitcoin joining our mission means a lot to us. Gitcoin is helping us to get the ball rolling. Spreading the word about Gitcoin holding Glo Dollars and joining the consortium has already resulted in an increase in inbound interest.

If you’d like to keep track of Glo’s trajectory, there’s a section right below the hero on our website glodollar.org showcasing the following: market cap, Glo holders, people lifted out of extreme poverty, and amount donated to GiveDirectly.

We’re already ruminating on the next steps in the Glo Dollar x Gitcoin journey and will share more about that soon. If you have any questions or ideas for further collaboration please feel free to reach out to me!

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Now that this is official I guess we should apply to this round on our own platform, Gitcoin is highly elegibile as far as I can see.

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We would love to have gitcoin join!

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We just announced Glo Dollar 2.0 on Twitter: https://x.com/glodollar/status/1775151425863213430

Holders of Glo Dollar can now choose to support other causes than just alleviating extreme poverty, including Web3 Public Goods!

Curious what y’all think, any feedback very welcome :slight_smile:

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