I agree with @ccerv1âs on all the points (as so often). Glo seems a great team and ++ reputation, GiveDirectly is one of the best out there, on risks: indeed, all extra info is very, very welcome so an informed decision can be made here.
Really good point also about the total TVL of Glo, it is pretty low, so we cannot risk too much here wrt liquidity.
What could maybe be an alternative is diversifying a symbolic part of the Gitcoin Matching funds. This doesnât require a DAO vote afaik, although we do vote on matching pool payouts.
In this sense it could be worth having a quick vote, as it wouldnât be part of the core DAOs treasuryâs diversification. (crf Carlâs final meta point) or it could just be a CSDO decision.
Swapping 5-10% of this would be a very nice sum already, and would also be a signal to our community.
I personally believe the Grants Program should embody core web3 community values as Gitcoinâs âflagship programâ, so this would be a step in the right direction and be practicing what we preach. By supporting Glo Dollar, we are supporting public goods simply by diversifying our own matching pool holdings.
Even if this is just 50K, it will help Glo Dollar on its mission, and Gitcoin with its vision.
Wondering if @Sov@M0nkeyFl0wer or @kyle have any thoughts on it.
Thank you for the proposal @garm. +1 to some of the comments that @ccerv1 has about the Glo team. However I do share the concerns which @essemharris highlights and @krrisis makes an interesting point about using Glo as a part of the Gitcoin product offering. Building on this idea, will Glo be interested in using Quadratic Matching and Grants Stack to distribute the Glo yield between a plethora of public good intiatives as opposed to a single org?
Reserves are all managed by brale.xyz with a self assertion published on https://brale.xyz/stablecoins/usdglo. We have audit rights on these reserves and together with a big 4 auditor are working towards a best in class audit - unfortunately it will take quite some time to complete this work. More on our relationship with Brale here.
Ramping up the amount of Glo Dollar held over time is a good idea - also makes sense from a diversification strategy perspective! Ultimately our hope is that as TVL and trust in Glo Dollar grows, the ecosystem embraces Glo Dollar in its entirety and holds the majority of their stablecoins in Glo Dollar. Baby steps.
I like @krrisisâ idea to start with Gitcoin Matching funds, and weâd love to work towards distributing Gitcoin Matching funds to grantees in Glo Dollar as well. Thatâs in line with the larger vision of what weâre trying to achieve. Some Glo Consortium members are already converting some of the DAI they receive as part of the GG18 round into Glo Dollar. We love to see that happening, so I would love to explore how we can make Gitcoin Matching funds denominated in Glo Dollar happen for future rounds!
@garm, I want to thank you for taking the time to write this proposal and to answer questions here in the forum. Glo Dollar seems like a very exciting project and Iâm glad youâre working on it.
That said, I do not believe it is wise to diversify Gitcoinâs treasury into Glo Dollars. I do not support this proposal and, if it goes to a vote, I will vote against it.
While you are right that having Gitcoinâs treasury 100% denominated in USDC is a risk, it is also a risk to diversify into a new, so-far untested alternative. Given where we are as a DAO, the most prudent thing is to keep the treasury in USDC and find other ways to support Glo Dollar as a values-aligned project. Speaking more broadly, Gitcoin needs to be focusing in on the areas where we can have the largest impact (Passport, Grants Stack, and Allo). That unfortunately means turning down other opportunities, even when theyâre as exciting as this one.
Please donât take this as a lack of enthusiasm for Glo Dollar. I am personally excited about this project and the tremendous progress youâve already made.
Would like to echo @0xZakk 's comments! While Iâm personally a fan of GloDollar, I donât support diversifying the Gitcoin treasury into GloDollars and would vote agains this proposal.
Aside from the risk of relying on a new product, we are currently leveraging our USDC reserves to pay expenses while the GTC token has a depressed price. I donât think that most of our creditors would accept payment in GloDollars given current liquidity levels and that strategy may not meet GloDollarâs goals, either.
Personally I got a message in my DMs about this Glo token during GG18 & totally thought it was a scam token.
Still not sure what Glo is but I thought that was an awful way to initiate a conversation with prospective projects that may actually be interested in the product.
Thanks for your candid feedback as to why you do not support this proposal @0xZakk and @meglister as well as your personal support of the Glo Dollar initiative!
I 100% understand your thinking and hesitations, and theyâre very much in line with feedback we get on a daily basis: most people are hesitant to switch to a new stablecoin until it is ubiquitous because of perceived âunknown-unknownsâ of an âuntestedâ alternative. This presents a paradoxical cold start problem to us, as Glo Dollar will not become ubiquitous until at least 3.5% of the population switches.
Of course, we donât get to adoption by 3.5% of crypto users overnight, we need to start with the 0.1% of crypto users and organizations with the strongest mission & values alignment. I like to think Gitcoin is within that 0.1% given its mission to support regenerative digital public goods, and that because of this alignment Gitcoin can very effectively leverage Glo Dollarâs impact as part of its own marketing and branding. To illustrate, the potential impact is big:
If Glo Dollar captures 1% of the current stablecoin market, we generate enough money for GiveDirectly to lift an estimated 62,000 people out of extreme poverty.
At 5% market share, thatâd be 310,000.
Isnât that exactly the kind of real-world impact weâre striving for in crypto? Available to us at the cost of no one, except Circle and Tether.
@0xZakk Iâd love to explore what other ways to support Glo Dollar we can come up with together that you would be supportive of. Would diversifying matching pool funds instead of treasury funds as suggested by @krrisis be a viable alternative? Or perhaps reducing the 500k to a smaller amount and/or doing multiple swaps over the course of a year makes more sense?
At this stage in Glo Dollarâs growth holding any amount of Glo Dollar already helps - some Glo Consortium members start with 5% of their treasury or a single $10k buy, for instance.
Finally, I want to emphasize that weâd actually be stoked if Glo Dollars are being used to pay creditors, or even converted back to USDC when necessary @meglister! This very much fits with our vision of Glo Dollar being a stablecoin thatâs being used to power real world goods and services, of which payroll is a great example. Note that we can facilitate 1:1 swaps from Glo Dollar to USDC.
Iâm less inclined to support this because the matching pool is not Gitcoinâs money. We donât think of it as a source of money that we have access to because this is a pool of funds people have donated and contributed to for the explicit purpose of being used to fund matching pools. I appreciate and want to encourage the creativity when thinking of ways Gitcoin and Glo Dollar can work together. But touching the matching pool is a non-starter for me.
Itâs not really about the amount for me. First, the risk of diversifying into a new stable coin isnât worth it to me. I just donât believe itâs prudent for Gitcoin to engage in active treasury management at all. Second, Gitcoin is focused on building tools for fund public goods: the grants program, Passport, Grants Stack, and Allo. Thatâs already a huge surface area and the best thing we can do as a DAO is continue to focus on these as the places we can have the most impact and trust the larger ecosystem around us to develop solutions for other problems.
So itâs a No from me for any diversification of the treasury or matching pool. But that is not a No to a collaboration between Glo Dollar and Gitcoin, so long as that collaboration is mutually aligned with what the grants program, Passport, Grants Stack, and/or Allo.
Thanks @0xZakk - makes sense on not wanting to touch any funds within the matching pool that are donated by individuals with a specific purpose.
While I agree that focus is of utmost importance and I understand your position, personally I do think that diversifying oneâs treasury is a sensible thing to do in order to (a) ensure continuity in being able to build tools for funding public goods and (b) strengthen Gitcoinâs positioning as a champion of fostering a better crypto ecosystem. Especially given that diversifying stablecoin holdings is a very low effort task to complete.
I appreciate you being supportive of collaboration between Glo Dollar and Gitcoin though, and will think about other great ways that we can support the grants program, Passport, Grants Stack and/or Allo.
Hey @garm thanks for starting this conversation and all of your thoughtful responses.
This proposal meets quorum to actually go to a vote. Iâm curious if you wanted to make any amendments to your proposal or if you wanted it to go to a vote as is. This proposal also doesnât have to go to a vote if you donât want it to.
Thanks @CoachJonathan! Iâm working on a slightly amended proposal that weâd like to go to a vote this week - what is the best way to move forward with posting this?
Apologies for the delays in weighing in, but perhaps a few suggestions to get this to a vote.
A couple of key considerations:
Change the request to have USDC come from the Matching Pool instead of from Treasury. the Matching pool is a large sum that we rely on to fund public goods, which are only spent when Grants Rounds are run. This means, there is no tension to allocate these tokens for contributor work. Said differently, we wont need to reward contributors in GLO dollars if we use the matching pool.
Lower the amount to $100k USDC. This is still a sizable first test in growing the partnership, and should offer enough funding to outline the impact the swap will have. I am slightly surprised that 1% of the total stable coin market would only support 30k people. Perhaps that is 1% of the Gitcoin treasury, and not the total market that is reference in this post?
Consider creating a derivative that supports Public Goods instead of GiveDirectly (ie, align the value to our communities interest). We know our community cares deeply about public goods funding, and subsets of our community care about other do-good initiatives. If there was a stable coin where yield was made available for public goods funding, that would be more compelling (for me at least).
Set a time period for when this funding may be returned to USDC, or set social expectations for when / how we might unwind if needed. Not knowing how to unwind can lead to hurt feelings in the future and it would be great to be aligned on what the ârip cordâ options might be for the community.
Really appreciate you posting this, and with those changes, I would vote yes on the proposal. Experimentation is still important in our ecosystem and I feel 100k from the matching pool is a small enough experiment to both matter for GLO, but also derisk large downside for Gitcoin.
Thanks for your feedback @kyle - Iâll be sharing a revised proposal later today and will incorporate suggestions 1, 2 and 4.
With regards to (3) weâre sticking with funding GiveDirectly at this moment in time as:
We want to run a lean operation thatâs solely focused on building the best stablecoin,
Extreme poverty eradication through unconditional cash transfers uniquely combines extreme scalability, very low overhead funding and non-crypto-audience appeal - which is vital to make our interest-on-assets model work
GiveDirectly has 10+ years of experience running cash transfer programs in a highly transparent way
Unfortunately it looks like I can no longer edit my original post.
Given that the revisions are quite substantial, I was wondering if it might be clearest for voters to start a new topic and close this one? If thatâs a no-go also happy to just post an addition to this thread, but I imagine that may become confusing to new readers
in line with the larger vision of what weâre trying to achieve. Some 
