With the shared goal of benefiting Gitcoin, Glo Dollar, and the millions of people affected by extreme poverty, I cast my vote as follows:
Yes to exchange $100k USDC for Glo Dollars
Thank you for your dedication to creating positive changes through innovative and impactful sociocultural experiments.
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness thatâs gone into this thread and willingness to revise. Iâm also a big fan of what youâre building! I am still planning to vote no on the proposal and am signaling this publicly since I currently have not-insubstantial voting power (600k gtc i think.)
Especially as we get ready for GG19, I am noticing a TON of coordination and ops overhead at Gitcoin. This feels like an initiative that adds to that operational overhead (eg - will require product support, grantee education, etc) without substantially impacting our Essential Intents.
That said, if the proposal passes I will gladly support with needed in-product allowlisting, etc.
We were approached by Glo dollar for some sort of offer during GG18 and really was not sure what it was at that point. Also seeing this post a few hours ago. So it doesnât seem like this is exclusively being offered to Gitcoin.
https://twitter.com/glodollar/status/1718991548401283287?s=46&t=_8dkepIOA6H5XhasVM4F9g
And seeing other DAO organizations within Gitcoin are accepting these deals already.
https://twitter.com/kokonutnetwork/status/1717885649003393492?s=46&t=_8dkepIOA6H5XhasVM4F9g
This vote has now been moved to Snapshot.
You can cast your vote here: Snapshot
The vote is live now until November 6th at 16:49 UTC.
Thanks @CoachJonathan for moving the vote to Snapshot, and thanks @ale.k @robioreefeco @kyle and @annika for voicing your support here. If you havenât voted on the snapshot yet, please do 
!
If youâre reading this and still on the fence, hereâs 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. weâre 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 Circleâs reserves are heavily concentrated in BlackRock and Bank of New York Melon.
Youâre 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.
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 Gitcoinâs 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 thatâs why Iâm voting yes.
UPDATE: I re-read the post and saw that thereâs some marketing coordination requested of Gitcoin. Not sure what this would entail, but Iâd 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 thatâs it.
I actually didnât notice that either. Iâm not for this - we are constantly hit up by other orgs looking to use Gitcoinâs legitimacy to promote their project. As fantastic of a project Glo Dollar is, imo this is more of that same behaviour.
Iâd 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 doesnât 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.
@ccerv1 @CoachJonathan our intention definitely wasnât to distract the marketing team from their core focus, to me it just seemed like a logical part of the initiative to share Gitcoinâs contribution to reducing extreme poverty with the world by associating itself with GiveDirectly.
Happy to strike that from the proposal if thatâs preferred :-)!
Regretfully, I voted no on this proposal. I think the project is great and Iâm 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 DAOâs 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 itâs as simple as @ccerv1 is stating then I could be a âyesâ but the more lift needed from us, the more Iâd like it to align to our roadmap.
Glad to hear you think Glo Dollar is gerat and that youâre personally values aligned @Viriya 
!
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
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 isnât exactly easy to have an actual non-sketchy financial institution holding Treasuries and USD for stablecoin reservesâŚ
I looked into Brale.xyz, and there are no real details beyond a sort of spiffy website that doesnât withstand any scrutiny. Are you just trusting that Brale is legitimate and bringing up Circleâs 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?
This snapshot has closed and option 1 âYes swapâ has won.
The full text for the option was: Voting âYesâ 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.
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?
Thanks for looking into Brale.xyz closely @Lunacat! Selecting Glo Dollarâs 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 isnât best in class, although I disagree that it doesnât 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 Braleâs 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 Dollarâs reserves are planned for December (with the first one covering November retroactively). Theyâll 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 weâre working with Brale.
If youâre wondering how Brale is able to do this, itâs 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 Benâs last company, Dwolla.
I hope this addresses your concerns, but please do not hesitate to follow-up if you have further questions
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"
Iâm 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 isnât 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 youâd 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 thatâs 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 âsaferâ 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.
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.
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 âGitcoin = Grantsâ focus for 2024. Although this initiative doesnât fall directly within our core mission, it is in harmony with our broader intents and mission to fund what matters. Glo Dollarâs mission resonates with Gitcoinâs values and objectives.
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:
Weâll 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. Weâll continue to provide updates, especially regarding the use of these funds in our treasury, and weâll revisit our next steps with the Glo Dollars in the next 12 months, as outlined in the original proposal.
Thanks for that thorough update @kyle - weâre super excited this got finalized and that Gitcoin is joining the Glo Consortium. Onwards and upwards !
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 thatâll benefit both our communities.
With the swap completed, Gitcoinâs immediate impact is clear: with time, this $100,000 held in Glo Dollars is enough to lift 5 people out of extreme poverty.
But thereâs a second âperhaps even more importantâ 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 youâd like to keep track of Gloâs trajectory, thereâs 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.
Weâre 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!
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.