P-4: Partnership & Mutual Grant with Gitcoin

Developer DAO is more in need of working capital to hire contributors and establish early frameworks for future contributors.

I 100% agree. Being able to bring on folks like @kempsterrrr full time will go a long way in helping us mature as a org. Defining the financial flexibility we’ll have in terms of the GTC we’ll be required to hold will help us with short-term/long-term budgeting too.

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They were shrewd, they knew the market and tilted the deal in their own favor before you knew what you had. There is nothing in writing and at this point it should be up to the DAO to approve or not, regardless of backroom handshake deals made before you all understood what was on the line.

One of the novelties of a DAO structure is that it makes it easy to raise working capital from your members instead of relying on outside investors. You promised them 5% voting power in a DAO that should be run democratically by its members. Not a good deal for the devs IMO.

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100% - the whole point of a DAO is that you can raise working capital from the members without giving out a large chunk of voting power to an outside entity.

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Valuation is way too low. $CODE is not issued and has not even been thru price discovery. The price will pop and then find its market value. After that, if Gitcoin wants a large voting stake they can buy the tokens off the market like everyone else. The entire point of a DAO is its ability to raise working capital from its members and skip the “pre-sale” discounts to VCs and other interested parties.

DAOs make comparisons to Y-Combinator valuation models moot, because we can raise working capital trivially from members. Even raising a debt round from members would be better than this.

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it is good here,it is easy to come here

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Been reading through the comments here. I want to echo a bit on the comment regarding the use of the GTC. Mainly I wanna touch on a couple topics:

  • Using the GTC for operating cost of the DAO (2 FTEs, domains, etc)
  • Determination process of partnerships/sponsorships weighted against overall goals

Using the GTC for operating cost of the DAO (2 FTEs, domains, etc)

This is a no brainer for any organization, and I think no one opposes this as an overall use case for the GTC. I think what (for me at lease) are things that need a little more nuance or at least more exposure is how we went about determining what the operational costs are, and we determined which costs the DAO would take on. Extreme example but could I (or any DAO member) quit my job and work full time for the DAO? There’d probably be some discussion or process to making that decision.

Process of partnerships/sponsorships weighted against overall goals

This is a little more hazy to discuss, but I’d imagine Gitcoin is not and will not be the only partner or potential partner for the D_D. The value proposition of hundreds of developers actively working in web3 is a big leverage point for partnerships, and that doesn’t count the other potential investment opportunities from outside parties like marketing sponsorships (e.g. SOL A+ D_D partnering for the Florida meetup), social media boosts, equity partnerships like Gitcoin, etc. While I assume a lot of these efforts will be championed by members of the DAO with certain connections, or by champions of initiatives (I can see for example a large scale hackathon having sponsors in a similar manner), that still leave room for discussion on where funds go, what the good exchanged are, and whether the DAO thinks those are worth pursuing according to the goals of the season or the values.

Given those two points, some things that I think need to be worked on before finalizing voting on this kind of partnership are

  1. A public operating budget for the DAO. This should include current costs, as well as a process for quickly approving new costs that can be voted. This should also include current treasury funds, incoming funds, and something akin to a burn rate since we’re also thinking of having folks on payroll.
  2. A process to tie DAO initiatives to changes in the budget if needed, plus a place with details of the initiative and the tokenomics of them. Partnerships are the prime example of funds being exchanged, and there should be clear details of the nature of the transaction. I think a lot of questions being raised are due to the intention not being very clear, but sponsorships for in kind goods have a not so clear impact on the treasury and are still worth having a defined path.

While I see sense of urgency in getting this going quick, I would imagine Gitcoin would be ok with the DAO setting some direction before saying agreeing to something with a sensible amount on the line.

With respect to approving this now or after the ERC20 is settled and distributed, I tend to lean with after, but it really is a question of how we want to weight the value the governance token, the initiatives the DAO takes on, and how we want the DAO to operate with respect to direction. Going with a more decentralized approach, RFC + vote based, means we need to think in terms of operational costs in terms of the things the community approves, versus, operating in terms of momentum and where opportunity for impact partnerships arise means a bit extra emphasis on what the partnership entails. Both are valid, the latter more akin to how a startup operates, but the nuance matters.

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#camo

I’m here to express my support for this proposal.
I voted Move to snapshot.

Gitcoin is massive, having them as a collaborator cannot be underestimated. IMHO the value that Gitcoin brings to the table is well worth 5% of our tokens.

I agree with the comments that we do need a bit more clarity on how those funds would be spent, but I imagine that we would have other proposals for that.

Some great discussion going on here. I support the proposal, but would like more time to discuss the details. Whatever we end up doing, it’s important to make sure we don’t rush this decision.

On the clarity of certain topics, everything I had in mind has been covered by other comments. Let’s take a breather, clear up the questions and then decide the course of action.

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After reading this, it makes more sense why you would like to move fast on this. I have seen the work some of the core team members have put in this and i this like you said they should be compensated for it. I see some people want to give less of a % which i think is not really the point here. I would rather leave that to you guys. I still think however that we cant close any partnerships for a token that has not been “created” yet. Perhaps we move both proposals at the same time.

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I agree, its support accelerates the construction of the community

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I think this exchange is good, but we cannot decide the exchange ratio before the tokens are issued.

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I love that I just minted a free NFT, and now I’m discussing and voting on a $500K partnership with a fundamental project in the crypto world.

Honestly, we don’t know what we have yet. Sounds like we have a lot of great people and ideas, but it’s so early. GTC doesn’t know what we have yet either, and if they are willing to come in early and take the chance with us at a $10M valuation, then we should absolutely embrace the opportunity.

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Sorry, this is $850K now, right (50K tokens at $17 ea)? Would be a $17M valuation?

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This is true.

At this evaluation I would like to support the proposal :slight_smile:

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I totally agree with what achilles is stating. A snapshot vote would need to be very clear on what shares of the governance tokens are being diluted.

Hello folks. A quick update on the status of our mutual grant with Gitcoin.

@willblackburn and I met with Scott @ Gitcoin to discuss how we handle the exchange from a logistical POV (i.e. where are we sending the funds and how are they being managed) and also consider how we manage Gitcoin’s influence on our Governance given the size of their allocation 5% vs the circulating supply.

@willblackburn suggested we stream the tokens linearly over x months to ensure we can honour the agreement and Gitcoin can participate in our DAO as a meta delegate asap whilst also managing the impact their holdings would have on our Governance.

@willblackburn is now investigating a solution for this to take back to Gitcoin. Please keep an eye here for updates on the proposed solutions.

@willblackburn any news on the proposal for Gitcoin? Happy to help if useful :slight_smile:

Will have an update out this weekend!

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