Temperature Check 🔥 — [Phase 0] Transition to the DAO

[shelb_ee]

Thanks for the post folks and for the detailed thought & research already poured into it! I believe this would be a great step towards preparing for the transition to the DAO on both the compensation and incentive fronts.

@abbey

Instead of using Foundation assets, the Foundation proposes to use 2.75M USDC of the Treasury’s assets to fund the Core Teams’ operational budgets and management by the Foundation for the next six months — or, in other words, up until Core Teams can transition to the DAO.

Funding core teams over the next 6 months from the treasury will not only get us one step closer to transitioning to the DAO, it will also allow for a smoother adjustment for everyone. This will also be a great learning period for organizers and contributors and leave an opportunity to provide feedback/point out pain points before making the full transition.

@abbey

There are ~18 contributors that qualify for this distribution with a total of ~1M RAD to be allocated based on a 2.5USD/RAD conversion rate. This means about 1% of the network will be allocated to current contributors.

The RAD allocation to contributors is also a critical piece to ownership distribution for a successful DAO. While distributing voting power to a wider range of stakeholders remains a broader goal, empowering core team members specifically to effectively participate in governance feels will empower folks closest to/most knowledgable of the project to have a greater say in important decisions for the DAO. I believe Radicle will nonetheless continue to explore ways to empower other stakeholders going forward, but for now this feels like a necessary step.

@abbey

Each qualified contributor will be granted 1.5x their annual estimated fee in RAD, vested over 4 years, with a one year cliff from their contract start date (i.e. if they leave before the end of their first year, they don’t get any RAD)

@abbey

The reason for basing the token allocation on a contributor’s “annual estimated fee” is that it already takes into consideration their 1) time commitment to Radicle and 2) seniority/experience.

This seems fair and I would support using this model. Question: Is it the plan to continue this allocation model with future contributors as well?

@abbey

The Foundation will be responsible for managing these vesting contracts until the transition. Once the infrastructure is in place, ownership of this multisig can be delegated among any number of DAO participants, decentralizing control of the vesting contracts to the DAO itself.

I think this would be the best way to approach handing this over. It would important to remain transparent about specifics around what will count as suitable enough infrastructure to have in place to start handing over to other folks/the DAO.