I will be withdrawing this AIP after clarifying the process with the current discourse admins. Here’s why:
Under the current setup, the Ape Foundation employs an Administrator to perform Cayman admin duties such as releasing funds to AIP authors. The process is as follows:
- AIP gets approved by voters
- After KYC process if finished for the AIP author, Administrator sends a contract to them
- After AIP author signs the contract re: receipt of funds, now Administrator can initiate “pay author” funds transfer (which is done in Coinbase Prime) (treasury money is currently hosted by Coinbase)
- When Administrator initiates the transaction, Coinbase calls Ape Foundation Director + Special Council + Admins to get verbal and video confirmation of validity of request.
- Money/$ape is sent.
Step 4 is consistent as it’s done by Coinbase. The delays are in steps 2 and 3. However, if you look at the RFP proposal for when we needed to change to new Administrator, it already has very strict time guidelines:
Ok, so, why isn’t the new Administrator (i.e. Webslinger) executing these in a timely manner?
Nobody knows.
BUT, they are still in the process of taking over the reigns from previous Administrator, which is apparently a complex ordeal. @amplify.Admin will ask them this week to please go ahead and initiate any outstanding payments, just keep in mind that Amplify doesn’t technically have the authority to force them.
Oversight
Cool, so how can we enforce this? Well, the RFP I linked to above outlines the following potential penalty:
Ok, so we can “adjust fees” as “specified under the contract.” And, you guessed it, the contract text isn’t made public (at least at this time). As to who can enforce it? Ape Foundation. Which I personally don’t know who the Ape Foundation is, precisely, but it’s not Special Council.
Summary
In the end, my AIP assumes there’s a multi sig wallet controlled by the community. There is not. Funds are in Coinbase and the payouts are initiated by Administrator. Hence, my AIP, as worded, does not apply.
It further assumes we may not have had time guidelines re: how long it should take to send money. As you see above, those guidelines do exist, just not being followed at the moment (hopefully temporarily as new Admin takes over). So that part of my AIP is not applicable either.
Finally, I included oversight. But while the DAO can try to replace the Administrator again, it would only make things worse b/c it would restart the ‘transition to new Admin’ process. Plus Webslinger - the currently selected Admin - seems to be doing fine, it’s just this one issue. Other than that, DAO cannot directly have oversight over any Administrator employees, so again those parts in my proposal are mute.
This is a mess
Yes and no. It’s a system that has worked before and can work again (hopefully very soon!). But long term, we want fully community-controlled DAO. No Ape Foundation. No Administrator. Just us organized in whatever structure we vote for. That’s a great goal that is already being implemented with Working Groups as the first step, but it needs more time. Also, that’s beyond the scope of my proposal here.
So for all these reasons, my proposal clearly doesn’t apply and there doesn’t appear to be any better option than giving the new Administrator a little more time to onboard/begin initiating fund dispersals. Hence I am withdrawing the AIP.
Let’s see how things are in 1-2 months. Hopefully it even changes this week-ish after Amplify pokes them re: this particular issue.
I hope this was informative/helpful! (big thanks to Amplify, Lost, Vulkan for the info, I’m only writing it down)