Keeping costs under control is a key factor in long term sustainability. We would fully support initiatives looking to improve transparency and accountability around expenses. However, we would like to highlight that it is equally important to have holistic view of the situation, maintaining a balance between the focus on assets and liabilities (robust treasury management is an inseparable part of that process). In our recent report we provide an analytical framework analyzing both cost structure and various revenue generating options. In our view, costs should also be informed by potential revenue generation - optimizing these two aspects in tandem are a key driver for long-term sustainability of the DAO.
Ideally, cost structure should be considered within the broader context of the DAO’s runway. In our report we consider a various scenarios of potential spending. For example, the simplified diagram below shows runway under three assumptions of levels of spending: operating expenses only, operating expenses plus historic grants, and operating expenses plus historic grants ex staking.
We specifically excluded staking from this part of analysis as it is an outlier on the spending side which can distort the overall picture and warranted separate analysis.
Additionally, please refer to this discussion on diversification for more thoughts in case helpful.
We’d be happy to provide more insight and work together with the community to help improve long term sustainability of the DAO.