AIP-536: Enhancing Sustainability: Prohibiting New Financial Requests over US $750,000 for one year

I totally get where you’re coming from, @furiousanger, but while I super agree with the underlying idea, I disagree with this specific proposal.

A fixed-amount limit could unintentionally squash some ambitious and timely proposals, making way for cheaper but less useful ones. Things cost what they cost, and hamstringing ourselves from potential high-impact moves isn’t smart. For example, if we had the chance to send an ape-naut on an (hypothetical) Polaris mission to educate about Web3 and promote ApeCoin from the Moon’s orbit, I’d be pushing a $100 million AIP like mad and would throw in some of my own $APE too. That’s obviously an exaggeration (or is it? :laughing:), but you see my point.

What we need instead is solid strategies, meticulous planning, clear goals, and concrete ways to achieve them—whatever the AIP aims for—and stringent monitoring, checks, balances, milestones, transparency, and accountability. We’re not burning cash because AIPs are too big; we’re burning it because we’ve been only paying lip service to all of that, or never had a clear strategy for a start.

Also, we’ve already poured $100 million into the Banana Bill. So, I’m worried your proposal, together with the 69% rule for requests over $250,000, might just screw over the “small apes with a potentially good AIP” while leaving a gaping loophole there.

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Actually we are looking to expand this program. FYI 175,000 APE is delegated and not being spent. Since launching we have now reached over 1.75m delegated in the program. Almost 1.5m is newly delegated.

Please note an allocation doesn’t create sell pressure as we are NOT converting out from APE. @Koko

Here is a reference of what Arbitrum is doing.

We want to increase from 15 to 50 delegations being supported next year. This would require a combination of locked ApeCoin and rewards. This would include MBAs with Yuga allocation, current larger delegations, as well as new ones. The objective: 50 active and functional delegations. Your proposal will hinder this plan.

@furiousanger i think you should be more granular with spending vs allocating. Also APE that remains as APE vs converted to USD or for payments which could be converted later.

If the facilitators become an internal foundation cost, that cost hasn’t just disappeared, merely shifted and non longer so visible. As are many Foundation costs. Personally, no matter if under the ApeCoin Foundation or GWG Non Profit DAO, I would like to see more use of contractors, where we can monitor and better manage their performance and outcomes. It is inefficient use of Stewards to not have the resources to implement more. Now Stewards have to do tasks below their Job Complexity Level and I actually use my private company at my own expense to do research for me related to ApeCoin. I ask them to do research as there are no NDA issues, as they are not given any ApeCoin non public information.

FYI. The rule is a non compete clause with related AIPs not able to go to vote within 3 months. This 3 month rule doesn’t apply as you are suggesting.

Finally, quarterly schedule for budgets is my personal preference and fits into global financial norms.

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~proceeds to state AIP budget to $299999 usd at in $ape at the time of passed proposal.

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Not sure what you are saying? USD exchange is based on the closing price on the previous day the funds are transferred to the AIP grant recipient.

What I do think needs to be done is to put a time limit on taking custody of funds. 60 to 90 days should be the maximum. Right now I have not seen any documentation that give a time limit from AIP passing to funds transferred to the AIP recipient. Alternatively, the AIP author should say I will take funds within 90 days. For example, Oseary had an AIP which did put a time limit on when he could take the funds.

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Hi

Thanks BB - this is perfect - puts an end to the defunding of WGs argument.

Also enhances my request that AllCity remove the “reduction of voting fatigue” as a benefit from AIP-504.

NB: You are interpreting the three month conflict period as a “non-compete clause”, I’d argue if that’s what was intended those are the words they’d have used. My belief is the three month conflict period is simply “to avoid wasting community assets” on very similar ideas or initiatives. Tl;dr - something neither you or I get to decide on.

Cheers.

That’s pretty crazy considering how community sentiment towards using DAO funds for voting purposes was demonstrated recently.

Also, as I’m sure you’re aware, I’m advocating to stop the nonsense of using locked $ape for any purposes, so may well indeed end up as a cost next time within your budget. :pray: Allocating or spending means the same - DAO no longer has those funds available.

Thanks mate

Hi mate,

Exactly!

LFG

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Locked APE
Regarding the locked APE, it would depend if it is:

  1. Part of the GWG budget. In that case the funds will be transferred to the GWG Treasury.

  2. If they are kept in the ApeCoin Foundation Treasury. It is important that the foundation clarifies if this counts as allocated, as they let those previous 2 AIPs go to vote.

Rewards
Rewards are not specific to voting, that will be one criteria, but there will be many criteria (the majority most likely) which are not to do with voting. Also Rewards would need to be allocated in our budget, as they would be transferred to the GWG Treasury.

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Replying to @ToniVal as well to save replies.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the input. :handshake:

My idea is an attempt to save the DAO by reducing spending in the short-term which will hopefully translate into long-term sustainability.

FACTS:

Last seven months on grant AIPs alone we’ve spent:

$18,524,910 USD dollars
AND
111,679,696 $APE

No need for lengthy studies, no need for any speculation, the truth is we have around 120/130m $ape left, by January I predict that to be around 100m $ape, so without some drastic reduction in our spending and/or revenue streams, the DAO will be no more pretty soon as funds go quickly (as we’ve demonstrated last couple of years).

Remember as well a large chunk of money needs to be found each year to “keep the doors open”:

OPERATING COSTS:

Administrators - $900,000 a year. (A)
Custody fees - $775,000 a year. (E)
Legal - $1,050,000 a year. (E)
Special council - $625,000 a year. (A)
Offset USD/USDC - $150,000 a year. (E)
Facilitators might be added - $288,000 a year. (A)
(A=actual E=estimation)

(Rough total to work with is probably good at $4,000,000 a year.)

So my point is simple - if spending continues at these rates on AIPs alone - $18.5m & 112m $ape in the previous seven months - the DAO will be closing its doors very soon. These are not even rare and/or astronomical amounts as remember the DAO has spent a quarter of the $ape supply even before the 100m $ape bananas bill - that’s over a quarter of a billion $ape in less than 2.5 years.

Keep in mind most of the $ape we have left is locked - cannot be spent - so putting the breaks on spending is a necessity - sure they are saying payments in $100k tranches recently - but these are people who are happy to spend every last penny before the DAO becomes self-sustainable, and shut the doors.

Tl;dr:

We have got to find ways of increasing our chances of being here in a year from now; there simply isn’t enough $ape to continue at the levels we’ve been operating at. We have around a quarter of our original 470m $ape allocation - let’s make this work super hard - funding as many good ideas as possible, for years to come!

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Hi mate,

Amazing! LFG. I’m always for the best approach. Would love to see something like this. Just makes sense. :muscle:

Thanks KoKo

Though you’re preaching to the choir, I say amen to that.

Speaking of burning funds; when I spent almost a month designing a $5M community project which was specifically for our community, in which 100% of the funds were recoupable, 30% of the funds went back to the DAO so we could fund more worthy projects like ThankApe, GwG grants, OtherPage etc. though widely supported (publicly and privately) some balked at the price tag. Still, I stuck with it, put a new collab team together etc. because I felt that we needed more than Discourse and Discord - an online town square we could call our own, where we could expand our community reach etc. Eventually, I sent it through the BB on Aug 9th and withdrew it from the DAO on Aug 14th. At the BB, after several calls by myself, my team etc with the BB primaries and others, we faced the same challenges; only this time it was about how a $5M project was a large chunk of the $60M year-1 BB funding, how due to the falling token price it now cost about $8.35M, how it was too big, could we break it up, the MMO platform part competes (lol) with Otherside, wen token? etc.

Mostly, few actually understood the 37-page ACE proposal because this being Web3, short-term gains are far more important. So we made an ACE For Dummies deck.

So, frustrated, a month later on Sept 9th, on discussions with the project advisors which I had put together, we withdrew the original from BB and replaced it with a pared down white label yearly license, non-exclusive proposal which could be deployed on any chain instead of being a 2 yr ApeChain exclusive as was originally intended. By signing up with more than one chain (of which the team is now talking with 3 interested ones), we made it possible to split and amortize the $5M (we simply can’t build it for less) price tag to the detriment of an exclusive, lucrative rev share, single smaller MMO world etc.

Subsequently, due to other reports from other devs about 'not knowing wth was going on at BB’ - the same questions we were having - I wrote a thread which, much like these three proposals about the WGs, was designed to get clarity, answers etc. which we weren’t getting directly. Shockingly (not really) nobody has thus far saw fit to respond to it. So, now we have a $100M fund carve out with the usual lacking accountability and transparency.

The point being made here is that, aside from personal experiences, at every corner and in every aspect, the DAO lacks the accountability and transparency befitting an org that’s destined for prosperity. Yet still, some wonder how we went from a $1.4B treasure straight into the negative - in under 2 years. Amid all that, yet still some wonder why very few care about the DAO.

To me, it’s sad that very few who are active in the DAO actually do speak up. Mostly it’s out of fear of retribution (you never know when you would need to have to pander in order to pass an AIP) as well as not wanting to stand out. And while judging by the behind-the-scenes discussions they tend to voice opinions, that does nothing but make it seem as if it’s just us - the usual loud voices - who keep clamoring about the same things over and over. e.g. I was in a BotB Spaces last Sat when James (Moca) said something akin to “we complain about the same things over two years”. The irony wasn’t lost on me because the thing is that people here know that you can complain until blue in the face and nothing is likely to change because we lack the tools and mechanics with which to enforce transparency and accountability here in the DAO.

As I mentioned in this post, this DAO, like the treasury, token etc. if things don’t change, are all destined to continue along the fail track because mostly few actually care about the DAO. All the vocal and loud nonsense machines are on X where they’re usually to be found virtue signaling. They don’t actually care about the core community here in the DAO or they would be more active in their participation in a bid to help the community prosper.

The bottom line is that we can write all we want, but without accountability and transparency, it’s all for naught and to the detriment of the DAO. And as these things go, when the dust settles, all we would have is the historical record of having said something - to no avail.

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I am getting a deja vu feeling here, friend. :rofl: We have been through this. We do NOT spend or allocate ‘locked’ funds - because we can’t. I remain baffled as to why you still have this opinion.

Those numbers are highly inaccurate.

We had this discussion in another one of your threads where you indicated that you just guessed. I didn’t. I used actual numbers from all sources that we currently have. It’s all in this thread.

Previously you said we were spending locked tokens. So, which is it?

What will the DAO be doing a year from now that’s any different?

You’re quoting a report which is six months old.

My figures are perfect.

There’s no discussion to be had around amount of $ape we have left to spend - today 120/130m left. Will be 100m $ape by Jan 2025.

Thanks.

That’s great. I expect your vote for AIP-517. LFG.

Yes. That’s how financial projections work.

I took those numbers, factored in our current spending on salaries, passed proposals, token unlocks etc. I wrote detailed posts about it while referring to actual numbers. No guessing.

Unless you have access to the DAO financials for Q2-Q3, they are not.

That’s wrong. Completely. If you don’t mind, instead of just pulling numbers, as I did, please share the numbers that you used to arrive at this conclusion. That’s the transparent way to do it so that we can all be on the same page.

While we all don’t have to always agree, we all do want the same things; but we have to always be objective and transparent or we lose the credibility that comes with it.

This is still relevant as related to the WG Charter which is not related to the 3 month discussion.

I shared all the numbers. It’s not rocket science.

There’s 120/130m $ape left approximately.

Great reference points are the treasury dashboard which tracks the wallets. And then go back through the AIPs we’ve passed recently. Then deduct all those liabilities.

Anyway, we can agree to disagree, but I’m right. :handshake:

I won’t be doing that because I believe that:

  1. It’s pointless because the Ape Foundation doesn’t spend or move locked tokens; and there’s literally no evidence to suggest that they have.

  2. In the event that tokens are unlocked, given that the DAO is low on funds, it would present a problem the DAO being unable to satisfy its accounts payables.

While I get the gist of AIP-517, it is trying to solve a non-existent problem while putting the DAO at risk. And like this $300K discussion, it solves nothing and is akin to closing the barn doors after all the horses have fled, all the while putting the functioning of the GwG at risk.

ps. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the link is below.

You have to move locked tokens to facilitate delegation. No other way. Cannot connect a CEX to snapshot. Has to be self custody option.

Very well. I am OK with that. :handshake:

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