Hi RogerRabbit
Welcome to the forums!
While I understand what you are attempting to get at, I do not believe fees based on AUM is an appropriate comparison here even as a ‘conservative’ comparison. Let’s dive in utilizing the figures from the Ape Foundation Transparency Report November 2022:
Most of the Ecosystem Fund is presently locked, meaning it would not be reasonable to include in an ‘AUM’ calculation. The fund is no where near $2B…
Total Unlocked Funds = 173,750,000 Unlocked + 3,198,334 Unclaimed APE
However, even then, the Year 1 budget “to manage” was only for 28,200,000 APE per AIP-3
So let’s say our starting point is:
31,398,334 (28,200,000 APE + 3,198,334 Unclaimed APE)
x $4 (keep it simple with the current price)
$125,593,336 USD ‘assets’ at $4/APE
$1,500,000 Cartan Fee ($150,000 x 10 months of March - December)
$1,500,000 / $125,593,336 USD = 1.19% “Management Fee”
Sure that present fee could sound reasonable for your position, but you then need to factor in that Cartan is not actively managing these funds for a return on investment. If we are going to look at it from an AUM point of view, then it would arguably be based on Cartan’s success in facilitating the disbursement of funds via approved AIPs.
|
|
Funds Allocated |
|
181,267,624 |
|
(124,690) |
Normalize: Staking prociess which was already allocated for at inception |
(175,000,000) |
Normalize: Staking funds which was already allocated for at inception |
6,142,934 |
Total Funds allocated for ALL AIPs have have been passed |
|
HOWEVER, most of those funds were from insider AIPs |
(4,700,000) |
Guy Osery (launch partner and investor in Yuga labs, and none have been spent yet) |
(1,000,000) |
Bug Bounty Program (relates to staking) |
442,934 |
Meaning if you normalize for the above, it would be reasonable to connect that Cartan’s AIP involvement resulted in only 442,934 APE funded |
67,500 |
Add: Let’s also give them Grants Approved by Special Council ($370,000USD / $4 APE) |
510,434 |
TOTAL Funds allocated for ALL AIPs have have been passed |
|
|
217,907 |
3.3.1 ADMINISTRATIVE FEES - These I believe are substantively Cartan Group |
|
|
43% |
(217,907/510,434) Conclusion: Cartan’s fees are 43% of the amount of APE that has been funded by AIPs unrelated to the launch partners/already provided for at inception |
Additionally, Ape Foundation also pays Coinbase Prime for custodial services which is presently accrued at 485,367 APE. This highlights that the majority of funds are held in custodial services, not ‘actively managed’ by Cartan - and those costs are not being factored in my above calculations.
All of the above is to illustrate that AUM is not appropriate; IMO it’s application would be more detrimental to Cartan’s case of comparing fees to ‘fund performance’ because barely any APE have been approved for spending via passed AIPs.
@ssp1111 please give me your thoughts as well on ^
Cartan does provide terrific value to the DAO, but it should really be seen as a service provider for specific contracted services. This is why we are trying to drill down on the specific services it wishes to provide in-scope currently or expanded at higher rates.
Getting to the meat of all this…Cartan’s present AIP has an underlying assumption that it needs to scale its services because the DAO/its members are not expected to change its behavior (i.e. we are going to be forever useless in presenting AIPs to operationalize the DAO, we will never implement working groups, etc.)
However, we are in the middle of elections and the general sentiment is that the DAO will be operationalizing over the next couple of months. The DAO is simply looking for more time instead of committing to 12-months at 2x service costs when we have not even completed our first election yet!
If in the next 2/3 months the DAO can’t get it’s act together by electing appropriate new Special Council members and starting to make moves towards decentralization, then sure, Cartan might as well run the entire DAO However, all one has to do is look no further than the passionate members replying in this thread - a shift/help is evidently coming and we hope Cartan can come to a reasonable understanding on what it wishes to do as we get through this election. The DAO can certainly come to an agreement on something that makes economic sense for Cartan, but it is doubtful to be this AIP, as it is written, if asked to be voted on within the next few weeks.