The APE token price continues to struggle, as the ApeCoin DAO fails to generate positive growth despite ongoing efforts. Although the treasury continues to issue grants worth several million dollars intended to make positive impacts and increase exposure, these initiatives have not yielded the desired results. Even the addition of working group steward positions has not produced tangible benefits for the community or DAO, might be good to cut it off, “Lean startup”.
Here is a suggestion to reduce the monthly compensation of all administrative staff to a flat rate of $5,000:
Special council: $5,000
Working group steward: $5,000
Facilitators: $5,000
Secretary: $5,000
At these levels, we will at best attract solid part time talent.
I think the bigger question we need to ask ourselves is “what do we want out of these roles?”
If it is to staff full time talent with specific skills to advance the DAO and bring value to ApeCoin, I’d argue our current levels don’t even do that.
If it’s “we need someone to put in 1-2 days a week to keep the lights on and sweep up the place”, then maybe this accomplishes that.
Personally, I prefer the former and would like to see a structure that compensates, incentivizes and drives accountability for the type of people who can further advance the DAO, ApeCoin and ApeChain.
The DAO was not setup to prop up the token. See www.apecoin.com
The token is sliding because it has no utility due to being a speculative asset.
It was setup as a grants DAO. Which means giving away money. But that’s not going to translate to the token pricing going up because - again - buying the token doesn’t do anything other than staking and speculation. It’s why even 11M $ape AIP like the DAM (Machi) haven’t done anything to boost the prices of the NFTs or the token.
If giving away money was going to benefit the DAO or the token price, considering how much we’ve donated to charity, the token should be back a ATH right about now.
And even the upcoming AIPs which are to generate revenue for the DAO, aren’t likely to make a dent - at least not in the short-term; and they certainly won’t affect the token price to any consequential effect. It’s just math. And metrics. And hopium.
In my mind, the only functional working group, and which we do need, is the GwG.
That won’t yield any tangible results; and it certainly won’t affect the token price or its prospects.
Plus, the salaries were already trimmed to acceptable levels.
Further, our recent election turnout has been the worst in DAO history. And so, messing with this any further will just mean that even fewer would even want to take any of these roles. It’s also why I have this proposal so that the experienced people who are already in leadership and who like the job of servicing the DAO, can continue to do so without having to deal with elections shenanigans every year. Proposal To Revise Special Council & WG Stewards Term Limits
Thanks for clarifying it further. This is exactly the main purpose I wish to achieve. But reducing the compensation or removing the unwanted position would be the shortcut to achieving this.
And I’m agree that DAO doesn’t mean to market making the token or even push the price up. The ultimate way is to close non-essential working group, but I’m also thinking that it would be good to restructure the compensation/budget too, even subscription of X Premium can be claim.
The recent election and proposal are totally a mess, a manipulated game.
Totally agree with your proposals!
The problem we encountered last time was they won’t allow their own “salaries” to be cut. They say it’s a breach of service agreements and simply reject the proposal on that basis.
Only way around this is to stipulate future appointments only. Or alternatively maybe we could all chip in and pay for outside legal council to look into their claims? But I’m probably going to guess they would not allow the documents to be seen by outsiders.
Agree with the approach - the DAO is unsustainable and bloated - less staff & more automation is the way forward. Fully support.
Yes, anyone in the DAO can take legal action if they so choose. But that would mean suing the Ape Foundation in Cayman Islands while also naming each of the Special Council members in the lawsuit. That’s not going to be cheap because you would need an attorney in the US and Cayman Islands coordinating the lawsuit. And if naming the SC, you would also need to take action in the countries where they each reside. But in all cases they would be compelled to present paperwork during discovery. I personally don’t see what such a lawsuit would solve because if it’s just for the presenting of paperwork, that’s just throwing money away because once you get the paperwork, then what? Then the end result is that, accountability and transparency aside, the DAO would have wasted money on legal bills.
This is why elections are important. People can’t elect people they don’t trust, and then complain when they act against the interests of the voters. And in the case of the SC, there are five people who can’t act alone on anything.
I would suggest contacting people in these elected roles to learn more about what they’re doing and the time they spend doing them before proposing changes to the salary structure – where I think you would be quite surprised by what you learn. Proposals like this without adequate research behind them can be quite dangerous to the DAO because oftentimes when voters see any sort of cost or salary reduction on Snapshot, psychologically they are inclined to side with it without a full understanding of the initiatives being advanced.
At the GWG, I tend to wear a lot of hats, and my days are incredibly long due to the amount of work that needs to be done and various time zones we operate in globally. I also make myself available to anyone from the community who wants to chat. Given these factors, and adds additional time to my days keep track of everything I’m doing on a day-to-day basis. However, I did take that extra time to log my activities for two weeks between March 25th and April 8th. I also take no extra salary than other Stewards, nor do I feel the need to on a personal level as I’m here to lift up the ApeCoin DAO and advance the Governance Working Group to the best of my abilities, which is likely why I’m now in my second term doing so.
Keeping this in mind, I do encourage you to ask us questions to find out more. Furthermore, and to be fair, much of these unknowns come down to all of us at the DAO needing to step up our transparency game. This is why I write reports like the one above, and we’re building out a front-facing Notion for the community to keep up with us on a more granular level with regard to initiatives. View it as an initiative tracker. I’ve actually been working on it for the last couple of hours.
I am pretty sure that for as much complaining that tends to go on in the DAO - and God knows I’ve done my fair share - nobody that I have seen would impugn the work that you GwG guys do around here. Sure, more could be done in areas of transparency and accountability, but those are separate issues.
We all - at least those of us engaged and paying attention - know that we have arrived at an inflection point in the DAO whereby we must change course, otherwise, like others before it, this DAO will die. There is no getting around this. For as long as I have been in communities, I have seen this play book time and time again - even in tech. For my part, as ineffective as it may seem, my conscience is clear, and that I tried, and still trying to make a difference so that we can give our DAO a fighting chance. At the end of the day, we will all have history starring back at us.
I’m agree to SmartAPE statement: “more could be done in areas of transparency and accountability”, although there are budget allocated to GwG, but it doesn’t mean to “No-brainer spending”
There are few things personally couldn’t accept in Q1 report
Reinbursement of X Premium subscription
Steward reimbursement (of unknown)
GwG website (Is this hyperlinks site worth that much?)
Website hosting (Of which website?)
Zoom Pro
Not to mention other working groups, basically can just shut down for DAO’s good.
