[Proposal #865] [ACCEPTED] Funding ATOM Accelerator DAO for 2024

Changelog • 2023-Nov-25: Posted initial draft • 2023-Nov-27: Added external links including the 2023 AADAO Impact Report • 2023-Nov-27: Added Calendly pages to book calls with AADAO members • 2023-Dec-03 Updated Oversight Committee and Legal Structure parts of the current proposal + added links to full docs of the 2 mentioned sections. 2023-Dec-10 Removal of Growth SubDAO and modification of the Strategy Committee 2023-Dec-11 Update to Budget from 1,021,000 to 975,811 ATOM and revised bonus allocation from 125,000 to 100,000 following removal of Growth subDAO. 2023-Dec-12 Added compensation brackets by category of contributor. 2023-Dec-16 Added links to internal protocols + bonus doc Table of Contents • Summary • AADAO contributions to the Cosmos Hub • 2023 Achievements • Looking ahead: AADAO’s vision for 2024 • Governance • Roles and Responsibilities • Migration to DAO DAO • Legal Structure and Trustee • SubDAOs Roadmap • Grant subDAO • AADAO Team • Budget and Compensation • Operational Budget • Performance and Retention • Suggested Timeframe • Appendix A - Mitigation Plan Summary As the ATOM Accelerator…

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Hello, Thank you for your detailed proposal and the efforts you’ve put into advancing the Cosmos ecosystem. Your dedication to fostering growth and innovation is commendable. As I consider the proposal, I have a few questions that would help in better understanding and evaluating the plan: • Could you please elaborate on how the DAO’s overhead is justified in terms of efficiency and added value compared to regular spending proposals? • What steps can be taken to ensure greater transparency and public involvement in the DAO’s review and decision-making processes? • How does the DAO plan to address the centralization risks within the Cosmos ecosystem, and what incentives could be introduced to encourage proposals that focus on validator set decentralization? • In light of the concerns regarding regional bias in project funding, what measures are being proposed to ensure impartiality and fairness in the selection process? • Can you provide a more detailed breakdown of the operational costs associated with the proposed extension, and how do you ensure these are in the best interest of the Cosmos community? • What specific benefits to the community can be expected from the…

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We support this. As others have said, thank you for stewardship of the Hub. Love seeing the forward progress.

Hi, before we giv furhter 10.000.000$ in the hands of the AA Team, i request more transparency on • Teams Spending: This should be detailed availibale on the Website, how much was spend for what • Detailed breakdown of income of the team members, (per person with Linked In Profile), planed working hours and an agreement that in case they getting paid a salary of 10k$ per month, that they work only and exclusive for AA and not on other projects. • More transparency of the fundings. The AA Website is missing significant transparency in trems of fundings. No TX showing transfers to wallets, no Real Names of receivers, it seems that we give thousend of USD to unknown persons. This should make sure that we fund real persons and lastly • that we dont have a conflict of intresst, therefore we need to have more infomration behind the teams and persons receiving funds. • a more detailed milestone payout for future fundings shall also be implemented. Here are two example for intransparency: 1) 80.000$ - 32.000$ issued Fund - No Website, No Names no tracable progress Cosmos SDK Module Registry https://www.atomaccelerator.com/grant-issued • 250.000$ - 132.000 issued…

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I believe that most of your questions can be addressed by referring to the content available at 2023 IMPACT REPORT. By comparing this transparency report with industry standards, it becomes evident that solid efforts have been made by the AADAO team considering this was their first year of existence.

Thanks for the link, i will read it in the next days.
So far, i see that we do not have the necessary team transparency,

• would be good to add for all Team Members real names and
• linked in profiles as well as
• current engagement in other projects to make sure that we dont have any conflict of interest.
  It seems that it is also missing about the payment of team members, how much does everyone get for how much effort they deliver per week/month.

On the project site, this does no delivery what i have requested. Not all projects have a link and if there is a link, you will not really find any useful information about the team (Names, linked in prfils - conflict of interest!!!) or the stats of the deliverable. Further: no TX about transfer of tokens of the paid funds. Have this funds realy paid to them? Ore hev they been send somewhere else?

I have some discomfort as AADAO become institutionalized.

How is the team thinking about changes in team composition over the term? Does the General Manager have discretion to remove someone from the team at any time? Is the general manager effectively AADAO CEO?

I’d also like to see how the AADAO intends to balance building legal infrastructure like a legal entity that can hold equity in trust to the Cosmos Hub vs executing investments etc vs incubating and accelerating promising teams.

I shared this proposal with my business partner and he said, “There’s nothing I can see in that long list of potential things to do that has a clear outcome in mind other than trying to influence the supply and demand. It’s disappointing. I really wish there was innovation happening instead of constantly mistaking motion for progress.”

I’m not sure i agree with him, but wanted to share and provide more well-rounded feedback.

No. • Legal Structure You received tens of thousands of dollars in your first year to establish a legal wrapper and chose a Guernsey trust? You should refund all the money you received for it. A Guernsey Trust is inappropriate for any self-described DAO because of its highly centralized organization. Moreover, Guernsey trusts are weak legal wrappers that offer very little tax clarity and virtually no tax advantages in any jursidiction—and (for that very reason) they do not require $50,000+ to establish… It is shameful to propose this as your DAO’s legal structure after a year of work and inspires no confidence in your due diligence or ability to identify appropriate vehicles for advancing the Hub. • subDAO Roadmap This is just a wishlist of things with basically no actionable items. “Streamline integrations and partnerships,” “raise ATOM awareness with investors,” “bring revenue and airdrops back to the ATOM community pool”—you provide no metrics you want to achieve and no standards by which your work can be judged. Most of these will be occur simply by another bull run regardless of what you do. You write: As Growth SubDAO generates value streams for the Hub…

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Hi Prometheus, updating a full file of all grant’s distributed so far soon. The report should have hyperlinks to the transaction hashes of all payments sent in the numbers with each of them having a memo for the specifics of the payment.

Let me know if there’s anything else you would like on the batch 1-7 distributions in the meantime

Hi, I also would like to see all funded projects, best with link to their Github. I had this thread here in the forum recently: https://forum.cosmos.network/t/gaming-in-cosmos/12103/2 No reply, which is a bit sad, as in other ecosystems like Ethereum or Solana games are booming, in Cosmos we don’t even have integration for Unity or Unreal engine. Which is no surprise, because we don’t even have C# integration. We need these interfaces so that all kind of application (mobile, desktop, game consoles etc.) can interact with Cosmos blockchains. We only have CosmJS which is nice for websites, but everything else seems to be totally neglected. I tried to find out why games are neglected and found out that this is not restricted to games but also everything else (apps). We (CrowdControl) have then build CosmCS ourselves ( GitHub - DecentralCardGame/cosmcs: A C# client library for cosmos-sdk blockchains ) and we asked for a grant from AADAO. We did not get an explanation why we were rejected. We only asked for a small sum (20k), since we have already build it for ourselves and this grant request was to make it available for everyone and not just our project. Rejecting us is…

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Agree on C# integration. Needed pronto.

Interesting that you are finally going to use a DAO framework like DA0_DA0, but how will the community be able to follow up? Will the existing UI at https://daodao.zone/ be able to show DAOs on Neutron? Who will pay for that and how much? Cause currently I can only see DAOs created on Juno network…

Let’s assume the AADAO’s work this past months has been critical.

The question would be, would any of this have happened without the AADAO? Neutron airdrop transfer is probably the highest achievement from this report, I would seriously question if it would’ve happened without the DAO.

Is it necessary to grow it FURTHER? I would say no until we see tangible results from grants. I would even suggest that a growth DAO, if one is actually needed, should be independent of the AADAO.

How long are founding members continue to run it? Why will their salaries be INCREASED? It returns to the question of results, the DAO defining their own bonuses and kpis seems insane to me, ignoring the fact of a lack of any kind of ongoing governance and membership structure. “Accountable to the community” is a hollow promise when there is no External instrument to accountability. The Oversight commitee is useless if it was chosen by the people that they are overseeing.

Sadly, I hope this doesn’t pass and urge AADAO members to stop working since funding should’ve been sought after before the end of their funding term, this already speaks volumes about their planning.

Here is our return:

• Growth team doesn’t looks like a growth team, it’s one of the most important task and there not a single person with verified experience (too simple to provide grant to some communities - growth is larger than that). Feels like more a BD or investment team?
• SubDAO team seems to have too many numbers for not many reasons.
• 99% of team members got already minimum 1 full time job (sometimes way more), that doesn’t seems to be a fully committed team for the result we are a lookign for a 10M funding.
• Bonus too high (again-same as informal-its the type of thing you wanna extract from governments etc but you do exactly the same)
• No plan shared (even minimalist- What growth? Which communities? Focus dev or b2c or b2b? Events?..)
• Marketing budget is way too low for the amount requested and should be use mostly for growth/communities, not much for Atom Accelerator (them representing it in their different areas/countries)

Growth Dao & marketing should be independant Dao but both Dao can still work together.

Oversight committee should also be a Dao then be independant (which could be elected by people).

We funded some project $NTRN related.
Why aren’t we using those fund?
They are part of Cp and one of aadao great achievement. 10%, 20%?

We only need people full time working in aadao.

ATOMAcceleratorDAO:

AADAO Team

For the dYdX grants program for example, potential trustees or grantors submit their applications publicly in the forum and are then selected in a decentralized process. Why the AADAO doesn’t have such decentralized selection process? It doesn’t seem fair for the Cosmos community that some people are selected in a private and centralized way. Nothing against the proposed members, we think they are great, the issue is in the opaque selection process.

Maybe we should put together a competing Cosmos hub grants program with a truly decentralized selection process for the members of the grant program, giving a chance to everyone in the Cosmos community to submit their applications? For the AADAO we are talking about very large salaries. If there is interest about a competing and decentralized grants program with applications open for everyone to apply as members, let’s discuss about this, we will be happy to help and contribute to a more decentralized grants program

The AADAO planned to spend ~12% of the total budget on operational costs, leaving 88% for grant recipients. In total, the AADAO received 588,000 ATOM (approximately $5.8M, of which 709,750 USD should have been allocated to operational costs). According to their reports, in 2023, AADAO spent 831,506 USD on operational costs, which is 17% more than planned. Additionally, AADAO spent 1,842,546 USD on grants, which is 63% less than expected. Instead of the planned 12% of the total budget on operational costs, the hub spent 31%, 2.6 times more than anticipated. When scrutinizing the financial reports, several questions arise: • Why is there a business development position expenditure of around $60,000 in September that wasn’t accounted for in the 2023 planning? • Why did AADAO allocate the majority of the funds ($40,000) for marketing or advertising last-minute in November? • Why does the proposal state that AADAO achieved a 2.75x cash return when Neutron was initially funded by prop72 before AADAO existed? Looking ahead to 2024: AADAO plans to spend $3,576,000 on operational costs, including growth subdao (25% of the budget). AADAO plans to allocate $8,000,000 +…

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i’ve been supportive most of the time.

this time i won’t.

opaque hiring decisions
oversight committee too small, not diversified, not independant
the bonus is … self attributed, no KPIs currently, peformance should be measured by an independent entity.

now i believe this kind of DAO should be working 1 year, then 1 year without funding/active work and the community sees what the past grants REALLY and concretely bring, then end year 2 seek a second funding.

i’m sorry but here you give a handful weapons to your historical opponents.

To Tom’s point, as an organization exclusively financed through public resources, your recruitment methods and selection processes for expansion roles are obliged to adhere to practices that foster heightened transparency and accountability.

This necessitates, for instance, public notification of roles AADAO wishes to hire for; complete with detailed job descriptions, requirements, and an overview of the anticipated compensation structure.

This is standard practice of publicly funded organizations.

@Youssef @Better_Future I suggest you share:

• JDs and comp for every DAO/SubDAO member
• publish any FT/PT contract commitments current/future members have with other organizations/projects; and what is the availability of hours per month required for each role?

For new additions, are your selections final? Have you performed due diligence and necessary conflict checks?

Thank you for sharing the pre-preposal.

Hello ATOM Community,

Thank you for the great questions and comments regarding our proposal. We’re actively collecting your feedback and our members will begin engaging shortly to address the key points raised.

As this is a work in progress, we’ll update the change log as we improve our proposal based on your input.

Your engagement is crucial, and we’ve noted some particularly interesting queries that we’re eager to interact with you.

Best regards,
The AADAO Team

ATOMAcceleratorDAO: During the past 9 months, AADAO has worked diligently towards the creation of a legal structure to anchor the AADAO activity in a nation-state jurisdiction. Structured in Malta, Cayman, and Singapore were considered, and ultimately the team selected a Guernsey Purpose Trust structure based upon a combination of factors including but not limited to regulatory tone, goals of the specific structure, professionalism of the attorney and trustee, and reasonableness of the costs (Questions are in bold) @Youssef @Better_Future can you elaborate on what the “specific goals” of a Guernsey Purpose Trust are? For example, Swiss foundations are created to marry an endowment to an immutable purpose, for limited or indefinite time duration. Swiss foundations are adopted to accommodate a broad purpose. But you say, comparatively – Guernsey Purpose Trusts are created to accommodate specific goals . What are such goals? Please explain. To be clear, what you’ve created is a non-charitable purpose trust, correct? To me, professionalism of the attorney and or trustee are immaterial to legal form selected. The chosen legal form should be wholly informed by…

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Hello All! Been a while since ive spoken to a few of you. First off I would like to mention AA DAO has done an exceptional job compared to other grant foundations and community pools in the space, a lot of people dont understand that. I have a few concerns with the ask: • Mirroring Zaki, that this has come to be too institutionalized and I an afraid that it will become like the AiB or the ICF, and what are you doing to actively target or disclose the conflicts of interest of board members or nominees. (Look at Synthetix Governance) • Coming from the world of business the ask is a bit egregious of the scope of work and given people on the board are also heading other projects in the ecosystem, its hard to believe that the time spent on AADAO is more than their validators, or protocols. • The road to self sustainability. What are the active steps in making sure in 2025 if funding is received that the DAO can be self sustained without additional funding from the community pool. My concern as that if the free money pile deprecates how can AADAO still exist and be strict on their sources of revenue and growth • More PR so the community and delegators can give feedback.…

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AADAO recruits should have on-chain vote each term. (term being one year) Candidates from all across the cosmos should have the opportunity to be part of AADAO.

@Krugg3r - great questions. Let me dig in on item one from your list: First and foremost, there is the ROI on all of the grants given, with the largest category of grant making to build out protocols, tooling, and dApps within the ICS Zone. While ROI is less easy to assess for each grant award as the program is still so new, we believe that if we can get dozens of apps and protocols launched within the ICS Zone, and start to catalyze positive synergies between all of the projects, the growth can start to compound positively. By funding research to improve tokenomics, AADAO is setting the stage to strengthen the $ATOM price with more sustainable monetary policy. With innovative grants like Mesh security, the $ATOM community can continue to maintain an edge of technical leadership. ICS on boarding is technically challenging and AADAO was proud to support @crypto_crew with their Replicated Security KickStart Service, as well as a Hub testnet incentives program. With these grants AADAO is supporting the delivery of the core ICS mission and improving odds of success within this mission. In the first 9 months of the program, AADAO team arranged revenue share or awards to flow…

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for the Guernsey Purpose Trust structure proposed for AADAO, the goal is to anchor the activity in an old world nation state jurisdiction with established legal precedents so that there is certainty around how other international actors must interact with it. Without anchoring the activity in a jurisdiction somewhere, predatory regulators in any one of the 192 countries of the world who are anti-crypto in tone might be able to claim regulatory authority, and the lack of a pre-defined old world structure would mean they could determine how it is treated under their own laws, which could be risky for the ecosystem if they were intending to be hostile and to inflict maximum pain. +++ Re status of the initiative to create a Gurnsey Purpose Trust for AADAO: the org model & key terms are architected at a diagrams & term sheet level of detail. Long form docs not yet completed - attorneys up to speed, and ready to convert to long form when ready. Our intention from process standpoint was to get the design 85% of the way & into strong conceptual state, but to leave flexibility in order to intake community feedback & fine tune details as we come thru this mandate renewal. Also…

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I would never use dydx grants as a positive example of decentralization. It’s fully centralized and controlled by Reverie

1m+ USD in direct compensation and another massive 1m+ USD in potential ATOM bonuses seems like an insane compensation for a group that consists of many FT business owners, founders and generally very busy people. I dont understand why AADAO has chosen to add so many members that clearly don’t see ATOM AEZ growth as their main effort in the web3 space. Additionally id like to add that Note1 should NOT be taken into consideration, if you didnt want to force or ask members to continue work non-compensated then you should have brought this proposal to the forum and chain earlier. Lastly, and ill have to think about this point further, An overwhelming percentage of the grants went to development of the Neutron ecosystem while often setting the Hub itself on the 2nd place. I think this proposal should see a clear cap in the amount of funding that can be spend on the Neutron ecosystem directly. It is gaining an outsized advantage from the AADAO not necessarilly to the increased benefit of the hub and in direct competition with any other Layer 1 in the cosmos ecosystem. This has come to the point where projects are being paid to port code or even leave their previous homebase which…

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What Sarah, the marketing person of Regen Network has to to on the Cosmos Hub seriously!
Regen is clearly a project failing in marketing and now we are bringing this great expert of marketing on the most important chain of the ecosystem is this a joke.
I largely agree with @Ertemannand I add that these members are clearly chosen based on personal relations. If you are serious about the Cosmos Hub start to recruit people that actually are aligned with Atom and have some proven expertise. I don’t even want to comment on the Atom bonus, if you want to align your team with Atom pick people that are already aligned, or buy some atom on the market, create a keplr wallet and stake it.

Was in support of the proposal until I read the bonuses - slap in the face imo.

Yes, roles like that are a lot of work, but the pay is great and loads of people would die to have an exciting and meaningful role in the ecosystem.

Bonuses, like on 839, are parasitical practices trying to extract maximum value from the commons wherever possible.

Furthermore, the lack of detailled breakdown of expenditures, especially salaires, is another shocking example of the immaturity of ATOM, and crypto culture in general, that a mature team like AADAO would dare post such a draft proposal. Proposals posted to the forum without transparent and detailed funding breakdowns should be immediately sent back to the drawing board.

Hello @Krugg3r ! Thank you for your feedback, and for digging into this proposal at such a detailed level. Please let us know if the information provided below responds to your questions. Krugg3r: • Could you please elaborate on how the DAO’s overhead is justified in terms of efficiency and added value compared to regular spending proposals? The overhead associated with AADAO allowed for the following developments that go beyond grant giving and grant project implementation, and is hence, an added value in comparison to typical direct request grant funding from the community pool. In the first 9 months of the program, AADAO team arranged revenue share or awards to flow back to the community pool, for example: Mystic Labs (33% rev share), Shogun (25% rev share), $AXV (airdrop to community pool) which will generate returns to community pool in years to come. Additionally, there is the ROI on all of the grants, which isn’t as easy to assess directly but will grow returns to the Hub community. Also, there has been significant work done to advance $ATOM as the Interchain gas token in wallets and to support deployment of the $ATOM POL on DEXs, which can…

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ATOMAcceleratorDAO: Recruiting - more than 80% of the AADAO team members have been recruited out of the $ATOM community to date, so the AADAO team is generally a mirror reflection of the community by its very composition. Where were they recruited? Missed the post to apply, is this a closed team that only you decide who is worthy? ATOMAcceleratorDAO: To reduce potential biases, two Reviewers are randomly selected and an objective Rating Methodology is used to score an application. How do you prevent reviewers from coordinating their scores? Can easily be bypassed by reviewers ensuring their scores don’t trigger an oversight review. ATOMAcceleratorDAO: The only operational costs that were not broken down are the Marketing and partner integration costs Several have mentioned payment details and you still haven’t shared how much each member will be compensated, this is either intentional obfuscation or a repeating mistake. I see Better Future in two teams, will he be paid double? Concluding… On my end, a concern of mine that is not addressed still is the time availability of several proposed members. It still seems ridiculous to me…

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ATOMAcceleratorDAO:

RPC service providers (Ankr),

Can i ask why this is seen as a material partnership?

I think i can name at least 10 Native cosmos teams that provide a better service for less money.

Also curious how many of these partnerships are redundant, in that its just another group of individuals doing outreach to potentially the same targets that are already connected to the Wider cosmos via various potential entities like Binary, ICF, Strangelove etc. Was there an effort made to make such a partnership list/outreach more cohesive throughout the entire ecosystem?

Edit: Also when can we expect the site to be updated with the latest Grants given, Just posting this on twitter hurts transparancy.

I’m generally in favor of this proposal.

The team has demonstrated a solid ability to execute in only 9 months, fund projects and essential research for the future of the Hub.

Of course, AADAO could be more transparent regarding certain aspects of its operations and processes. But all in all, the team aligns with the values of the Hub, and I believe it has its best interest at heart. They have also demonstrated an ability to listen to the community and accept feedback, one of their most vital traits.

Those interested in listening to Youssef talk about AADAO’s accomplishments and plans can listen to our recent conversation with him on The Interop.

This proposal is too egregious to even scrutinize it. It will surely be voted down hard. Maybe try with a legitimate proposal and let us work from there. Way too far apart to even consider countering.

Thanks for the comment, Mike. Allow me to answer your questions as a nominee for the Oversight Committee. But first, I’d like to introduce myself for those who might not know me yet. My name is Damien and I am a Protocol Specialist and the Governance Lead at Simply Staking. We have been behind some key proposals that you might have seen on the Cosmos Hub from the past year including Proposal #88 to Increase the Community Pool Tax to 10%, Proposal #687 which was the Third Party Audit of the ICS code, and Proposal #826 which sets a Minimum Commission of 5% on the Validator set. My motive to join the AADAO is that I wish to lend my hand where I can for the betterment of the Cosmos Hub. I am happy to have been nominated to the Oversight Committee to ensure we remain Hub-aligned going forward. Now, onto your question and to quote Zaki first: zaki_iqlusion: I have some discomfort as AADAO become institutionalized. syndicatemike: Mirroring Zaki, that this has come to be too institutionalized and I an afraid that it will become like the AiB or the ICF, and what are you doing to actively target or disclose the conflicts of interest of board members or…

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Hi Tom, thanks for the comment.

tom:

oversight committee too small, not diversified, not independant

The Oversight Committee currently comprises two members and each has a defined role. AADAO will initiate the process of welcoming a third governance-elected community member. We will keep you updated about the next steps if reelected.

tom:

the bonus is … self attributed, no KPIs currently, peformance should be measured by an independent entity.

KPIs will be defined by the Oversight Committee in collaboration with the AADAO relevant stakeholders to make sure that performance is aligned with the objectives of the Cosmos Hub. Once the Oversight Committee signs off on the KPIs, they will be shared with the community.

The bonuses are not automatic and they are based on strong performances and it is very unlikely that the entire performance pool budget will be distributed. The Oversight is involved in the ultimate signing off of bonuses and we can weigh in if we do not agree on specific performance reviews.

I hope this answers your concerns!

I think you should propose a more reasonable plan. You couldn’t propose to spend 20% of the total fund for your a year of work. As a risk control, if your plan fail or does not bring any catalysts to COSMOS, 5 proposals like yours will completely over-withdrawn the community pool and we do not have money for other “important” developments.

I would expect more real “development” other than “education” stuffs as on your website now.

thanks for the answer Damien,

i think these KPIs could have been constructed along the current year with some community members’ input. i don’t think establishing these performance parameters once the funding proposal is accepted is fair.

but thanks for the details you brought.

about the oversight committee, firstly, i’m glad you’re part of it. secondly, i’d say the same thing: it should have been constitued during this first year. it should not be 100% a committee “invited” by AADAO team members. 51% would be fine.

adding a community elected member is a good step forward. will he be pre selected?

again, all of this should have happened prior to this signalling proposal imo.

and i still have doubts about the new people AADAO hired. ex-AiB and Jae’s cultists should be avoided. (i know i know i’m a bit tough on this)

i do hope the oversight will be very careful and have a strong say if things stay as they are.

good luck anyway

Appreciate the response, My discomfort has been resolved.

Hello, @Lil_D , @Cosmos_Nanny , @zaki_iqlusion , thank you for your questions on the structuring topics. Here is a link to a Google document providing responses to the specific questions raised by each of the community members. Our task was to create a fit-for-purpose organizational design and legal structure that meets the following objectives: • Can legally work with $ATOM community pool as origin and owner of funds, • Supports AADAO mandate to provide stewardship of $ATOM community owned resources, • Mitigates risks from nation state attacks on those resources in areas of regulatory, tax, liability, and AML that could harm $ATOM community and also its contributors, • Provides legacy world anchoring in a narrowly-defined way related to mitigating risks, but without subjecting all the DAO’s organizational protocols to legacy world org designs (flexibility to innovate DAO protocols beyond what corporations, LLCs, and foundations provide is necessary due to the technology we are building on) • Embraces multisig system for making payments out of the DAO, • Can work with the idea of sub-multsigs with different sets of team members having membership and accountability on…

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Hello ATOM family,

Following your valuable feedback, we’re happy to share that we’ve updated the proposal’s sections around the Oversight Committee and the legal structure and have also attached full documentation that cover in greater details those 2 sections.

Full doc Oversight Committee Year 2

FAQ v1 Legal Structure and Professional Trust

What are the promises / pledges AADAO can make at this stage in regards to fair and non selective grants? As of today, according to many out there, and myself included, the grant issuing process seems not just selective, but at places very institutionalized (mentioned above) and seems to have a “side” agenda. As a validator and token holder, I would love to understand how such entities as AADAO, can promise to not be selective and can be verified (that they indeed are not).

Hey folks -

I have a bunch of thoughts on the proposal, both shout outs and areas for improvement, but unfortunately haven’t had the time to put them all in writing yet (although I have shared them orally to AADAO members). I’ll try to do so before a prop goes on-chain - but regardless wanted to swing by and clarify that AADAO did indeed play a crucial role in ensuring the unclaimed NTRN airdrop tokens would go to the Cosmos Hub community pool. They were the primary advocates who pushed for this to happen.

I don’t know if people want more details but if people are interested in a little more background… During the proposal for Neutron to join ICS a number of the team had questions around the allocation of tokens to atom stakers. In the first public version of Neutron tokenomics the clawback was going to the neutron dao and I floated the idea that it should go to the hub cp instead. Youssef took it to Spaydh with my suggestion that it should go atom as the aim was to get Neutron into the hands of the atom community. Spaydh went away to check if it wasn’t too late to change the code. 48 hours later came back and agreed it was sensible and viable. During the process it was originally the AADAO wallet (for the avoidance of doubt we would have moved it all straight to the cp) that would have received the neutron rather than the hub cp for technical reasons. Neutron then updated that contract to change it to the cp once that was viable because both parties wanted a trustless solution. Do I in my heart of hearts believe that I am responsible for the hub having those Neutron? Yes. Amongst others. Things are always about teams and the teamwork between AADAO and neutron is why those…

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Hi @serejandmyself thanks for your question. Our agenda has been funding grants we believe drive value to cosmos hub. In our selection process we established various rules and guidelines to ensure a fair selection. We are by no means perfect but have consistently improved and implemented changes to minimize errors: First let’s talk about biases: Each batch of open grants undergoes a multi-step review process led by the DAO’s seven-member Reviewer Committee, supervised by the Oversight Committee. To reduce potential biases, two Reviewers are randomly selected and an objective Rating Methodology is used to score an application. Out of a total of 16 points, applicants must get an average score of 12 or higher to proceed to the interview phase. If the gap between the two reviewers ratings is too large, this triggers an alert for the Oversight Committee, which then examines the reasons for the significant variance in the ratings. Discussions are then initiated at a team level to reconcile differing perspectives, and the applications in question are subsequently reassessed by alternate reviewers to guarantee an impartial evaluation. In the interview, applicants undergo further…

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Reasonable size ask. It seems like the North Star win is the 22MM worth of NTRN to the community pool. Well Done! 2023 Impact report is not loading on your website isn’t loading. Going to ask a series of questions that are generally asked of AlphaGrowth when engaging with Chains to help with Ecosystem Growth. Many of these topics and metrics may have been covered already apologize. My main goal is to help raise awareness to the community on new ways deploying grants and ways to evaluate the efficacy of a grants program. On chain metrics Goals: So what is the north star this year? Which on chain metrics will the AADAO grow, and which chain will they grow them? How would you order rank the importance of the following metrics? Fees, Transactions, Users, Tokens returned from investments Past Success How many transactions and gas was spent on the projects funded? How much revenue was generated from all grantees funded? How many users came from all the grantees funded? What is the expected return on the Grant DAO, Growth DAO? What’s your biggest success story? What’s your biggest mistakes and what did you learn in the past year? Developer Acquisition &…

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Met with @CuriousJ on the comments.
Really appreciate the conversation we had on pushing forward projects in Cosmos.
The amount of operations and “customer success” they are taking on is daunting.
Looking forward to learn from all these experiments.

Thanks for your feedback @bryancolligan , appreciate especially your suggestions around on-chain data driven metrics for the growth/marketing objectives. We actually had an AADAO team vote yesterday and we decided to put the Growth subDAO part of the renewal mandate proposal on hold, as the community has had many valid points of feedback about that part of our proposal, and we want to respect the community voice. Also, one item I’d like to comment on, because I’ve seen two or three people mention it now too, is the reference to the neutron unclaimed aidrop item as AADAO’s “North Star win”. For us, we like to think that our North Star win was building a process-based open grant program, awarding 39 grants, processing 7 batches of grants in 8 months, including structuring of milestones for every grantee, and doing all of the grantee administration that you chatted with @CuriousJ about. Definitely we also structured a handful of deals that bring revenue-share and airdrops back to the $atom pool, and surely, the easiest item for $atom community to assess in terms of ROI of the program is the neutron unclaimed airdrop that we returned to $atom pool as one of those deals.…

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Lean into the wins. Take bigger risks.
“3-4x multiple back to $ATOM pool” in 9 Months is amazing!
Talking about process is mundane.

What I am really pushing for are the expected value calculations & the thesis associated with each grant deployment.

Will it bring 50MM TVL, 10k users, transaction volume, assets back to the community pool?
The estimate will likely be off on size or timing, but by making a calculated guess it forces discipline in getting the right price.

Anything with Off Chain impact should be tagged and tracked like traditional marketing campaigns.

The best practices around grants seem to be evolving and leaning towards traditional VC investment approach.

Thank you for the response again and looking forward to see your team go more risk on!

Assuming the budget listed in the original post will be updated shortly with the revised ask?

I agree, the grants are a big thing for AADAO. Is there a public doc with your grant making criteria? People grumble about grants being made “only to friends” - but TBF, that’s probably because builders in the ecosystem is small. Grant evaluation guidelines will help dispel those grievances (maybe).

Additionally, can we discuss clawing back the liquidity from Cosmos Millions? Or did I miss it’s ROI figure?

Hello Cosmonauts, As we continue refining the AADAO funding proposal for 2024, we want to share some key updates that directly address the community’s feedback. Community representation in the Oversight Committee We’re taking a significant step towards community representation by introducing a community-elected member to the Oversight Committee . You can refer to the Oversight section in the original post for more details. DAO DAO tooling gives us more optionality as a DAO, including more streamlined control of AADAO via public governance. We’re happy to explore more ways to ensure public governance is more involved in the shaping of AADAO as it further professionalizes and solidifies. This initiative responds to the concerns of AADAO not being inclusive or representative enough of the ATOM community and is aimed at increasing the legitimacy of AADAO’s oversight committee. Removal of the Growth Sub DAO Guided by the constructive feedback from the ATOM community, we have decided to remove the Growth subDAO component from our current proposal. This decision reflects our commitment to listening to and acting upon the community’s insights. Recognizing the importance of…

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Hey Damien,
It was very nice to read about these additional details. But, I believe the proposal has so many legs that it should be divided among multiple proposals. The first proposal should be the selection of a team for a term.

I as an investor only know CP did the funding a year ago, and now we are a discussion for another term, if we had the chance to choose the caretakers of CP funds we would have been delighted, but I fear it will be internal hiring for next time too and it is not a good situation.

Thank you for the updates @Youssef
To be clear, Growth SubDAO is tabled for reconsideration later, but the Marketing SubDAO still stays in the 2024 picture, correct?

Damien:

• Veto power over new grants
• Can discontinue existing grant

Can Oversight committee members’ votes with respect to the above be made public?
I do think it is important for transparency purposes. And will help community understand the relevant and evolving evaluation criteria.

Hi @Cosmos_Nanny such votes are already made public when a grant is discontinued. Our Oversight has discontinued one grant so far and you can find it in the transparency report #4 following the decision.

A veto on a new grant hasn’t happened yet. If this was to happen, we’ll make sure it is published in due time in our transparency reports.

Thank you for the response.
Apologies, should have been more clear.

Is there value in making public how oversight committee members vote with respect to these decisions a)discontinuation and or b) veto of new grant?

Might be valuable for community to reference “voting record” of oversight committee members.

Re: elected oversight member, what is the duration you have in mind? Is this member subjected to re-election annually alongside the DAO?

At present there’s limited and inconsistent accountability with respect to the hub funding space and culture. In addition to empowering a more independent oversight committee for AADAO, I think there’s an invaluable opportunity to promote and normalize essential transparency best practices more broadly. To this end, I’d like to recommend the following – Grantee Education : Educate grantees about good corporate governance, It’s my observation and belief, that many grantees are not well versed or practiced in matters of good corporate/organizational governance in general, and the AADAO has an opportunity here to adopt an “educate” first and “prosecute” later approach at the outset. The AADAO Oversight Committee should act as a central point for educating grantees about responsible fiscal management and practices resistant to conflicts and corruption. Oversight should establish a clear definition of ‘Conflicts of Interest’ and the internal controls necessary to avoid them. Standardization of Transparency Measures : It is imperative to establish standardized reporting protocols for transparency, including the adoption of uniform transparency measures. This will involve…

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On 12/04, I had a one hour call with @Youssef and @Better_Future. The conversation disarmed my initial concerns re: appropriateness of Guernsey Purpose Trust for AADAO legal form, or risk of centralization via role of Enforcer.
No governance documents have been produced. Please read the preliminary org design documents shared. AADAO confirms they will continue to seek review and approval from community before formalizing via establishment papers.

These developments, particularly in terms of bonuses, are appreciated. We would still like to see clear disclosure of salaries for each team member.

Ertemann:

Lastly, and ill have to think about this point further, An overwhelming percentage of the grants went to development of the Neutron ecosystem while often setting the Hub itself on the 2nd place. I think this proposal should see a clear cap in the amount of funding that can be spend on the Neutron ecosystem directly. It is gaining an outsized advantage from the AADAO not necessarilly to the increased benefit of the hub and in direct competition with any other Layer 1 in the cosmos ecosystem. This has come to the point where projects are being paid to port code or even leave their previous homebase which is not to the success of the Hub or Neutron but just a detriment to the entire cosmos ecosystem overall.
IBC wasm, IBC hooks and ICA exists, funding projects to deploy copy projects on Neutron harms the composability of the cosmos ecosystem and the longterm success of ALL appchains thereby hurting the hub and ATOM.

Can i expect a comment on above feedback and or any of the other points i mentioned in the 2 posts i placed here?

I too would like to see more extensive response to many of the important points raised above, and not selective answers when uncomfortable issues want to be ignored.

Hey @Ertemann , On AADAO giving an overwhelming % of grants to Neutron, this is factually not true. Out of 39 grants issued, 4 were for projects on Neutron (10%). The Hub doesn’t have smart contracts and Neutron has become the de facto execution layer on the Hub. Not funding any projects on Neutron would mean that AADAO won’t be able to support any dapp, which wouldn’t sit well for a grant program. Some additional context as well: • There is currently $34M of NTRN tokens sitting on the ATOM CP from the unclaimed airdrop. Neutron’s success is the Hub’s success • The projects we funded on Neutron clearly drive value for ATOM. Whenever we fund a project on Neutron, we make sure there is something in return for ATOM. For example, we negotiated with Amulet to use ATOM as the default gas token and ATOM is clearly at the center stage of this lending protocol as the most desirable asset. Neutron is becoming a strong competitor to Osmosis as a DeFi Hub and having ATOM as the leading liquid token in their ecosystem is a must we should embrace to fulfill the narrative of ATOM as money. To become money , ATOM has to be everywhere in DeFi which means finding use cases for ATOM outside…

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Thank you, the effort is appreciated.

My sense is that the clearest possible disclosure in terms of salary would be an answer to the question:

What is the estimate for each person for the total period of the ask?

Coupled with what other part time/full time jobs they will have in parrallel.

This is the crucial kind of info that I’d like to see in bold so that it can easily be picked up.

Crystal clear numbers please!

Thank you for continuing to provide more clarity - working a proposal myself as we speak and realize the challenges.

Hi @Gnoman

We updated the main post. In the team section, we added the % FTE for each person.You can calculate the annual salaries by annualizing the hourly rate now that we have disclosed the % FTE for each contributor. 100% FTE corresponds to 40 hours per week.

Regarding AADAO contributors having parallel professional activities, you can check the team description section. For each contributor, there is a disclosure of other professional endeavours.

Please note that the team section doesn’t include the future hirings who will all be full time: a Grant Lead, a Marketing Lead, a Developer (Go + Rust) and a Technical Product Lead. Once the hiring is complete, we’ll have 8 full time and 5 part time contributors as opposed to only 4 full time currently, meaning we’re doubling our number of full time contributors. This is as part of our commitment to professionalize the DAO going forward.

I hope this helps, good luck with your own proposal!

ATOMAcceleratorDAO: Finally, in keeping with our commitment to adaptability and efficient use of resources, the timing of our next funding proposal is not set in stone. We will base the decision to seek additional funding on the actual financial needs of AADAO, rather than adhering to a rigid 12-month cycle. Several suggestions: -The first cycle was around 9 months and now it is +12 months/undefined, this seems a very long time period. I think at least every 3 months there should be a governance discussion and on-chain vote regarding whether the community wishes the AADAO to continue for another quarter or not, this gives you a motivation to perform. Otherwise, if you have sure salaries for one year or longer you might relax and perform worse -Before approving any batches of grants and distributing funds, an on-chain signaling proposal should be submitted to ensure that the community agrees and also approves each batch, since the funds given are from the community, ie. from the community pool. In the case where for 2 or 3 batches the community rejects the proposal, then a discussion could be started about adding/removing members of the AADAO or other modifications so…

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What do you gentleman do that All in Bits or the Interchain Foundation doesn’t? Is the Atom Accelerator DAO a formally organized entity? Would working remotely for either of the mentioned established organizations overseeing these duties/responsibilites be more practical? I generally think organizations should have a lead, and people compensated for their efforts - but, as a six-sigma adherer, I’m also pro-efficiencies in organizations. Organizations have structure. Instead of several organization doing all these different things with potentially fractured back-office set-ups - I would say having different departments would be more efficient.

For example - the DAO could use something like Lit Protocol to access web2 backoffice tools where everything can be done collaboratively. I’m actually sharing the way I would go about things myself to accomplish many of the things I’ve suggested.

Just think of Gaia as the organization. What is the most efficient way to organize people around that organization? I think these other organizations should merge too, so there is that.

Unless the chain forks - then an organization should head the management of each fork.

why would AAdao get funded again when they failed to provide a narrative for $ATOM after having over a year to come up with one?

ATOM isnt interchain “money” $USDC is

LSDs wont be 50% of ICS volume, cosmos LSDs are a joke and their main customer is the CP

everything they have funded was either an obvious yes that could have easily passed governance or failed to do anything meaningful. they even funded a previously rejected proposal and then were pressured into revoking partial funds by the community.

AAdao has overpromised and under delivered. we would be better off with a bunch of suggestions thrown into a proverbial hat and selected using $NOIS to fund proposals.

Youssef:

Grant Lead, a Marketing Lead, a Developer (Go + Rust) and a Technical Product Lead

Hey @Youssef, is there an open application period for the following roles?

Grant Lead, a Marketing Lead, a Developer (Go + Rust) and a Technical Product Lead

For instance, generate community awareness that AADAO is hiring for the above. Post JDs, and requirements for roles. Create an open application window (of some defined duration). For efficiency, AADAO should preserve discretion and authority in hiring decisions, but many in community (including me) would like to see a more open consideration and solicitation process.

We 100% intend to do this going forward for all roles that are full time, not necessarily here on the forum though. They will be posted on our website and the community will be made aware each time there is a full time job opening.

We recognize we had our challenges with community involvement in year one (mostly due to a lack of resources, not intentionally) and hopefully we can do better going forward.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback.

Youssef: We 100% intend to do this going forward for all roles that are full time, not necessarily here on the forum though. They will be posted on our website and the community will be made aware each time there is a full time job opening. Why not share job openings for AADAO here on the forum, on twitter and everywhere so that the community can be aware? Not many check often the AADAO website. Candidates should share their applications also publicly in the forum so that the Cosmos community can also evaluate and comment about potential candidates? ATOMAcceleratorDAO: • Dilan Asatekin 50%FTE (Grant Sub-DAO). Founder of Imperator. ATOMAcceleratorDAO: Xavier Meegan 50% FTE(Grant subDAO). Chief Investment Officer at Chorus One. Dilan is founder of Imperator and Xavier is a full time employee at Chorus One. It is mentioned they will work 50% FTE. Does this mean they will work 50% less for Imperator/Chorus since this time will be for the AADAO? Or they will still work 100% FT for Imperator/Chorus, and another 50% FT during all evenings and weekends? Because 50% FT is 2.5 days of work, or ~20h, so either they need to work 4h extra all…

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Thank you for the comments, although i agree Neutron’s success is important for ICS i would have liked to see a reply to the core of my argument, namely paying for porting code.

Can you still comment on the goals of AADAO with respect to growing Neutron without being a vampire on the rest of Cosmos?

Ertemann:

IBC wasm, IBC hooks and ICA exists, funding projects to deploy copy projects on Neutron harms the composability of the cosmos ecosystem and the longterm success of ALL appchains thereby hurting the hub and ATOM.

The website seems to be fixed (although i am still missing some) but none of the new items have descriptions or links. Please post a little more information about the projects that were funded!

Ertemann:

Edit: Also when can we expect the site to be updated with the latest Grants given, Just posting this on twitter hurts transparancy.

Best regards,
Ertemann
Lavender.Five Nodes

Cosmic_Validator:

Before approving any batches of grants and distributing funds, an on-chain signaling proposal should be submitted to ensure that the community agrees and also approves each batch,

We would be a strong NO on any requirement for AADAO to post their Grant batches on-chain first.

The whole idea of AADAO is to move away from the slow process that is on-chain governance and trust them as stewards of the ATOM they receive. The question we should answer is If we trust the AADAO to make decisions for the Hub at large. Micromanaging their decisions will do nothing good - you might as well not fund this group all together if you disagree.

Ertemann:

The whole idea of AADAO is to move away from the slow process that is on-chain governance and trust them as stewards of the ATOM they receive

I think funding via on-chain community pool spend proposals is faster and more efficient than the AADAO. The whole point of the AADAO is so they review applications and decide, instead of the Cosmos community reviewing and deciding. Is the AADAO better at reviewing applications than the whole Cosmos community? I’m not sure. Does the Cosmos community prefer the AADAO reviewing and deciding about grants applications for them? I’m also not sure. Where the AADAO could add value is by creating RFPs and sourcing projects. However, while Reverie for the Osmosis grants sourced many grants projects and created many RFPs, it seems the AADAO was mostly waiting for applications to arrive, rather than actively drafting RFPs and sourcing teams to fullfill the RFPs?

Cosmic_Validator: The whole point of the AADAO is so they review applications and decide, instead of the Cosmos community reviewing and deciding. Again - I just don’t know what this entity does outside of what Interchain Foundation or All in Bits does, or why it couldn’t be performed inside the capacity of those other organizations - with appropriate compensation of course. I’ve seen people historically raise concerns about use of funds. Greed is a real thing, but so is expertise. I’m more trusting and more naively than I should, but I’ve seen teams who create value get rewarded. Rising tides raise all ships so to speak. What happens if the chain forks in the next year, which I think different architecture styles for the hub would be interesting, but is there going to be some rift or allegiance in the power dynamics where one of the forked tokens get dumped? Personally, I’m not a huge fan of all the derivative DeFi token drops that fracture liquidity or the speculative inflationary aspect of many chains. There are a few chains that I think are really innovative - derivatives of those innovations is a second mover attempt at relevancy, is it possible - yes, is it…

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We’d like to express a few words of thanks and support here for the AADAO as the team building Amulet Finance, a protocol which will enable users to obtain self-repaying loans from staked assets without being liquidated, using smart contracts deployed on Neutron. We self-funded for many months during the bear market while looking for the right CosmWasm-enabled chain to build on. The technology stack on Neutron is perfect for cross-chain staking of ATOM, so it was clear to us that it was the right place to build Amulet Finance. We’re really excited to show Cosmos Hub what we’ve been building. Given the high cost of audits and the work that still needed to be done, we would have really struggled to get this far without the support of Neutron (in particular Spaydh) and the AADAO. The value adds we intend Amulet Finance to bring to the Cosmos Hub and the AEZ are extensive - not only will ATOM be the default gas fee on Amulet Finance, it will also be the flagship asset for enabling self-repaying loans from staked assets. There will also be support for ATOM staking derivatives. Liquidity and leverage are the lifeblood of finance in general and DeFi is no exception - by empowering…

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It should be relatively clear that I’m not in opposition to the people doing the work of the AADAO. I’m not in favor of inefficiencies though. I perhaps even think them working under the umbrella of the Interchain Foundation or All in Bits might improve those organizations and/or their transparency.

Lil_D:

No.

1. Legal Structure

You received tens of thousands of dollars in your first year to establish a legal wrapper and chose a Guernsey trust? You should refund all the money you received for it.

A Guernsey Trust is inappropriate for any self-described DAO because of its highly centralized organization. Moreover, Guernsey trusts are weak legal wrappers that offer very little tax clarity and virtually no tax advantages in any jursidiction—and (for that very reason) they do not require $50,000+ to establish… It is shameful to propose this as your DAO’s legal structure after a year of work and inspires no confidence in your due diligence or ability to identify appropriate vehicles for advancing the Hub.

A Guernsey Trust is a legal arrangement where a person (settlor) transfers property (trust fund) to another (trustee) to hold for the benefit of another person/s (beneficiary/beneficiaries) or purpose. Is this already established?

Perhaps the existing described entities could also stand to be restructured to fit the form of a DAO.

cc: @Better_Future A Guernsey Trust is a legal arrangement where a person (settlor) transfers property (trust fund) to another (trustee) to hold for the benefit of another person/s (beneficiary/beneficiaries) or purpose. @jasonsprouse This is the correct description of a trust, Guernsey or otherwise. It is primarily an instrument for existing persons or entities to earmark assets for specific purposes, and not a legal wrapper per se. The problem is: Who is the settlor? The Hub still does not have a legal wrapper (i.e., personhood). Moreover, if the Hub is to remain the owner of the trust’s assets—i.e., a revocable trust—then the Hub’s community pool is entirely liable for the debts and obligations the trust incurs. This means this trust is actually opening the legal door for opportunistic attorneys to go after the entire Community Pool. The alternative would be an irrevocable trust, but in this case the Hub would not be in control of the assets—it turns them over once and for all. I have no doubt that this arrangement appeals to AADAO as well as the legal firm they are working with—it either puts all the liability on the Hub or is actually cutting off the Hub’s…

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Lil_D:

Marshall Islands DAO Directory Service

There are several jurisdictions where DAOs have legal status. Might be something All in Bits and Interchain Foundation explore too. Shape Shift dissolved their LLCs or corporate formation and relaunched as a DAO. I think this structure is something that will be more common.

jasonsprouse: I just don’t know what this entity does outside of what Interchain Foundation or All in Bits does, or why it couldn’t be performed inside the capacity of those other organizations - with appropriate compensation of course. I think AADAO is a business development organization, whereas All In Bits and Interchain Foundation are mostly software development shops. I think it makes sense for these functions to be done by different organizations. Is there any reason why business promoters would be talking to the devs? They are selling whatever is out there already. Cosmic_Validator: I think funding via on-chain community pool spend proposals is faster and more efficient than the AADAO. The whole point of the AADAO is so they review applications and decide You either delegate some type of work or don’t. I am not sure Cosmos Hub stakers and validators would have the understanding of all the various early stage projects that AADAO would want to fund. It is hard for the average person to understand complicated early stage projects. People don’t have the time to do research or even the cognitive capacity to picture something theoretical and…

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vixcontango:

I think AADAO is a business development organization, whereas All In Bits and Interchain Foundation are mostly software development shops. I think it makes sense for these functions to be done by different organizations. Is there any reason why business promoters would be talking to the devs? They are selling whatever is out there already.

Organizations have departments for those different activities, if All in Bits or Interchain Foundation was a DAO maybe called a working group or something. It seems they do more than just business development. Having common back-office tools that creates the transparency everyone seems to be concerned about would be a healthy development for the ecosystem.

Hi @Lil_D, thanks for your feedback. We appreciate your mindset of protecting ATOM community, that has been our mindset too. We believe we have robust answers to each of the points, and at same time, we do want to consider your perspective fully and thoughtfully to make sure we haven’t missed anything. My email address is: [email protected], if you’d like to reach out there.

Indeed, we have to be VERY VERY carefull for potential conflicts of interest… With the issuing of grants with this kind of money, milions of $ worth… We have to be VERY VERY careful. Especially with the history and following bad reputation Cosmos/Atom already has with this.

After responding to our queries, Commons Hub has voted Yes on AADAO’s proposal 865.

Chose promise chose due StakeLab: Growth team doesn’t looks like a growth team, it’s one of the most important task and there not a single person with verified experience (too simple to provide grant to some communities - growth is larger than that). Feels like more a BD or investment team? @StakeLab We canceled the Growth SubDAO following numerous feedback, both public and private. StakeLab: • 99% of team members got already minimum 1 full time job (sometimes way more), that doesn’t seems to be a fully committed team for the result we are a lookign for a 10M funding. • Bonus too high (again-same as informal-its the type of thing you wanna extract from governments etc but you do exactly the same) We have 4 full time positions to fill in the next 3 months: Grant Lead, Developer, Technical Product Lead and Marketing Lead. Once this is all completed, AADAO will have 8 full time contributors and 5 part time. StakeLab: Marketing budget is way too low for the amount requested and should be use mostly for growth/communities, not much for Atom Accelerator (them representing it in their different areas/countries) Following the…

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AEZ is a subset of ATOM as interchain money as such I think you want to market the broader theme. I know “ATOM as money” messaging is piggy backing off Bitcoin and Ethereum money narratives (Bankless), but positioning ATOM as the 3rd major crypto capital asset behind BTC and ETH would be best ROI. Cosmos tech is 3rd biggest ecosystem in crypto and the token advertising should reflect that and try to build out an investor and consumer mindshare that corresponds to that. Solana is trying to insert itself in the 3rd place and Cosmos should be contesting that narrative. It has bigger developer and user adoption and bigger total market cap for the ecosystem.

ATOM as IBC money, the interop/bridging or “interchain” money is incredibly powerful messaging especially after the last 2-3 years of massive bridge hacks on various Ethereum bridges. The marketing should be capitalizing on that and highlighting IBC technology’s status as the ultimate bridging technology and thus the best way to capture the growth of the totality of the overall blockchain ecosystem.

Hi,
can you give a clearer example of the oversight for the workforce e.g. 60% full time in regards with the payment brackets. Which non-related entity is taking account and which escalation routes, comms and what delegations to revision does this oversight have?
Thanks in advance