Finance Squad Proposal

Proposal Summary

The proposal is a request to Executive Sub DAO to fund $42,000.00 for Season 1 (April 1st - July 31st) for forming and running the Finance Squad. During Season 0 the base has been built with the principle of paying on time and the beginning of research on a more efficient way of distributing value to the DAO as a whole, this has been done through research Coordinape, yield farming , and Gnosis safes. It has allowed efficient payment of holders in single transactions. The next step of this squad is taking the identified focus points in practice / to the next level, including seeding squads focused on Yield management, token economics and accounting.

DAO Finance Guild

During Season 0 we attracted a number of talented individuals to join Aragon and work on bounties around Core Operations. The finance guild will follow the proposal set out below for reward distribution.

Core Contributor(s) – Someone who will take on a first POC within the squad. The person in core contributor role will have the ability to play activating roles within the squads.
Pool: A reward pool to be allocated via coordinape for the completion of important and ongoing tasks
Bounties: A pre-defined allocation towards currently undefined bounties that will allow ops to be nimble and attract talent or fund action that supports effective operations of the AN DAO

Proposal Rationale:

Today we fund individual projects or working groups, which pushes significant operational and financial overhead to these teams and the executive sub DAO to organize payments. Moving into S1 we seek to create and empower and well-staffed Finance Guild to drive the operational efficiency for our community working groups and enable teams to focus on deliverables and free up the ESDs time to work on funding proposals.

The finance guild identifies the following hick-ups:

No clear structure (repeating date) when teams have to provide their monthly reports with KPIs and proposed payments (will provide a streamlined format for this)
No clear structure (fixed amount of time) for the ESD and Treasury squad to process the received reports
No clear structure (repeating date) for the contributors when to expect their payments
No clear structure on the payment distribution and calculations of ANT
Inefficient payment and transaction signing process

Expected duration or delivery date (if applicable):

This funding request is for Season 1 of the AN DAO. This will run from 1 April to 31 July.

Deliverables/Milestones (re-designing the payment process)

In order to achieve a decent payment process we will propose a resolution of each aforementioned hick-up in the paragraphs below:

A clear structure on monthly reporting
In order to provide structure in monthly reporting, we would like to propose a fixed repeating date for every squad / guild to to propose their KPIs and Payments. Squad / Guild leaders should monitor their KPIs and proposed payments continuously and share the results of a particular month, early in the following month. We propose that the 4th of each month as a fixed date for squad / guild leaders to provide their monthly report.

A clear structure on assessing reports and preparing transactions
The ESD is in charge of capturing the (amount of) imbursements of each month for each squad / guild. After receiving the monthly reports from each squad / guild, including proposed payments and substantiation (e.g. this is what we have done, these are our goals in the form of KPIs), the ESD assesses the request. After assessing, the ESD can accept, adjust or decline the requested payments and will communicate this with the stakeholders (the particular squad / guild & treasury team).

We propose that the ESD fixed time period to assess the monthly reports and instruct the treasury team, namely the 5th till the 11th of each month.

After receiving instructions from the ESD, the treasury squad will compile all payments that are approved and will prepare the transaction. We propose that the Treasury squad has a fixed time period for this, namely the 12th till the 14th of each month.

A fixed monthly pay day
As AN DAO is moving towards monthly payment cycles for their contributors, we would like to propose the 15th of each month as a fixed pay day.

A fixed payment distribution and ANT price calculation
As proposed in Season 0 we would like to implement a fixed payment distribution and ANT price calculation for Season 1, which is a 70%USDC / 30%ANT ratio. As the ANT price is volatile, we would like to provide clarity on the imbursement calculation. We propose a fixed calculation date and method, namely a 14-day average of ANT on the 4th of each month (for the ANT imbursements of that particular month).

An efficient payment and signing process
Aiming for a more efficient payment process, we would like to propose for Season 1 that the ESD holds the requested funds on a multi-sig escrow instead of Aragon Govern. We would like to change the three step process into a two step process, where the Main DAO directly send their funds towards the ESD multi-sig.

The signing process will change as well in that regard, as we propose a 3 out of 5 approval multi-sig for the ESD. The signers would be Ivan (ESD), Renee (ESD), Daniel (ESD), Alex (Treasury) and Rick (Treasury). In this regard the ESD still has “a veto” but we can experiment if this increases efficiency.

Summary
24th till 30/31th → slot for guild leaders to compose their reports and share with ESD + Finance guild

1st till 11th → ESD assessing the squad / guild reports and instructing the treasury squad

4th → the 14 day average of the ANT payment will be calculated

12th till 14th → Finance guild compiles all payments and prepares the transaction

15th → ESD signs the transaction and contributors are payed

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Monthly deliverables

100% timeliness to compile all payments, prepare, sign and execute routine financial transactions by the 15th of the month 2100 UTC +0
100% timeliness of monthly income / expense report posted to forum by the 15th of the Month 2100 UTC +0

Discrete deliverables

1st of May, define contributor reward payment and reporting process
1st of May, deliver visualisation of token flow to aid transparency into the grants funding rated 8/10 or higher by community polling
15th of June (2nd payment cycle), start initiating the first payments via the Polygon chain
Prepare an overview of all contributors per guild (and their addresses) within a week after the guild is approved for funding by ESD (to get contributors paid in time)
1st June, Deliver the Finance notion page, that will be rated by the community on: transparency, easy to understand, helpful (aim for 8/10 at community polling)
1 July, Initiate the necessary change in the Charter, to increase efficiency in the payment process
15th of August (after last payment cycle), deliver an overarching AN DAO S1 Finacne Report, which provides an overview of the financial status of AN DAO, a look back on S1 and an outlook to S2 (will be rated by the community and aim for 8/10)

Strategic Alignment

Finance is seen listed as a priority for the Executive Sub DAO to support the development of financial transparency. DAO Ops will support financial transparency, operational finance as well as undertaking research to provide advice on productivity of treasury such as yield on unallocated funding. Finance is not expected to be the experts on yield management on day one but can effectively facilitate and support experts to make proposals that deliver on financial priorities

Some additional key points of alignment for the coming months:

Work with ESD to remove any of there operational overhead eg payments
Align and Communicate clearly with all teams on payments (e.g. reporting and payment process)

Team Information

Core Contributor: ricktik6#0196 (Full time 40-45 Hours) - Rick was the treasury and accounting bounty holder during season 0 and worked closely with Alex. He functioned as a POC on the payments for the bounty holders. In addition, he helped identifying improvements such as payment mechanisms (e.g. coordinape), how to optimize the treasury (e.g. yield farming and creating more transparency), and payment infrastructures (e.g. Gnosis safes, DeWork, and Polygon chain). He is motivated to take these improvements to the next level in Season 1.
Anukriti acted as an Ops Coordinator during Season 0 and worked closely with all contributors to capture their needs along with identifying the KPIs and making sure any blockers were removed. She also did a proof of concept of DeWork along with MDLawyer and Spectra. She is also working on a DAO Governance Hub project funded by Metagov and DAO Research Collective. (https://twitter.com/bebaakbeyou)

Funding Information

The finance guild requests funding of $10,500/month with following distribution -

ricktik6#0196 - $5000, split 70:30 with USD:ANT (40-45 hours)
- 0xDacf1065b12849298dc5B47EcE9553094000074F
Alex (steward) - 0, (0-10 hours)
- 0x580e5E54055d087D7F012dD43e54cceaE9ce4265
Anukriti (ops) - 0, (0-10 hours)
- 0xae8b5f6638a8f3c76e2f4656cfd2b0b523307302
Additional bounties - $5500 (35-40 Hours)

Adding the per month distribution, the total disbursement requested for Season 1 is $42,000.

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This is a rough estimation of the first deliverables that we are picking up (of course new deliverables can be added and priority can switch during the season).

**Lower value due to work completed during pre-season

In terms of transparency, we would like to propose: if a deliverable takes actually more or less time (and costs), we will report this to the ESD including argumentation.

Happy to answer any questions / concerns and as always open to feedback.