Exploring a Structured Path Forward for Gnosis Treasury Management

General
1

Hello all,

My name is Dane Lund, founder of Lund Ventures. I became aware of the recent governance dynamics regarding treasury management services and have followed the matter and vote closely. I am interested in designing a governance process and assembling a high-credibility team to revamp Gnosis’s treasury management processes and strategy.

By way of background, Lund Ventures was heavily involved in the design of the Optimism’s Grants Council and currently leads Optimism’s Budget Board. Separately, I was a core contributor to Alliance DAO and am a partner of 1121 Law, a crypto-focused boutique law firm.

In whatever way Gnosis decides to move forward with treasury management, it should involve more rigor than the 2021-era baseline, in terms of design, controls, and implementation. Gnosis is a key ecosystem for Ethereum and having a strong treasury structured to endure for the long term is critical.

I would like to get feedback on proposing a two-step process. First, I would propose that Lund Ventures put together a study with a small team of talented Web3 veterans to determine how Gnosis’s treasury management can be upgraded based on the last four years of technological developments. As part of this study, the team would put together a governance framework for selecting a treasury management platform, assessing its performance, and keeping it accountable to the community. As part of this effort, Lund Ventures would plan to partner with Phil Meng, former Head of Treasury Management and Capital Markets at Stellar and current CIO of io.Net. Phil is focused on endowment-like treasury management. If the community is supportive of moving forward with Step 1, Lund Ventures would submit a follow-up post with a detailed scope of work, proposed team, timeline, and a modest stipend request to support the effort.”

Second, after making the envisioned study available to the community, Lund Ventures would plan to propose a team to implement the strategy, which would likely involve more than one organization to accomplish different functions. Importantly, I would expect that the proposal involve a competitive selection process in which any other person or organization would have the benefit of the findings of the review conducted in step 1. It may be the case that part of the selection process may involve selection of passive mechanics, such as locked vaults or other autonomous mechanisms.

Following this post, I would like to hear feedback on whether there is interest in putting a proposal forward for step 1. If nothing else, hopefully this post helps the community focus on the next steps for Gnosis’s treasury management and highlights that there are measured processes that the community can utilize so as not to rush into a new treasury management regimen without serious thought.

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Hi Dane - thank you for your interest. A few questions for you:

Can we ask for a shortlist of the reasons that the DAO should consider seeking support from Lund Ventures? What really sets you apart from doing the process ourselves, or seeking external support from existing partners or ecosystem participants?

How big is your team?

What would be the cost of the two steps of your process?

In honesty, we’re raising our guard a little in these circumstances. We’re concerned that the treasury transition risks becoming a feasting ground for hungry external providers with no previous or future interest in the DAO beyond the fees they hunt. We need more than just good solutions - we need to protect the treasury from incentive misalignment and wasteful spending.

Anything you can add to help us to understand your motives would be much appreciated. Thank you.

1 Like
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Thanks for raising these questions — they’re fair and reflect the kind of scrutiny the DAO should apply during a transition like this. Treasury shifts can attract misaligned incentives, and my goal is to help Gnosis avoid that dynamic rather than contribute to it.

Why involve Lund Ventures?
The role I’m proposing for Step 1 isn’t treasury management. It’s the design of the process the DAO will use to evaluate and select whatever long-term strategy or providers the community ultimately prefers. Much of my work with Optimism — on the Grants Council and Budget Board — has focused on building structures that introduce clear evaluation standards and give communities durable governance tools. I think Gnosis is at a moment where that level of structure would be valuable.

Neutrality is also important. Many long-time ecosystem contributors could reasonably be candidates in Step 2. If they’re also shaping the selection process, that creates unavoidable conflicts. My role in Step 1 is specifically meant to avoid that — and to be explicit, Lund Ventures will not propose to manage the treasury.

Proposed Process
The process I envision has a few simple phases:

  1. Form a small council of high-context contributors (see below).
  2. Run a focused study to clarify community priorities around treasury management, including outreach and forum dialogue. This would also produce concrete frameworks for how the DAO should evaluate and compare different approaches.
  3. Based on that work, propose a budget and timeline for an RFP.
  4. Run the RFP, evaluate submissions, and bring a structured recommendation to the DAO for a vote.

The goal is create a transparent, defensible, community-owned process.

Team Dimensions
The council would stay intentionally small: myself, a strong governance participant from outside the Gnosis ecosystem, one or two Gnosis community members for internal context, and a subject-matter expert such as Phil Meng. The idea is to keep this lean, high-context, and focused on quality over volume.

From Lund Ventures, it would just be me — this is a consulting practice I run personally, and I’d supplement it with the contributors mentioned above. I would also plan to involve GFX Labs. They have a long track record of rigorous, independent governance work across multiple ecosystems. I’ve worked with them before — including during the early Optimism Grants Council — and they consistently bring careful analysis and transparent reasoning. Their role here would be to pressure-test the framework and help ensure the process is objective and durable. They are not positioning themselves to manage treasury assets.

Cost
Before putting forward a specific number, I’d like to confirm that this direction is desirable and align on scope. That said, I’d expect the budget to be comparable to governance processes in ecosystems like Arbitrum — enough to attract strong contributors and compensate time fairly, but structured to avoid windfalls or excessive value capture.

4

We appreciate the response, but will await further updates from the Gnosis Ltd team, given their latest message.

We feel that any proposed processes for setting the future direction of the treasury should take into account the work being undertaken by Ltd for the transition.