GIP-99: Should Gnosis Guild steward GnosisDAO Governance?

[staworth]

Stance

We are broadly supportive of the proposed mandate for Gnosis Guild, and agree that there’s much to be done to improve and strengthen the systems that facilitate the DAO’s governance.

Pricing

We also broadly agree with @nesk here about the revised pricing:

@nesk

I believe that adding a recurring $0.9M cost to the DAO does not make sense at this point. This project should probably be structured in a way with a heavier workload to revamp the governance structure in the beginning and then enter maintenance mode

$76k per month (assuming static GNO price) for an estimate of 3.5 FTE equates to an average salary of $260k per FTE. Though our maths here completely ignores any other costs incurred and a reasonable profit margin, our immediate reaction was: “Is this amount really needed for 24 months of loosely-scoped work?”

However, if this were framed instead as $76k per month for the ITP based on the deliverables, with a subsequent process of price and deliverables setting, it would be easier to stomach (even if $76k were subsequently agreed and retained throughout). It’s in the later stages of the 24-month term where it’s harder to gauge the value (and easier to imagine the value dropping off).

We also recognise our logic about the price being mirrored in @espina’s logic about the team:

@espina

If the DAO prefers a fixed team we can work with that and provide more concrete details on it. However, we don’t think it makes sense for this mandate, as the team will shift based on emergent needs.

We think that a fixed team and a fixed price over a long fixed period makes a lot less sense than shifting the scope based on emergent needs. However, we also recognise the importance of a stable, long-term mandate in giving Gnosis Guild the certainty to pursue ambitious solutions that require serious time and investment.

To us, the obvious solution would be to build on this kind of fixed/variable split proposed by @SEEDLatam:

@SEEDLatam

- Fix 90 % of the annual budget in USDC as a base reainer. (paid monthly).
- Keep only 10 % as a variable component, set at 0.03 % of AUM and hard capped (e.g. max 100 k USD per year, min 50k). Can be paid in vested GNO for example.

For the fixed element, this would mean a comfortable monthly retainer for Gnosis Guild that supports a level of ongoing work and maintenance (equivalent to Nesk’s “maintenance mode”).

For the variable component, it would mean having scope for a larger amount to be paid based on the work that’s demanded and meeting regular milestones (e.g. set in 3 or 6-month reviews). Where there’s less demand, the variable component would shrink, and so would the demands on the team. Ongoing scoping could be handled by a small committee tasked with overseeing this mandate.

In a scenario like this, we would be happy to approve the $38k stables + $38k GNO proposal as a total budget, with a retainer of say $25k per month and a variable scope of $51k during the ITP. We expect the full amount would be suitable for the ITP (and perhaps the milestones immediately after that), but in Year 2 expect the scope could decrease if not needed. This approach would leave space for the mandate to continue while adjusting costs to suit demand.

Thoughts?

De-duplication

Otherwise, our only comment would be that this mandate should aim to minimise duplication with other ongoing work/mandates. For example, on treasury dashboards, we’re conscious of kpk’s extensive monthly treasury reports… work across the two mandates should be aligned wherever possible to reduce overlap/waste.