A modular treasury framework with Impossible as a specialist provider.
Proposer
- Sheeki on behalf of Impossible Finance
TLDR
- Replace the single, monolithic treasury manager model with a Treasury Council plus 3 buckets: Safety, Strategic Ecosystem, and OG Prediction & Labs.
- Use prediction markets and KPI linked incentives to inform treasury decisions and pay providers for outcomes, not assets under management.
- Run a small, capped 5M USD active investment pilot only for projects that build on Gnosis infra, with 0 percent management fee and 20 percent carry on realised profit only after full principal is returned.
- Impossible wants to help design this framework and act as specialist steward for the Labs lane, not as the exclusive manager of the entire treasury.
All numbers here are starting points for discussion, not fixed demands.
1. Context and goals
GnosisDAO has just ended its long standing treasury management arrangement and is now deciding what comes next.
From forum and social discussions, three themes keep surfacing:
- Discomfort with large, AUM based fee structures,
- Unease around complex DeFi risk relative to the “low risk DeFi” narrative,
- And a desire to avoid a single external team having long term de facto control over the treasury.
At the same time, Gnosis still has a very strong identity:
- Deep roots in prediction markets, conditional tokens and futarchy,
- Core infra like Gnosis Chain, Safe, CoW and Gnosis Pay that many projects already rely on,
- And one of the most significant onchain treasuries in the ecosystem.
The question is not just “who manages the treasury” but “what architecture lets Gnosis:
- Protect its never die capital,
- Grow its ecosystem,
- And actually use its own primitives to govern itself”.
This RFC proposes such an architecture and offers Impossible as a specialist provider inside it, not the single manager of everything.
2. How Impossible fits
2.1 Our edge relative to Treasury-focused and RWA shops
Impossible is not a traditional fund manager. We are primarily:
- Builders and product people,
- Launchpad and auction designers,
- Ecosystem structurers and participants across multiple chains.
Concretely:
- We help protocols design tokens, auctions, liquidity programs and vesting that route upside back to their DAOs in structured ways.
- We operate in the “deal flow and structure” layer across a wide portfolio of projects, which is exactly where information about protocol health and risk accumulates.
- We already use Gnosis products (Safe, CoW, Gnosis Chain) in production for ourselves and partners.
This puts us in a particularly good position to own a Prediction and Labs mandate that plugs Gnosis’ primitives into:
- Advisory and futarchy style markets about Gnosis decisions,
- KPI options tied to treasury and ecosystem metrics,
- Labs style experiments that can eventually spin out into independent products with clear upside for the Gnosis treasury.
We are used to turning information into structured products and markets. A Gnosis Prediction and Treasury Lab is essentially formalizing that work inside the Gnosis ecosystem instead of doing it only externally.
2.2 How we think Gnosis should upgrade the structure
We propose that Gnosis adopt a structure built on three pillars:
- Gnosis Treasury Council
- Segmented Treasury Buckets with mandate stewards and working groups
- Prediction informed governance and a Gnosis Labs ownership model
Our role is to help design and test this structure, and then operate the lanes where we are clearly the right specialist.
3. Pillar 1 - Gnosis Treasury Council
3.1 Mandate
The Treasury Council is a DAO mandated body that:
- Has no custody of funds,
- Defines treasury policy, risk limits and RFPs, and
- Coordinates and evaluates specialist providers.
The Council should be a brain, not a legal wrapper. It does not need to originate every strategy itself, but it should:
- set the filters for what “good” looks like (in risk, return, alignment),
- evaluate and prioritise opportunities surfaced by service providers, delegates and the wider community,
- decide which opportunities move forward in which bucket, under what constraints,
- and enforce time boxed mandates with clear review points and exit paths.
The Council is funded through a fixed annual budget approved by GIP, not AUM based fees, to avoid incentives to maximise managed capital for its own sake.
3.2 Composition and accountability
This RFC does not fix an exact structure, but suggests:
- 5 to 7 members, mixing:
- Gnosis delegates and contributors,
- external risk and treasury experts,
- at most one seat for any single service provider to avoid capture.
- Members serve fixed, staggered terms, with rotation each year so the Council cannot stagnate.
- The Council publishes:
- quarterly policy updates and bucket level allocation reviews,
- annual “state of the treasury” reports with scenario analysis.
The exact numbers and selection mechanism should be defined by the community in a follow up GIP. What matters here is that:
- there is one body responsible for the whole structure,
- it has an explicit mandate and budget, and
- it can replace or scale different providers without redoing the whole constitution.
4. Pillar 2 - Buckets, stewards and working groups
The Council governs the entire treasury, but it is unrealistic to expect every member to be equally deep in every lane.
We propose three primary buckets, each with:
- a clear objective,
- a preferred asset and strategy universe,
- a mandate steward, and
- a working group where needed.
Ultimate accountability stays with the single Treasury Council, but work is distributed.
4.1 Bucket 1 - Safety and Runway
Objective
Preserve the real value of Gnosis’ core capital and ensure minimum 5 to 10 years of operational runway for critical infra even under stress.
Assets and strategies
- High quality stablecoins diversified by issuer and custody,
- ETH, staked ETH and potentially GNO in conservative configurations,
- carefully vetted RWA exposure (short dated sovereigns, solid legal structure),
- limited, deeply audited DeFi positions with strict concentration caps.
Risk constraints and metrics
Examples for the Council to refine:
- Max exposure per protocol, per issuer, per chain.
- Hard limits on complex leverage.
- Clear tolerance thresholds for:
- maximum drawdown in defined stress scenarios,
- tail risk,
- and liquidity under market stress.
Performance should be evaluated on risk adjusted metrics such as Sharpe or Sortino against simple benchmarks like “hold ETH and GNO in a Safe”, not just raw yield.
Providers
Multiple treasury and risk managers can compete here, including kpk if the DAO wishes, but under:
- explicit Council set constraints,
- on chain role based permissions (Safe plus Zodiac style), and
- transparent reporting.
Impossible is not asking to lead this bucket. We are open to providing risk modeling and analytics support, or running small slices, but the main competition here should be among the big treasury shops and RWA specialists.
4.2 Bucket 2 - Strategic Gnosis Ecosystem
Objective
Deploy capital in a way that grows the Gnosis ecosystem:
- Safe and SafeDAO,
- CoW Protocol and Gnosis Auction,
- Gnosis Chain, Gnosis Pay and related products,
- and key partner protocols that are strategically important for the network.
Instruments
- Strategic token stakes with long term alignment structures,
- liquidity and market making for ecosystem assets,
- tailored incentive programs (for example, Gnosis Pay user campaigns, Safe usage incentives, CoW or Gnosis Chain fee rebates) with clear KPIs and cliffs,
- co investments into products that lock in usage of Gnosis infra.
KPIs
Examples:
- growth in active addresses and volume on Gnosis Chain and Safe,
- traded volume and order flow through CoW and Gnosis Auction,
- adoption metrics for Gnosis Pay and new products,
- revenue or fee flows to the Gnosis treasury from ecosystem products.
Providers in this bucket look more like ecosystem builders and structured product designers than pure portfolio managers. This is closer to venture and BD than to fixed income.
Impossible’s launchpad and structuring experience fits here:
- designing token economics, locks and auction paths,
- aligning upside between Gnosis, builders and users,
- and using Gnosis infra as the default rails for new projects.
4.3 Bucket 3 - OG Prediction and Labs
Objective
Reboot Gnosis’ original edge in prediction markets, auctions and futarchy, and make it a central tool of treasury and ecosystem governance.
This bucket funds and operates the Gnosis Prediction and Treasury Lab (“Gnosis Labs”).
Scope
- Design and run prediction markets on key Gnosis decisions:
- drawdown risk under alternative allocations,
- long term treasury NAV under Strategy A versus Strategy B,
- success probabilities for major initiatives.
- Build KPI options and conditional instruments that:
- pay out based on ecosystem metrics (usage, fees, revenue),
- are used for provider compensation and new incentives.
- Prototype new products:
- updated Omen style markets and AMMs,
- improved Gnosis Auction and Mesa style mechanisms,
- AI forecasters and agents participating in markets,
- on chain dashboards that make this intelligible to delegates.
Impossible is explicitly proposing to act as:
- the initial specialist provider for Gnosis Labs, and
- the steward of the Prediction and Labs working group, if the Council and DAO agree.
5. Pillar 3 - Prediction informed governance and ownership
5.1 Using both history and markets
We propose that Gnosis uses both:
- Backward looking data and stress tests, to understand what has actually happened, and
- Forward looking prediction markets and KPI options, to get a live view of expectations about what might happen under different choices.
Mechanically:
- For major treasury changes, the Council would request:
- historical risk analysis,
- plus markets that price outcomes of alternative proposals.
- GIPs and Snapshots would include:
- a narrative policy section from the Council,
- a risk appendix,
- and references to relevant prediction markets and KPIs, with short explanations of any large divergences.
This is fully aligned with the original GnosisDAO futarchy ambitions, updated with better tools and more realism about where prediction markets are strong and where they are noisy.
5.2 KPI linked compensation for providers
We propose that some share of all provider compensation, including Impossible if selected, is paid in KPI linked instruments rather than just flat tokens or cash.
Examples:
- Safety bucket managers:
- get upside only if they keep drawdowns and volatility within agreed bounds,
- and deliver risk adjusted returns above benchmark over a review period.
- Strategic bucket managers:
- get upside based on growth of agreed ecosystem metrics and generated fee flows,
- not just on mark to market PnL.
- Labs:
- get upside based on adoption and impact of markets and tools they build,
- for example number of GIP decisions where markets were used, or fees generated by new products.
Structure can include:
- vested tokens,
- claim tokens that only pay out if KPIs are met,
- or conditional fee shares with clear caps.
The principle is simple: pay for risk adjusted outcomes and ecosystem growth, not only raw yield or assets touched.
6. Gnosis Labs: incubation, ownership and upside
A key question is how new products coming out of Gnosis Labs are owned and how upside flows back to the ecosystem.
We suggest the DAO adopts some default rules:
6.1 Default ownership template
For any protocol or product incubated using Gnosis treasury funds or brand through Gnosis Labs:
- Gnosis Treasury Allocation
- a fixed base allocation of tokens (for example, a minimum of X percent of initial supply) with long term vesting, plus
- a perpetual or time bound share of protocol or product fees routed to a Gnosis treasury Safe.
- Builder and contributor allocation
- a clear allocation for the core builder team and early contributors,
- with vesting, clawback and governance terms set to align them with Gnosis.
- User and community allocation
- ongoing distribution to users, forecasters and LPs that bootstrap the product,
- possibly via auctions, rewards or KPI options.
- Service provider allocation
- a small, capped slice for Labs operators (including Impossible),
- primarily in KPI linked form that only vests if agreed milestones are met.
Exact percentages should be debated per project, but the meta rule is:
If Gnosis treasury capital or brand seeds something, the Gnosis ecosystem gets a hard coded upside share in tokens and/or fees, not just soft ecosystem value.
Impossible’s role inside Gnosis Labs would be to:
- help design these structures,
- make sure they are fair to builders and users,
- and make the Gnosis share explicit rather than implicit.
6.2 Economics for Gnosis Labs and active investments
To keep incentives clear and avoid rent extraction, we propose a simple, capped model for both:
- token allocations in incubated products, and
- returns on active ecosystem investments.
6.2.1 Token allocations for incubated projects
For projects incubated through Gnosis Labs that launch their own token, we suggest a standard template so founders and the DAO know what to expect up front.
Default ask for the Labs steward (Impossible)
- 2% of total token supply for new products that are originally designed and built on top of Gnosis smart contracts and infrastructure.
- 4% of total token supply for friendly forks or extensions of existing product lines that migrate onto or extend Gnosis contracts.
Key properties:
- These allocations are:
- taken from the project’s team / investor side,
- not from any GNO or Gnosis treasury allocation,
- and are subject to long term vesting and clawback if the steward abandons the project.
- They sit on top of whatever Gnosis treasury allocation the Council negotiates for each project (for example, a larger 10 percent type allocation plus fee share as suggested earlier), so the DAO still receives the majority of the “Gnosis side” upside.
- The 2% and 4% figures are defaults, not hard laws. The Treasury Council and Labs Steward can negotiate lower numbers where appropriate, but should treat them as maximums for the steward in this mandate.
The intent is to set a clear tone:
“If you build on Gnosis infra through Gnosis Labs, you are expected to align with GNO stakers and share upside with both the Gnosis treasury and the Labs steward that helped you.”
6.2.2 Active ecosystem investment sleeve
Separately from generic incubation support, we propose a small, time boxed Active Ecosystem Investments sleeve inside the Strategic bucket.
Size and checks
- Initial pilot size: up to 5 million USD equivalent in Gnosis treasury assets.
- Per project check size: minimum 250 thousand, maximum 1 million.
- This implies diversification across at least 5 projects in the pilot, and a maximum of 20 projects (to ensure conviction in any deals the DAO participates in and avoiding a pure-spray and pray).
- Every deployment from this sleeve requires explicit approval by Gnosis governance (for example, Treasury Council plus Snapshot or full GIP, depending on size), with Impossible doing the sourcing and structuring work.
Fee and carry model
- Management fee: 0%. No ongoing AUM fee on this sleeve.
- Carry: 20% performance fee on realised profits only, after full return of principal to the DAO.
- If Gnosis invests 5 million and eventually realises 8 million back, profits are 3 million and Impossible would receive 20 percent of that 3 million as carry.
- If Gnosis realises 5 million or less, there is no carry at all.
- Vehicle life: target 4 year investment life for the pilot.
- Carry only crystallises after the earlier of:
- the 4 year mark, or
- full principal return and profit realisation on exited positions.
- Until initial principal is fully returned, Impossible receives zero carry.
- Carry only crystallises after the earlier of:
This is deliberately strict:
- no payment up front,
- no AUM fee at any point,
- and no ability to “take carry early” on paper gains or pre vesting tokens.
Alignment if Impossible is rotated out
If Gnosis chooses to rotate Impossible out as Labs Steward before the 4 year period is up:
- Impossible commits to continue providing reasonable portfolio support to invested projects, in order to maximise value to the DAO and eventually earn any carry that might arise from those positions if and when they exit.
Carry rights are tied to the specific projects where capital was deployed during the pilot window, not to holding the steward role forever.
Capital at risk and scope
This structure intentionally keeps risk controlled:
- The Active Ecosystem Investments sleeve is capped at 5 million in year one.
- The minimum check size avoids wasting governance cycles on very small experiments relative to Gnosis treasury scale.
- The majority of the Gnosis treasury remains in the Safety and Runway bucket, managed under the existing low risk framework and other providers, focused on stable yield and preservation.
The goal is to test whether an active, structured investment sleeve focused on teams that build directly on Gnosis contracts can:
- return principal plus profit, and
- generate outsized ecosystem value for GNO stakers,
without exposing the DAO to large new structural risks.
6.3 Summary of steward upside and constraints
Putting it all together, the Labs steward (Impossible, if appointed) would have upside limited to:
- a small, capped token allocation per incubated project (2% or 4% of supply, vesting, from project side),
- a 20% performance fee on realised profits from a capped 5 million USD pilot sleeve, with:
- 0% management fee,
- no carry before full principal is returned,
- no carry on unrealised marks,
- and crystallisation only after a multi year horizon.
There are no hidden fees, no basis points on the main Gnosis treasury, and no dilution of GNO.
7. Governance relationships: Gnosis, Safe and others
Because this proposal talks about Safe and other ecosystem projects, it is worth clarifying governance boundaries as this matters for the Strategic Ecosystem bucket: Gnosis can deploy treasury and design programs that benefit Safe and other ecosystem projects, but each of those still has its own governance.
A council plus bucket structure gives Gnosis a cleaner way to manage those inter DAO relationships without blurring lines.
8. Impossible’s proposed role
Impossible is proposing to:
- Help design and test the new architecture
- contribute to drafting the GIP that creates the Treasury Council and buckets,
- provide risk, structure and product design input,
- open source any tooling or templates we build for this.
- Act as specialist provider in the Prediction and Labs bucket
- lead Gnosis Labs under a time boxed mandate,
- build markets, KPI options and dashboards using Gnosis primitives,
- and hand over or scale down if the DAO is not satisfied.
- Support the Strategic Ecosystem bucket
- help structure strategic deals and incentive programs,
- design token and fee flow structures that route upside to the Gnosis treasury and partners,
- and ensure these are consistent with Safe, CoW, SafeDAO and other ecosystems.
- Optionally participate in small slices of the Safety bucket
- only if the DAO wants more diversity of approach,
- and only under strict constraints and without AUM fees on GNO.
We are not asking for exclusivity, and we think the structure should be explicitly built to avoid any provider becoming “too big to fail”.
9. Pricing and alignment
9.1 Budget structure
The Labs mandate operates on a scalable annual budget between $500K and $1M, streamed monthly.
Core tier ($500K) covers:
- Labs steward function (1 to 2 FTE equivalent),
- basic prediction market infrastructure and maintenance,
- quarterly reporting and Council support,
- limited deal sourcing and structuring support.
Full tier ($1M) covers:
- everything in Core, plus
- expanded prediction market operations and forecaster incentives,
- dedicated deal sourcing and active incubation support,
- dashboard development and analytics tooling,
- Asia distribution and ecosystem expansion work.
The Treasury Council may adjust the budget within this range with 30 days notice, based on workload requirements and DAO priorities. Scaling below $500K or termination of the mandate requires a full GIP.
Budget levels are reviewed quarterly by the Council as part of standard provider oversight.
9.2 What we are not charging
To be clear on what this proposal does not include:
- No AUM based fee on GNO or any other Gnosis treasury assets.
- No basis points on assets in the Safety or Strategic buckets.
- No hidden fees or off balance sheet arrangements.
The only compensation Impossible receives under this mandate is:
- the fixed budget described above,
- capped token allocations from incubated projects (as described in Section 6), and
- performance carry on the Active Ecosystem Investment sleeve (as described in Section 6.2.2), which only pays out after full principal return.
9.3 Open licensing
All code, contracts, dashboards and analytics produced under this mandate will be open licensed so that Gnosis can:
- self host and operate tooling independently,
- bring in additional providers to extend or maintain it,
- or replace Impossible entirely without losing access to infrastructure built during the mandate.
We think this is the right approach for DAO funded work and it keeps us honest. If we are not delivering value, the DAO should be able to walk away cleanly.
10. Safeguards and risk
To avoid recreating current problems in new form, we suggest:
- Hard limits on any single provider’s scope and fee share.
- Time boxed mandates for all providers and the Labs itself, with explicit review and renewal votes.
- On chain role based permissions for execution Safes, so providers cannot exceed their remit.
- Standardized reporting across providers, so delegates can compare like for like.
Impossible would be subject to the same constraints as any other provider.
10.1 Conflict of interest management
Given that Impossible proposes to operate across multiple functions (Labs steward, deal sourcing, incubation support, investment sleeve), we commit to the following safeguards:
Disclosure
Impossible will maintain a public register of all projects where we have any economic interest, whether through Labs allocations, investment sleeve positions, or external investments made outside this mandate. This register will be updated within 7 days of any new position and will be linked in all relevant Council communications.
Abstention
Impossible will abstain from any Council or DAO vote involving a project where we have or are seeking an economic interest. This includes votes on funding, partnerships, or any other decision that could affect the value of our position.
Vouching requirement
Any project proposed for incubation through Gnosis Labs or investment through the Active Ecosystem sleeve where Impossible has a relationship must have at least one Council member (who is not affiliated with Impossible) willing to formally support the proposal before it can proceed to a vote.
Research memo requirement
All projects proposed for participation in the investment sleeve must have a written research memo shared with the Council at least 7 days before any vote. The memo should cover: project overview, team background, market analysis, risk factors, proposed terms, and rationale for Gnosis ecosystem fit.
External diligence option
For any investment or incubation proposal above $500K in value, the Council may request an independent third party review at Impossible’s cost. Impossible will maintain relationships with 2 to 3 qualified external reviewers (to be approved by the Council at mandate start) who can provide independent assessment within 14 days of request. The Council is not obligated to use this option, but it is available whenever the Council feels additional scrutiny is warranted.
Cooling off period
If a project is proposed to the Council and rejected, Impossible may not make an independent investment in that project for 6 months following the rejection. This prevents any dynamic where we route the best opportunities outside the mandate after they fail to get DAO approval.
These safeguards are not meant to be bureaucratic obstacles. They exist to make sure that even when Impossible wears multiple hats, the information asymmetry this creates does not disadvantage Gnosis or other ecosystem participants.
11. Implementation sketch
If the community is broadly aligned with this direction, a path could be:
- Phase 1 - RFC (this post)
- gather feedback from delegates, Gnosis and Safe core contributors, kpk and other potential providers.
- Phase 2 - GIP: Create the Treasury Council and buckets
- define the Council mandate and budget,
- ratify the three bucket structure,
- instruct the Council to publish RFPs and initial policy within a fixed period (for example, 60 days).
- Phase 3 - RFPs and provider selection
- Council runs open RFPs for:
- Safety and Runway,
- Strategic Ecosystem,
- Prediction and Labs,
- and possibly cross cutting risk and reporting.
- Council runs open RFPs for:
- Phase 4 - Pilot period
- Providers operate under conservative constraints for 6 to 12 months,
- Gnosis Labs launches a limited set of markets and tools,
- Council collects data and feedback.
- Phase 5 - Review
- DAO assesses:
- whether risk and transparency improved,
- whether ecosystem metrics moved in the right direction,
- whether providers should be renewed, rotated or resized.
- DAO assesses:
Impossible is happy to iterate on the details and adjust the scope of our role based on community input.
12. Questions for feedback
To keep discussion focused, some specific questions for GnosisDAO participants:
- Does the community want to move toward a Council plus multi bucket plus multi provider structure at all, or is there appetite to simply renegotiate with a single manager?
- Are the three proposed buckets (Safety and Runway, Strategic Ecosystem, OG Prediction and Labs) the right way to organize the treasury, or should they be combined or split differently?
- What level of ambition does GnosisDAO have for prediction informed governance:
- advisory only,
- partial use for comp and incentives,
- or full futarchy experiments for specific decisions?
- What hard constraints should be imposed on all providers up front (for example, no leverage beyond X, no RWAs of type Y, no more than Z percent on any one protocol)?
- Is there support for a Gnosis Labs style approach to incubation with explicit treasury upside, and if so, what minimum ownership or fee share should the DAO expect when its capital or brand seeds a new product?
Impossible is offering this as a starting point, not a finished decree. We are keen to refine it with the community and, if the DAO agrees, to take responsibility for the parts of this framework where our experience is most relevant.
