Staworth Limited - Delegate Platform

Delegate Communication
1

Staworth_1_1_Black_Circle
Staworth_1_1_Black_Circle1080×1080 38.3 KB

Contact & Delegation Address Information

Delegate Voting Address: 0x76c32eF9587b07c77545Ad1a86E02fC1f045a3b9 - governance.staworth.eth

Point of Contact: jackgale.eth as the individual delegate; governance.staworth.eth for the group

Website: staworth.com

Twitter: For Jack | For Staworth

Voting Record: Snapshot Record

About Us

Staworth Limited is a new DAO service company that aims to deliver value-aligned and committed service to a handful of DAOs which ignite our passion.

Our model aims to accumulate governance power and align incentives by reinvesting a proportion of all revenue into the DAOs that we serve.

Alongside non-reserved legal services, Staworth contributes actively to its DAOs by leading governance initiatives, providing copywriting and opinion pieces, and analysing financial performance, among other activities.

Jack is an English law solicitor by training, now focusing full time on supporting and building DAOs.

Delegate Motivation

Staworth and our team has been participating in GnosisDAO since early 2024. We love Gnosis :heart: because it’s one of the few true decentralised communities that is ceaseless in its pursuit of innovation across so many new areas. From Chain, to Pay, to Hashi, through Safe, CoW, karpatkey and Guild, Gnosis truly embodies the spirit of innovation in DeFi. And so it’s an ecosystem that we really want to invest our time and effort into.

From our involvement in various governance initiatives across the DAO, we feel there is a huge amount to sink our teeth into, and also a need for more new and emerging delegates to step up their role. As a largely external delegate, focused on value-aligned investing and incentivizing innovation, we believe we can bring a lot to the table for GnosisDAO, to accompany the existing roster of delegates from across the ecosystem and its partners.

In particular, Staworth looks to bring an experienced set of eyes on issues around legal risk, liability and regulatory compliance. We deliver value through detailed review and investigation of the circumstances of governance, and aim to take a lead on issues that touch on legal risk to help safely navigate the DAO through these difficult areas.

As a delegate, we pledge to:

  • Sustain a voting record of no less than 95% participation throughout;
  • Provide complete communication as well as detailed quarterly reports to this delegate platform post to summarise recent activity and public positions on key issues affecting the DAO;
  • Invest part of the company’s revenue into $GNO to match delegations with our own voting power and “skin in the game”; and
  • Seek further opportunities to support and contribute to the DAO, its members and the Gnosis ecosystem.

Areas of expertise

Jack’s background in professional legal services brings a wealth of experience that can be unusual or hard to find in Web 3.0. This includes navigating legal, commercial and pragmatic issues around large-scale corporate and trading arrangements, advising client in relation to regulatory requirements, risks and enforcement, and experience in handling complex litigation and disputes in senior course, all across both UK and international markets.

In terms of Web 3.0, Staworth has been a key contributor to Beefy DAO since 2024 (and Jack since 2022). This includes a wealth of experience leading governance initiatives, pursuing large-scale grant and incentive programmes, creating the financial reporting function, and contributing regular blog publications and press releases. In 2024, Staworth began contributing to karpatkey as well as acting as a delegate for GnosisDAO. We also frequently attend conferences and events around the world to promote the work of our DAOs.

References are available on request.

Conflicts of Interest

No immediate conflicts are known.

Where Staworth is engaged by other DAOs on subject matter touching on the interests of GnosisDAO as well, new potential conflicts may emerge. Where they do, Staworth undertakes:

  • to provide full disclosure and details of the potential conflict in the comments to this delegate platform;
  • to caveat any public comments on the relevant area(s) with details of the potential conflict; and
  • to abstain from voting on issues where Staworth’s interests do or are likely to genuinely conflict with those of GnosisDAO.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to serving GnosisDAO!

:pray:

4 Likes
2

With the launch of the delegate platform, I will now delegate my personal voting power to the governance.staworth.eth delegate voting address.

For transparency on my prior voting record, I set out below the recent proposals I have voted on and my reasoning for the vote.

Proposal: GIP-93

Vote: For

Reasoning: An obvious win-win to improve bridging security and support Hashi (as an ecosystem project).

Proposal: GIP-94

Vote: For

Reasoning: Following the support and success of GIP-91, the proposed arrangements to progress with onboarding Centrifuge Prime and for expanding access to RWAs seem novel and suitable, and worth supporting.

Proposal: GIP-95

Vote: For

Reasoning: karpatkey have delivered enormous value for the DAO in their work to date. Expandin their service mandate to cover RWAs is an exciting prospect, especially as other arrangements under GIP-94 push us forward in the same direction.

Proposal: GIP-96

Vote: For

Reasoning: The proposed to allow the Centrifuge Prime legal conduit to handle other illiquid investments seems like a no-brainer. With the administrative arrangements already in place, this limited scope extension provides greater security in managing those investments.

Proposal: GIP-97

Vote: For

Reasoning: The inclusion of the Safe <> Gnosis joint treasury within karpatkey’s remit is a natural and obvious choice, and will enable these assets to benefit from karpatkey’s existing work.

Proposal: GIP-98

Vote: For

Reasoning: Security and privacy are other verticals that are essential to the development of Web 3.0. Strengthening the ongoing relationship with HOPR and supporting further development seems like an attractive use of the requested investment.

Proposal: GIP-100

Vote: Supported But Did Not Vote

Reasoning: Unfortunately, due to issues with attempted delegations, we were deprived of voting power for this proposal. Nonetheless, we engaged with the prior discussion, showing support but questioning if the scale of the program could be altered to make it more appealing to sceptical voices.

Proposal: GIP-101

Vote: For

Reasoning: Diversification of governance is vital to maintaining a strong and stable DAO. StableLab and karpatkey have demonstrating the value of delegation programs in many other DAOs and this effort should be welcomed to Gnosis as well. We are pleased to throw our hat in the ring as delegates for this proposal.

Proposal: GIP-102

Vote: For

Reasoning: Expressed initial scepticism about the draft proposal, but obtained reassurance about the prior planning, involvement of Gnosis LTD and reasons for raising to the DAO. Generally supportive of all efforts to invest further in innovation and entrepreneurship across the Gnosis ecosystem.

Proposal: GIP-104

Vote: For

Reasoning: The Shutterized Gnosis Chain is in need of additonal awareness and adoption, and a range of different initiatives are needed to support this. As a frequent attendee of major events, we can see the value in using them to expand awareness and engagement.

Proposal: GIP-105

Vote: For

Reasoning: As a fan of beaconcha.in’s explorers and supportive of the importance of open and accessible information about validators, the value added by this service warrants the additional expenditure. Was pleased to see the integration fee converted into an investment to address concerns.

2 Likes
3

Provisional views on live topics:

Proposal: GIP-106

Vote: Leaning Against

Reasoning: As commented by Gnosis core, it is right that efforts should be made to prevent exploitation of reward programs and close gaps in the original spec. Though changes can undermine trust in the DAO, this does not necessitate returning to an old policy with obvious gaps. The same withdrawal address point is a narrow loophole affecting a small number. It should have been better designed in the first place, but clearly now aims to avoid sophisticated actors claiming an outsized proportion of the results. We tend agree that the policy objectives, network and DAO are better served by the revised terms, despite the reputational risk that the change carries.

Proposal: GIP-108

Vote: Leaning Against

Reasoning: By contrast with GIP-106, this GIP aims to challenge the change in reward value among all recipients. As with core team comments on GIP-106, we lean towards correct a flawed and unhelpful original spec as a better outcome for the policy objectives, network and DAO, despite the reputational risk.

2 Likes
4

Proposal: GIP-107

Vote: For

Reasoning: We originally raised various questions due to the limited information in the proposal. karpatkey’s very helpful response made clear that the arrangements have been carefully contemplated by Gnosis LTD and karpatkey, and legal advice has been taken. As legal entities are often a sensitive topic, with privilege protecting any legal advice, we are content to support those efforts despite the limited information. We are considering techniques for proposals to briefly notify of any sensitivities where limited information can be shared.

Proposal: GIP-109

Vote: For

Reasoning: We fully agree that proposal moderation is important, regardless of the number of current attacks. We also agreed with the comments from Refri that some limitations should be placed on moderators. Our response proposes a general principle that taken-down posts should be posted to the forum with a light-touch commitment to give reasons for the take down.

Proposal: GIP-111

Vote: For

Reasoning: As explained in our response comment, we recognise the importance of developing Ethereum in supporting Gnosis Chain, and feel the plan and ask were both reasonable in this case. However, we would prefer to see a more systematic and conscientious approach to supporting Ethereum, in place of merely approving ad hoc proposals whenever they arise.

Proposal: GIP-110

Vote: For

Reasoning: See our supporting comment for details of the benefits we expect this program will bring. We think this will be an excellent driver of activity for Gnosis Pay, and is well worth experimenting with.

Proposal: GIP-112

Vote: For

Reasoning: These infrastructure upgrades to facilitate Gnosis’ Snapshot strategies is critical for maintain governance, so we strongly support this. The urgent need in light of the upcoming deprecation by TheGraph gives clear rationale for the urgent proposal and timescale. We vocally support.

Proposal: GIP-114

Vote: For

Reasoning: Supporting Blockscout as a relatively reasonable cost maintains diversity of explorer services across the Gnosis Chain ecosystem, providing redundancy in case of issues. The product is good, the team is great and it continues to be a valuable piece of infrastructure for the entire ecosystem.

1 Like
5

As described in our platform, we’re pleased to announce our first revenue reinvestment into $GNO tokens. We place value-aligned governance at the centre of what we do, and are proud to commit our own “skin in the game” as a means of deepening our connection to Gnosis DAO. See more info here.

2 Likes
6
  • Seek further opportunities to support and contribute to the DAO, its members and the Gnosis ecosystem.

In line with our delegate commitments, we’re pleased to be submitting our first formal contribution to the Gnosis Chain codebase. Our pull request seeks to update the documentation to reflect the launch of StakeWise V3 and osGNO:

We look forward to contributing further, and will aim to provide regular updates on this platform of other contributions, so viewers can quickly and easily access all of our contributions to the DAO and ecosystem.

3 Likes
7

A brief disclosure from us. In October 2024, we have begun a new contractor role supporting karpatkey with its work across various DAOs, including GnosisDAO.

We believe that this work will be purely complementary to our GnosisDAO delegate platform, given the amount of time and energy that will be devoted to both Gnosis specifically and to supporting the operations of its treasury managers more generally. With that said, we are mindful of the possibility of conflicts of interest on specific issues, where karpatkey’s interests may diverge from GnosisDAOs (e.g. proposals to extend/alter karpatkey’s engagement). We therefore intend to abstain from proposals where any risk of a conflict arises, and to give notice of our reasoning here on our platform post.

We’re keen to engage with any questions or comments on this change in our position.

2 Likes
8

Proposal: GIP-115

Vote: For

Reasoning: We believe this initiative has the potential to accelerate traction on Gnosis Chain by shining a spotlight on the chain’s ecosystem and Safe integrations. Similar previous efforts by Safe have proven successful for fostering adoption.

Proposal: GIP-116

Vote: For

Reasoning: We are of the view that the majority of these actions are important for the continued operation of the DAO and its treasury and should not be delayed or denied.

Proposal: GIP-117

Vote: For

Reasoning: We are excited by the prospect of Backed’s offering and making Gnosis Chain a hub for innovation around onchain equity securities. We appreciate the detailed breakdown of the decision to work with Backed, and see Backed as closely aligned to the ecosystem, given the support of GnosisVC.

Proposal: GIP-119

Vote: Against

Reasoning: As raised in the forum discussions, we are concerned that this proposal may not be likely to produce substantial long-term value for the ecosystem. Once the initial funding dries up, we believe there would be little to retain the participants from the grant scheme, especially if new funding arises elsewhere. There is also little to vouch for the quality of the scientific work that would be supported by the proposal, beyond trusting the written positions of the scheme’s operators and their one testimonial. Though the value at risk is not especially large, we are opposed to setting any precedent that the GnosisDAO treasury is an easy source of funding for scientific ambitions of any quality. If GnosisDAO is to support more decentralised science initiatives, this should be done by a concerted, longer-term effort with support from regular contributors, not by way of one-off externally-operated grant schemes.

1 Like
9

Proposal: GIP-120

Vote: For

Reasoning: As described in the original forum post, we feel that this acquisition makes qualitative sense, even though we recognise and agree with the difficulties establishing the quantitative financial case with the limited information provided. We support the vision of Gnosis LTD in moving towards business-to-business tooling and interfaces, as a means of extending the reach of existing ecosystem solutions like Safe and Gnosis Pay.

Proposal: GIP-116 Re-do

Vote: For

Reasoning: As with the original proposal, we support the revised GIP-116 and have performed due diligence to confirm the revised proposal still meets the outline of the original.

10

We’re pleased to share that we’ve updated our Delegate Platform and Snapshot delegate page today. After almost a year of serving GnosisDAO, we’re thrilled with our progress and to be seeing a few minor delegations taking place. We look forward to continuing serving the DAO throughout 2025.

We’re also pleased to confirm that we have been using our revenues to purchase more GNO in December, and will continue to do so as the price remains under our view of the project’s intrinsic value.