BIOHACK-7: Treasury Management

Context:

Almost 300 ETH is currently sitting inside our treasury right now. At around 3% staking rewards, we believe it’s sensible to avail ourselves of the opportunity to generate yield for the DAO. At the same time, we might benefit from defining an overall Treasury management strategy with more clarity.

The solution:

We are proposing to -

Ratify that Ethereum is the DAO’s reserve currency of choice and most of our treasury assets will continue being held in ETH (expect for tokens held inside the Biohackers Fund, certain tokens received from others, and a small USDC buffer for operational expenses, or any other qualifying exceptions)

Empower the Stewards to stake any ETH inside DAO treasury via reputable staking protocols such as Lido, Rocketpool, Aave (or any similar others with a good track record), to generate yield

Ratify monthly operational spending: Our Constitution mandates that up to 5% of our Treasury can be held in an operational wallet and used to cover operational expenses.

Now that we have been live for several months post fundraise, we have more clarity on what our expenses are. Our current burn rate is <$20k/mo, and we expect it to increase steadily over time. At the same time, we will not operate on the basis of pre-allocated budgets that must be spent, and we will continue being as lean and frugal as possible, instead.

For maximum transparency, we propose to start sharing quarterly reports on how we are allocating our operational spending across projects and categories such as compensation, tech, legal, and marketing. We will also be sharing breakdowns of all assets currently held by the DAO. Of course, both of the above can also be seen on-chain, in real time. Nevertheless, an annotated breakdown is much more legible. We wish to ratify the current spending strategy and implement the outlined reporting strategy, going forward.

Next steps:

Start staking some of the ETH inside our treasury for yield. Initiate quarterly reporting on operational spending. Everything else is on track already.

Voting:

Vote YES if you approve this proposal.

Vote NO if you disapprove.