TEMP CHECK - put the idle treasury to work
tl;dr
about $15.2m of gitcoin’s treasury and matching pool is sitting in plain usdc and eth earning nothing. at conservative rates that’s roughly $500k a year we’re leaving on the table. i’d like us to put it to work.
what’s idle
wallet
idle
~usd
matching pool safe 0x25A84CC1014062463a829Fbc2B0848798BF5E378
3.30m usdc, 2,247 weth
$8.79m
treasury safe 0x5743E35477363241300FcEdc2F5eB0195F300817
3.82m usdc
$3.82m
matching pool 0xde21f729137c5af1b01d73af1dc21effa2b8a0d6
449 eth, 214k stables
$1.31m
ecosystem collective 0xC23DA3Ca9300571B9CF43298228353cbb3E1b4c0
793k usdc
$0.79m
gtc timelock 0x57a8865cfB1eCEf7253c27da6B4BC3dAEE5Be518
139 eth, 115k stables
$0.45m
total
8.2m stables, 2,835 eth
~$15.2m
gtc (about 15m tokens across the timelock, the csdo multisig and the matching pool) isn’t counted here.
what it’s costing
idle
assumed rate
per year
stables
$8.2m
~4%
~$330k
eth
$6.9m
~3% (staking)
~$210k
total
~$540k
the rates are my rough assumptions.
the proposal
in february we ended avantgarde’s mandate and said the pool would be managed “through dao-controlled, non-intermediated approaches.” this is the second half:
keep runway liquid: 12 months of opex stays in plain usdc
the rest of the stables go into a short list of plain, battle-tested, onchain yield sources (for example sky savings or aave)
eth gets staked through liquid staking
no external manager. the dao’s own safes hold every position, and anyone can verify them onchain
yield funds matching, per the february proposal
a regular report on this forum: positions, yield earned, any losses
a trading mandate
markets move faster than a governance vote. i’d also like the dao to give me and the gitcoin foundation a standing mandate to trade in and out of liquid coins on the dao’s behalf (for example rotating between stables and eth, or out of the old donated tokens sitting in the matching pool), so we can act inside a week instead of a month.
the guardrails i’d propose:
liquid coins only: stables, eth and its liquid staking tokens, and the large donated tokens with deep markets. no leverage, no derivatives, nothing illiquid
foundation safes, foundation signers. trades execute from multisigs where foundation signers have to approve, so i can’t trade alone
a cap per quarter (say 35% of the liquid treasury) set by the dao and changeable only by the dao
the dao can revoke it with a simple vote at any time
the risks
smart contract risk is real, and that’s why nothing exotic goes in. staked eth can depeg briefly in a panic, which is why runway stays in plain usdc. and we pay a few hundred dollars in gas plus signer time.
my view is that $500k a year beats those costs by a wide margin.
the ask
should the dao deploy idle treasury assets for yield?
is 12 months of liquid runway the right buffer?
which yield sources would you trust, and which would you veto?
should me and the foundation hold a trading mandate for liquid coins, and are the guardrails above tight enough?
if this lands, i’ll come back with a formal proposal naming the exact protocols and allocations.
owocki
Disclaimer: This post is for informative purposes only and is not financial advice. This post reflects my personal views, not a decision or commitment by Gitcoin governance. Forward-looking items in it are targets, not commitments. The information in these posts is subject to change as we continue learning. This post may contain estimates, may contain errors, and is provided on a best-effort basis. DYOR, do not make any financial decisions based on these posts.