I, Dion C. of Tracer DAO am offering my advisory and treasury management services to Lil Nouns. I also serve as director at NFTGo.io.
I am the primary drafter of Tracer’s Treasury Management Fund Sub-DAO and currently serve as a member of Tracer DAO’s Treasury Management Team and Treasury Management Council. In this role I am a holder of the Tracer Treasury Management Fund multi-sig and key manager of Tracer’s idle/excess cash. I have an extensive background in TradFi managing large portfolios as a former market-market and trader of U.S. government bonds.
I am bullish on seeing Lil Nouns broaden the Nouns DAO experiment in pioneering an NFT based DAO governance system to a wider community. From what I’ve seen, Nouns and Lil Nouns Tracer DAO has the ability to combine the financial power of DAOs with the strength of community found in the NFT community. Nouns and Lil Nouns first movers at the intersection of NFTs and DeFi/crypto and I’m happy to provide my time to work with the DAO to further explore the possibilities.
Remuneration
For the provision of my efforts and services, I request:
3 Lil Nouns per month (roughly 0.10% of supply) for the term of my engagement.
Deliverables
If I am engaged to provide the services described in this Proposal to the DAO, I will provide the following:
Treasury management framework proposal to be voted on by Lil Nouns DAO
Frequent and regularly recurring meetings to advise on and execute Treasury strategies
Willing to exercise responsibility as multi-sig holder if Lil Nounders deem necessary
Variation and Termination
I, Dion C., acknowledge that, if engaged, my engagement can be varied or terminated by future Proposals.
I expect that any engagement will be terminated if I fail to deliver in accordance with the Deliverables specified above.
Conflicts of Interest
In the context of the Lil Nouns project, conflicts of interest include:
It is unclear to me based on this proposal what types of strategies you had in mind that would differ from ordinary proposals to the treasury, so its unclear to me what your services are. Are you asking to be hired to make proposals for the treasury?
Also of note the lil nouns dao treasury doesnt hold any lil nouns. So, if you would like to get paid in lil nouns then you are asking the treasury to spend ETH in the treasury to buy lil nouns. It may be better to propose an ETH amount and then you can purchase lil nouns on your own.
The proposal is to manage the day-to-day operations of Treasury management, which includes (i) identifying and harvesting yield farming rewards, (ii) evaluating and monitoring protocol risk, and (iii) quarterly performance reporting. Depending on the strategies pursued, this includes initiating transactions to claim and compound any pending farming rewards as well as rebalancing of DAO farming positions.
Similar to Nouns DAO, proposals would be reserved for strategic decisions, such as funding new ventures/initiatives and projects. Certain day-to-day actions and decisions incidental to managing an ETH denominated yield farming portfolio would be delegated to the treasury manager. If accepted, I would draft a plan with input from Lil Nounders, see the Tracer’s Treasury Management Fund Sub-DAO proposal as an example. Because each DAO is different, I believe its best to understand the Lil Nouns DAO vision to tailor a framework that best fits the Lil Nouns DAO structure. This is why I am holding off on proposing a fully detailed framework proposal until later time.
For a general idea of the strategy, my understanding is that the DAO will always be denominated in ETH, so all strategies will be measured against ETH as benchmark portfolio. Given that the goal is to steward capital for the DAO while generating safe risk-adjusted yield, I will build a plan that focuses on strategies that maintains the DAOs structural ETH exposure (e.g. Lido staking, Lido/ETH pools, etc.).
Regarding remuneration, I am open to accepting 4.5E in lieu of 3 lil nouns per month. I wasn’t sure if the 10% going to the vesting contract for the core team was available to contributors.
I don’t agree with the assumption that the DAO should focus on generating safe risk-adjusted yield at this time but others may.
Before posting this proposal on chain it may be good to post in prop-temp-check and also might be helpful to include your track record and on chain receipts for past bull and bear market strategies, since it is hard for me to gauge why the DAO should hire you vs just vote on proposals as they come in or am I missing something.
Sure I can send to temp check. Whether I am hired for this or not, it makes sense to delegate some limited authority to a manager to handle the day-to-day. Its not efficient to go to the DAO for minor decisions such as whether to reinvest or cash out on farming rewards, or going to the DAO every time a decision needs to be made on whether to farm on Lido vs. Sushiswap or Uniswap as circumstances change etc. Decision overload could lead to lower engagement from the DAO if too much is asked of them.
Seems like they are doing some limited treasury management activities (staked Eth on Lido and Sablier) but not super active. Not clear to me how these decisions are made, (for example, see a proposal to stake 1 ETH not 4561 they currently have on Lido). It doesn’t seem like they have a formal process for this.
I too recognise that the treasury can be actively managed and financially optimised for longevity and growth of the ecosystem. This will go a long way in funding additional initiatives within the noun ecosystem. However, it must be noted that returns are not the primary objective.
I would suggest that those who are interested in managing or overseeing the treasury to come together and propose the treasury objective, mandate and structure. I am keen to be involved in such a proposal.
I question the value of “active treasury management” at this stage and think most teams underestimate the smart contract and operational risk associated with active management strategies.
The core of the nouns model is treasury management (the proposals and voting that takes place on them).
Nouns engaged in earning yield through this proposal process with a simple “should we stake x ETH in lido”. Giving token holders the ability to vote on capital use, vs putting a subset of the treasury into the hands of a treasury manager, seems most appropriate for this DAO.
We have a growing treasury, lets focus on putting that capital to work in ways that grow the lillnouns brand or ecosystem rather than earning yield on it.
I wouldn’t characterize it as “active”. I agree that we are not a trading or prop shop here. Just watch the paint dry blue-chip defi protocols like uni/sushi/balancer LP pools (e.g. stETH/ETH), Lido staked ETH etc. earning in the 5%-10% range. As the treasury grows this is significant revenue that can help fund the future growth of the DAO. Do the math, in one years time we will have close to 70mm USD equivalent of ETH. We could be generating 3.5mm to 7mm USD alone in safe yield farming in bluechip protocols, which is meaningful revenue to spur the growth of the DAO.
Rather than positioning yourself, why not just propose to deploy a % of the funds in a weighted index of XYZ bluechips via the DAO’s governance mechanism?
Putting my nomination aside, I think the benchmark should be ETH since the DAO (as well as all ETH NFTs) are denominated in ETH. Introducing other bluechips would introduce tracking error and neither I nor anyone else has a reliable way of outperforming any market. Goal here is to keep things the same, just add some conservative yield to fund operations.
What 0xTaiga is proposing is for the DAO to give him 3 Lil Nouns a month (at this rate, that’s roughly $6000 a month in income).
With all respect, I don’t see any added value by having a treasury manager, let alone, I’m not aware of any value 0xTaiga has added to his past positions. With that being said, I’m not sure if this is a valuable proposal.
A better proposal would be to ask if Lil Nouns DAO if we actually need a treasury manager & advisor, what are the benefits, and why we would need one. And then to have people “apply” for this position where we can have an “election” or “hiring” process.
But for now, 0xTaiga, if you can dox yourself & show us a few examples of the value you have contributed to Tracer DAO, NFT Go, and your background in TradFi, that would be beneficial to the Lil Nouns DAO to understand your value prop; Asking for payment in return for advising / treasury management is technically what the DAO is already doing, without the payment part.
You can find my full name in the Tracer Proposal (if you read through it). I don’t like my name all over the internet but the information is there if you do a quick ctrl-F. A quick google search should then turn up plenty of info on my background. To be honest, 3 Lilnouns (more like equity rather than cash, which was my original ask) is much below what I would charge given my background and experience. If people are offended, however, by the proposal (and it seems like that is the case) I am happy to withdraw.
An ETH denominated treasury gives me some backstop for the price of LilNouns in ETH terms. Once you bring in other non-interest bearing altcoins into the mix, I no longer have certainty on the Eth price of Lil Nouns, which is one draw to the Nouns and Lil Nouns project.
I Googled “Tracer Proposal” but I wasn’t sure what to look for. If you can reply with a link to the proposal and let me know what to CTRL+F to find you, that would be great. Or you can DM me your name
Won’t interest-bearing projects on Ethereum ultimately accrue to the underlying Layer 1 Infrastructure (the price of ETH)? And wouldn’t investment in those Ethereum-based altocins be far riskier than simply holding ETH? Why not identify blue chip ETH-based art and protocols like Uniswap, Nouns, Compound, Cryptopunks, Apes, and wrapped Bitcoin, and just hold them? This strategy is already being implemented with the treasury’s purchase of a Noun.
Yes this is and should be the primary goal of the Treasury. Idea is just to put idle ETH to work while the community decides on how ETH should be spent.
