Thanks Don for your proposal and continued support for BitDAO.
The post below is a personal opinion and will align with my vote on BIP-15.1
Summary Feedback
Has potential
- Adoption of users and institutional partners in Latin America region
Issues
- Proposal size is too large, tranche 1 is too large
- Unable to identify significant and direct outcomes for $BIT
Ideas for a restructured proposal
- Latin America region adoption of $BIT products such as Mantle .
General Commentary
Dynamic Strategy
Crypto is a rapidly changing landscape of industry specific narratives and hypotheses, and the impact of traditional economy macro factors. It is best to critically assess our own performance and those of crypto industry peers. With new data points, previously approved initiatives may not be the template for future ones.
Increase Priority: $BIT products
When BitDAO was launched in 2021, the original strategy was to grow the treasury via direct investments, and the creation of BitDAO-like entities (sub-DAOs / autonomous entities) and investments. This strategy has had questionable impact on driving outcomes for $BIT, and there have been calls by the $BIT community and stakeholders to develop $BIT core products to drive adoption. The most performant DAOs (Lido, Aave, Uni) have been centered around underlying core products which have large addressable markets and longevity.
Mantle is envisaged to be one of these $BIT core products. Mantle is an Ethereum layer-2 network built with modular architecture delivering low fees and high security. Mantle provides a protocol to attract mass users and dApp adoption, and better outcomes for marketing and growth activities. Note: that initial development of Mantle has been bootstrapped by Bybit, with the next phase being a DAO proposal and budget cycles for expanded development and go-to-market activities.
References: twitter announcement, TheBlock media release
Decreased Priority: Swaps and Investments
It is not recommended to pursue swaps and investments that do not have additional strategic outcomes for $BIT, due to the following reasons: 1) has little impact on $BIT token holders other than passively observing investment returns; 2) DAOs have less flexibility to negotiate competitive deals compared to specialized VCs; 3) DAOs have fewer options for post-investment legal and governance involvement once funds have been transferred (see FTT swap situation).
Increased Priority: Discipline in Resource Spend
As we head into a bear market, capital is becoming more valuable, and discipline in resource spend is a core topic among all organizations. For BitDAO this also means increased discipline and hurdle rate for new initiatives, scaling with size of the initiative. Key questions include:
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what advantages justifies funding a project that use a separate token and for building a separate community instead of one that uses $BIT token and mainly focused on building a BitDAO community?
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what is a reasonable sized first tranche? how do we measure outcomes or adjust before approving subsequent tranches?
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how do we increase BitDAO oversight and governance power (direct or representative), to manage outcomes and necessary pivots?