TIP-103: Restructuring of Threshold DAO committees and roles

Vote type: Token holder DAO snapshot, 7-day vote window

DAO Elected Representative Sponsors: @JohnPackel @Eastban @Luna5 @Vict0r @MrsNuBooty

Key provisions

  • TIP-100 called for sunsetting existing committees and restructuring DAO roles to reflect Threshold Labs taking over tBTC development & growth per TIP-098
  • This TIP is the recommendation of the DAO restructuring workgroup based on evaluation of responsibilities remaining with the DAO
  • The treasury, security and oversight committee called for in TIP-100, combining the responsibilities of the Treasury Committee and Council, will be the “Threshold Committee”
  • The Threshold Committee will consist of 6 part-time paid seats and 3 volunteer seats, retaining the 5-of-9 threshold for multisig security
  • 5 part-time contributor roles remain (hours reduced from current): treasury operations, tech support, communications/engagement/education, project management, incentives/reporting
  • Total cost for Committee and part-time roles will be $602k annually, a reduction of ~$1.1 million from current payroll
  • Streamlining operations and reducing cost substantially will minimize the treasury selling T tokens, allowing the DAO to be a net purchaser of T by implementing “buyback and make”
  • Treasury assets plus 30% of projected revenue can cover ~23 months of our obligations paid in stablecoins, with $10.6M in T remaining to cover ~$1.6M annual protocol & incentives cost
  • A detailed plan with timing is outlined, reflecting the need to transition multisig signers and committee work streams; election for Threshold Committee seats will start March 29th

Process for creating this recommendation

The DAO restructure workgroup (East, John, Luna, Ashley, Victor, Ethan, Sap & MacLane) used these principles to inform our work:

  1. tBTC development and growth will move to Threshold Labs, a new DAO structure will streamline remaining core work, and we will discontinue what’s no longer essential
  2. Avoid compromising protocol, treasury and operational security by assessing risks each retained function needs to mitigate
  3. Every function needs accountability: no autonomous or “orphaned” roles
  4. Ground the recommendation in financials: actual cost and revenue

Given the mandate (from token holders approving TIP-100) to sunset guild committees, combine Treasury and Council functions into a single committee and dramatically reduce cost, we put all work streams managed by each committee and contractor role on a board, separated them into 3 groups (move to tLabs, retain in DAO, discontinue) and determined the minimum number of committee seats, contractor roles and hours per week we believe are required to mitigate risks to the protocol, tBTC and the DAO (token holders).

Threshold 2.0 structure & financials

In addition to the >$8.5 million annual savings from TIP-92 eliminating tBTC rewards and continuing TACo’s for 6 months, TIP-100 prescribing a further $360,000 reduction by discontinuing thUSD incentives, as well as $252,000 in protocol savings – this proposal will reduce the annual cost of committee and contractor roles by ~$1.1 million, to $602,400.

Threshold Committee: 6 paid committee roles (7 hours/week) plus 3 volunteer signers (trusted members of the community), all elected (see schedule detail below).

Dev & growth to tLabs: the 2 full-time developer roles (Evandro and Leonardo) and growth lead (Ethan) will transition to tLabs. Expected timing is April 1, but these roles will remain on DAO payroll until tLabs is able to hire them.

Redefined DAO roles: These roles, with reduced hours/week, will cover the key needs not moving to tLabs: POL & treasury operations (East, 15 hours/week), Tech support & Discord management (Victor, 20 hours/week), DAO communications/engagement/education (Ashley, 20 hours/week), Project management (Luna, 20 hours/week), Incentives and reporting (Wuji, 8.5 hours/week).

While the DAO has used $85/hour as its standard for most roles since the Marketing Guild adopted it 3 years ago, this recommendation and financial plan includes a rate of $100/hour to reflect both the contributors’ reduced hours and the fact that they receive no benefits and pay full self-employment taxes.

As tLabs finalizes its planned team structure, there may be additional opportunities for former DAO contributors and committee members to apply.

Simplifying treasury operations: In order to streamline operations, reduce cost and increase security through fewer treasury transactions, we will make the following updates:

  • Treasury multisig will hold only assets for 6 months of operations; any surplus, plus T returned from betastakers’ stakes, will be transferred to the Governor Bravo contract
  • All reserve assets – stables, tBTC and ETH – will be managed by vaults from partners like Aera, Arrakis or Flowdesk, facilitating yield and diversification (detailed proposal to follow)
  • Active T pairs on DEXs will be analyzed to be determined if liquidity needs to be adjusted
  • Other assets (all governance tokens like CRV, CVX, AURA, AERO, VELO) will be swapped into tBTC, ETH or T (timing depending on market conditions)

Bridge fees can turn the DAO into a net buyer of T

If we annualize the current level of bridge fees we can project revenue of ~32 tBTC in 2025, not counting future growth based on accelerated development and growth via tLabs, as well as previous TIPs (particularly TIP-96).

We can use tBTC revenue to implement “buyback & make” as originally proposed in TIP-54. If we use 70% of redemption revenue to buy T and add it to the T/tBTC pool, it would mean that:

Each quarter, tBTC from bridge fees can be claimed and the buyback executed.

Expense planning

Based on the new DAO structure above, plus an estimated ~$2.5 million in tLabs costs for development and growth in year 1 (they will share actual cost in the coming weeks), if we convert all reserve assets (tBTC and ETH balances above) plus governance tokens to stables as they are needed – this will cover ~23 months of our obligations that are paid with stables (i.e., DAO Committee and roles plus tLabs).

Note that total runway for Threshold is longer, as the treasury has $10.6M in T and T pairs, and annual obligations paid in T (protocol and incentives) are $1.58 million/year. We do have other costs (oracles, market making services, legal, etc.) but these account for only ~2-3% of total.

Of course, we could decide on a different ratio for tBTC redemption fee revenue going to buyback and make; e.g., if we put 100% of revenue into buybacks (eliminating the 30% to treasury) we could still cover ~19 months of our expenses paid in stablecoins.

The DAO should also decide at some point to turn off the mint fee holiday we’ve had since December 2023, increasing our projected revenue.

Operational transition and timeline

While TIP-100 approved sunsetting all committees as they have been configured, and combining the Treasury Committee and Council, it will take a few weeks to complete this, including transitioning the multisigs and committees making any final payments already committed.

This document outlines a full plan and schedule, with key milestones being:

  • One week for comment on this TIP, plus one week Snapshot (March 7 - 21)
  • End of current committee and role responsibilities and payroll: March 21
  • Transition – current Treasury Committee members** take on Treasury + Council responsibilities and execute all multisig updates: March 22 - April 6
  • Nominations (one week), vote (one week) for new Threshold Committee: March 22 - April 4
  • New one-year term for Threshold Committee begins: April 5

** The rationale for recommending the current Treasury Committee members take on the Council responsibilities during the transition period rather than vice versa is that the Council has not been involved with treasury management and the multiple daily transactions required, whereas Treasury has provided guidance to Council on decisions such as POL and asset transfers, Threshold Foundation transactions, etc.

Links to documents with further detail:

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I’m in support

  • Egg
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Thanks for taking the lead on this TIP @JohnPackel. Without these changes and cost cutting Threshold might not exist in 6-12 months. Excited to see the rebirth and I think the team carrying the project forward is capable of making it a success.

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Why are these remaining rooles simply handed to a seleked few? Why no community vote? Exspecially the new role “DAO communications/engagement/education”? why no allow people to apply and let the community decide? But, by the same token, there’s not much of a community left, so that role should likely not exist, or handed to a more caypable individual.

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Thanks, darkbowl. It’s a fair question, and here’s our perspective/rationale: there will be a community/tokenholder vote on this TIP (scheduled to start snapshot at the end of 7-day discussion, which is tomorrow evening EDT). The DAO communications/engagement/education role is a modification of the DAO Marketing role Ashley has held, reduced in scope and hours given tLabs managing growth/marketing of tBTC going forward and TACo transitioning to a new network – and thus refocused on DAO, governance and Threshold Network. We believe there remains a strong Threshold community and there is benefit to keeping it engaged and informed (beyond the tBTC-focused marketing tLabs will do).

We did consider the question of whether to define these scaled back roles and then open an interview process to fill them. There are several challenges with this, including who would evaluate the candidates (not something the current Treasury Committee is designed to do), how to assess the risks of bringing in someone not already familiar with the role and how to get the up to speed, etc. It’s also a challenge to source candidates for roles requiring specialized knowledge of Threshold and the DAO but are ranging from only 8.5 to 20 hours per week, with no benefits, etc.

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thanks @JohnPackel for the clarification. I’ve been vokal about accounttability for time spent, to which nooone was willing to provide detailed recoords. The tech support guy 20 hrs seems a lot, but fine if they’re on sttanding at ready state - but why is treasury operations only alotted 15? and finace reports should be more considering that’s how tLabb KPI will be measured, no? I look at T twitt/X and it crap, blog is old and stale so my questioon is: why is marketing spending 20 hours a week? doing what? how long does it taake to post a announcement in discord? I think the marketing roole should be added if need, from what I read tLabs will run whole show, why have duplicated efforts?

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While we have several years of expenses we do need to be prepared if the market continues to drop from here. The treasury’s value at the moment is half of the ~$30M it was in just 3 months ago, in December. To get to sustainability and to change the narrative, profitability is the goal: Threshold covering all its costs with tBTC revenue and not burning any treasury is ideal. With tLabs accelerating development and growth, plus this DAO restructure, we can get there.

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As you indicated, being the sole Tech Support resource it requires monitoring nearly 24/7, as well as keeping up with the protocol, network and other topics like the beta staker program. As discussed in the TIP, 15 hours for the treasury operations role is sufficient given the streamlining underway, as well as the fact that the entire committee shares in overall treasury management. The milestones tLabs will be measured against are to be proposed and aligned (voted on by tokenholders). And there will be no duplicated efforts; tLabs is focused on tBTC development, growth, marketing, while the DAO role will focus on engagement related to DAO, governance and Threshold Network.

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Snapshot vote live: https://snapshot.box/#/s:threshold.eth/proposal/0x0c83560eb8275ae7b5dd645ef73f4824561b7c9699ead00ea11fe78e33f1f885

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