• General
  • Request for comment: Treasury Framework

Background:

OlympusDAO has seen an outstanding growth in 2021 in terms of number of ohmies, number of partners, Protocol Owned Liquidity and more generally Treasury assets. Today, the Treasury is composed of hundreds of millions worth of assets waiting to be further utilized to help propel Olympus towards establishing as a central entity in defi.

Because DAOs are by definition decentralized, it’s important that the community has a say in all key decisions. At the same time, as a DAO grows and its operations become more complex, the community may wish to delegate minor or technical decisions to specialized teams, so that the average community member isn’t overwhelmed by relentless voting on matters they might lack the time, interest or technical expertise to carefully consider.

Olympus is — and will always be — a community-run DAO in which key decisions affecting the protocol are made by the ohmies. The Treasury team exists to first propose strategies and opportunities to strategically utilize our assets. The team will then execute on any of the community’s decisions.

For any DAO, it can be hard to determine where to draw the line between decisions the community itself must make and decisions the community should delegate to its specialized teams. However, we think it’s crucial for the ohmies to clarify these rules now to maintain a healthy alignment of expectations among our growing community.

Summary:

Adopt a framework distinguishing (1) key treasury decisions and guidelines that require a community vote from (2) operational levers that the treasury team uses to implement community decisions, in which case the treasury team should act with autonomy.

Motivation:

Olympus is a community-run DAO in which key decisions affecting the protocol are made by the community. The treasury team implements the community’s decisions through a number of tools, the effective use of which often requires both speed and technical knowledge.

On the one hand, it is critical that the community is broadly aligned on key decisions. On the other hand, we believe it would be a mistake to require constant community votes on more technical questions, particularly when these technical questions arise in implementing decisions the community has already made.

Framework Proposal

We propose adopting the table below as a general framework to clarify when the treasury team should take action to implement community decisions, and when it must seek specific authorization.

Because it is difficult to predict in advance every technical treasury issue that may arise, the following list is not intended to be exhaustive. Rather, it should serve as a living document to help everyone in the community understand how decisions are made.

Note that ETH constitutes a reserve asset and will also be subject to the applicable guidelines.

Proposed Guidelines & Allocations limits

Treasury is also proposing the following guidelines & allocations to the community. Those have been drafted using the Treasury framework presented above as a baseline.

* While it is not always clear whether an asset is centralized or not, we believe that the strategies targeted by the Treasury team should make that criterion unambiguous. As an example, any treasury asset mixed with 3crv token (USDC,DAI,USDT) would be subject to that allocation limit.

Approve the Treasury framework & the allocation limits proposed

Why is LUSD so explicitly preferred over FRAX? I am curious about how to balance centralization risk (if USDC gets crushed then FRAX is in trouble) against failure risk (what if LUSD … doesn't work).

  • json replied to this.

    When we say we don't sell partner tokens, how does that not limit us from "deposit[ing] tokens in defi protocols"?

    It seems to me that if we do that, in just the same way as someone putting their gOHM to work in some defi protocol means they can no longer vote, that if the Treasury does that with partner tokens then they can't say they "never sell".

    Surely I am just missing a nuance, but what is it?

    • json replied to this.

      Any reason why 25% is the max for a single protocol. I get not exposing all approved reserves incase of catastrophe, but these are white listed protocols and it seems like throwing away millions if one place yields like 15% and another is like 11%. Obviously a risk assessment should be run and there's probably like a fair number there. Like 35/15 or 38/12 etc. This is just an off the top example, I don't have a real world example right now.

      • json replied to this.

        sirsean The way that Frax versus Liquity works in maintaining their platform leads to different types of stablecoin platform/peg maintenance/etc risks.

        sirsean We will never swap or dump a partnership token but we're asking for the ability to farm with them like staking.

        Trinquin It is all related to risk in case of a black swan event. In the end it kind of works out because the more capital you throw in, the less yield especially when you're talking 10-100 mil. Also, it is good since farming in different platforms allows for the accrual of different assets such as FXS vs CRV/CVX.

        Few thoughts:

        1. %excess reserve that can be allocated 50%.. I hope one day we go 75%+. End of the day we are in the growth phase of the DAO (I would say anything over >10% yearly emissions is growth) and early years I'd rather the DAO lever up and get returns on its assets rather than get diluted (slowly) by inflation. If the treasury can allocate capital wisely, I honestly do not see much additional risk in this sense and should be strongly considered.
        1. I hope one day the treasury can make decisions without showing the community its hand. For example, say the DAO decides CVX is a good buy, if we collectively vote on it/it's all out in public whales will front run the buy and we're just DCA'ing at a higher multiple and that sucks. On the flipside, no discussion can lead to buying some shitcoins that make no sense but perhaps insiders have bags of/can be influenced by outsiders to do it.. I think the way forward is to ultimately trust a council/committee within the treasury who actually understand Defi/OHM vision very well and are investors at heart and allow them to approve/disapprove buys. Once they're done, a write up would be done explaining to the community why.. that way we can actually secure assets without being front-run. I think that would be better than what we do currently (broadcast to everyone) specifically because buys I imagine in 2022+ are all 8+ figures and I as a 3,3'r can't trust this committee within the DAO, then WAAF'd anyway.. I'd rather the DAO get an actual good price on treasury assets

          Max deposit of 25% seems quite high considering how much value is in the treasury. Wouldn't it be better to have a lower % and diversfy across more protocols?

            priggjohn Sure, the upper limit would only be targeted for the more battle-tested protocols that hold billions of $ in TVL. The remaining funds would probably be spread out across multiple protocols at lower % of excess reserves as you mentioned.

            Kazuya1987

            1. I think once we have allocated the 50% of excess reserves as approved by the community, we can look into increasing that limit. As the treasury gets bigger over time maybe down the line we will partner with protocols that specialize in treasury management which would facilitate making a bigger portion of treasury investable IMO.
            2. Yes it is hard to operate in a transparent manner while trying to avoid frontrunning. In the proposed framework, Treasury would have for example the autonomy to swap some of the yield farming rewards (Think of the CRV farmed on Convex for example). However, I want to say it is important that we remain transparent with these kind of decisions. Olympus remains a community-run project after all.

            Thanks for your feedback ser

            I think the allocation limits are good. The 25% limit is generally considered a concentration in finance, so not having a large concentration to manage is beneficial.

            Circle (USDC) is will become regulated in the near future. They are seeking to become a bank will be overseen by the US Regulator the Comptroller of the Currency. From a stability standpoint this is possibly one of the best things to happen to USDC. This brings the banking regulator back full circle to when it started. Different banks had their own currency. Being regulated by the OCC meant your money was good at any other national bank - no rug pulls.

            This looks like a thoughtful proposal, however I do not feel prepared to vote immediately.

            When can we expect to vote on implementing voting delegation for DAO governance? Even though I do not feel readily qualified to directly cast a vote on this proposal, I do know more experienced policy people at the DAO who I trust to make (3,3) decisions on my behalf.

            Delegation is a fairly well established concept with available OZ governance contract templates:

            Thank you for the consideration!

              Kazuya1987 Exactly! The Defi space is being watched by whales and bots to move with news. Speaking of bots, why isn’t there a discussion on this topic? Maybe I missed it but it is something that needs addressing. There ARE rebase eating bots and I see no taxes or holds being implemented anytime soon to stop it. That worries me.

              Although the proposal would provide a baseline for the community to go off-of I think we can go a step further. Let's take the example of another rebase token where the community votes once on a proposal, it passes etc. What I see in most scenarios is that even when the Community is not happy (after a period of time) with the proposal passed, it is very difficult to reverse such a proposal by virtue of another one. $TIME for example, appointed SIFU as their treasury manager - invests in startup projects without DAO vote using treasury assets etc. Although the Wonderland community is not entirely happy about this, even those who are against it are finding it difficult to revoke such a privilege.

              I personally think that adopting the Gitcoin DAO Governance model would be perfect. This entails (in the case of gitcoin), the notion of Gitcoin stewards. The stewards are appointed as stewards by the community itself which pledges tokens to any particular individual it deems fit to represent its affairs (Look at it as a sort of parliamentary election).

              My suggestion is this - Create an Ohmie Stewards framework wherein users can actually pledge their tokens to a particular Ohmie (naturally the tokens are not transferred but their voting power is tallied to that steward). This way, voters are confident that their voting power belongs to an Ohmie Steward that is readily available to vote on day to day or week to week decisions of the DAO. I think this would achieve a bit more decentraliation and, more importantly, help to get the community's concerns and comments across to the developer team.

              In summary, the Steward would serve as a sort of Representative. Given the size of the Community, I would open the programme to circa 20-30 people to be stewards. Users submit why people should pledge their voting power to them, (a sort of election of sorts) and the rest is history.

              What could also be done is that one can actually remove his or her voting power from a steward (in the case of any abuse by such steward for example) and allocate it to another better suited steward.

              ivelin117

              Thanks for the recommendations, I will definitely report this back to the Policy & Treasury teams. I do not have a specific timeline to give at the moment but I know governance improvements is being researched & worked on.

              @ZenOHM Same for your feedback!

                balotelli45 Thank you for the prompt response. I believe @ZenOHM recommends essentially the same concept of voting delegation to OHM stewards.

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