Thanks to @dylan @anon10525910 and @Matthew_Graham for input to this post.
Summary
Something akin to an FAQ, this post is designed to answer some common questions that have recently come up around the Treasury Committee.
What is the TC’s Mandate?
The Treasury Committee’s main purpose is to maintain and grow the Coop. To date, we have done this by being a fast, non-IIP option to direct funds quickly to people (Treasury Rewards, Working Groups) and projects (exchange listing budget). Taking from IIP-4, and this post expanding on it, committee members have two main responsibilities:
- Assist in the co-creation of the monthly Contributor Rewards allocations
- Assist & evaluate Index Coop contributor proposals seeking funding. Working Groups are the prime example.
The Committee is currently made up of 4 decision makers - @dylan, @puniaviision , @anon10525910, @DarkForestCapital - detailed in Expanding the Treasury Committee. The Treasury Committee multi-sig is a 1-of-3. The signers are Dylan, Felix, Alex Soong. The TC Multisig only has control over TC funds (Etherscan).
The initial request for Treasury Committee to pull funds from the community treasury comes as an IIP and is voted on by the community, but once the tokens arrive the TC has discretion to spend them without further IIPs. Which brings us to…
How does the TC fund things outside of the IIP process? (recent example, Working Groups)
As a DAO, the Index Coop is constantly evolving. The job of the TC is to help this process occur rather than block it, as such the committee is focused on evaluating community proposals rather than putting forward its own initiatives. Instead, community members and working groups are encouraged to submit proposals on the forum, where community sentiment can be gauged and input received before moving forward.
For example, when we decide that forming working groups is a good idea, a framework is put forward and anyone is free to use the template for a wg proposal. By following the process of adding a poll after 2 days of discussion, and leaving it open for 7, we can determine if community sentiment is in favour. Any proposals with large support by the community will, in general, be funded.
We want to encourage all community members to get into the habit of using the forum as a sounding board. Of course it’s very busy most of the time, but it’s still the best way to get focused feedback on a topic. If you have been discussing an idea and think it could get funded, but aren’t sure how to proceed, make a forum post! This simple flow is how to approach the process:
- Discord/chat/call discussion
- Forum post - solicit and incorporate feedback where relevant (2-3days)
- Add poll, open for 7 days (not mandatory, but can help make the case)
- Close poll and TC fund if clear community support OR move to IIP if TC not prepared to fund/no poll used (which then follows this process)
The forum will act to help you refine your ideas, find interested contributors and make sure there is generally positive sentiment from the community. This is all valuable for when the TC looks at the proposal to gauge whether to fund it.
On the subject of working groups, how will working group leads distribute rewards to contributors?
This will be the subject of a separate post, but in summary the rewards distribution is becoming hard to manage by the TC alone with so many contributors, and we believe the ability to distribute should be rolled out to working group leads as they have better insight into appropriate reward levels.
What is the relationship between TC and TWG?
It is appropriate to think of the Treasury Committee as an executive committee, who, through the makeup of its representatives, aims to be an impartial group tasked with enabling the growth of the Index Coop through funding. This is achieved by distributing monthly rewards based on impact, effort and alignment with our goals, but also by funding proposals that drive the organization forward.
The Treasury Working Group has a much broader scope and aims to meet the goals of growing, sustaining and protecting our capital. They achieve this by studying our income and expenditure (including wg budgets) and managing our investment & operations accounts.
Where there is separation:
The TC can be seen as the first hopper into which funds flow from the vested tokens in the community treasury. The TC is a node that allocates capital to working groups and specific initiatives. The TWG on the other hand is a working group just like any other. TWG has no control over how other working groups utilise capital. As the TWG may have a different view with respect to spending than for example the BD or Growth working groups, it wouldn’t be appropriate to have funding decided by them, after all the TWG mandate is partly to protect capital. That’s not to say the TC will be careless with funds, but that the TC is an important overarching and impartial way to get funding where it needs to go, especially vital in the early stages of Index Coop’s existence.
Where there is overlap:
Given the TWG’s focus on budget and expenditure, it makes complete sense for them to review TC actions and hold the TC accountable in the same way they would any other group spending $INDEX. We expect in time, the TWG will also help to tighten up the accuracy of TC budget requests every quarter, as the analytics for tracking $INDEX gets built out further.
So hopefully that helps clarify the way we are approaching things at the moment. There are still some open questions around wg leads distributing rewards, avoiding burden on TWG in terms of tracking expenditure and what the handover plan looks like to go from 4x Set employees on the multi-sig to having Index Coop contributors with a set of keys, but these will be worked on in the coming weeks.
Please reach out to any of the TC members listed if you have any further questions!
