[GIP-08] Call for Transparency on GoodDollar LLC Treasury Management

GIP: GIP-08
Title: Call for Transparency on GoodDollar LLC Treasury Management
Author: Gustavo Segovia
Status: Stage II / pre-proposal
Track: Proclamation
Created: 2022-08-08

Transparency GIP

  • TL;DR; This Proclamation Governance Proposal is aimed to request GooDollar LLC to share with the GoodDAO community a full report on their operations, strategy and budget management as a way to bring transparency towards the industry and market in order to maximize the potential contributions and collaboration from professionals and social-inclusion/impact investors. This report might include:
    • Treasury management and allocation: How much the GoodDollar LLC is receiving from sponsors (eToro)?
    • Budget breakdown: How is this budget spend and allocated? How much is it used for developments, what kind of developments (wallet, app, protocol, GoodDAO, etc.), marketing, legal, Human Resources, contractors, etc.
    • To Disclose GoodDollar legal strategy: Is a proper Foundation aimed to take care on the GoodDAO, it’s protocol and community going to be stablished? So far, only a Private company limited by guarantee without share capital (aka GoodDollar LLC) has been set up, and it’s not properly clear if their main goal is to serve the interests of its sponsor or those of the GoodDollar community.
    • Priorities Disclosure: a Roadmap was published last april, is this plan still on track? What constrains is the team having to deliver what has been promised?
    • GoodDAO planning: So far, there seems to exist natural conflicts among GoodDollar LLC and the GoodDAO, while the former (LLC) has all the budget, so main decision making power and incentives to keep going over the project developments, the later (GoodDAO) seems only to have ownership over the protocol changes (that haven’t happened, yet) but no budget to move forward any strategy or initiative of their own.

Once all money is transparent, we believe that the invisible hand will become the visible hand, and the philanthropy bank could actually direct the economy to create more value.
Yoni Assia - Good Dollar The Visible Hand - November 2008

GoodDollar has advocated for transparent policies for money generation and distribution since our project was conceptualized, even before Bitcoin creation, the first fully transparent global currency with fully transparent and immovable monetary supply and distribution policies.

Money, in whatever of its forms, is ultimately the combination of an accountant system and a Trust system. The accountability covers the function of tracing how the currency is being generated, burned, and transferred among peers; while the trust system enables the exchange of value around these “numbers” being transferred from one peer to another, Trust in having your local stores, rest of providers or exchanges in accepting that money for valuable goods and services.

The Visible Philanthropy Bank

Policies for minting, burning and distributing our G$ currency are fully transparent and encoded into the blockchain, and are also described by our WhitePaper, so we can say G$ is actually a fully transparent currency where all rules for generation and distribution of money are open to everyone to engage with it in a permissionless and decentralized way.

But what about the organizations leading the design and development of this currency for inclusivity? Are they behaving visibly and transparently?

While the GoodDollar economic protocol is ruled by the GoodDAO, smart-contract set which is owned by the GOOD tokens, the only entity working on SW development and other related activities is GoodDollar LLC, a non-for-profit company based in the UK, which is getting its funds from donations from eToro, a web2 investment platform.

While the whole world should be thankful to eToro and Yoni Assia for founding and funding the first and probably the more likely-to-be-sustainable crypto-UBI innitiative, we all should be also demanding the same organization to report to us on what are actually the plans, and how is this money flowing for enabling the operations of GoodDollar LLC to happen.

As GoodDollar aims to bring good and fairness in the world wealth distribution, I completely submit to the following statement:

It is only a wealthy mindset and thinking level, which is going to solve the UBI in the real world.
It is only a capital of the wealthy people, which is going to fund the GoodDollar treasury to make the UBI possible and viable worldwide.
Anonymous Community Member

But we do need also to understand and consider that this initiative can only succeed if and only if it is led, promoted and executed with an open, inclusive and decentralized mindset. Opaque treasury management and Command & Control structures, inherited from the old world order will jeopardize any effort for empowering and inspiring communities of developers and investors to support the protocol and grow the value that GoodDollar aims to deliver to its +450k users (and more to come) around the world.

Where is the money going to?

From a web2 perspective, demanding any Limited Company to disclose their way of using their budget would be completely out of order, traditional organizations have the right to have their own business goal and treat their operations and strategies as opaque as they will. It is the right of shareholders to keep or not their information private from the public.

But GoodDollar is all but a traditional initiative, it is a project aimed to alleviate poverty around the world, and all the money they have does need to address this “specific” problem.

How do we know this money is well used? Well, this proclamation GIP aims to answer this specific question. How do we ensure that GoodDollar LLC, in its very centralized position, is not biased in its strategy or has no agency to deviate the funds to other purposes consciously or not? For example, what should be the organization focusing on? Bringing more investors or more claimers?

The only way I see to ensure the success of GoodDollar strategies and operations is to make public and transparent the way they use the money to build and promote the protocol, promote an open discussion about it, and even make an open call for other development teams to make proposals to use that same budget more efficiently and effectively. But not only, this would also create the necessary Trust in the team so more funds can come over so eToro doesn’t have to be the only UBI sponsor around GoodDollar.

GoodDAO: The way Forward

Having eToro and GoodDollar LLC accept to report to the community on the way they are using the money to fund the developments of this UBI initiative, further conversations do need to take in place to fully transfer this money to the GoodDAO to not only have a Visible Hand, but also a Visible and Inclusive Philanthropy Bank.

It is true DAO developments are still in an early stage and giving all the development money to a contract in which anyone can make submissions, therefore, there’s a risk of receiving malicious attacks and mismanagement over the funds.

But what if GoodDollar LLC is mismanaging its budget already? What does the community know about the organizational and web3 expertise of the company leading efforts for a sustainable UBI?

Initiatives like Token Engineering Commons are working on the foundations to make DAOs founding and governance secure and sustainable, we could create, for example, new instances of the GoodDAO where the GOOD token gains economic value as a way to keep the funding coming so GOOD holders can rule on the way the development money is used without including plutocracy power over the
GoodDollar protocol (this explanation will be expanded after having the current GIP approved).

The web3 industry is already proving the success in empowering communities of developers and contributors to take their own decisions regarding the commons purpose that a DAO can chase, we’ve seen how decentralized communities had achieve to thrive the value of their protocol/tokens, therefore, GoodDollar does need to set a proper strategy for decentralization.

If we do really want the success of GoodDollar we do need to embrace web3 principles for wealth generation, and this can only start with transparency.

8 Likes

Hello Gustavo, the proposal is striking to me in many ways due to its content, one of them is that you question the economic management of GOODDOLLAR LLC since you speak in conditional. You have my support because your initiative is genuine, responsible and courageous, qualities of a leader.
Waiting for more information.

5 Likes

Hey guys! @sirpy @goodanna @jessica

Is there any reply coming from the core team!? Would be nice to have you position on this before launching the vote soon next week.

This is what I could never understand, why so much time to answer whether it is a proposal or whatever, in my case I have made several, a few lines and that’s it, Total Support for the best decisions for the good of GoodDollar’s future, Thank you!

1 Like

Thank you for kickstarting this and calling for greater transparency. I support the need for integrating the ethos and more diligent practices of transparency in the way the GoodDollar community develops its ecosystem, and builds in trust in the core mission and vision of what we are all building for.

I cannot speak about the budget for the GoodDollar LLC as a whole, but I support the publishing of a breakdown of costs and allocations and will let others from the core team share more details on that.

I have always believed in a community-driven GoodDollar, and GoodDollar’s ambassadors have proven to be the roots of all significant growth. In response to this call for transparency, I will also request that the community budget - what remains after the significant budget cuts - be moved to the DAO’s community treasury. This budget is for any and all marketing costs (designers, copy writers), global Ambassadors, events, and more. I will share more details in a separate proposal, but for the sake of transparency sharing here an important need from the community team’s agenda.

5 Likes

GoodDollar LLC is an entity funded entirely by donations from eToro. The mission of the LLC is to research and develop a scalable solution to crypto UBI using blockchain. To that end, the foundation decided its core activities would be to research, develop and build a UBI protocol, with a vision for it to grow and scale via decentralized community leadership. The founding protocol and DAO design is reflected in the original GoodDollar white paper. The paper outlines the key protocol functionality, and the stated intention for how this protocol will be established by the LLC, and transition protocol stewardship to community governance through the DAO.

Here are some of the activities the GoodDollar LLC has done to establish, develop, and launch the GoodDollar UBI protocol and DAO, from founding to date:

  • Invent the model & write the white paper
  • Develop the UBI wallet
  • Develop the protocol smart contracts & DAO
  • Advocacy and community
  • Partnerships
  • Legal and admin
  • Pay people to do all of the above stuff

The journey to a community-run GoodDollar is a multi-year journey. From 2018-to date, the LLC’s work focused on the initial protocol build and launch, including developing and maintaining the UBI wallet that has been key to GoodDollar’s adoption-to-date.

February 2022 V2 upgrade initiated the DAO model. This expands the LLC mandate to to set the protocol on a responsible journey towards decentralization (while maintaining the current UBI system, its products, and community of members).

The multi-year process to “decentralize” all the core functions and operations of the LLC is a journey. The role of the LLC is to present a transition model that is responsible and effective. The LLC has already effectively delivered on the following:

  • Community Moderation: 2021 the LLC hired a community moderator; 2022 the nomination of and selection of community moderators was performed by the DAO

  • Ambassadors / In-country Leads: 2021/2022 the LLC was responsible for identifying, hiring and paying ambassadors; by the end of 2022 this will be done by the DAO

A strong and trusted community-run GoodDollar and DAO doesn’t appear overnight. It will happen because the core team will work with the community to empower them to lead the future of GoodDollar. This takes onboarding of people, tools, and funds.

Examples of things we are working on that decentralize the strategy of GoodDollar from LLC to DAO:

Product & Dev Goals
A focus that moves from UBI onboarding (wallet) → G$ Utility (dapp integrations)
Core team decides what’s built → DAO proposals
Core team does all dev → DAO Grants & Bounties
DAO governance tools

Community & Growth
Advocacy, partnership, community work completed by the LLC → GoodDollar DAO Jobs
Donor funds → DAO-nominated community grants

Operations
Establish best in class DAO regulatory structure, treasury structure, and employment practices

Regarding the LLC’s budget, which is funded purely by donations, it ranges from from $1-2 million annually, depending on market conditions.

100% of the funds donated to date have been spent on developing the wallet, the protocol, the DAO. All of this work is 100% open source.

The same budget that is used to pay all core team members & contributors.

To date, any GoodDAO funds are also allocated from the LLC. The community moderators are selected by the DAO, but the funds come from the LLC.

As the DAO absorbs more responsibilities that contribute GoodDollar’s growth, it will receive more funding.

From 2018 to date, the vast majority of the development funds have gone towards building a very basic, simple UBI wallet. To enable any person to easily sign up to get G$. wallet.gooddollar.org

This is both good and bad.

Good: the UBI wallet has been key to successfully onboarding nearly 500,000 to crypto, and getting the UBI to people who really really need it.

Bad: A Web3 wallet is expensive and complex to develop and maintain

The LLC is developing a plan that balances the desire to 1) responsibly “decentralize” and give more say and funding to the DAO, 2) while responsibly serving and managing the existing 500,000 members in the wallet, 3) all within a bear market.

The annual budget of the LLC and how it is spent has ZERO relationship with how much GoodDollar UBI is minted or distributed.

UBI is minted and distributed directly as a result of the smart contracts. This is people staking / buying G$ directly from the protocol.

eToro has also financially supported in this way, by staking for GoodDollar. But this has no connection whatsoever to the annual operating budget, or the UBI distributed.

Regarding increased transparency:

  1. The LLC can provide a high-level annual overview of its budget breakdown

  2. Legal strategy - the LLC has consulted a range of legal experts is opening an offshore entity to host the DAO components; and will update the community after it is established. A full update will come in 6-8 weeks.

  3. Roadmap - As discussed in August 2nd’s community call, the original roadmap of April 2022 will not be delivered as planned. An updated roadmap will be shared on upcoming community calls.

7 Likes

Sounds good @goodanna :+1::muscle:
I support & follow.
My path is clear :))
Thank you :blush:

1 Like

thanks @goodanna, your response is concise and super clarifying for the community about what the organization is doing :clap:t3::clap:t3:

It is great you start by remember us the mission and vision of this project

regarding this point:

Totally! Let’s start with transparency. It’s important to everybody to understand what are the available resources, and to at least have also a say on it. No one expect the DAO to fully happen tomorrow, but there are important things to work on if we want to become a self-regenerative economy, like Protocol Research that I see you are not including in your bullet n.2.

I think the GoodDAO is getting good shape when I see the LLC and eToro to investing its community while finally having the Foundation to represent us juridically.

As you can guess at this point, there’s no need for calling to a vote. Thanks again for your clear response and please let us know the estimated date for the breakdown, so then we can follow this conversation.

4 Likes

All for transparency & progress!

The LLC will share an updated roadmap, budget breakdown and legal strategy by end of Q3 2023 / beginning of Q4 2024 (October 2024).

6 Likes

The sound is good, I will support this And thanks for the Great Decision :pray::pray:

Hello Anna,

in pro of starting the decentralization journey that GoodDollar does need to gain trust and support from Social Impact Investors, token engineers and SW contributors, I think it is crucial that the high-level annual overview of the LLC breakdown includes information like:

  1. Amount of resources addresses to the different project verticals (e.g. Advocacy & community, marketing, App-wallet development, Protocol development, protocol research, legal, admin, etc.)
  2. Team dimensioning: when you say “Pay people to do all of the above stuff”, and again, in order to start our decentralization journey, it’s important that the community understand who are actually these people and what are their capabilities to execute the mission of generating more fairness in wealth distribution through our protocol.

While I’m sure you are preparing for #1, but if you want GoodDollar to be part of the DeSI trend (see tweet below), it is super important for the GoodDollar community and the DeSI movement to have such an information so they (Social Impact crypto-community) can challenge how the LLC is managing their funds for a more fair, efficient and efficacy work and way to use this money.

I’m not sure DeSI is actually a thing already, but you guys (yes, you, the LLC, the centralized entity managing this project) have the duty to decentralize yourself (not tomorrow, of course, but just set up a proper decentralization journey/roadmap) from the main decisions that impact our UBI supporters and claimers, and that includes all you guys are doing.

Looking forward to an update from your side regarding when do you plan to deliver this Transparency Report.

Hey @goodanna any update on this!? A month has passed and there’s still no news about the transparency report you will provide.