Council Proposal - Treasury Composition & DAO Funding for Risk Mitigation Efforts

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Edit 29 April 2024: In response to feedback from the community, this proposal has been split into two separate ones. Please read the updated posts here: Risk Mitigation Efforts, Treasury Composition.

Summary

If passed, this proposal will authorize: (i) the conversion of 50% of the SOL in the Orca protocol fee treasury (the “Treasury”) into USDC; and (ii) payment from the Treasury in the amount of 500,000 USDC tokens to support various risk mitigation initiatives.

Description

As many community members know, it can be difficult for crypto projects to navigate the choppy waters of the ever-shifting risk management environment in which they operate. The Orca protocol has always been committed to mitigating potential risks for ORCA tokenholders and the broader Orca ecosystem. Given the recent increase in activity on Solana and Orca’s continued growth, these efforts are more important than ever.

In Q4 of 2022, the Council passed a proposal to convert fees accrued to the Treasury such that the Treasury was balanced into 80% USDC and 20% SOL (based on the then-current market value of SOL). Fees are automatically converted when they enter the Treasury wallet. However, because the value of SOL has increased significantly in recent months, the overall composition of the Treasury has shifted away from the intended 80/20% split. To honor the intent of the previous proposal, the Council proposes to convert 50% of the SOL currently held in the Treasury into USDC.

In addition, a Council member proposed allocating 500,000 USDC tokens of the Treasury to the initial development team for the purposes of exploring, developing and implementing various risk mitigation practices and processes to benefit the Orca ecosystem.

These proposals regarding the Treasury were discussed and considered during the Orca Governance Council meetings convened on 13 March 2024 and 29 March 2024. Unanimously, all Council members in attendance endorsed the submission of this proposal for an on-chain vote.

Governance Process

Forum Discussion

This proposal will be posted here for a discussion period of at least 4 days before it is formally put to a vote. This period allows community members to review the details of the proposal and share feedback.

Voting

After 4 days, a Council member may submit the proposal using their Council Token to the Signaling Governance account (6d76J…4HUf9). The account contains the following voting parameters:

Voting Period: 5 days

Council Threshold: 4 ‘yes’ votes

Veto Threshold: 1,000,000 ORCA

Cool-down Period

This account also has a 2-day cool-down period, which begins after the initial 5-day voting period. In other words, if the proposal is passed after 5 days, the community will have an additional 2 days to veto it.

Execution

If the veto threshold is not met during the cool-down period, then the proposal will pass and its contents will be implemented.

2

This proposal is concerning for two reasons.

  1. This should be two separate proposals. The two items are unrelated and it’s not hard to imagine people being for one item but against the other.

  2. Half a million dollars is a lot of money, especially so for an extremely vague initiative. “…for the purposes of exploring, developing and implementing various risk mitigation practices and processes to benefit the Orca ecosystem.” What risks are we talking about here? To my knowledge, there are no significant outstanding risks that need to be addressed. Also, doesn’t the team already have funding from the VCs they raised from etc.? Why the need to dip into the treasury?

3

Thanks for your contribution. The Council has split this into two proposals and provided additional context for the allocation for risk mitigation initiatives. You can read the updated proposals here: Risk Mitigation Initiatives, Treasury Composition.

Regarding #2, the risk mitigation initiatives proposed by the Council will help keep the protocol in line with best practices and the funds requested will be used to engage third party service providers. The Council believes the initial development team is best positioned to vet and engage these service providers given their familiarity with the protocol.

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