Thank you for raising the topic publicly in the forum.
This is my first post on this forum as an outside party that is mainly interested in understanding this decentralized institution, its norms, processes, actors and other aspects, therefore I might excuse in advantage, if there are misunderstandings on my part, I am happy to be corrected.
As far as the alleged, yet to be comprehensively proven misconduct of L2DAO and any affiliates goes, a relevant text I could find states:
OP received through Growth Experiments Grants should not be sold by the grant recipient.
[…]
Includes the grant recipient, their affiliates and any other related persons. These persons cannot receive OP for the purpose of selling (or if the grant recipient knows they intend to sell) the tokens.
[…]
Includes the direct exchange of OP for crypto or fiat,
[…]
Does not include using OP to incentivize usage
By my personal interpretation of those words and with my limited knowledge about the norms of the optimism collective, I think the question at hand is; if L2DAO had any a priori knowledge or suspicion of a receiver of an L2DAO grant, the affiliate, going to use the grant in a way not permitted by above statute, which as stated above has of course yet to be proven comprehensively and for the sake of fairness should be assumed to not be the case.
In the case that by the processes at hand the opposite should be found, I personally would find it unfair to put receivers of an L2DAO grant that acted in accordance with the “no sale” rule and the norms of the Optimism Collective into an uncomfortable position, of possibly having to return a grant that could have already helped to grow the network.
Regarding my personal curiosity, I read your snapshot and would like to understand if the different distribution proposals, like
3 months of training and onboarding new analysts
ongoing infrastructure costs, including hosting data and any fees incurred
marketing our safety rating initiative
were intended to give the OP received from L2DAO to third parties, which more than likely would sell those OP for fiat or crypto in the process, as one can hardly assume that an infrastructure provider accepts OP as means of payment to pay for his bills.
If this was the case, that would by my understanding be a violation of the above statute and keeping the OP in the multisig, waiting for the appropriate actors determining how this case in its entirety should be further proceeded, is likely the best course of action for all organizations that received an L2DAO grant.