For full context on the Budget Board, please read the Budget Board Charter.
The Foundation is proposing to appoint the following members to the Budget Board, as per the Collective Council Framework.
As we transition all Council and Board terms to 12 months, starting in Season 8 & 9, members will serve an initial term of 12 months, after which point membership will be determined via alternative selection methods, such as elections. More detail is available in the Budget Board Charter.
The Budget Board’s term will run from May 2025 - May 2026 as onboarding is required prior to the start of Season 8 so that proposals by the Budget Board may be considered during the upcoming Reflection Period.
Eligibility
Members of the Board will be responsible for bootstrapping the Collective’s ability to make sound financial and economic decisions. Their main role is to identify the set of data, models, and algorithms needed to develop cohesive frameworks for token allocation and treasury management. While the Board will initially make proposals, subject to governance approval, their goal is to reduce their role over time to maintenance of public infrastructure and management of governance-approved algorithms.
Participants on the Budget Board were selected to bring the following skillsets to the Board:
Experience in financial forecasting and /or corporate budgeting
Ability to inform decision making with data, computation, and / or automation
Professional capital allocation and/ or portfolio management
Experience allocating capital to support public goods, supporting sustainable ecosystem growth, and/or building long term capital allocation systems
Context on Optimism governance and / or the Optimism Foundation’s strategic priorities
Proposed Membership
Lead
Dane Lund - Founder of Lund Ventures, former Alliance DAO Core Contributor, former Grants Council Lead (Genesis Cohort/Season 3, Season 4)
Genesis Cohort
Token House Representatives
Xochitl Cazador - Chief of Staff and Head of Operations at Optimism Foundation
Xochitl will be able to facilitate tight coordination between the Optimism Foundation’s Finance Team and the Budget Board, ensuring the Board has access to all relevant information. She brings over 15 years of experience in Strategy, Planning, and Operations, where she has led initiatives involving capital allocation, portfolio management, prioritization frameworks, and the development of models like CAPM and efficient frontiers to guide strategic decision-making. Xochitl is also deeply involved in the Foundation’s Intent setting process and can, therefore, lend strategic insight into the Board’s operations.
Michael is responsible for Optimism ecosystem intelligence. He has deep knowledge of onchain analytics, chain economics, and his insights inform decision making across Labs and the Foundation. He is responsible for much of the reporting that drives business reviews but also metrics that measure the health and success of Optimism.
Member will not receive an OP Stipend
Katie Garcia - Partner and Head of Operations at UDHC, formerly at Maker Foundation, and Token House Delegate
Katie will bring a high degree of governance context to the Board as a result of her experiences working with Optimism and Maker governance. She is also a full-time investor, adding a valuable perspective on capital allocation.
Through his work with Open Source Observer, Carl has been critical in building out the Collective’s public data infrastructure, which will be a key input into the frameworks developed by the Board.
Divya is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Collective Intelligence Project, an organization focused on the development of effective, decentralized, and agentic decision-making. With a degree in computational decision analysis and a wealth of experience across economics, artificial intelligence, and governance, she brings an incredibly important perspective to the Board.
Eva Beylin brings deep strategic insight as a member of the Optimism Foundation’s Board and her past experience growing a blockchain data ecosystem. Her previous work overseeing ecosystem growth, grants and treasury management at The Graph will be immensely informative for her role on the Budget Board.
Ratification Process
The Token House will ratify this proposal to approve the Token House representatives and Lead.
The Citizens House will ratify this proposal to approve the Citizens House representatives and Lead.
Each House may remove the representatives of the House to which they belong, at any time, via the Representative Removal proposal outlined in the Operating Manual. The Lead may be removed by either House.
This proposal will move to a vote in Voting Cycle #36.
I understand that the Foundation is proposing these 7 people to serve as members and lead of the first iteration of the budget board.
Could you share what has been the process behind the choice?
Also, since citizens are being asked to vote in favor of the lead and the three Citizens House representatives - and the latter three in turn are expected to be accountable to the Citizens House - it would be great to hear their take on this.
@ccerv1, @eva, Divya (sorry, I don’t know where to find your handle):
Might you each share, here, your thoughts on how you understand your roles as representatives of the Citizens House, and what your expectations are around being members of the budget board?
Hi @joanbp, to address your first question, the Foundation may appoint the first set of members for the first term of a representative structure as outlined in the Representative Structure Framework. As the Foundation creates these structures, being able to appoint the first set of members, still subject to governance approval, allows for the assurance of high quality members to fill new positions and effectively launch a new structure. The founding set of members has a large impact on the overall success (or failure) of a structure. We did voter interviews when this policy was established and the majority felt it was better to have the Foundation appoint a trusted group at initiation than to leave it open to chance via an open election process. This was especially true in the case of the Security Council, for example.
The proposed members were selected specifically for the balance of skillsets outlined in the eligibility criteria.
Great list of initial members and I am STOKED to see @danelund.eth back in the mix!
After working under Dane on the first iterations of the grants council, it’s pretty apparent that he has an enormous amount of competence in starting something from zero, so it’s great to see him leading another new effort.
Voting yes on the Budget Board ratification. I’ve spent time on Uniswap’s treasury working group and want to offer a few focused suggestions to strengthen this structure early.
First, the flat 40k OP compensation doesn’t map to the level of responsibility. I’d encourage adding a performance component based on outputs like budget frameworks, emissions modeling, or tool adoption.
Second, without clear functional tracks, you risk coordination drag. I’d recommend assigning leads for areas like DAO ops, rewards, staking, and mission budgets so the work moves in parallel and accountability is legible.
Third, forum engagement from some members has been low. Increasing the cadence of public outputs or syncs would help bridge trust with active Delegates and Citizens.
Lastly, Foundation-heavy composition is understandable short-term, but a transition plan would go a long way toward reinforcing credibility and decentralization in future seasons.
I’m optimistic, and net happy to see this pilot is moving forward. Wishing the cohort a productive and focused term.
I agree that it makes sense for the Foundation to appoint these first members.
My question was aimed at understanding the process by which the Foundation had done this.
Seeing as we are being asked to approve of the choice - and also considering that in future the collective might be asked to take on more responsibility for the process - it seems prudent to not just sign in blind faith, but to try and illuminate how these things work. To help us all learn from it.
Overall, this is a solid slate of initial members. Over time, we would like to see a steady movement away from Labs and Foundation affiliates given the potential for conflicts of interest that creates, since representatives are supposed to represent Citizen and Token Houses.
One suggestion, to prevent full turnover of the board at any given time, would be to make half of these seats only 6-month terms for this inaugural term. Then the board is staggered, and ensures no institutional knowledge within the Budget Board is lost due to elections/resignations all coinciding together. Budgets in particular, whether from the actual budgetary details or from familiarity with processes and workflows in creation of them, are susceptible to disruption if the entire board turned over at once.
On the process: Stakeholders at the Foundation and within the Collective Feedback Commission were asked for recommendations of people that met the eligibility criteria. From that initial list, we tried to ensure candidates met the skillsets required while balancing representation from the OP Foundation, the OP Foundation Board, and OP Labs’ (to ensure strategic cohesion); and that 2 candidates also be a long-time delegate / citizen. 1 candidate is new to the ecosystem but has done well recognized research on governance systems and has a degree in computational decision making, which is very relevant to what the Budget Board does. We also asked a representative from the Ethereum Foundation, but they declined due to bandwidth constraints.
In terms of how net new contributors will represented and accountable to each House: we are preparing extensive onboarding materials for members, which clearly outline the goals of each house as publicly documented, and are onboarding them for ~6 weeks before they need to make their first proposal to ensure they have all the context they need. Many of the members of the Security Council and Developer Advisory Board were also new to Optimism governance in their first term. It’s important that we continue to bring net new contributors into the ecosystem, and don’t just entrench the power of incumbents or long-time contributors. It’s part of why it’s not a requirement to be a delegate or a citizen to be on a Council or a Board. Onboarding plays an important role in facilitating this.
Some community members have asked for a Q&A call with members. The Foundation would be happy to facilitate this some time in May once members have completed onboarding!
