There is no loan agreement, it was something that would be sorted out when we get the grant. If you knew me, you would believe me, I am not a business man, I am a very engaged philanthropist/impact angel investor trying to get my projects engaged in the Optimism Ecosystem.
The agreements that are in place are salary agreements for several of the people (not all) in several of the projects, they get regular monthly salaries from the Giveth DAO or General Magic. Then, after the 1 year lock up, portions of the OP would be split up between people in the project and the orgs that pay their salaries so that the have the economic security they need to pay rent and be available to do the work.
Most of the Giveth & General Magic teams hail from low income countries like Turkey, Columbia, Philippines, Mexico, etc around 80% of the Giveth team is DEI. These are not teams that can just not be paid for a few months sabbatical and can wait a year for payment. We are trying to bring web3 to this part of the world, and regular salaries are an important part of that, so that is how we are structured. In general, I backstop these teams and would make deals to make their financials easy.
The details about the one year lock up and how it is supposed to be executed is still murky for me, but all the teams I am associated with will follow whatever direction is expected, with an understanding that OP is governance rights, despite the emergent market value (my new catchline).
I am just making an effort to be overly transparent, and I’m glad I am as it is helping me understand the space that we can play in. It sometimes feels in these public forums that I am talking to traffic cops and not DAO members that are assuming positive intent and understand we are all just trying to navigate in this big experiment, and I hope that you can understand that the Giveth and GM teams are also experimenting within the experiment!
I’ve been around the block and understand this is how forum posts go, and that there is a silent majority that is more understanding and not excited to take sides in what could be perceived as tense public discussions.
Any team that I would have expected to get some OP allocation for any contribution, I was a member of the team and listed explicitly in the proposal.
I think the ToC are very murky, and I am trying to be overly transparent. I am in no way a bad actor in the space. I have helped to rescue 100’s of Millions of dollars worth of crypto multiple times as well as starting project after project in the public goods space. I would appreciate an assumption of positive intent.
I just clearly had different expectations from what was stated in the terms of these grants (because I thought Optimism was about making investment strategies for Public Goods as is stated in this blog post and that is naturally what I am trying to experiment with), and am happy to have ridiculously public and transparent dealings for where the OP goes that follows the expectations of the Foundation or any other stakeholders.
I hope to build public goods focused economies that are modeling the Impact = Profit mantra, as was done with the Token Engineering Commons but maybe I am running too fast for that in the OP space. I am happy to slow down, and play by the rules.
Again, there is no deal anywhere with any of the teams to provide financial capital in return for OP. I have been very transparent and straight forward in these conversations, apparently to my own detriment. I was expecting to make some deal around the OP that would help these teams, but I never did and I won’t do it if there is clarity given that it is against the rules.
IMO, just to be practical, I think it would be great to enable people who contribute financially to making sure that projects can be executed on can be rewarded with OP as well (this is one of the places where I would add value to these teams), financial contribution is a contribution that should be considered alongside labor, expertise and time, but if that is not an option, we can abide by the clarity given, and I won’t create any deal for being rewarded with OP for financial contributions.
The other thing that needs clarity is…
When the 1 year lock up is over, the OP can be split up amongst the team members correct? And different team members can receive different amounts based on their contributions to the project?
For instance, in the RetroPGF marketing proposal, Bankless Academy has their role, and the Giveth & General Magic teams have their role.
Are we allowed to set expectations between the teams on how much OP goes to Bankless Academy for building the course, and how much goes to Giveth for running the booths, coordinating the sponsorships in person and supervising the content production & how much goes to GM for doing the design work, brand guidelines, shooting/editing videos and doing the general project coordination?
I assume that is ok, and want to confirm, because this is how I assumed Alliances would work, that they would form for the life of the project and after the year they could split the OP amongst the contributing teams.