[EGG] st2024 v2: Continuity Grant Funding to Achieve GOOSE Goals

[steakhouse]

Source: Archival photograph of a stETH token (2024, colorized)

tldr

• Continue grant approvals to the Lido Contributors Group to advance towards hasu’s GOOSE and reGOOSE Goals
• Development, audit and deployment of multiple Staking Router modules, Dual Governance, Layer 2 integrations and reviews and zkOracles and integrations for stETH in restaking
• Best-before date: 2024-12-31
• 24.6m DAI + 180k LDO in grant continuity for the Lido Contributor’s Group
• 7.1m DAI in grant continuity for the Liquidity Observation Lab
• 400k DAI for the Community Lifeguard initiative

Basic Data

Field	Description
Proposal Name	st2024 v2
Which of the following GOOSE goals is your proposal advancing?	1: Lido has effective and decentralized governance, 2: Lido attracts the best validator set in the market, 3: stETH is the most used token in the Ethereum ecosystem
Proposed scope of work	Engineering Coordination, stETH Core Protocol Engineering, Validator Set Engineering for the Staking Router, Alerting and Monitoring Tooling, Community Module, Governance Core Protocol Engineering, API & Components
Objectives	Significantly advance all three GOOSE goals by focusing on expanding the validator set through Community Staking Module, growing stETH adoption in restaking and launching dual governance implementations
Total Budget Request	31.8m DAI, 180k LDO
Best-before date	2024-12-31

Review of st2024 v1

In line with recurring underspends, the st2024 v1 EGG has a positive variance of ca. $12m. This excludes the last half of May and the month of June, but do not expect significant grants in this period.

Thanks to the EasyTrack process, DAO grantees do not receive the full, upfront budget requested through an EGG, but realize any variances on a rolling basis.

st2024 v2

st2024 v2 is a 6mo grant request to advance all three of the GOOSE goals approved by the DAO earlier this year and to double down on reGOOSE objectives approved earlier this year. All these goals are crucial for realizing decentralization objectives around governance minimization, validator diversity and stETH utility.

Continuity for ongoing projects being outsourced to Pool Maintenance Labs Ltd., Argo Technology Consulting Ltd. or serviced by RCC, to collect functions relating to protocol execution, sponsorships and development support for the DAO. These existing contributor channels can mitigate present business continuity risks while advancing decentralised protocol governance.

This proposal would ratify the below budget request that will continue grantee funding for a further 6 months through EasyTrack contracts into three multi-signature addresses

DAI 24.6m and LDO 180,000 will be approved for the period Jul-2024 to Dec-2024, distributed across the below grant approvals.

Approval of a continuation of the previous grant to Pool Maintenance Labs Ltd., an independent not-for-profit staking advocacy and technical services company and existing contributor in the British Virgin Islands, transferred to a company-authorized 4/7 multi-sig wallet with signers listed below: 0x17F6b2C738a63a8D3A113a228cfd0b373244633D

adcv: 0xcC692077C65dd464cAA7e7ae614328914f8469b3
folkyatina: 0x75E01e1B7a4Ac280fB744A8153beE668A7e83abd
kadmil: 0x9A3f38AF97b791C85c043D46a64f56f87E0283D4
Azat: 0xA14BFfd91fb571bF1D9Bec70f273CAc13CA127Fa
krogla: 0x000000DfE832ccD7a4011a1Fca34602C9a598353
skozin: 0x181dbb1E8156518a58Cbb83AF4D3C41E731c6bdF
rotorless: 0xF6E9a144D727C239cC2A7C64C48B8b9A0E39b3dc

Approval of a continuation of the previous grant to Argo Technology Consulting Ltd, an independent Panamanian software development company operated as a not-for-profit, funded through a company-authorized 4/7 wallet with signers listed below: 0x9B1cebF7616f2BC73b47D226f90b01a7c9F86956

• adcv: 0xcC692077C65dd464cAA7e7ae614328914f8469b3
• dgusakov: 0x992Ce4eEc8288274f60880c7770DdA265fCCe610
• Marin: 0x04e7C0350241b818eE5c92cc260008C9898F41cf
• ShardYaco: 0x59d07dc34B135B17b87840a86BFF7302039E7EDf
• madlabman: 0xA8815bc0B541D0a28dA7b8f759EB7E157e8fF8b0
• Alex_L: 0xB339918e75664a07BB650513427559920C0A0F6C
• Juanbug: 0xB8Dcad009E533066F12e408075E10E3a30F1f15A

Approval of a continuation to fund the RCC 4/7 multi-sig wallet with signers listed below: 0xDE06d17Db9295Fa8c4082D4f73Ff81592A3aC437

• Marin: 0x04e7C0350241b818eE5c92cc260008C9898F41cf
• Alex_L: 0xB339918e75664a07BB650513427559920C0A0F6C
• irina: 0x8CeD94df9ddba8E38b6cb36639B6635F19Eb25C6
• UniteTheClans: 0x81ca68f085282434D15c09619360D6513710a979
• zuzu_eeka: 0x004812da927b5dcd07e7329609edd75e25d2d295
• adcv: 0xcC692077C65dd464cAA7e7ae614328914f8469b3
• Mol_Eliza: 0x21b82AA7149c8Fd0562E78b740937442FfD43094

If the proposal is approved, the first funding for disbursement to finance protocol operations would be requested from the DAO via EasyTrack 5 motions.

Pool Maintenance Labs Ltd. 0x17F6b2C738a63a8D3A113a228cfd0b373244633D
Argo Technology Consulting Ltd. 0x9B1cebF7616f2BC73b47D226f90b01a7c9F86956
RCC 0xDE06d17Db9295Fa8c4082D4f73Ff81592A3aC437

Multisig signers & addresses may be rotated by specified multisig after signalling the change to DAO on the governance forum. Number of signers can’t be lowered, and the threshold must be at least 50% of the signers.

A further 7.1m DAI in wstETH at market value would be approved for the Liquidity Observation Lab to continue a previous grant to further liquidity incentivization, experimentation and research. LOL will continue to work to deliver public resources on stETH liquidity.

To deliver on hasu’s GOOSE and reGOOSE goals, areas of focus during the budget period will include:

• Engineering Coordination
• stETH Core Protocol Engineering
• Validator Set Engineering for the Staking Router
• Alerting and Monitoring Tooling
• Community Module
• Governance Core Protocol Engineering
• API & Components

At the end of the budget period, if GOOSE goals can be advanced further, the Lido Contributors Group may request another grant from the DAO to continue their contributions.

Transparency

As with the previous EGG, a mid-period review will be held to recap on the progress to date and report on variances. Publicly available information on the state of the DAO economics continue to be available here (though the dashboard is being reworked over the coming weeks to update for Stonks and distinguish between new Staking Router modules

July 2024

Tracking a substantial underspend in grant requests relative to the ceiling. Following September, we will recalculate an expected grant disbursement for the full year and communicate it in this thread to update expectations with more precision.

August 2024

Continuing to track a substantial underspend in grant requests relative to the approved ceiling. We are recalculating a forecasted EOY grant disbursement level for the full year and communicate it here through an update.

[Tane]

Thanks @steakhouse for the proposal. It’s exciting to continuously support the GOOSE and reGOOSE goals with funding by the DAO!

We have reviewed the st2024 v2 budget proposal and have a little concerns regarding the significant variances between budgeted and actual expenditures in previous proposals.

• Nov 2022 - Mar 2023 around $3.6M variance
• May 2023 - Dec 2023 around $8.0M variance
• Jan 2024 - June 2024 around $12.6M variance

We believe that the accuracy of budget management is important given the necessity to improve profitability in the medium to long term.

It would be great to help us understand why these variances between budget and actual expenditures have occurred and the rationale behind the amounts set in the current proposal in a little more details.

[Jenya_K]

Thank you for the proposal; the EGG framework has made grant requests much clearer and more transparent. I appreciate you suggesting it and using it.

I want to clarify: is this a request for additional grunt on top of the unspent amount from H1, or is this the entire amount LCG plans to spend in H2? Also, will the unspent but already disbursed part cover part of these expenses?

Also, last time a further 10% was reserved for unforeseen expenses. Will this be the case this time as well?

[steakhouse]

Of course, thank you for your question, and thank you for your continued support and engagement.

Generally, the two main drivers of budget variance are reliably behind contributor grants and audit and development expenses. These are overwhelmingly the bulk of the costs in actuals as well. The nature of these investments should be seen more as upfront costs rather than expenses that could be expected to continue indefinitely. The speed of realization of milestones towards GOOSE goals and their complexity all make it quite challenging to forecast accurately what the level of actual investment will be required to achieve them.

The technical skillsets required to contribute to various modules within the DAO tend to be quite niche and difficult to identify talent for. This makes it difficult to estimate starting dates and therefore actual expenses. We have typically tended to forecast a full period of contributor grants rather than try and accurately calendarize based on start dates, and delays in identifying the right talent contribute to setting back the variance.

Audits are another large cost that depend on the realization of milestones and on negotiations with audit suppliers. Here we are unapologetically responsible for regularly overforecasting, in order to avoid last-minute rushes to meet budget goals for making sure any DAO approved changes are subject to an exhaustive level of audits from independent vendors.

@Jenya_K

I want to clarify: is this a request for additional grunt on top of the unspent amount from H1, or is this the entire amount LCG plans to spend in H2? Also, will the unspent but already disbursed part cover part of these expenses?

Also, last time a further 10% was reserved for unforeseen expenses. Will this be the case this time as well?

On that note, given the mechanism of the EasyTrack smart contracts, grants are only disbursed if they are or will be used, while the variance is fully realized and remains in the Aragon agent smart contract. Therefore this H2 request is effective from July 1. Similarly, given the extensive and recurring positive variances, we discontinued asking for a 10% buffer for unforeseen expenses.

---

What we propose to do differently this time is provide more frequent updates, rather than the mid-point community call that we organized in March that was very lightly attended.

Month-on-month reconciliations should be helpful in providing a bit more transparency and can help track the accuracy of the forecast. As usual we are always available for the community to answer any questions that might arise.

[SEEDOrg]

Hello! We are supportive of the current proposal in sight of the ongoing work towards reGOOSE goals - also happy to see the CLI growing! All transparency efforts are not only welcomed but necessary to keep up with the overall activity thus we appreciate @steakhouse list of inititatives and look forward to participate in their monitoring.

[governance-data-bot]

Snapshot vote started

We’re starting the [EGG] st2024 v2: Continuity Grant Funding to Achieve GOOSE Goals Snapshot, active till Thu, 04 Jul 2024 16:00:00 GMT . Please don’t forget to cast your vote!

[governance-data-bot]

Snapshot vote ended

The [EGG] st2024 v2: Continuity Grant Funding to Achieve GOOSE Goals Snapshot vote concluded!
The results are:
Approve EGG request: 53.1M LDO
Decline (grants discontinue): 96 LDO

[zuzu_eeka]

An on-chain vote has been initiated for the transfer of 180k LDO from the Treasury to PML multisig: Vote Here.
The main phase will last for 48 hours and will conclude on July 25, 2024, at 15:20 UTC.
Don’t miss out — vote now!

[Tane]

@zuzu_eeka

for the transfer of 180 LDO

The transaction’s call data and description in the vote shows 180,000 LDO (which is calculated from 180000000000000000000000 in 18 decimals), not 180 LDO, thus we consider it the correct and approved amount and voted on the proposal accordingly.

[Jenya_K]

Yes, the above is a typo. It is proposed to transfer 180k LDO.

[zuzu_eeka]

The vote to transfer 180k LDO is now closed and enacted. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to vote.

[LukeWasm]

Thanks so much for the detailed proposal and updates! Regarding the financials of Lido, I noticed a significant 3298 ETH under other expenses/income from the dune lido-safu dashboard for week 2024-07-15. This is quite unusual. Is this related to this v2 budget? or is it related to the STONK where 3500 ETH is swapped to stablecoins ( the timing seems to be consistent).

What is the best way to monitor the expenses of Lido? Do you offer detailed monthly reports like previously?

[steakhouse]

Correct ! Apologies for this misconception, we are working to relabel the account. The outflow is indeed related to Stonks. We will push monthly updates related to this grant request indeed.