TLDR: Redacted Cartel, the DAO in charge of building out the Redacted ecosystem, is extending their current DAO operations budget to ensure the protocol continues shipping innovative products even in turbulent markets.

Redacted Cartel launched in November of 2021 as a fork of Olympus DAO to expand it into the CRV ecosystem and provide liquidity within the now infamous Curve Wars. This community is in charge of stewarding the development of the Redacted ecosystem which includes products like Redacted Protocol, Hidden Hand, Pirex, Dinero, and more. These products focus on empowering on-chain liquidity, governance, and cash flow for DeFi protocols. The DAO counts on a budget within its DAO reserves to pay for its contributors building these protocols and its various products.

In June of 2022, the DAO passed a proposal to form a DAO operations budget within the treasury. This was created at the time to help maintain and expand the DAO and differentiate DAO revenue, tokenholder emissions, and the expenses needed to run the protocol. The proposal allotted a budget of $1.122M to $1.266M to fund contributors and their various workstreams. This budget ensured that operations within the protocol, such as product development, would continue uninterrupted amidst the rapidly deteriorating market.

Now Redacted DAO is voting on a proposal that would extend and slightly increase their DAO operational budget as the protocol looks to ramp up product development and expansion.

The Proposal: Redacted Budget Proposal v2

On November 19th, RIP32 was posted to the Redacted forums to extend the current DAO operational expenses for six months, through the end of May 2023. The proposal builds off of an existing budget within Redacted for DAO expenses and contributor compensation.

The proposal outlines increasing the budget band up to $1.2M to $1.38M. This new range is provided to ensure there is sufficient funding in place for potential future hires and potential added expenses. A separate $200K is specified for audit fees over the six-month period. The entirety of the budget will be paid out in stablecoins to ensure there is no potential sell pressure to any of Redacted native tokens.

The proposed budget covers the core functions of the protocol such as Development, Marketing, Policy, Operations, Partnerships, and more. Redacted explains the funding will be utilized to continue the development of its existing products along with expansion into (as yet unidentified) new offerings.

In order for a Redacted proposal to pass, it must first go through the DAO’s governance process. A proposal begins as a draft before moving on to the RFF (Request for Feedback) stage; once it gains sufficient interest it can proceed to the RIP (Redacted Improvement Proposal) stage. Designated members of the community, known as Sicarios, are tasked with being governance stewards at Redacted. Sicarios help initiate proposals and get them in front of the Cartel Committee, which is an internal committee (comprised of workstream leads) that reviews proposals and ensures they are ready to be posted for a vote. Holders of xBTRFLY and wxBTRFLY can vote on governance proposals.

RIP32 is currently up for a Snapshot vote and is set to expire on November 24th.

Big Picture

According to their dashboard on Zapper, Redacted has a “net worth” of over $19 million, with enough flexibility in asset types to fund the new, six-month budget. It’s still, however, a bold move in a bear market to suggest increased spending. The DAO appears to be confident in its current products as well as its development pipeline, and remains excited about the “fat protocol infrastructure thesis.” (See Joel Monegro, who posited that “most of the market value in crypto would be captured at the ‘protocol layer’” rather than at the application layer.) They’re having no trouble shipping widely-used DeFi products, and want to set the stage for more. With the highly visible failures of centralized operations so much in the news in recent months, it’s easy to miss all the constructive, forward-looking work taking place across the DeFi landscape.

We’ll be tracking this proposal activity closely at Boardroom, follow our newsletter to stay up to date.  *If you’re a voter in a protocol, make sure to check out Boardroom Portal.

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