BIP-104: Treasury Funding for Beets DAO Contributors October 2025 – March 2026

Introduction & Motivation

The Beets DAO treasury plays a vital role in enabling contributors to sustain and scale the protocol. Previous funding cycles have established a stable baseline for operations, innovation, and protocol growth.

To continue this trajectory and support new capacity, we seek an updated allocation of 50,000 USDC per month, reflecting a 5,000 USDC increase from the previous cycle. The increase incorporates an additional 0.5 FTE in development, reflecting growing technical demands and scaling.

This BIP builds on existing precedent and defines governance boundaries, clarifying where contributors may act independently and where DAO approval remains required. There are cases where contributors need the autonomy to act with agility, especially for strategic and confidential initiatives that cannot always pass through full governance in advance.

Background

Beets contributors steward the product vision and strategy, drive innovation and product-market fit, and oversee day-to-day work across engineering, business development, marketing, partner relations, design, and operations, ensuring the protocol can move quickly without compromising transparency or security.

This work has been funded by the DAO through six-month treasury allocations, a cadence that balances accountability with continuity, providing the team with the necessary runway to deliver. As Sonic enters its next phase with new products and integrations to ship, we propose a modest expansion of the core team to comfortably handle the increased workload and maintain delivery quality.

Key milestones

• Largest DEX on Sonic.
• stS is the largest LST on Sonic, representing over 78% of total LST supply.
• Grew stS stake to ~290M S by early May 2025 and maintained that level through the S1 airdrop and broader Sonic downtrend.
• Strategic Aave collaboration: fees from the Aave wS market are recycled into the stS loop.
• Over 21,000,000 BEETS bought back from protocol revenue.
• Integrated advanced liquidity primitives: reCLAMMs, Blockchain-Traded Funds, and Dynamic E-CLPs.
• Launched the Sonic Staking Program to align with key validators and deepen stS liquidity.
• Built key relationships with SonicStrategy to support validator growth and long-horizon participation.
• Designed and executed a grants rework on the Optimism deployment.
• Presented the next stage of Beets in person at Sonic Summit, establishing Beets as the backbone of native S yield and financial data and the connective tissue between institutional capital and onchain finance.
• In progress: Ultra Sonic Money, Sonic’s financial front page, and data layer.
• In progress: loopS, an ERC 20 wrapper and receipt for the automated Aave stS loop.

Roles & Responsibilities

Under this BIP, contributors (i.e. the core team) will operate with the following responsibilities and delegated authority:

Domains of responsibility:

1. Technical implementation

   • Design, build, deploy, maintain protocol contracts, UIs, integrations, and infrastructure.
   • Prioritize feature development, bug fixes, upgrades, and system optimizations.

2. Ecosystem partnerships & integrations

   • Negotiate and engage strategic collaborations, protocol integrations, tooling, and ecosystem projects.
   • In certain cases, initiate and finalize partnerships confidentially, without requiring prior DAO approval.

3. Strategic decisions & planning

   • Define medium- to long-term direction, new product proposals, and protocol growth strategies.
   • Allocate internal resources (developer time, marketing, audits) across opportunities.

4. Operations, marketing & community

   • Oversee community programs, branding, content, grants, educational resources, and public communications.

Important governance constraint: Contributors cannot directly spend DAO Treasury funds without an approved governance vote. There are cases where due to confidentiality or time constraints contributors have fronted a payment in the belief that DAO will agree with the action once the information has been made public. In this case the contributors have asked the DAO treasury to reimburse the payment retroactively through governance.

Proposal (Funding Request)

• Approve 50,000 USDC per month for contributor funding, over a six-month cycle (October 2025 – March 2026), totaling 300,000 USDC.
• The Treasury will disburse this as a one-time upfront lump sum at the beginning of the cycle.
• These funds will support the expanded 0.5 FTE development capacity and maintain existing roles and efforts across product, strategy, marketing, and operations.
• Contributors will exercise the responsibilities and autonomy as specified above.

Impacts & Risk Assessment

Benefits:

• Provides stable support for core contributors while scaling development capacity.
• Grants contributors the autonomy to act quickly, especially for strategic or confidential initiatives.
• Strengthens Beets’ capacity to seize opportunities and respond rapidly to ecosystem developments.

Risks:

• Greater autonomy may lead to decisions that diverge from community expectations if not carefully aligned.
• Confidential partnerships carry hidden risk—bad reputational or legal fallout if poorly executed.
• The increased budget is a higher fixed cost on the Treasury, requiring confidence in contributor productivity.

Mitigation:

• Contributors cannot spend DAO Treasury funds without governance approval.
• Reimbursement requests require DAO approval, ensuring community oversight.

Specification / Execution Plan

1. Upon passing this BIP, the DAO Treasury will transfer a one-time upfront payment of 300,000 USDC to the designated DAO Contributor wallet to cover the six-month funding cycle (October 2025 – March 2026).
2. Contributors assume the expanded responsibilities and autonomy described above.
3. At the end of the cycle, contributors will account for outcomes and propose adjustments for the next cycle.