BIP-92: Treasury Funding for Beethoven X DAO Contributors April 2025 - September 2025

Introduction and Motivation

The Beethoven DAO Treasury continues to play a crucial role in supporting and sustaining the talented contributors who drive the growth and development of the Beets protocol. Over multiple consecutive six-month funding cycles—beginning with BIP-35 on Fantom and most recently extended through BIP-73 for the period of October 2024 to March 2025—the Treasury has provided the financial foundation necessary to maintain contributor engagement and protocol advancement.

With this proposal, we seek to continue this proven funding model, requesting an updated allocation of $45,000 USDC per month, reflecting a $5,000 increase from the previous cycle. This adjustment is designed to ensure continued momentum as Beets strengthens its position as the leading DEX on Sonic.

To enhance operational efficiency and reduce the need for repeated manual interventions, we propose that the full six-month funding amount—$270,000 USDC—be disbursed as a single upfront payment at the beginning of the cycle. This approach allows us to automate internal distribution, reduce administrative overhead, and increase operational security by minimizing repeated treasury interactions.

The funding will support contributors for the period April 2025 through September 2025 and will be supplemented by revenue from the ongoing Balancer Technical Service Provider Agreement, ensuring core contributors remain engaged and supported throughout.

Background

The contributors of the Beets protocol have demonstrated resilience, dedication, and a shared commitment to establishing Beets as an innovative DeFi powerhouse. Thanks to the continued support of the Beethoven DAO, contributors have sustained innovation, development, and marketing efforts across market cycles. Today, Beets proudly stands as the Flagship LST Hub on Sonic.

The past six-month period has been one of the most ambitious and successful in the protocol’s history, marked by several key milestones:

• Flagship Liquidity Hub: Beets established itself as the primary liquidity hub for liquid-staked tokens (LSTs) on Sonic, directly supporting the network’s goals of speed and scalable DeFi infrastructure.
• stS Liquid Staking Success: Launched $stS, a liquid-staked token for $S, achieving over 88.99M $S staked within a month—surpassing total $sFTMx deposits on Fantom across two years. Beets is now the largest liquid staking provider on Sonic, with more than 220.56M $S staked.
• Revenue Growth & Operational Efficiency: With the new Budget based protocol management system now fully operational, the revenue sources have been expanded, with the full list including Sonic DEX, Fantom DEX, Optimism DEX, stS staking, Sonic validator and Sonic FeeM. The average monthly total protocol fees for the 2025 Q1 were ~$115,000, which is a significant increase compared to the average monthly protocol fees of the previous funding cycle of 2024 April-September at ~$39,000.
• Sonic Ecosystem Integration: Beets has created a diverse set of new opportunities within the emerging Sonic ecosystem, including collaborations with DeFi leaders like Aave, Silo Finance, and Rings Protocol, culminating in innovative DeFi primitives such as the recently launched ultimate stablecoin play offering six sources of yield in a single position.
• Rebrand & Platform Relaunch: Beets transitioned from the playful and lyrical branding of Beethoven X into its more mature and ambitious “Beets” identity. This coincided with the launch of the new beets.fi portal—widely recognized as a leading DEX user experience—built on Balancer v3.

Overview of Current Contributor Areas of Operations:

Currently, contributor resources are approximately 7.6 FTE, a small decrease from the long-term average of 8–10 FTE. Contributors remain responsible for a wide variety of responsibilities—ranging from development and governance to marketing, design, and strategic partnerships—always guided by community input.

Contributor Composition Update

Two primary developments have influenced the current contributor setup for the DAO:

• Resource Rebalancing: A new hire trial for marketing and partnerships was not extended due to lack of fit. Instead, existing contributors—with significant domain expertise—have taken on increased responsibilities and more gains during this strategically vital phase of Beets’ deployment on Sonic.
• Efficiency Gains: Streamlining and refining contributor processes has allowed for reduced administrative overhead. After the intensive relaunch phase Design resources have been slightly reduced.
• Balancer Marketing Service Provider Agreement Conclusion: In early 2025, it was mutually agreed to sunset the Balancer Marketing Service Provider contract and not to apply for an extension.
  • For over 18 months, Beets contributors led Balancer’s marketing efforts—guiding the v3 launch and daily communications across the Balancer ecosystem.
  • The launch of Balancer v3 and Beets on Sonic marked a natural conclusion point for this arrangement.
  • While this revenue stream ends, the Balancer Technical Service Provider Agreement remains in place, ensuring contributors continue to support core Balancer & Beets technology innovation.

Despite a bright outlook for Beets, Q1 2025 has presented mixed market signals. As a result, the DAO is adopting a conservative posture heading into the next six months: contributor resources have been reduced, and the funding increase is moderate—ensuring that a small increase can largely compensate for the conclusion of the Balancer Marketing agreement.

Treasury Proposal

This proposal, if adopted, will extend and adjust treasury funding to $45,000 per month for the six-month period from April 2025 through September 2025. This increase will allow contributors to continue maintaining and improving Beets’ position as the flagship LST hub on Sonic and one of the most user-centric platforms in DeFi. The proposed $45,000 monthly funding will be augmented by the remaining $29,000 USDC from the ongoing Balancer Technical Service Provider Agreement to ensure retention of core contributors. As always, the DAO and its contributors remain committed to agility and responsiveness—ready to adapt to changing conditions and new opportunities in the market as they arise

We appreciate your consideration and support in ensuring the continued growth and development of Beethoven X.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Impact for the 6 Months

Contributors – Step 1: DAO Contributors will receive an aggregate fixed $45 per month ($270k in total) Budget in USDC from the Treasury. In addition, Step 2, for the remaining Balancer Technology Service Provider Agreement: $29k per month, a total of $174k in protocol revenue from the service provider agreement with Balancer is paid into Treasury and will be used to fund the core contributor wallet.

Treasury – Treasury assumes a fixed monthly cost of $45k per month ($270k in total) in USDC and commits to passing the $29k (or any new equivalent arising from SP contracts) in USDC received service provider agreement onwards, to be used for the payment of DAO Contributors.

Tokenomics – No impact

Committees – No impact

Execution Plan

Upon approval of this proposal, the Treasury will transfer a single upfront payment of $270,000 USDC to the designated DAO Contributor wallet to cover the full six-month funding period from April 2025 through September 2025. This one-time payment structure is intended to streamline operations by enabling automated internal distribution, reducing ongoing administrative overhead, and increasing security by minimizing the frequency of manual disbursements from the Treasury.

In parallel, the Treasury will continue to receive the equivalent of 6-payments of $29,000 USDC from the existing Balancer Technical Service Provider Agreement. These funds will be forwarded to the same DAO Contributor wallet to support ongoing contributor funding throughout the proposal period.

This authorization will take effect at the beginning of May 2025, covering the April 2025 funding period. The single disbursement from the Treasury will serve as the full allocation for this funding cycle, ensuring contributors have predictable and timely access to the resources necessary to operate efficiently and deliver value to the Beets protocol.