Proposal Champions

Abbey - @abbey | abbey#5646 Ange - @ange | ange#8727 Sally - @sllyllyd | sllyllyd (she/her)#3512

Temperature Check 👇

https://radicle.community/t/temperature-check-start-the-foundation-org/3272

Discussion

https://radicle.community/t/discussion-start-the-foundation-org/3278

Overview

In order to clarify the role of the Radicle Foundation (also referred to as “Foundation” below) within the Radicle ecosystem, increase transparency around the Foundation’s use of funds, and communicate the intentions for the Foundation’s ongoing allocations from the Radicle Treasury, the Foundation Council is putting forward this proposal to make the Radicle Foundation an official “Organization” (also referred to as “Org” or “Foundation Org” below) within the RadicleDAO. This proposal is part of the outcome of "Workstream 1. Proposed Org Design" as laid out in https://radicle.community/t/the-next-phase-of-the-radicledao/2776. It outlines the continuation of the project's decentralization that was initiated with the https://radicle.community/t/11-phase-0-transition-to-the-dao/3026 proposal. It also initiates the first stage of Radicle's "org shift" as described in https://radicle.community/t/org-design-update-an-evolution-of-radicle-s-org-s/3248.

By framing itself as an Org within the RadicleDAO, the Foundation will receive funding to continue fulfilling its foundation purpose: supporting projects and people developing resilient, non-extractive peer-to-peer technologies that promote Internet freedom. Because the RadicleDAO is undergoing a brand evolution and “Radicle” has evolved into two products (Radicle, the code collaboration protocol, and Drips, the funding protocol), the name “Radicle Foundation” is no longer accurate. The Foundation, therefore, will likely rename itself a name that is more compatible with its purpose. There will be communication on this topic in the near future.

Mandate

The Radicle Foundation is, among others, the RadicleDAO’s trusted real-world entity. It has been a key force in progressively decentralizing the RadicleDAO and will continue leading the RadicleDAO’s decentralization efforts in Q1 2023 in line with the Foundation’s purpose. Since September 2022 it’s been funded directly by the RadicleDAO. Now that the project’s product and engineering teams (Drips and Radicle) are forming their own Orgs, which will be funded directly by the RadicleDAO, the Foundation shall be re-positioned as an Org that provides the RadicleDAO and its Orgs (including Radicle and Drips) with operations, legal, marketing, community, and governance-related support.

Therefore, the Foundation Org will, to provide the support to the RadicleDAO ecosystem as the Foundation Org, setup three operational bodies: “Operations,” “Marketing,” and “Governance.” The Foundation will enable these bodies and their contributors, guiding their prioritization of work based on the needs of the RadicleDAO and its Orgs. While the goal is to have Operations as well as Marketing provide their support on a consultancy basis to (and paid for by) other Orgs within the RadicleDAO ecosystem, it’s unclear exactly how the new Orgs should budget for these services now. Therefore, the Foundation will provide Operation and Marketing support to Orgs in 2023 free of charge (to the extent such service is in line with the Foundation purpose), with the intention of providing clear, ongoing reporting to these Orgs to understand the amount of support being provided and clarify the kind of deliverables required, which will be used to inform future budgeting.

For at least the medium term, while the product and engineering Orgs are navigating their journey towards product-market-fit, the Foundation will act as a provider of these “support services” within the Foundation’s purpose. The Foundation will support the autonomy of these teams as they mature and develop. Once the product and engineering Orgs have better defined their needs for these “support services”, the Operations, Marketing, and Governance bodies can mature their own operations and spin out as independent, DAO-funded Orgs with the support of the Foundation.

For the long-term, the Foundation will also fulfill roles that are better suited to a legal entity, such as the maintenance of RadicleDAO’s intellectual property and initiation of RadicleDAO’s legal analysis and action.

Foundation Purpose and Background

Established in 2020, Radicle Foundation is a Swiss non-profit foundation with the purpose of supporting projects and people developing resilient, non-extractive peer-to-peer technologies that promote Internet freedom. The technologies it is currently supporting include Radicle, a peer-to-peer code collaboration stack for decentralized communities, and Drips, a social funding network for dripping funds to creators.

The Foundation was a critical vehicle for deploying capital to support the maintenance and core development of the Radicle and Drips stacks as well as other resilient, non-extractive peer-to-peer technologies. Since 2021, the Foundation Council has coordinated project-wide strategy and objectives in order to ensure the effective and impactful allocation of capital to the Radicle and Drips projects. Furthermore, a prime directive of the Foundation has been to support the development and growth of collective community infrastructure that can be employed to further decentralize the RadicleDAO project - including the social infrastructure necessary to support healthy and effective community governance. While the Foundation has been the key supporter of most core Radicle and Drips development up until this point, the intention has always been to ultimately fund all project development and governance initiatives via the Treasury of the RadicleDAO.

Transitioning the Foundation to the RadicleDAO

The Foundation was already allocated 3 million USDC from the RadicleDAO in September 2022 to fund approximately six months of Radicle and Drips development. While the Foundation has been working to put the scaffolding in place for Radicle and Drips development to be funded directly by the RadicleDAO, this funding initiative in September 2022 represented a step in progressively transitioning aspects of the projects where possible. As part of the next phase of the project’s “transition to the DAO”, the Foundation intends to operate as an Org within the RadicleDAO, while remaining an independent legal entity with its own governance structure. This will not only enable the DAO to support the ongoing work of the Foundation, but also presents an opportunity to make the budget, costs, requirements, and processes at the Foundation related to the Foundation’s work for the RadicleDAO more transparent.

Initiatives

The Foundation’s focus in 2023 can be split into three categories of initiatives:

1. Org Support, which includes operations, legal, community, and marketing-related work that will be done in support of (and in prioritization with) Orgs within the RadicleDAO. This will also include the stewarding of decentralization efforts (i.e. help Orgs to “launch” and get setup within the RadicleDAO) in Q2 2023.

2. RadicleDAO Support, which includes operations, legal, community, marketing, and governance-related support that strengthens the resiliency and growth of the RadicleDAO ecosystem more broadly. This includes brokering relationships with third-party “DAO service providers,” branding services for the RadicleDAO, maintaining the RadicleDAO ecosystem’s IP (including managing the RadicleDAO’s trademarks), facilitating discussions around the governance of the RadicleDAO with its stakeholders, and tracking the evolving real-world legal risks.

3. Foundation Health, which includes the maintenance of a healthy and functioning Foundation that meets its obligations with regards to its Swiss jurisdiction and its supervisory authority (ESA).

Reporting and Documentation

The Foundation will publicly share the following on radicle.community:

• An annual report similar to the one sent to the Foundation’s supervisory authority, focusing on the Foundation’s work for the RadicleDAO (Q1/Q2 2024)
• A proposed annual budget for the following year (2024) relating to the Foundation’s work for the RadicleDAO (Q4 2023)
• A financial report with how funds were spent as well as the status of the Foundation's funds from the RadicleDAO, focusing on the Foundation’s expenses related to the RadicleDAO (Q4 2023)
• Quarterly reports that breakdown the operations, legal, marketing, and community-related services provided to the Orgs

Budget for 2023

The funds allocated to the Radicle Foundation from the RadicleDAO in September 2022 have paid for the work of “Core Teams” and general Foundation operational costs through February 2023.

For this proposal, the Radicle Foundation is requesting 3,660,992.78 USDC. This will support the work of the Operations, Marketing, and Governance Committees, as well as general Foundation administration costs, through December 2023. These funds will also support the work of Radicle and Drips contributors through April 2023.

| Component | Requested Budget | | ----------- | ----------- | | Foundation Administration | CHF272,900.00 | | Operations Committee | CHF296,217.00 | | Marketing Committee | CHF1,006,739.00 | | Governance Committee | CHF567,130.00 | | Radicle + Drips (through April) | CHF570,858.00 | | Radicle + Drips (transition buffer) | CHF720,000.00 |

The requested budget also includes a “buffer” to relieve financial pressure from the Foundation (and the new Orgs) as they navigate the formation, scoping, and budgeting of their new Orgs. This buffer can be used to cover the costs of Radicle and Drips contributors should there be any delay in the launch of Radicle and Drips Orgs beyond April 2023. The Foundation will return any unused “buffer” to the RadicleDAO Treasury or apply it towards the budget requested for future years.

As mentioned in the Mandate, while the intention will be for most work outlined as “Org Support” to ultimately be paid for by individual Orgs, it’s unclear exactly what budget will be required to cover these needs. Therefore, the Foundation will provide this support to the Orgs free of charge in 2023. Future Org budgets (likely starting in 2024) will be informed by reporting provided to the Org by the Foundation in 2023, indicating how support from the Foundation committees is being used.

In September, the Foundation was also allocated 1.5mil RAD by the RadicleDAO to set up vesting contracts with contributors as part of the Distribution of Ownership initiative. The Foundation set up the majority of these in 2022, however, there are vesting contracts that will need to be setup in 2023 in anticipation of new contributors to the Foundation Org. Therefore, the Radicle Foundation intends to continue to manage these vesting contracts for new contributors on behalf of the RadicleDAO. The return of any remaining RAD to the RadicleDAO Treasury and the transfer of control of the vesting contracts (from the Foundation to the Orgs of the respective contributors) will be communicated in a future post.

See more details on the proposed Foundation Org budget in this spreadsheet.

Budget Implementation

• Multi-sig wallet: 0x85C6CeEeb8E1A2E49D23cE8b9E0e59413FDb8bbB
  • Signers: @cloudhead, @abbey, @lftherios, @sllyllyd
• Payout Cadence
  • Foundation will be paid once by the Treasury for the whole 2023 budget. Any unused “buffer” budget that is unused will be returned to the Treasury or applied towards the Foundation Org budget requested for future years.

Technical Implementation

Proposal Code

The proposal will transfer the USDC amount to the Foundation multisig, which is controlled by four signers, with a two out of four quorum. The signers will consist of the Foundation Council (@abbey @lftherios @cloudhead) and the Foundations Op Rep (@sllyllyd).

0xA0b86991c6218b36c1d19D4a2e9Eb0cE3606eB48 0 "transfer(address,uint256)" 0x85C6CeEeb8E1A2E49D23cE8b9E0e59413FDb8bbB 3660993000000