Should we implement SDIP#12 ?

With Stake DAO growing on all fronts — TVL, number of verticals, contributor head count—operational costs are steadily increasing. This is a good problem to have, as a barometer of our success, but it means we will need to stay organized, strategic, and transparent in our spending.

This proposal outlines in detail the costs incurred by the DAO in March, 2022, and seeks approval. Going forward, we will publish these expense reports on a regular basis as we push to develop best-in-class operational practices.

Forum post: https://gov.stakedao.org/t/sdip-12-dao-expenses-for-march-2022/590

Summary: Send funds from the Treasury Multisig to the Operational Multisig and Polygon Multisig to pay for the DAO expenses for March : Infrastructure, Legal & Tax, Events, Admin & Tooling, Marketing and Contributor rewards.

Rationale: The goal of this proposal is to bring more transparency to the Stake DAO Treasury. A governance framework is already in work (and should be ready next month), which should facilitate better visibility of the governance, and present a monthly budget for the DAO costs. This proposal seeks approval for the DAO expenses for March 2022.

Mainnet expenses:

IT & Tech Infrastructure: All IT & Tech infrastructure will be provided as a service by an external partner focused on Administration and maintaining. The initial budget for this expense was 45,000 USDC/quarter, however the cost increased a lot and the servers costs are expected to increase over the next months, because of a higher validators amount to bootstrap our Staking-as-a-Service Offering and our Arbitrage Strategies on Avalanche.

AWS, Vercel, Github, and other tools and services needed by the DAO. Servers infrastructure: 60,000 USDC Admin & Tooling: 7,900 + 5,800 USDC Total monthly costs: 73,700 USDC

Legal & Tax: As regulation and AML rules are getting tighter, the DAO must have a solid legal base on which operations take part. The DAO will continue to mandate an experienced advisory already working with major projects on the blockchain. The initial budget for this cost was 20,000 USDC/quarter.

Effective Cost for the Legal & Tax expense: 5,500 USDC Extra budget in case of additional costs: 1,200 USDC Total monthly cost: 6,700 USDC

Marketing & Events: As the DAO competes against other significant players, marketing actions like events are needed to raise awareness of DAO and improve our market presence. The initial budget for events was 20,000 USDC/quarter, depending on the amount of events and the marketing one was 60,000 USDC/quarter.

Effective cost for March events: 47,000 USDC Extra budget in case of additional cost: 3,000 USDC Marketing costs: 20,000 USDC Total monthly cost: 70,000 USDC

Audits: The audit costs are estimated to 60,000 USDC/quarter, however the cost can change depending on the complexity:

Effective Audits costs to pay for Q1 2022: 56,250 USDC Audit already paid for Q1 2022: 45,000 USDC Left to pay: 11,250 USDC

Polygon expenses:

Contributors sdam3CRV rewards: The contributors rewards are estimated to 64,250 sdam3CRV/month for their work:

Effective contributors rewards for March 2022: 51,400 sdam3CRV (Already paid from treasury Msig) Extra budget in case of new hires (up to + 25%): .12,850 sdam3CRV Total monthly cost : 64,250 sdam3CRV.

Voting options: Yes, accept the DAO expenses No, refuse the DAO expenses Abstain