Stargate Foundation Budget (Nov 2024 - October 2025)

Background Stargate Finance over the past 15 months has grown to become by far the largest and most well-known bridge in the industry. The huge success of Stargate V1 in the first half of the year contributed many billions in volume, and millions in revenue to the protocol & DAO. In June 2024, Stargate V2 was successfully launched, which has since expanded to 10 additional chains, with many more in the pipeline.

While Stargate is a decentralized protocol supported by the DAO, The Stargate Foundation plays a significant role in the day-to-day operations of the protocol, as well as executing upon the will of the DAO. This support necessitates a budgeting and administration of expenses. In the previous 15 months, the Foundation team remained quite lean. Today, the Foundation team is growing much faster, across both technical and non-technical roles. The growth of the team, and level of support required by the growing protocol and number of partnerships requires a budget that is detailed below.

It should be noted that the previous budget was set out until August 2024, but the Foundation has so far continued to use excess capital to fund operations. In the event that this proposal is accepted by the DAO, and the budget exceeds an immediate 12-month need, the Foundation will continue to use the funds outlined below for operational expenses beyond October 2025.

Proposal The proposal below is for a 12-month budget (November 2024 - October 2025), based on an estimation of costs required by the Foundation to continue support the DAO and the Stargate protocol in the following areas:

Dedicated Support The Foundation requires a growing number of people to support the operations of the Foundation. The team has grown from 5 to 16 in recent weeks, with a target of ~20 by the end of the year. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Day-to-day management of the protocol operations (technical and non-technical),
• Developing, operating and offering new products built on top of the Stargate core protocol
• Other areas that may present in the future (the proposal is inclusive of the ability to grow beyond current needs)
• Technical Support (including audits)

While the technical team within the Foundation has grown significantly in recent weeks/months, the Foundation will occasionally utilise external technical resource

Stargate also remains one of the most audited protocols in DeFi, with an impeccable security record, and the Foundation coordinates these, covering expenses

Legal Corporate service, registered agent and general counseling fees across jurisdictions

Operations Recurring miscellaneous expenses for day-to-day operations of the Foundation and Protocol (e.g. Moderators, Google Suite services, Payment Rails, Admin/Organizational software)

The Stargate Foundation is also responsible for covering the costs of protocol deployments, and the maintenance of the AIPM and StargateDVN, which consumed ~25% of the previous budget

Community/Marketing The Foundation has coordinated a few small marketing campaigns this year in order to improve the recognition of Stargate’s brand, including sponsoring side events at conferences and announcing Stargate V2 at Consensus 2024 Community and Marketing will be a particular focus for the Foundation this year, as highlighted within the community

The operational funding will be transferred from the Protocol Multisigs to the designated Foundation Multisig wallet for ease of use and expenditure. An additional Operations wallet may be used for ease of payments.

| Function | Amount | Allocation | | :--------- | :------ | :------ | | Team | $2,500,000 | 39% | | Technical Support | $750,000 | 12% | | Legal | $750,000 | 12% | | Community/Marketing | $400,000 | 6% | | Protocol Operations | $1,500,000 | 23% | | Other Operating Expenses | $500,000 | 8% | | Total | $6,400,000 | 100% |

Note: the above table assumes a 90-day VWAP STG price of $0.32

Execution To obtain the funds, it is suggested to send 20,000,000 STG Tokens ($6.4M, see above note) from the Ethereum DAO Multisig to the Stargate Foundation Multisig. The funds will be used exclusively for the purposes outlined above, and any funds that are in excess at the end of the period stipulated (October 2025) will continue to be used for the above purposes, unless otherwise mandated by the DAO.

Upon successful governance vote, funds are transferred hereafter to the Foundation multisig wallet. The Stargate Foundation will be tasked with dispensing the budget according to the above framework.

Summary The Stargate Foundation does important work to support the Protocol and the mandate of the Stargate DAO. In order to continue providing support for the next 12-months, given the growth of the protocol, relationships and Foundation Team, the Foundation is requesting a budget of 20M STG Tokens. These funds will be transferred to the designated Foundation multisig and used for various functions including, but not limited to; team, technical support, legal, marketing and other operational expenditure.