Do you believe that you have achieved something that can be called “decentralised”? How is it decentralised if the creation of the budget goes through one organisation and its communication structures?
Who has decided that and why?
Were there other structures considered?
Especially a categorisation by importance would be good: Which spendings to whom are indispensable for keeping the lights on? And which are on top of that with which priorities?
What I would have expected is that these buckets are “the budget” as defined by the (interim) constitution and there is not more detail prior to the treasury withdrawals.
They can define how much we want to spend in total in a certain area, what are the maxima and minima per request (minima to ensure that there are not zillions of on-chain votes about very small projects that should rather go through Catalyst or other community grant programs in the future), maybe a restriction that only a part of the bucket is available per quarter (to ensure that not everything is eaten up immediately by the fastest withdrawal requests).
Ideally, this should be one on-chain info action per bucket, so that on-chain governance can decide under the eyes and with discussions by the whole Cardano community (not just Intersect members, and not just those Intersect members who have the nerves for endless Discord threads and unproductive Zoom calls) which buckets the community wants and which it does not want.
What were the requirements for this “careful consultation” by “treasury experts”?
You do realise that the funds flowing into the treasury will only be around 300 million ADA in 2025, don’t you? And it will continue to become less and less in subsequent years due to inflation from the reserve going down (which is >95% of what finances staking rewards as well as treasury refill)?
So, it will be inevitable to start spending from the capital stock soon enough. But do we have to do it in the very first year?
Shouldn’t that be the first decision done by the dReps on-chain still independent from buckets and budgets? How much do we want to spend? What should be the “net change limit” (which is unfortunately very much underspecified in the interim constitution)? After all, that is one of the most important decisions in this context.
This should come before we allocate the buckets of the previous point.
By the way, an argument from authority (fallacy) – “treasury experts”, even anonymous ones – is one of the least decentralised things I can imagine.
What is the reasoning behind “single treasury withdrawal”?
By the way – in contrast to some gaslighting going around in the community – this is not about breaking it down to monthly withdrawals leading to insecurities for the projects if they still have funding next month. It can (and in my opinion should) be about breaking the withdrawals down by (sufficiently large) projects (which then have security about the whole lifetime of their proposal, provided they fulfil the necessary audits/milestones), giving the on-chain governance, the dReps, the possibility to decide, for example, that they do want to fund the ongoing maintenance as proposed by the Intersect team, that they do want the research and development for Leios, and Catalyst, but that they don’t want (at the moment) what was proposed for marketing and that they’d rather fund a development proposal submitted through another MBO than, say, the Babel fees proposal by the TSC.
In the AMAs, you stressed that this proposal does not preclude other entities from also submitting one. How would that work in practice according to your plan? When are the deadlines for getting something into the 2025 budget? What has to be done to actually get it into the final budget proposal? Who decides how what is in and what is out? Can such entities propose their own “professional treasury management” independent of Intersect, get independent treasury withdrawals into their custody instead of Intersect’s?
It would/should in my opinion then be the decision of the dReps (in deciding about the treasury withdrawal) if the presented concept of audits/milestones/reviews and the proposed panel of auditors deciding on releases of disbursements is convincing to them. And the (I)CC can decide if the (very rough and abstract) requirements of the constitution are fulfilled by that.
The main role of dReps – voting on-chain with their delegated voting power – is reduced to a ceremonial acclamation if all they can vote on is one big blob of a budget and if they decline that, nothing will be done in Cardano (at least until a new budget is hastily proposed). Only giving people a nuclear option that they will almost never use because of its unforeseeable consequences is a tool to reduce democratic decisions.
Instead of their real role – voting on governance actions – you give them a nebulous “We’ll talk to them and they can give feedback.” role. How exactly? How do your reach all hundreds of dReps? Do they get a say in proportion to their delegated voting power? Or all equally, including self-voters voting with their 1k ADA?
I’m still not convinced, rather disappointed.