The Governance Working Group of the NEAR Digital Collective and the NEAR Foundation is excited to announce the launch of the NEAR Community Treasury. The Treasury will have an initial 5.7 million $NEAR.
The Community Treasury is intended to serve as a decentralized, community-led treasury for the NEAR Ecosystem, unlocking decentralized funding for grassroots initiatives for the first time.
The Community Treasury helps deliver the NDC’s goal of creating decentralized governance of community-owned funds and is the first and most significant milestone delivered by the GWG in the formation of the NDC and NEAR ecosystem decentralized governance.
What is the Community Treasury?
At its simplest, the treasury allows the growth of the ecosystem by supporting grassroots initiatives through funding.
It serves as a launch-pad for communities, working groups and projects within the NEAR Community. These can include things like community governance, treasury management, asset onboarding, risk evaluations, business development, technical development, and recruiting.
In V0 of NDC Governance, the main role of the Treasury will be to distribute funds to the Grassroots DAOs, and working groups helping to bring decentralized governance to life. The Treasury will have an initial 5.7 million $NEAR.
The Treasury is also a legal instrument, known as a Guernsey Trust. This means that trustees have to be appointed to ensure any grant allocations or disbursements are allocated according to the guidelines set out by the Governance Body. The trustees are detailed below.
The Treasury will go through several evolutions as part of the development of the NDC governance structure more broadly. In the beginning, in V0 of NDC governance, the Treasury will have a limited capacity to allocate funding.
As you can see from the chart above, it will only be able to allocate funds to the Marketing, Developer and Creatives DAOs. However, in V1 and later iterations of NDC governance, the Treasury will have a broader remit to allocate funds with community approval via onchain voting. To allocate those funds, trustees are required, which we will explore in more detail below.
The role of Trustees in the Treasury’s Management
Trustees are the appointed guardians of the Community Treasury, and they play the role of voting to disburse funds to grow and sustain the ecosystem.
In the first stage of governance, there will be five initial Trustees. In order for funds to be released, the majority of the five must vote ‘Yes’. Once the NDC voting mechanism is launched, Trustees will only be able to unlock funding when the community has voted on and approved a specific request in line with NDC Governance.
How are the Trustees held accountable?
The initial Trustees were identified via a vetting process by the GWG Legal WG. Once the NDC voting mechanism is launched, the community will be able to appoint and remove trustees.
Who are the Trustees?
The initial Trustees are the following individuals from the NEAR ecosystem:
- Alina Tustanovska - Chief Operating Officer at INC4
- Antonio Morales Cordoba - Guild Leader, NEAR Malaysia
- Carolin Geier - Co-founder, Mintbase
- Rahmat Albariqi - Founder and CEO, Paras
- Rune Bentien - GP at Lyrik Ventures
The initial Enforcer is Francesco Paolo Patti, an experienced lawyer in the Web3 space.
The Trustees have been appointed through a lengthy and rigorous vetting procedure conducted by a working group within the GWG: the Legal Working Group, a group of legal professionals with ties to the NEAR community. You can find more information on the Initial Trustee selection process here.
Once a voting mechanism is ready for use, Trustees can be removed and appointed by the Community.
What safeguards are in place?
There are a number of safeguards in place to ensure that any spending is held to account. For example, the Community Treasury is not able tp allocate more than $1.5 million USD during V0, and each DAO can only receive up to $100k USD per request from the Treasury.
How do I find out more?
Find out more about the legal explanation here.
Learn about the Trustee Selection Process here.
About the NDC
The NDC, originally proposed by NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin, is now an independent movement led by the NEAR Community. Its goal is to establish a community treasury and governance model that allows the ecosystem to collectively make decisions on everything from funding intiatives to electing representatives. NDC’s purpose is to steward NEAR towards becoming a truly decentralized network that can self-organize and self-govern.
What is the Community Treasury? was originally published in NEAR Digital Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.