SPS Governance Proposal - Establish a Legal Fund
Intro and General Update
The purpose of this proposal is to apportion some of the SPS DAO's holding to facilitate the execution of the previous proposal to establish an SPS Foundation. After the initial exploratory phase of that proposal @davemccoy and I believe that the work needed to execute that proposal can be accomplished with a budget of $25,000. To be clear, this proposal is meant to establish a budget to negotiate with and not dictate a price for the services.
What will this budget be used for?
- Retainer for general council.
- Incorporation fees for the foundation.
- Miscellaneous legal services and fees related to establishing and operating the foundation which vary depending on the final jurisdiction chosen.
The current course of action is to formalize the plans for establishing the SPS Foundation under the guidance of the general council. Dave and I have spoken to firms familiar with blockchain and cryptocurrency as well as DAO governance models and have a pretty solid idea of how to proceed, but it's definitely best to do so with proper legal guidance.
Proposal
If this proposal passes, the SPS DAO Treasurers are authorized to spend up to $25,000 USDC tokens on the Ethereum blockchain to be used in the pursuit of establishing the SPS Foundation. Our current Chairman Dave McCoy will provide invoices to the SPS Treasurers and DAO Project Manager to facilitate payments when needed.
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STOPI think we are spending too much of the DAO's money but I will support the proposal. Legal troubles are no joke. We don't want a repeat of the Floyd Mayweather incident or something worse could happen.
Yea I get it. We also don't currently have a legal entity to represent us though and that comes with its own complications. I guess we'll see how the DAO votes on this.
That i think is what happens after you hire the attorney to set it up.
Right, we essentially have to hire an attorney to help establish the legal entity and ensure it's done properly and fully compliant with jurisdictional laws.
Perhaps it might be worth considering a yearly budget limit for legal representation instead of a multi-year one. This way, we can reassess spending and make any necessary adjustments after a year. If you're saying this budget is for a few years with wiggle room then we can bring the amount down a bit, use the extra funds for other avenues or save, and have legal representation for a year.
Just to be clear, the few years thing is in reference to the overhead it takes to keep the foundation in good standing. Like doing all of it's yearly filings and such. $25,000 isn't going to buy much of any actual legal representation. This is why having qualified legal opinions about creating the foundation is critical to avoid needing legal representation in the future. Having a lawyer on retainer is more or less to have someone to ask for opinions and guidance that will help write or validate the bylaws of the foundation to ensure its set up properly.
This seems like another necessary proposal. I see no valid reason to vote against this
It is if we want the DAO to ever be able to sign contracts or interact with companies that require signatures.
I voted yes, but I only support it if we hire Saul Goodman.
That was a pretty good show. I'm in!
Legal counsel is always a good thing to have...
Have you guys considered a specific firm or just testing the waters?
We've had preliminary discussions with a few. The goal was to get an idea of what we're looking at to bring info to the DAO. This budget should be enough to cover everything plus operational expenses for a few years with some wiggle room in case anything unforeseen pops up.
I am just going to toss out the name "Bully" since he is a Crypto focused Lawyer...
Let's get it done. Thankyou both for your efforts in this.
Why are the rewards from these posts to do with the sps dao, and sps proposals going to you directly. These post rewards need to go to the dao account, not to your personal wallet.
The sps dao, is already paying you 60k a year to write these posts from its own personal funds. Please adjust the post rewards to be sent to the DAO wallet as of immediately.
This is not supposed to benefit you personally by keeping the post rewards, when you are already being paid, and they have nothing to do with your personal blog.
Either make the sps dao the 100% beneficiary of these post rewards, or start posting from the sps dao account, which is what you are supposed to be doing. That's what the sps dao account is for, and why it exists in the first place.
This must be done immediately. No, more rewards for personal gain when you are already being paid directly by the sps dao, amd there is already an @sps.dao account that exists for this specific purpose.
You are receiving guaranteed hive whale votes on these posts, from splinterlands whales, who are also large hive holders, as well as from splinterlands directly on some posts. If you think it's acceptable to be double paid for the same job, then you are completely wrong. It is not acceptable to take advantage of your position, to be rewarded on your personal blog with these rewards that you are already being paid for.
You can't play dumb on this either. You know what you are doing. You work directly with these sps whales and splinterlands on sps dao related posts.
They dont belong on your persona blog, and neither do the rewards.
Why should players and investors pay you directly from the dao, if you are going to be double paid with rewards from hundreds of posts that you will be making from your personal blog. This is completely unacceptable. Especially when everyone else is suffering through the horrible downturn in the game and markets, and you are being paid a guaranteed income (and then with guaranteed blog post votes), while everyone else gets to sink or swim with risking their capital, based on market performance and the performance of the company.
Upvoted & 100% agree.
Further, there was a discussion some time ago paying a community manager $6k a month is way too much for someone living in Malaysia.
So keeping the rewards is just the cherry on top of the cage...
I went and totaled up all the post rewards just to see what it came out to. It was less than $50 in 10 months. In my opinion it's pretty trivial. I also don't keep track of what I spend on gas fees as a treasurer and have never asked to be reimbursed for the proposals I made before the DAO approved the ability to make DAO Sponsored proposals.
With all of that context, do you still feel it's an issue?
Should I be invoicing the DAO for every dollar I spend as well?
Stop making excuses. The Current USD value of rewards is IRRELEVANT. Set the @sps.dao account as the beneficiary for the rewards for these posts that are specifically related to splinterlands, or start posting from the @sps.dao account.
You had no problem in adding a DEC burn for tournaments, but when it comes to your own interest, it is irrelevant.
IT'S NOT. We pay you, and we dont think its trivial at all.
The players are currently earning a token, that is 0.007 of a cent in USD terms. We should be the ones complaining after sinking thousands of dollars into a game, where the splinterlands leadership were blatantly incompetent with the funds that were entrusted to them from their player base.
0.007 usd per token is also trivial in current usd terms. That is no fault of any player or investor in this game, but the fault of the splinterland leadership and their incompetency. Your former employer. They are experts in rewarding people who drove the game into the ground, all of their own doing.
So much of that money went missing into the pockets of the inner circle, when you think its all just trivial. How about holding the previous CEO and emplyees to account, and ask for the money back that went into his/their pockets, and left the game in ruins. How about we just do that instead, and then you can keep the trivial rewards.
The only pathetic answer we get, is if you dont like it, then sell your assets and leave.
How convenient of an answer that is to throw in peoples faces AFTER all the assets in the game fell by 99%.
Instead of trying to divert the conversation, and pretending its "trivial", how about you directly address what was written in my comment.
If the amount is so trivial, then why do you refuse to send it to the dao account, as the dao is actually paying you from its own funds.
Let's not forget how you got the job in the first place. It was co-ordinated by said whales along with the recommendation of the splinterlands leadership, who previously employed you directly.
You own no significant amount of HIVE or assets in game. Yet you seem highly concerned about some minuscule amount of finances. If you care so much, make a Proposal and we can have a vote. You have no skin in this game. Why waste our time on these trivial matters. Is there any chance that you are a coward using an alt account?
This is obviously necessary, but just as with the validator proposal, we seem determined to overpay.
When I looked into forming a foundation, the legal costs were around $5,000.
Why is this fund five times nmore than that?
Please provide a breakdown of this lavish fund usage....
I think the fund is for a retainer which most firms require not the actual cost of the set up plus there are more things than just the set up ongoing legal costs, annual filing fees usually etc reports that must usually be filed all would be taken care of by a professional usually in this case. Why ive been talking about we need to get the dao sustainable for its own expenses as soon as possible so any passive income covers the dao manager and any ongoing costs. Then we will stop bleeding and hopefully we can rake in some dollars from upcoming sales with SPL and this time use a lot of it to convert to making are treasury robust. We have a weak treasury for what we need right now.
I think the fund is for a retainer which most firms require not the actual cost of the set up plus there are more things than just the set up ongoing legal costs, annual filing fees usually etc reports that must usually be filed all would be taken care of by a professional usually in this case.The goal is to actually cover all of that within the scope of the budget. That's why it's $25k and not something like $10k. It's hard to know exactly what all ongoing fees there will be and what other surprises could pop up during the process. Governments love to charge stupid fees for "official notarized copies" of documents and such.
As far as getting the DAO to a place where it can be self sustaining, that's my main mission. I'd like to see us keeping pushing our defi expansion to hopefully cover at least my salary with the passive fees. Last time I did the math I think we're about halfway there. The work continues. Glad to see we share a similar outlook on the importance of that!
Thta is 100% my main concern is we should have had you a long time ago but the dao was not really organized like now since you took over managing it we get things done and have a actual oranization. We deff need to make sure that we get the dao to be self covering for your salary so we can keep you bc in my opinion you have done a great job wrangling this behomoth of a project like good lord i see what you have to deal with id rip my hair out evey dollar is worth it at least in my view. Thats good to hear we are half way i thought it was less as long as we get some sales coming in from the split revenue or how ever the deals are arranged then we deff need to retain somee of that in some nice fairly stable defi positions that can fund your salary plus extra costs then can worry about expanding that into a endowment type of thing so the sps dao acts like a college endowment fund almost for the game and its stakeholders whether it eventually is able to pay out distributions or fuel growth of the game. This was always the entire idea of the DAO was to fund the game and the players control it the company gets paid to build it and either charge a fee marked up to make a profit for the shareholders or a split like we did which also would profit for the shareholders and the dao. Both entities if we succeed in the marketing efforts here should be able to do well and get back on track now that we have things in place for both the SPS DAO as well as some of the spending and other things have been reigned in to be a bit more conservative bc were not in a postion to be super aggressive until we have ample cash flow and a large treasury and the company is growing and either plowing it back into growth or if it cant make more with that then start paying dividends out to us as shareholders at some point from the excess income as i dont beleive a sale ofthe company would be in the best interest of the game unless it was all left in place and we were all bought out for a nice premium with agreements in place to continue working the same way but honestly i would probably lean toward distributions when it gets there unelss the payout is huge and it could be a positive sale for the game like the company buying it in that scenario can just take it to the next level or something and cash all the shareholders out in the process or give us equity in the new company in a stock deal but deff dont want to be in a position where it needs to be sold from a position of weakness as we will likely not like the terms lol. Based on what the vision is my guess is we keep ownership of the company and would eventually be paid distributions quarterly or something based on the excess cash flow the comapny makes and eventually the DAO could do that as well and that would be a huge success for everyone involved. Would deff be nice to get back to he valuation in 2020-2021 lol.
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I already addressed this on Discord but I'll post here for posterity:
I agree with your first two bullets but not the third, which confuses me.
Are you suggesting that we employ a lawyer on a retainer to check the work of the lawyer we would be paying a fixed fee to do the work correctly?
Also, there are several lawyers amongst the Splinterlands community, and presumably many more lurking on Hive, so we could see this as an opportunity to keep it in the family.
Still feel the foundation funding should be a separate issue and we should wait til the foundation is done, but i am not stuck on the point.
One final question, why use eth? I am not a fan of tokens with infinite supply and strongly feel the dao needs to start accumulating bitcoin, but why the eth specifically, as opposed to other assets?
I'm suggesting having a lawyer on retainer to discuss which jurisdictions to pursue and be able to provide qualified legal council if/when questions arise.
Lawyers invested in the SPS token or being involved with the DAO would have a conflict of interest.
Not sure what you mean about using ETH... the proposal is suggesting we reserve 25,000 USDC (stable coins) that happen to exist on the ETH blockchain. We're not going to be able to pay legal fees in HIVE/DEC/SPS and the firms that do work with crypto are going to want ETH/ERC-20 generally. Maybe they'd take BTC, but we don't have that. The suggestion to reserve stable coins mean the fund is there if we need it and we don't need to worry about price fluctuations with the ETH token, like if I said, "Reserve 10 ETH." Then we could be talking about a $20k or $50k budget depending on which way the market goes.
i do not think there will be enough for a lawyer to do to justify any retainer
We do not need a lawyer to discuss anything about jurisdictions now and i can give you the link to a legal AI if you want an opinion.
Asking people we know, who happen to be lawyers, about anything is not a conflict of interest.
This is too much, too soon, and lacks clarity.
Matt was VERY insistent the validators be finished by specific developers and at a specified cost. He actually first said 'it doesn't have to be them, the DAO can hire someone else if it chooses' but as soon as Jarvie and PM tossed their hat in the ring at a significantly lower cost, Matt backtracked and basically insisted it would be devastating and irresponsible to switch developers.
Since you bring this point up regularly (a valid point) maybe check in with Matt about the cost of the SPS validator project? He certainly influenced and one might even argue 'strongarmed' that expense.
Hi Jimmy, good to see you around!
There was even a third pitch, by someone who is a tech whizz, and that was at only 100k, so the dao seems determined to waste its money on this project.
Ya it think any post that comes from the dao or paid members of the dao should deff be sending rewards for these posts to the dao as they will likely get excessive rewards bc alot of ppl look at these and vote on them. That could be used to start building the treasury slowly by sending the earnings to the dao and using that to maybe collect HBD as part of the commitment to hold x hive assets these and other posts could go towards that. Also company posts should goto the company as revenue as well bc it should add value to the shareholders in that case.
Someone brought this up like a week ago so I went and totaled up all the post rewards just to see what it came out to. It was less than $50 in 10 months. In my opinion it's pretty trivial. I also don't keep track of what I spend on gas fees as a treasurer and have never asked to be reimbursed for the proposals I made before the DAO approved the ability to make DAO Sponsored proposals.
With all of that context, do you still feel it's an issue?
I'm happy to see steps being taken to cover potential legal risks. We won't remain unnoticed forever.
Legal fund sounds like a wise idea when we need legal counsel to set up the SPS Foundation. Another important proposal on the way to decentralization!
Love the idea! Voting yes.
Hello, maybe it is time to set some goals for team, for example new players, funds addition ... Otherwise is just taking from DAO :D
Thank you for participating in SPS DAO Governance @clayboyn!
You can place or monitor SPS Stake Weighted votes for and against this proposal at the link below:
Link to this Pre-Proposal
Updated At: 2024-09-02 08:14 UTC
This is a great idea. This proposal makes me have more confidence in the DAO. Confidence that it is taking its responsibility seriously, and has the goal of succeeding in the long term. $25,000 for this is a bargain. Dont use cheap lawyers. Please don't use someone called "Bully" please use a real firm. It sounds like you are. You get what you pay for with lawyers, like anything in life. Also for people complaining that cost seems high, you have no idea what you're talking about. $25,000 to make sure the DAO is in total legal compliance, with the ridiculous number of regulatory hoops the government has put in place? That's a bargain. Legal fees have inflated over the past few years more than the cost of your eggs and milk. $25,000 is a great start. We'll probably need to spend more eventually if this is a successful venture! Thanks clay! Voting ... yes