SNS Team Expenses - Lack of Accountability and Due Diligence

Governance
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Lately, I’ve been researching SNS Team Expenses, in attempt to gather understanding of how others operate.

In doing so, I noticed an alarming pattern, showing that 18 of 31 researched SNS DAOs have utilized over 25% of their treasury for team expenses, 14 of 31 SNS DAOs have withdrew over 30% of their treasury for team expenses, 11 of 31 SNS DAOs have withdrew over 50% of their treasury for team expenses, and 7 of 31 SNS DAOs have withdrew over 70% of their treasury for team expenses - most of which having raised hundreds of thousands of $ICP.

Additionally, there is an interesting correlation; every project that has withdrew over 30% of their treasury for team expenses, have negative performing assets, ranging from -24% to -91% from date of SNS initialization.

I’ve also discovered that 13 of 31 SNS DAOs researched have less than a year of runway remaining, while 22 of 31 SNS DAOs researched have less than 2 years of runway remaining, based on the average weekly payment withdrawn for the team since genesis of respective SNS DAOs.

It can also be observed that the average weekly withdrawn team expense for negative performing governance assets (SNS DAOs) is 2937.83 ICP, while the average weekly withdrawn team expense for positive performing governance assets (SNS DAOs) is 1113.78 ICP.

Reference Research:

In the past, I performed SNS Due Diligence on each SNS that launched, resulting in the following reviews - recommending “No” Votes, and abstained participation, most notably, due to valuation & allocation concerns:

BOOM DAO - $BOOM -89%, while 82.52% of Treasury Spent on Team Payments

Sonic - SONIC -76%, while 72.3% of Treasury spent on Team Payments

Catalyze - $CTZ -91%, while 77.81% of Treasury Spent on Team Payments

Hot or Not (Now DOLR AI) - $DOLR -80%, while 54.47% of Treasury Spent on Team Payments

Modclub (Now Decide AI) - $DCD -48%, while 80.09% of Treasury Spent on Team Payments

Nuance - $NUA -87%, while 59.94% of Treasury Spent on Team Payments

Is this once again a desired service within the ecosystem - should I resume SNS Due Diligence?

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thanks for putting this together

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In my memory - you had the best reviews. I think many who know how to see made the right conclusions.

Considering that two out of the three narratives that Dfinity has bet on (Multichain activities and DAOs) are, imo, dead: perhaps it would be worth paying attention to the narrative that is IN PROGRESS - AI/Caffeine. But again, imo, it might turn out to be a waste of time. It’s hard to convince oneself to bet on a three-wheeled vehicle in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

But in any case - your reviews are a good piece of work that is worth recommending to read.

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Thanks for the feedback, a lot of time went into them.

I think Caffeine may actually put the power back in the hands of the SNS DAO participants, but I think its a shame most DAOs will have next to no runway to work with, and are controlled by large founder allocations.

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I’ll retract my comment. I didn’t realize I was stepping into the middle of infighting among ICP’s vigilante detective degen crowd. I have no interest in this nonsense.

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Would be interesting to see the $ amounts going for teams with ICP prices at time of transfer. Then you can sum all up and see how much they really costed the IC as a whole.

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I can provide this once I’ve concluded my next article :handshake:

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A little side question.

Why does price at time of the sale matter here but not for the seed investors who missed out on the pump of Eth/btc?

Seemed like you were trying to minimize the entry point of people into icp.

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This report is basically a monument to errors—embarrassing from start to finish.

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It’s a shame that you are exemplifying a complete lack of critical thinking due to your personal emotions, by taking his claims at face value and not doing any research yourself.

600,000 $ICP Staked in Neurons, is not liquid, and can not be used for team payments. At most, it will generate 90,000 $ICP a year, which is 29 weeks of runway at their current expenditure levels.

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(post deleted by author)

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Because the teams will sell and withdraw it right after treasury transfer?

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Now do Motoko dao. You literally just paid yourself.

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If you read the report, you’d find Motoko is included :laughing:

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Assuming we’re all stakers, we did vote these SNS’s into existence. Why can’t we as ICP stakers use the NNS to take-out or remove the corrupt SNS DAO’s and take back the ICP tokens from their treasury?

We have checks & balances, the NNS can do whatever we want as ICP stakers, let’s clean house.

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I agree with the sentiment but it leaves those who invested in a terrible position; most teams have extracted large quantities of ICP, making any form of refund a fraction of the ICP deposited, while also giving the teams any easy out “we have no more runway, project shutting down”, which then seals the fate of the SNS projects.

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It’s definitely a path you have to give careful consideration to, because of the precedent it would set. Tis a tangled web we weave.

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9 weeks remaining runway for OpenChat is very wrong. The due diligence conducted on OpenChat for TACO DAO estimated they have ~ 2.3 years of runway. The OC team confirmed our calculations seem sound. These calculations can be found at the bottom of tacodao.com/reports/openchat

ICP staked in neurons can actually be used for team payments, 100 000 ICP is about to dissolve on 8th October.

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I understand people need to get paid, and sometimes we hire in outside help, but can’t help thinking if these projects are paying large regular wages to core members they are not going to be competitive.

Looks like some of these teams are paying $100-200k a year in wages.
What If say that budget was spent on advertising and promotion?

To grow a business you need to take risk and put down collateral. In this case your time and effort without wage or with minimal wage is collateral.

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