Proposal (Draft) Terminate AADAO Mandate and operations within 60 days

[StunZeed]

Proposal to Terminate AADAO Mandate and Operations Within 60 Days

Summary:

This proposal suggests we officially wind down AADAO operations within 60 days. For the past 8 months, AADAO has been running in prolonged “maintenance mode” without a clear plan to conclude its mandate, and “maintenance” is still costing the community around $19K–$22K a month. The idea here is to wrap things up efficiently, cancel any leftover obligations after August 31, 2025, and hand off all remaining investment agreements to ICL to follow through where appropriate.

Why This Matters:

Since November 2024, AADAO hasn’t shared a clear plan or timeline for shutting things down. Despite being in so-called “maintenance mode,” it’s still operating with a sizable monthly budget and four contributors working at 40% FTE. Additionally, paid core contributore have publicly criticized ATOM’s future while actively promoting other coins and projects.

The last batch of grants (10 in total) was approved back in December 2024. All those teams have had time to deliver, and we’re proposing a final deadline of August 31, 2025. If any of them don’t meet that deadline, their grant would be cancelled, and unused funds would go back to the treasury.

Many community members have voiced concerns over the past several months, asking for closure and clarity. This proposal aims to bring exactly that.

What This Proposal Does:

If passed, this proposal would:

1. Officially shut down AADAO within 60 days.

2. End all remaining AADAO grants and ventures work after August 31, 2025.

3. Cancel any incomplete grants after that deadline, with unused balance from the second mandate returning to the community pool no later than 70 days after proposal passes.

4. Hand over AADAO’s investment agreements to ICL.

5. All financial statements from AADAO will be posted to GitHub.

What Happens Next:

If the community passes this proposal, we ask that Oversight oversee the process right away, so everything can be wrapped up smoothly and efficiently within 60 days.

Let’s bring this chapter to a close the right way—with clarity and transparency.

Voting Options:

Yes – Support closing down all AADAO operations within 60 days.

No – Let AADAO contributors decide the timeline for winding things down.

Abstain – No strong opinion, but I want my vote to count toward quorum.

No With Veto – I believe this proposal is harmful.

Wind-down begins as soon as this proposal passes.
TR9

[Ziggy5425]

I support this personally. It seems there is no clear end set. Setting a date and wrapping up loose ends is imperative for the community and the cosmos. Right now it seems they are just sitting back and collecting for no reason. It may be they are actually doing some work, but without proper updates as to how progress is going, it seems they are just taking from the CP.

[BendyOne]

How many grantees are still working on grants? And how many are on track.

Helpful to understand the scale of:

Cancel any incomplete grants after that deadline, with unused balance from the second mandate returning to the community pool no later than 70 days after proposal passes.

And then I guess the question is what value would be risked now. Would be shame to miss out of something good or fail to support a project that is delivering what it was approved for. On the other hand if there is nothing significant left…

[StunZeed]

Keep in mind there’s also @0xjordy - venture lead.

Last investment was made in December 24. Why is he still collecting a monthly salary? Jordan, please elaborate what you do for your 40% FTE, monthly hours. Can also share slack activity (message with only a smiley doesn’t count, ) so the community gets ab idea of what’s going on.

[Cosmos_Nanny]

According to Clickup, all grants from the 2023 mandate period are closed out. There are 21 grants from the 2024 mandate period that are still in progress.

Note: Spelldrop grant not to be confused w Spell Wallet grant (which was discontinued).

~40% of the active grants are Hydro ecosystem related.

For more information on Q4 2024, please refer to TR 9.

[Cosmos_Nanny]

Incidentally, I asked AADAO about their draw-down plan last week.

They indicated that their focus will shift to finalizing the plan after the publication of their end-of-Q2 blog update. That post is expected to include revised contributor FTE allocations (with some contributors moving below 40% FTE) as well as progress updates on active grants. ETA: next week? (@CuriousJ @0xjordy)

Separately, regarding the ventures function, I’ve requested that the team schedule a call with the BVI trustee (with Oversight participating) to assess which responsibilities can be transitioned immediately/imminently.

Please note, I’m going to be offline for 3 days. I’ll check the forum upon return. If you have a specific question for Oversight, please @ me so I don’t miss them. Thanks

[Cosmos_Nanny]

I shared the following in the $ATOM Community Chat (tg) earlier today, adding here for cover and visibility.

RE: Transfer of Assets and Agreements

1. The Guernsey trust functions solely as a custodian of Cosmos Hub assets; while it holds legal title, it exercises no discretionary investment authority. Upon receipt of a valid and sufficiently specific instruction from the principal, Cosmos Hub governance, the Trustee should be able to transfer the subject assets and any related investment agreements to a sufficiently shielded entity representing the Cosmos Hub. Please note, there are no assets held by the Trustee at this juncture.

2. Should an on-chain proposal be submitted, its operative clauses should be drafted in terms acceptable to the Trustee of record, Lemma Ltd. Ideally, we would want the passage of the proposal to constitute “effective instruction” for purposes of the trust deed and automatically trigger the migration event. To ensure this, I ask the community to work w me and Lemma to draft appropriate language if y’all wanna pursue this.

3. Reached out to Lemma Ltd to discuss the above.

Update RE AADAO FTE & Active Roster

1. Presently, four contributors are compensated at 40% FTE (~16 hours pw/~64 hrs pm @ $3,500 per contributor pm).

AADAO indicated this Monday that they plan to *reduce each contributor to 20% FTE or less". While seemingly more cost-efficient, I’m concerned the across-the-board reductions FURTHER impair timely reviews and approvals. Due to lack of engagement and ownership of issues, the 40% FTE arrangement at present is already largely unproductive. Too many PT cooks in the kitchen, is the issue.

Instead, I’ve recommended retaining one grant reviewer and the operations associate at 40% FTE and release all other non-essential personnel. I haven’t received a response to my recommendation.

2. Margaux, an independent communications contractor hired by Syed, bills $500–650 per month; her services should be kept until all DAO operations are formally wound down.

[StunZeed]

Not surprised about ‚lack of engagement and ownership of issues‘.

Cutting your own salary from 40% to 20% either means: you will work even less than before which allows you do be even less productive.

• Or they admit they worked too little the past 6 months for 40%? So they wanna do what’s ‚right‘ and cut it to 20% so it’s justified to work that little?

Note that this all happened after this thread was posted.

[reasonant]

Shut this thing down already

[ZigZag5425]

I agree to retain 1 person until the cease of operations. There is no need for for a ventures and grant lead when there is no new ones going to happen, there is no need for an op associate if there is no longer operations. There is only need for one person to handle shutting this all down

[Cosmos_Nanny]

AADAO did mention to me 3 weeks ago one contributor may be leaving the roster.

This Monday, they informed me their progressive maintenance plan is to reduce 4 people to lesser hrs.

[Cosmos_Nanny]

@ZigZag5425

op associate if there is no longer operations

The ops associate is actually essential to coredao and oversight. Ending ops makes ops associate more relevant as counterintuitive as that may sound. There’s a lot of administrative documentation and stakeholder communication behind the scenes. She does work her 40% FTE hrs and has been consistently responsive to oversight needs throughout maintenance.

I recommend a pared down team consisting of:

• one grant reviewer, 40% FTE
• ops associate , 40% FTE
• comms contractor ($500 - $600 pm)
• elected oversight member, 20-35% FTE
• financial controller, 20-35% FTE

[Ziggy5425]

That is a temporary solution that solves some of the issue short term, but the other part of this discussion is a time line until sunset. How long do they plan to run on “maintenance” mode? They could technically stay on for years in this form.

[Cosmos_Nanny]

I do think it’s helpful to have a hard deadline, and the community can formalize the directive via governance.

But it must also be done responsibly. Please read this.

[highstakes]

I think that makes sense, with the caveat that maybe not all ongoing grants can actually wrap up their projects within 60 days, or it was planned to finalize them at a later date and the teams cannot practically make it happen sooner.
Cancelling these grants remains an option but that basically means losing the funds already disbursed.

At the very least trimming the team down is relevant under the circumstances.

[Ziggy5425]

I do not see a need to cancel them. I do not think it right to punish the teams building who are relying on the grants. It is possible though to turn over control of the grants to ICL maybe or the oversight committee.

[Ziggy5425]

I have read. The community needs to work together then to create a prop for governance that covers all these issues. If there are roles that are not needed, they should remove them in the mean time. I do not know all the inter workings of AADAO and who is all needed moving forward until they are officially closed down, but i cannot see why they need 4 people on payroll when there are not any new grants or ventures happening. As you stated above it does sound like they intend to do that some but still to me there is no need for more than 2 people on payroll.

[highstakes]

Yes, good points.
It would indeed be unfair to the recipients who have nothing to do with this

[Ziggy5425]

Very much so, it would not be a good look to abandon and punish the teams trying to bring value to cosmos

[StunZeed]

Right, but they shouldn’t rely on contributors not getting their shit together to shut it down (present a plan) - having endless time to deliver what they were paid for.