True as well… so if I’m getting this right, there is no simple solution to this complex problem 
I guess each project will need to be assessed independently and a decision taken by the remaining AADAO staff or Oversight.
Probably a bit early to start thinking about this however. Let’s see first if Grace’s proposal gets enough traction.
This is my proposal, believe it or not 
(debut yay)
At present, there are the 16 “in progress grants”. I’ll ask the grant reviewers to provide, for each grantee, an estimate of the time needed for each grantee to complete their obligation.
The Zellic engagement spans 18 months and involves audits of the Cosmos stack; can be transferred to ICL immediately, and also makes more sense for ICF/L to own this relationship.
DoraHacks has produced minimal value relative to its sizable cost and should be discontinued imo.
Cosmos Hub - Accelerate Brazil - Payments and milestones pending, expected to be complete by June 30, 2025
Cosmos Hub Testnet Incentive Program (renewal) – 2025 H1 - Payment is complete with the final milestone expected to be complete by July 31, 2025
Votion: The Hydro Vote Aggregator - Payment pending as the final milestone is expected to be completed by July 31, 2025
ATOM Interchain Insights: Comprehensive TVL & Flow Analytics for ATOM - Payments and milestones pending, expected to be complete by September 30, 2025
CosmWasm Development and Maintenance 2025 - Payments and milestones pending, expected to be complete by September 30, 2025
Archive Node for the Cosmos Hub- Payments and milestones pending, with an expected end date of November 1st, 2025
Boosting Hydro with Delta-Neutral Vaults by Margined Finance - Payments pending as we are currently strategizing the date of completion with the Hydro team
Zephyrus: Vote aggregator for Hydro - Payments pending as we are currently strategizing the date of completion with the Hydro team
Robust Bug Bounty Program for Hydro by Immunefi- Payments and milestones pending
Huginn: ATOM Community Activation in Istanbul- Payments and milestones pending
Zellic: Security Audits for the Cosmos Hub - Payments and milestones pending
La Multisig: Community Activation in LATAM - Payments and milestones pending
DoraHacks’ AEZ Quadratic Funding Rounds - As of today [DATE], DoraHacks is on its 7th round out of 10 rounds leveraging AADAO funding to match their reward pools.
Passage: Supercharging ATOM usecases in the metaverse - Payments and milestones pending, expected to be complete by October 2025
Pryzm Zone - Supercharging Yield Optimization - Payments and milestones pending. Expected to be complete by July 2025
Superbolt: Bringing Advanced NFTfi to the AEZ - Payments and milestones pending
Thank you for this necessary proposal, @StunZeed. Congratulations on this debut as well. Agree with a set date to wrap things up, however:
With how the recent prop 993 was handled by an ICL representative/Neutron Joint Committee, why would we want to transfer funds over to that team? There has been no update RE returning the committed ATOM vs. DROP’s liquid staked ATOM.
the Neutron Foundation has committed to return 50,000 ATOM received as part of [Proposal 72]([PROPOSAL #72][ACCEPTED] Bringing Liquid Staking and DeFi to the Cosmos Hub with Interchain Security)
CosmosNanny, AADAO Oversight Committee, seems to be the better candidate RE handling remaining investment agreements.
AADOA oversight is a good choice. I merely was throwing suggestions on who could take over the remaining grants. Whether it be ICL, oversight, or another entity, I feel it important to have a plan for sunset
In light of the current context, we would like to share the following recommendations, which we believe are aligned with the DAO’s present needs.
If these recommendations are implemented, the majority of the DAO’s operational workforce could be safely phased out, potentially paving the way for a complete wind-down in the months ahead, once all transitions and closures are effectively completed.
We share these thoughts as a contribution to the collective decision-making process and remain open to further discussion.
Thank you for reading,
Govmos.
Current Arrangement: In the event of maintenance termination, the executed investment agreements will be overseen by the BVI trustee, Lemma Ltd. The firm is fully funded through year-end 2025.
Extension Option: Should the community wish to maintain this structure, Lemma can continue for an additional two-year term at $6,000 pa. The trustee’s remit is largely passive, monitoring contracts until each investment reaches maturity.
Organisational Efficiency: Given the limited workload, I’ve been asking the team re the necessity of having a dedicated Ventures Lead. I have a call scheduled with Lemma tomorrow to confirm whether any critical functions would remain uncovered if that role were to be phased out sooner than later.
I disagree for several reasons:
#1. COI: Hydro would be judging its own performance while using cp funds. Independent verification is a basic tenet when public funds are used. We shouldn’t waive this requirement merely for perceived tradeoffs in convenience. We don’t trust. We verify.
#2. Accountability & Risk Mgmt: External review disciplines schedules and deliverables. Self-assessment effectively eliminates the control function, heightening exposure to delivery slippage, and scope drift. Community has little recourse for correction once all funds are released.
#3. Size: High-cost engagements demand proportionally stronger eval and oversight. $417,882 was allocated to Hydro-related initiatives in Q4 2024, representing 23% of grant outlays for that period.
#4. Fairness: Allowing a single grantee to judge its own milestones is bad practice. Efficiency gains can’t come at the expense of fairness and objectivity. Granting one team the latitude to “grade its own homework” gives into a preferential standard that undermines the integrity of the grant making framework.
Informal’s track record w self-certified/self-satisfied progress reports with limited evidentiary support (Prop #839) underscores the need for third-party eval rather than reduced scrutiny.
There are no “pending” grants. All grants were approved by end of Dec 2024. There are approx 16 that are “in progress”.
Even with an assigned sunset date via gov, a satisfactory and responsible draw-down is unlikely under the “maintenance” situation.
The absence of leadership w urgency and responsibility to prioritise and execute close-out actions is challenging.
Community should grant explicit authority (via this proposal) for the Oversight Committee members (Financial Controller and myself) to manage the wind-down end-to-end.
Giving us the remit closes the leadership gap and makes a theoretical target sunset date viable. I suggest September 30, 2025 as the hard stop date, with a commitment to close earlier if feasible.
Right-size roster resources immediately: Elminate non-essential roles and operating costs. Imo, we can shut down w op associate and one grant reviewer at 40% FTE.
Grant completion/closure: Discontinue grants where necessary, and transfer grant administration (e.g., Zellic audits, CosmWasm maintenance, Archive Node for CH) to ICL where appropriate.
Finalize administrative arrangements for investment agreements: Preserve and extend supervision structure w BVI trustee OR transfer agreements to sufficiently qualified and shielded legal entity (eg ICF/L or other).
Documentation and archiving: Organize and secure all material contracts, records, workspaces, and repositories for org posterity.
Reporting commitments: Update the community biweekly re progress of total sunset (via forum). Produce a 2024 report w complete financial statements. This report should not be confused w AADAO core contributors’ “Impact Report”.
Return balance of unused funds to community pool
I fully agree and strongly support Grace’s suggestion here. This is the only path given so far that I see as reasonable and effective.
To do this correctly, Grace should be given full authority to gracefully shut down the DAO and manage the hand off of the assets to whatever comes next.
Let’s get this over with as fast as possible, and onto a new chapter.
Thanks for your confidence. But I can’t do it. AADAO is a Guernsey Non-Charitable Purpose Trust (NSPT). While a popular legal entity choice for DAOs, it’s not ideal bc the liability shield is weak. Guernsey NSPT only provides liability cover to the trustee, and even that cover is limited to trust assets.
None of the contributors are protected. While I’m not a core contributor – if governance assigns supervision of agreements to me, I become a contributor. And I can’t take on that kind of risk.
It’s best to keep assignment w BVI trustee (and extend engagement through 2027 for $12k) or transfer the agreements to qualified and shielded entity.
It seems there is some disagreement on who will be the “handler” of the sunsetting. Would it be feasible for the community on here to elect an individual or entity to handle this matter? Or is better to just try and hand over all of this to ICL?
We had initially anticipated a much longer wind-down process, but if September 30, 2025, is now being considered as a firm sunset date, we fully support this proposed path forward.
If the DAO’s operations can indeed be concluded by then in a structured and responsible manner, it would render our earlier proposition less essential than we previously believed.
Our primary concern remains the same: that this program be brought to a close as swiftly and cleanly as possible.
Please name teams with a stronger reporting track record than Informal & Hydro.
The Informal Hub team was publishing painfully detailed quarterly reports (including budget, headcount and everything else) and organizing multiple community calls monthly.
The Hydro team already provides:
On conflicts of interest: you are remunerated using AADAO funds, which creates a direct incentive to preserve its existence. Since you apparently agree with @StunZeed that AADAO should wind down, why did it fall to a community member to initiate that conversation?
On transparency: can you share how much you’ve been paid since joining and what measurable outcomes you’ve delivered for the Hub? From our end, we’ve asked for your help in reclaiming the Prop 800 deployment still under AADAO signatory control, and received no response.
More to the point: we’ve been monitoring the Hydro-related grants from the beginning and sharing our assessments with the AADAO and we can distribute funds as suggested by @govmos if it helps. Regardless, please keep it professional and don’t let your personal antagonism toward Hydro negatively impact legitimate grantees. cc @mag.
We’d support this plan as well.
– I do think however that Informal could reliably manage the Hydro related grants.
Testing 1,2,3…testing for my first post on the forum…
Kudos to @StunZeed for authoring the Proposal.
For the Recommendation on and orderly wind-down: Thanks for putting forward something which appears to be a realistic way forward. Oversight needs to be granted a clear mandate to lead the wind-down and this is the right call imo, especially if there is a Sept. 2025 sunsetting target. Dragging things out indefinitely causes uncertainty and frustrations.
One area that probably will require clarity on the way forward is how active grants will be handled. Thinking about those teams where they are in the mid-deliverable phase but are on track or have met KPIs. While some transitions to ICL are mentioned, it will be good to understand how decisions will be made across the broader grant portfolio. If these teams are given a clear transition to whatever applies to them would maintain trust in the wind down process, especially if contributors have been delivering in good faith.
Once this gets the go-ahead, an Orderly Closure Process Roadmap would not go amiss. This can be a live modular document that can be updated as things progress. Maybe it should include steps for reviewing existing grants, wrapping up key commitments, and communicating decisions clearly. That kind of structure will help ensure fairness, reduce risk, and maintain confidence in the Hub’s governance through the transition.
Let’s say all this is true - you’re not really replying to any of the four points that totally make sense. Or are you vouching for grantees getting to decide for themselves if they’re doing a good job or not?
You just don’t get to check yourself and decide for yourself if you‘re doing good or not - especially when you were given community pool funds.
??? LOL Are you shocked that someone working in Cosmos is being honest and supports a proposal, that will make her lose her (grossly underpaid - given the amount of extra hours she spent to set the bar as high as it has ever been in cosmos terms of REPORTING, ACCOUNTABILITY, etc etc) job?
Why didn’t she put it up? All I know is that community pool funds were transferred to AADAO and it’s in the communities interest to shut it down asap. Why didn’t Rarma put it up? Why didn’t Ray put it up? What does it matter, I did.
Unclear on what you’re implying here. Conflicts of interest exists when private gain trumps duty. And yes, I’m in support of a motion to end a source of “paycheck” with velocity and transparency bc it’s the right thing to do. That’s weird?
Suffice it to say, your incorrect application and definition of “conflict” above, is both strange and well, revealing.
I’ve been privately and publicly asking for a clear plan since Nov 2024: define what “sunset” actually means and spell out the execution plan. Transparency Report #9 (April) laid out why we need a wind-down plan and how it must be communicated. Core contributors kept promising they’d “get to it,” month after month. I warned them they needed to get ahead of growing frustration before it gets ripe. Well, it got ripe, and now there a post. Also unclear why it’s an issue if the conversation is further advanced by community. Think it’s healthy.
My compensation at $75/hr has been public since the first Transparency Report following my election. In general, my role is limited to 35% FTE pm. Since joining Oversight in May 2024, I consistently worked more than 35% FTE hrs. On the rare occasions the workload really pushed past that cap (e.g., 50-60% FTE), I told the community here first (and context for what) and was paid exactly what I disclosed. No surprises, no secrets.
Since maintenance mode, Oversight is paid on a sliding scale, anywhere from 20% to 35% FTE, strictly pegged to hours worked. I elected to do this bc I think it’s more fair. No one told me to do it.
Whereas, the core team gets paid a flat 40% FTE rate every month since January 2025, whether or not they actually perform such hours (16 hrs per week).
As to what “measurable outcomes” I’ve delivered for the Hub – I somehow managed to get elected to the Oversight Committee despite certain teams campaigning against me w unsportsmanlike conduct lol. My contributions in the capacity of oversight are kinda self evident. Just read the forum.
I share your frustration wrt to this issue. But your claim that you “received no response” is untrue. Since being added to the TG chat on the matter on 8 May, I’ve shared 26 messages there and fired off 67 internal Slack messages to untangle this mess.
Here’s the hard block:
At present the tokens sit outside that msig. Worse, every signer has since left the DAO, and the msig membership was not updated although Oversight advised last fall that the signing roster must be composed of active contributors only.
Current location of funds
According to AADAO financial records, this is a single user wallet owned/operated by former contributor Xave Meegan. The deployments to Stride and Astroport were made from this wallet, after receiving funds from the msig.
Required transfer
All 450k ATOM must be returned to cosmos1jggracsvp6fkw0ktf544lpda6dwrrxggx9a20n (4-of-7 msig) before any disposition action.
Outreach
I asked AADAO and Hydro folks to connect me with Xave. No one helped. So I tried cold outreach, and Xave was non responsive. With @crainbf’s assistance I finally connected w Xave this week. Once Xave confirms uga62 is indeed his wallet, he will coordinate with me and the Financial Controller to document the transfer back to 9a20n.
