KIP-90: Cooperative Spending Disclosure

Proposal
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Context

Following the adoption of KIP-88, this proposal makes its first concrete request to the Cooperative: publish a structured, recurring breakdown of its spending. The goal is to give the DAO the baseline data it needs to formulate informed guidance.

KIP-88 established that the DAO can issue requests to the Cooperative covering ~70–80% of net spending. But the DAO currently has no shared reference point to formulate meaningful requests.

Specification

Within 4 weeks of this proposal passing, the DAO requests that the Cooperative publish a best-effort spending breakdown of the last 4 quarters (12 months):

  • By category: salaries/personnel, R&D, business development, infrastructure, legal/admin, marketing, grants given out, other

  • By project / product line where feasible (contractors often work across several projects, so retroactive per-project allocation stays best-effort)

  • By role bucket for personnel costs (aggregate, not individualized)

Going forward, this breakdown should be included as a recurring section in the Cooperative’s quarterly reports.

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I agree in the proposal. The DAO needs more information of the current status so DAO can propose changes.

It would be nice to also request, per project, the objectives of each product for the following months (3/6 months?), or at least, if the Coop doesn’t want to specify the timeline, the expected milestones in product terms.

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Aligned on the spirit. I’d keep that within the scope of a separate proposal though, to keep KIP-90 narrowly focused on retrospective spending data.

Based on KIP-88, the Cooperative retains discretionary spending (10–20%), but anything beyond that threshold would require a formal grant request to the DAO, justifying the amount in ETH/stables. On your point, I’d expect a grant to be far easier for the community to approve if it comes with associated objectives and milestones.

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Following feedback from a core team member, I’ve updated the specification: the recurring breakdown will be aligned on a quarterly cadence rather than monthly.

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I want to push back here, in the spirit of keeping the DAO focused on what it can actually act on.

My broader concern is that the DAO shouldn’t vote on things it can’t enforce. A request like this, even if approved, can be missed. And then what happens? It might not be good for both the DAO and the Coop. In my opinion, it’s better to avoid that.

I agree that the Cooperative should produce this kind of spending breakdown, but I’m not sure if it should be public to non-coop members at this point. I think it should be something prepared and discussed internally, on a quarterly basis, but that would be a change in the Cooperative.

A couple of other reasons, some cited in previous posts:

  • I don’t think the DAO, as it stands today, is mature enough for this data to be useful to it. Without regular meetings, a shared baseline, and people actively working with the numbers, committed delegates, a public breakdown is more likely to generate noise than informed guidance.

  • I’m not aware of any organization, in crypto or outside of it, that publishes this level of internal financial detail to external parties. Why is that? Are there any risks related to that? Which organizations are successful that we are trying to emulate?

This isn’t a permanent “No”. Once the DAO outside the Cooperative matures, holds regular meetings, and builds the habit of working with this kind of information, my view could change.

In the meantime, the most direct way to have a voice in how the Cooperative spends and reports is to join it. Token holders or anyone following Kleros closely should be encouraged to do that. A vote in the cooperative is probably a higher share of the total votes than whatever amount of tokens anyone holds. The cooperative could vote to generate these types of reports for example.

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even if approved, can be missed. And then what happens?

it’s a signal about whether the Cooperative’s leadership is responsive and legitimate

I’m not sure it should be public to non-coop members at this point. I think it should be prepared and discussed internally.

Cooperative fails to do for his members so the recourse left is “escalation” to the DAO. And the ask is already scoped to be safe to publish: category-level spending, quarterly, best-effort.

the DAO isn’t mature enough for this data to be useful to it

This inverts cause and effect. The claim that the DAO can’t make use of it is an assumption, not something we can know in advance.

I’m not aware of any organization that publishes this level of internal financial detail to external parties. Why is that? Are there risks?

We’re asking a protocol’s service provider to give its community visibility at the category level. For a decentralized project, that openness is the point, not a hazard to be avoided.

the most direct way to have a voice is to join the Cooperative.

This one I’d push back on firmly, because it doesn’t match experience, for example requests to the Cooperative for spending detail, membership records, publish proposals have gone unanswered.

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not unanswered, just not delivered yet afaik

what if you received the information you were asked, would you still pursue this proposal?

because I believe that’s what’s going to happen soon

The main objective of the coop and the DAO is to be successful. Any examples of organizations that are successful that are as open as you propose?

Nico, I haven’t seen you in Kleros groups for years, nor in coop assemblies for some time (can’t remember the last time to be honest). The same thing for other members now asking for their visions to be implemented, or asking for particular changes. And most, maybe all of them, are part of the cooperative.

So allow me to be skeptical to think this information might be super useful for people outside the coop. The non-coop members don’t seem to me to have a shared vision of what they want, don’t hold regular meetings, etc. It’s hard to tell how committed they are to remain around in Kleros and participate in the governance of the Kleros DAO. For example, ask for delegations, etc. I would love to see that, and then I could change my mind.

I believe this was said in another channel with you, but we recently started tracking the work being done more granularly, broken down by hours/products/categories. As I mentioned previously, this is something I would like to see too, as a member of the coop! I’m sure that by the next assembly we will have a couple of months of data to work with.

Who that is not part of the cooperative, and that doesn’t want to be a part of the coop, that wants to see this data? Have you talked with anyone that asked for this?

In that case, did you ask them why they don’t want to be a part of the cooperative? Curious to know.

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Proposal is reasonable followup to KIP-88. Please put it to vote.

Also strongly suggest that as a Kleros founder and valued member of the DAO, I believe @n1c01a5 should have snapshot rights so the DAO is not impeded by Cooperative schedules.

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not unanswered, just not delivered yet afaik. what if you received the information you were asked, would you still pursue this proposal?

Yes. The point of KIP-90 it’s a standing requirement: the Cooperative should account to the DAO on a recurring basis (especially when results aren’t there).

The main objective of the coop and the DAO is to be successful.

Good to know

Any examples of organizations that are successful that are as open as you propose?

Aave, Arbitrum, Lido… publish some recurring, category-level treasury and spending reports, not just insiders, with active forums and Snapshot governance. What KIP-90 asks for (category-level, quarterly, best-effort) is less granular than what we can expect for coop members.

So allow me to be skeptical to think this information might be super useful for people outside the coop. The non-coop members don’t seem to have a shared vision […]

When holders’ capital is being spent, they want visibility into how, that’s true of any project with external stakeholders.
On the lack of investment and engagement you describe: in my view that’s largely the result of not listening to or onboarding the community, something I’ve raised before. The handling of this very proposal is a good example, reply late, attempts to delay its publication.

I believe this was said in another channel with you […]

Can you prove this?

And note that “we recently started tracking this internally” is itself an argument for the proposal: it confirms the data is now producible, so formalizing recurring disclosure to the DAO costs little.

Who that is not part of the cooperative, and that doesn’t want to be a part of the coop, wants to see this data? Have you talked with anyone that asked for this?

Yes, and yes

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so, what did they say about not wanting to join the Coop?

any particular reason? are they in this forum?

I don’t think Aave Labs publishes this kind of information, can you find me an example of such a report?

btw recently they folded more and more activities from the DAO into the parent company. why do you think that is happening?

same as above, I don’t think Offchain Labs publishes this kind of information, and I don’t think Arbitrum Foundation publishes something similar to what you are asking

also activity on the Arbitrum DAO has been migrating to OpCos. Again, why do you think Arbitrum and Aave are moving into that direction?

These are the messages I found about it. Again, I think it’s a great thing to have.

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my argument was never that it would generate extra effort for the cooperative to SHARE reports. I think this should be done at the cooperative level (and it is in fact being done).

I’m just saying that I’m not sure about the benefits of sharing it with the DAO if most (if not all) people asking for it are part of the cooperative, or haven’t shown any reasons on why they don’t want to join the cooperative.

and again, I don’t think it’s a good idea to repeatedly vote on proposals that are not enforceable. this could be potentially bad for both the coop and the token holders.

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KIP is open to voting Snapshot

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shared on all channels

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