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Mina Foundation Decentralized Treasury Update
Recorded: Sept. 2, 2025 Duration: 0:57:33Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. yeah
yeah Can you hear me? Thank you. Can you hear me now? Thank you. Any better now, Matej? Oh, better for me.
Can you hear me?
I can hear you, yeah.
Same, Grayson.
Great.
Perfect now, yes.
Oh, man, Matej, do you have, like, a podcast mic?
That sounds amazing.
No, actually, it's just the MacBook.
I don't even have headphones connected.
Wow, that's impressive.
Way to go, Apple.
But yeah, I guess we'll give folks another minute or so.
Yeah, I'm on my AirPods, so hopefully it sounds okay.
It's my first time hosting one of these.
It's very finicky, isn't it?
Yeah, in retrospect, it's kind of crazy that this killed Clubhouse. Thank you. Where do you think, Josh?
Where do we go?
Yeah, let's do it.
Okay, I'll just do the quick intro and get the thing rolling. Hi everybody, welcome to this.
I'm David from the MENA Foundation product team. Hope everybody's well and thanks for coming.
This should be an interesting one today. Josh and Matei are both here to give updates on the
Treasury, the plan, what's been going on and kind of where we're going. First up will be Josh.
He's the interim CEO, you probably know, with the foundation.
And he's going to give an overview of why the foundation is focusing on the treasury at this stage
and the plan for the next few months and beyond.
Following that, Matei, who's leading the technical implementation of the treasury,
will go through the RFC published around a month ago and then delve
into that. At the end, as always, we'll have some questions. You can put them in the chat
or we can open up the mic to anybody who wants to. But other than that, I hope you enjoy. And
over to you, Josh, to kick things off. Perfect. Thanks so much, David. Yeah, really,
really happy to be here and talk through a lot of this. I know there are a lot of open questions from the community that we've done a lot of work to answer.
And I know that maybe some of those answers haven't been fully satisfactory, but I hope that this space will change those minds.
But yeah, I think the best way to start here is just to talk through where we are now before getting into the Treasury, why we're here and why we're focused on the Treasury to begin with.
So, you know, as everybody knows, we went through a pretty significant transition earlier this year.
We ended up transitioning leadership teams, scaling down from nearly 50 employees to just nine.
leadership teams scaling down from nearly 50 employees to just nine.
And in that process,
I negotiated and transferred a number of employees and supported resources to
O1 Labs to give them the reins to keep building the protocol with,
with more unilateral control and, and, and a lot more, you know,
a lot more say and voice and voice in that.
I think that one of the things that we realized early on is that,
earlier this year, is that we were not reaching a degree of harmony
on the vision for the protocol between the two organizations,
and that that friction was causing a lot of problems
for the broader ecosystem.
And we also realized on the foundation side that, like,
the work we were
doing was not bearing fruit for the protocol and for the broader ecosystem and we could do better.
So anyway, that's the, that is, that was the context of why that transition happened in a
very, very small nutshell. But now our goal is to, is to really give that voice back to the people that actually use
the protocol, the community of MENA users, and to actually deploy as much of the capital that we
have. And yes, I know a lot of people were maybe upset that we purchased Bitcoin, but I want to be
very clear that pending regulatory approval
and discussions with regulators, our goal is to offload that Bitcoin and sell it and then buy
Mina with it to deploy to the treasury. I just want to be very, very clear about that. It's very
much pending. We have to actually get a degree of sort of regulatory go forward.
But outside of that, that is our goal, along with the vast majority of our MENA tokens and our USD reserves.
So I just want to be as clear as possible about that, because a lot of people, after we've verified that, seem to believe that we're not going to do that.
And that is what we're going to do as long as we can get the Swiss regulatory authority on board with it. So, and that's not like me saying that as an exit,
you know, for us not doing it, it's really that we want to do this so that our board members don't
wind up facing any, any, you know, really, really big legal trouble while trying to do right by the
community. We want to be able to balance both those things. So anyway, I wanted to be very, very clear about that.
The other reason that we're really focused on the Treasury now,
beyond this sort of scale down that we're entertaining and engaging in,
is that the Treasury itself has been promised to the community
for a very, very long time.
And in four years, we had a lot of false starts and we had a lot of great theoretical research,
but we haven't really delivered on that.
And we want to change that and give control over funding decisions,
which I know many in the community were not happy about.
But we want to take those funding decisions and take that
decision-making authority and power away from the foundation and into the hands of people that
actually hold the meetup. Something we've promised and something that we want to actually deliver on,
and now that we have a scaled down and focused foundation, we're in a place where we can do that.
The other primary reason that we want to do it is it's part of our charter as a foundation. It's one of, you know, happy to have one less centralized organization calling the shots,
but it's really a requisite goal for us to ultimately disappear from the picture.
So I just wanted to give all of that context and be as clear as possible about all of that.
And with that, I think I'd like to actually give it over to Matei to talk through the RFC that we have proposed for the Treasury that's been on MENA Research.
It's been great seeing a lot of the back and forth on there for the design of the Treasury.
And I'd love to have him take the lead in sort of explaining the overall design and where we're going.
And then, you know, after that, we'll actually open it up to Q&A, including having people ask questions live from us directly.
So, yeah, go ahead and take it over, Matej.
Thanks, Josh.
um thanks for the intro and for all the context um surrounding the treasury so i will just get
Thanks for the intro and for all the context surrounding the treasury.
right into the rfc and explain how we are doing things and why we are planning them to do them
uh why we are planning to do them in a certain way so um one of the first steps in making the
treasury actually happen and make it go to production was for us to publish an RFC, essentially
detailing all of the, maybe not necessarily all of the technical designs, but at least
all of the conceptual designs behind how the treasury should work and getting feedback
from the broader community.
So we've done that about a month ago.
I think it was like first week of August.
We published an RFC on the Mina Protocol Research Forum.
And since then we've had some, I believe, great feedback
and also really fruity discussion regarding certain details
of how the treasury should operate.
But let's just go through certain concepts and designs
in the RFC itself, mostly for people who didn't have the chance to read the RFC just yet.
So what do we want from the treasury and what kind of concepts do we want to apply here?
So one of the first obviously major things that we want to do is the treasury should be able to distribute tokens, namely MENA tokens, since that's what the foundation is holding as well.
We want the Treasury to be fully on-chain and provable.
So those are two important factors.
That means that none of the processes surrounding the Treasury
should be paper-based and everything should be programmatically enforced.
One technical insight into how MENA protocol itself works is that it's based around an account ledger,
which also has an associated market tree with it.
And each of these accounts has a MENA balance or a custom token balance, which is not really relevant here.
And it also has a delegate for staking purposes.
We can use this information to determine the voting
weight of all the accounts or participants in the protocol.
So the rationale behind this is that we
want to follow the same rules as the consensus
does for determining who's going to be the next block producer.
And we want to use the same kind of like voting weight
slash balance slash proof of stake structure
to allow people to vote for which proposals should be funded.
So yeah, some simple things like obviously we
want to prevent things like double spending.
So there are some technical designs that we went into.
Namely, we are using historical ledger snapshots
in order to prevent double spending.
This, again, follows the same design
as the consensus does, since we are using the so-called staking
ledger from one of the previous epochs, which
is the same
one used by the consensus to determine who's going to be the block producer.
Another thing that we wanted to focus on is we wanted to get as high voting participation
as possible.
Therefore, the votes on the proposals would be as much representative of the broader community
opinion or the stakeholder opinion as possible so
when we were designing the treasury um we were focusing on making the barrier to entry as low
as possible and there are some clever technical things that you will see down the line that that
make this possible so like for example one of the aspects that makes the participation for a large amount
of stake easy is delegation and since we are using the same model as the consensus does we can use
the staking delegation from the consensus itself um as well in delegations too but we will talk
about that a little bit more later. What else?
So the treasury itself, all of the technical components
behind it should obviously be permissionless, self-hostable,
and there shouldn't be any centralized involvement
from any entity.
The treasury itself works on a lifecycle basis.
So the lifecycle consists of different periods. So we'll have the proposal period, the exploration period, voting, cooldown, and post-cooldown periods.
So that is what the entire lifecycle entails.
The reason behind this is because we want to give people sufficient amount of time to engage with the treasury and with each individual proposal.
We've considered also like having different proposal types.
I think the main proposal type that we will go forward with would be a treasury spent proposal. So anybody who has
a MENA account or a MENA address can come forward and submit a proposal for a certain amount of
funds. And that proposal would have to go through the treasury lifecycle. So first of all, you would
have the proposal period. That's when you can submit proposals. Then you would have the exploration period.
That's like a period where essentially no action can happen,
but we are expecting a lot of discussion around the proposals.
So this should give everybody enough time to really explore
and dive into all of the available proposals for voting.
Then the period after that, the third period,
would be the voting period.
So anyone with voting power, meaning anybody who holds Mina tokens, should be able to come and cast their vote.
So the vote types, the proposed vote types originally were yes, no and abstain.
So everybody could express their opinion about the proposal. And then assuming that proposal reaches a certain amount of votes,
so there's enough participation to reach a certain quorum,
then that proposal is considered like valid, let's say.
And then for the proposal itself to pass, it not only has to reach quorum,
it also has to reach majority or supermajority
on the approval.
So a sufficient amount of yes votes has to be present.
Then we have this sort of like a safety mechanism
that is the fourth period,
which is called the cool down period.
That's where all the hard lifting
or the heavy computation and the proving will happen,
vote tallying, etc. Plus, it gives
time for our safety mechanism called the break glass
mechanism to intervene in case there's any technical issues or any other
conceptual issues that have to be prevented. We'll talk about more
about the safety mechanisms later, but
one important thing is that they
are designed to be eventually phased away
to reach full decentralization.
Another interesting concept that we were tinkering with
was spam prevention.
So the idea behind spam prevention here
is that you have, let's just zoom out and take
a look at the protocol itself.
So you have the ledger.
Currently, it has about 250,000 accounts.
And all of these accounts, or most of them, are delegated to someone for staking purposes.
Some of them might be delegated to other accounts for only voting purposes, but that's not really
delegated to other accounts for only voting purposes,
but that's not really important here.
important here.
The point is that you're going to have a group of people,
probably hundreds of people who have major delegations,
and they will be responsible for casting votes
for the proposals.
And the deal with spam prevention is that attention
of these delegates is quote unquote super expensive and we want to make sure that
they don't have to spend time reviewing proposals that are not serious so we kind of want to make
it easier for people to participate by limiting the amount of proposals that might be considered
spam so that was the original idea behind spam prevention.
There were different opinions on it based on the RFC comments.
So it's something that we will have to reevaluate,
but that was the basic idea.
Yeah, what else is there?
So when it comes to voting,
I've already mentioned that you could vote yourself.
You could have a staking delegate
be reused for voting as well,
or you could have a custom voting delegate. Soused for voting as well or you could have a custom
voting delegate so that's something that's super important as well um passing criteria
vote types we've already talked about these um double spend resistance we've talked about it as
well safety mechanisms so um we would like all of the contracts behind the treasury to be eventually upgradable, subject to a community vote again.
We also want to make sure that we migrate the funds
from the foundation treasury commitment progressively.
So we don't commit all of the funds at once, let's say,
but we do it like in trenches.
So that will allow us to identify risks early on.
And in case there's a breaking bug,
the damage would be less substantial
than if we put more funds at once.
Then the break loss mechanism in the cooldown period.
So essentially what we want to do is have a multi-sig in place,
that would be temporary, emphasis on the temporary,
that can be used to intervene and stop the proposal itself
or the operation of the entire treasury in case there's
something wrong.
So meaning there's a technical bug, most likely,
which we of course want to avoid through
having multiple audits, etc. But like, the idea stays the same, like you want to be, you want to
have one way or another to post the proposals in case something's wrong. I think another important
subject here is how the deployment of the treasury affects the delegation program.
Um, it's not something that people have reacted too much, um, about in the RFC,
but the idea behind this is that, I mean, currently the foundation runs a
delegation program.
Um, just correct me if I'm wrong, but like the Mina tokens held by the
foundation are delegated to, let's say,
about 80 different block producers right now.
With the rollout of the treasury,
the idea is that the amount of MENA held directly
by the foundation is gonna be lower than it is today
because it's gonna be part of the treasury itself.
So that means that the amount available in the delegation program
is also going to be lower.
So we don't want to lose all the block producers
that are currently participating in the delegation program.
So what we can do here is design the treasury in a way
that it can continue supporting the design of the delegation program
as it is today.
So that's something that's super important to us as well and um something that we will have to focus on um during the development
yeah i think um those are like the major technical technical details um the rfc also
contains more information such as how we want to audit things, how we want to roll them out, what
kind of timeline you can expect, et cetera.
So I would like to invite everybody who's listening to go and take a look at the RFC.
We can post the link maybe somewhere in the comments and really tell us what you think
so we can make this a better treasury than it is today
awesome thanks thanks for tay and one one thing i just wanted to um add real quickly uh particularly about the the break glass mechanism is that um you know just from a legal perspective
when you're a swiss foundation you can't just throw your money on chain.
It's not something that can be done without some thought and care. And one thing that we're
considering that we need to figure out is whether there still needs to be some immediate, you know, in the short term control by either the foundation
or some other entity tasked with, you know, tasked with evaluating whether those funds
are going to serve the purpose of that Sixth Fresh Friend Foundation.
We obviously think that deploying the funds to the treasury serves the foundation's purpose, but we just have to be careful about it.
So I think Matej's right that we are designing it in such money on chain, but there is this inherent veto power
in the short term by an organization that is ensuring that it can't direct where the funds
get spent, but it can stop money from being sent to places that don't serve the purpose of the foundation or benefit the ecosystem.
But again, the long-term goal is to remove that entirely.
We just have to figure out sort of how to get there.
But I wanted to be explicit about that as well.
But otherwise, I just want to say thanks very much, Simite, for walking through that
and explaining what the sort of design criteria and where we're going with the Treasury.
And I'd love to open it up for questions that people have about the Treasury going forward.
I'll let you handle the selection and getting folks on stage,
because frankly, I still get a little boggled by the interface.
Yeah, I'll be confused too, but there's no questions yet.
But while people maybe are coming up with questions,
I have a question actually for Matej,
and I think you covered this in the RFC.
But did you look at any other kind of treasuries
and how they were launched and get any inspiration and any lessons learned from other ecosystems?
Oh yeah, of course. So we've done quite extensive research at the start, like pre-RFC.
One of the largest inspirations would be, I think, open governance by Polkadot.
Like a lot of the things that we see here at the current
treasury are kind of modeled after that.
And all of the lessons that they have learned,
we've tried to apply here as well.
Plus, we had to adjust things a little bit
for the technical capabilities of the current protocol.
So kind of like finding a balance between how long
will things take, what is technically
feasible and what is also the right thing to do for the community.
Okay, nice.
Thanks.
I don't see any other questions.
Is there anybody else wants to add something in the comments or even just grab the mic
and ask directly?
I'll leave it open for a minute.
Okay, I guess it doesn't look like it, but, you know, we will be responding to questions async.
Oh, wait, looks like there's a request.
Yeah.
Okay, let me see if I can...
There we go.
I think I did it.
Thanks.
Hello? Hi. Can you hear me yeah yeah got it hi nice to meet you uh i just heard that
uh a lot minor tokens will go into the treasury but uh it just made me wonder
uh will it not be stables also that goes into the treasury?
That's a great question.
We actually talked about doing that early on
and being able to allow stablecoins to be represented in the treasury.
But the problem, at least right now,
even though we know that there are projects to build stables directly natively on on mina um but they're not fully mature yet and the
thing that we were worried about was really the expediency um aspect because we want to deliver
uh deliver this treasury as as soon as possible um so we still would love the that feature to be possible in a future a future iteration of it
and want you know a future upgrade path for it but um but in evaluating it and i'm sure mate could
speak to this point better than i could um but i i do know that in the technical evaluation
we were just worried about how long it would take to actually deliver that functionality when there aren't even any production
ready stables directly on MENA to start.
But yeah, Matej, if you want to add some color there,
by all means go for it.
But it's a great question.
I think, yeah.
So as Josh said, one of the aspects
is obviously keeping the complexity of the treasury low
so that we can ensure that it is implemented correctly.
And adding functionality surrounding stablecoins because of how the ZK protocol works
would just make the treasury, again, more complex,
which would mean it would take us longer to deliver
and it would increase the
risk of something going wrong so this is a huge factor in why stables are not part of the original
design and i think we've also discussed like different strategies on how we could approach
that with josh so maybe he can comment more on that.
Yeah, I mean, I think in general, our goal is to take whatever stable fiat we have prior,
you know, again, this is all contingent on regulatory approval and all that, but like whatever reserves we have in stables and Bitcoin and using that to buy back MENA and deploy
to the treasury is exactly what we
want to do um but it's again just sort of incumbent on uh on those discussions with with regulators
okay so it's not only the btc but you you're also thinking to use these stables and fiat
use these stables and fiat to buy back yeah okay 100 yep yep i mean what what in ideal in an ideal
world we are going to be deploying something like you know i mean i would say 70 or 80 percent of
the capital that we have although i can tell my you, you know, the CFO of the MENA Foundation is on here and she could probably correct my numbers for sure, because they're not exact. But the
ideal goal is to deploy a really, truly significant amount of all of our remaining capital, whether
MENA, Bitcoin, USD, whatever assets we have into the treasury.
But again, it's pending a lot of that regulatory discussion and to make sure that
we are above board with the Swiss authorities.
That sounds great. Really promising.
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that.
Thanks for letting me talk.
Yeah, yeah, of course. Thanks for letting me talk. Yeah, yeah, of course.
Thanks for the question.
And Josh, there's a question from Nama as well, just in the comments.
More generally, what about foundation investments in Bitcoin or stocks or whatever, not only stablecoins?
I think you kind of covered that a bit, but maybe you want to drill in.
I did.
And you know what? I actually see Molly, I think, requested speaker.
Oh, let me see if I can do this.
I'll let Molly take that.
Yeah.
I think it's working.
There we go.
Yeah, go for it, Molly.
Thanks to meet everyone.
And it's really nice to have this space to answer these questions. Yeah,
like Josh alluded to, I mean, you know, our whole goal here in doing this massive change that we did
of going from 50 to nine people was to massively reduce our burn and to preserve as much capital
as we could. And Josh, I will correct you.
I think it will be more than the percentage that you, that you mentioned that, um, is going to be
able to be, to be essentially what we want to do is we want to, we want to support the token,
right? We have lowered our burn, um, to, to the point where obviously we're, we're in a position that we can obviously no longer sell tokens and really
preserve a lot of our capital. That is what we have right now in our fiat portfolio,
what we have in Bitcoin, which is trending very well. So the goal here is to support
the MENA token and the MENA community and to be able to, you know, take the value of that when we have regulatory approval and to buy back tokens so that it really is, you know, uplifting for everyone and for the ecosystem. And then, and then, yeah, as Josh alluded to, you know, this was, was a big change for us that we're, we're part of this leadership transition. And, and, and we hope
that, that, you know, the community is, you know, at this time, you know, really, regardless of what,
you know, your feelings might've been of what was done in the past. What we're doing now
is we are saying, hey, we get it. We hear you. Things may not have been done perfectly,
but that's why we're trying to preserve all this capital, grow it as much as we can,
reduce the spend as drastically as we can, and then give it to the people who can make the best
decisions of what to do with it.
So just wanted to say that and thank you everyone for being here and for being interested in this.
Thanks, Molly. Yeah, a clear path forward to take the reins on protocol direction and vision is,
is the recipe that we have for, you know, for a future,
future success for the protocol. And that's, and that is,
that is what we have been orienting ourselves toward and what we've been working toward and what everyone at the foundation,
you know, as few of us as there are here
are really focused on doing going forward.
So, yeah, I appreciate that.
Moeller, thank you. Any other questions coming up, Dave?
No, not that I can see, Josh.
Okay.
Well, feel free to interrupt me if one does,
but what I will say,
um, is that, uh, we are going to be responding to any other questions async, um, about the treasury,
either via X or via MENA research. Although I will say my personal bias is to MENA research
because I feel like the quality of the discussion and just the ability to have nuanced long-form
replies is really great there. So look for that link. And yeah, otherwise, we'll look to do more
of these spaces as we have more updates to make with the Treasury. And we'll be sure to keep
everyone up to date on all of that.
Oh, it looks like there might be.
Is there one other request again?
Sorry.
Is there?
I can't see it.
Oh, yeah, it looks like it.
I think it's, yeah, yeah.
There we go.
Hello?
Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Hi, guys. Yeah, yeah. I we are. Hello. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Hi guys.
Yeah, yeah. I had one more question.
I have like many years ago been proposing to file for an ETF.
And I wonder who would be most suitable to deal with that.
Would it be 01 or would it be a proposal on a decentralized
Treasury when it's working or would it be before the the decentralized
treasuries up and working to be handled by the minor foundation because from my
experience it could cost like two to $3 million,
but there are other ways to launch it.
If you have connections that you can do it for the fraction of the cost for like
500 K. I'm just wondering, like right now,
I get it that I mean with all the feedback and stuff and the challenges might not be
might not be the most suitable period right now but if you look a little ahead
after the upgrade and stuff like that and things are starting to look better
like where would it be and who would be most suitable to handle that?
Question I think it would be a good marketing
especially since
Ethereum is piloting
towards CK and
I don't see enough of
I don't know if it's O1 or the Mina Foundation that should, you know, maybe comment a little more on the big accounts.
Because like Sol is down every now and then.
Ethereum is expensive, all this.
I don't see the comments from significant MENA, not just community, but the leadership, to promote it more.
So basically my question was regarding the ETF, where would be the best to go through?
Yeah, that's a fair question.
I will say for the MENA Foundation specifically speaking as interim CEO, I think given where we are, that is beyond our scope. the treasury, a significant amount of our capital to the decentralized treasury.
I think our goal is to preserve as much of that as possible, to deploy it to the decentralized treasury, and it would be potentially an expensive, lengthy process to even get an ETF on board.
And candidly, I think that an ETF would have more impact when the protocol is
further along and has, you know, more, really like more, more momentum behind it. So, so my view,
at least personally, is like, we got to get there first. And before, before engaging in that, and,
first and uh before before engaging in that and uh and my i i don't you know on on who's the right
person to do it if it's not the mina foundation i'm not sure if o1 would be the right uh you know
o1 labs would be the right party to initiate that uh they might be uh but but i do think it's
something that further down the line if it if there are ways cheaper ways of doing it think it's something that further down the line, if it, if there are ways, cheaper ways of doing it, and it's some, someone puts a proposal in the treasury to, you know, to, to do so like that, and that it would be we'd be better served
waiting until there's until we've actually like delivered on the treasury and there's
more momentum around the roadmap that old one is delivering on and and then you can see that like
okay now that there's more interest and momentum that would be the place to go from there. My view anyway. If everything else is planned, like just by
hunching, like how far ahead would you expect? Like, are you thinking one year or less or more?
Like, what would you just, if you just took a wild guess? Wild guess, I would say like one to two
years, but that's, you know, I'm not basing that on anything but intuition,
to be quite honest. And again, it's only if we get to a place where, you know, it's only
where we get to a place where it makes sense to spend that cost to get that access to,
you know, public market capital, right? But i do think it is a good it's a good
avenue to pursue from the decentralized treasury although the legal intricacies of that are maybe
beyond my ability to understand you know to be honest but um but i do think it's like something
worth worth investigating down the line okay thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, sure.
A couple of questions there on the text there, Josh.
I can read them out if you want.
Oh, yeah, go for it, Dave.
Yeah, from Jays.
Hi, Jays, how are you? Will the Treasury support community contributions like NAMA did with the MENA graph, for example, or another proposal?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the full intent of the Treasury is to support not just big initiatives, but whatever folks want from the community.
I think it's going to be a real, in my view, it will hopefully even supplant the grant program that O-O-1 is running.
one is running. They may still be involved in helping to coordinate potentially, but I think
a lot of those grants will be supplied directly from the Treasury.
Great. Okay. And then there's another one from Nama. This is a good one. What is the share on
total Treasury you think will be part of the decentralized Treasury?
Okay. I'll let Molly take this.
Yeah, I have a question back on that one.
When we say share on total treasury, what are we referring to total treasury?
Is that all assets that Mina Foundation holds now?
You'll have to ask them out.
Yeah.
I assume that's what you're asking. Josh mentioned 70 to 80%. You'd have to ask in the mat. Yeah.
I assume that's what you asked.
Josh mentioned 70 to 80% of what has recently been reported. I said that I think and hope it will be higher than that.
You know, the idea is literally to give everything that we have left over.
idea is literally to give everything that we have left over. And so it's really a calculus of
how long it takes to get it deployed and the regulatory approval of being able to deploy what
we want to deploy, which is really everything that's left over. Josh alluded to this before,
the fun thing about a Swiss foundations is you do have to have regulatory approval of where you're
giving your funds. They could decide to, I think we've posted this before, they could decide to give it
to a Cardano foundation if they wanted to, just as an example. So obviously we don't want that to
happen and we need to tread lightly. So it's a function of how long, you know, this, this,
this takes to get the approval and what the approval says. But I think Josh already threw
a percentage out there, and I said it should be higher than that if everything goes smoothly.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Molly. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to try and do my exit stage right
spiel one more time,
because I think we're finally at the end of the questions.
But as I said, if there are any other async questions...
Oh, wait, no, just kidding.
Okay, let me...
Yeah.
Let's see.
Why is this not...
Sorry, let me...
There we go.
Hi. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you. Great.
I have a question. Maybe it's not the right place to put it.
I may be mixing topics, but what is the relationship with the runway of O1 Labs? Is this treasury going to be part of that?
The costs and operations of O1 Labs are going to be tied to it?
Is it guaranteeing some future for the runway of the O1 Labs and the MENA project?
Or those are two different subjects?
No, actually, you know what?
That's a great question.
I don't, because I'm not, you know, I can't speak for O1 Labs, so I don't know what their perspective is on it directly, but I am guessing that they will come to the Treasury to ask for funding, but I don't think that they're going to be able to, you know, actually get funding from the Treasury unless they demonstrate progress and improvement on the protocol.
get funding from the treasury unless they demonstrate progress and improvement on the
protocol. And that's going to be the power of the fact that people can vote, you know,
you know, vote with their feet and their MENA on the treasury. So it is entirely possible that
they're going to request funds from the treasury that way, but it's really up to them. And I don't
know what their plans are on that to be quite, to be quite candid. Yeah, it would be like great to to have a conjunction and kind of a statement of giving a,
you know, a cohesive vision of the project because I feel like we're talking about
decentralized treasury being something like completely apart from O1 Labs and from Ina
and that's not the case, right? So it makes a lot of sense for us to in the community to
have like a centralized vision and a cohesive one, you know, like understanding the role of not only this decentralized treasury, but as well the vision and where the O1 Labs and MINA project is going.
And how this will make sense funding or no, those kind of things, you know, like.
Yeah, I hear that. I will say that part of why we transferred all of the other resources and the people that we had working both on the community side and the marketing side and engineering to O'O'N Labs is to give them the power to have that cohesive vision for MENA's future, where we as the foundation are really just focused on this scale down and delivering the MENA that we have and all the other assets that we have, as much of them as possible, into the treasury to then basically give both the community and O of One Labs a clear way forward with the project. So I hear you about that cohesive vision, and I will say that that was definitely the intent
of delivering what we delivered to Ode1.
And yeah, let me, sorry,
I think Molly might want to add something too as well,
real quick.
Yeah, go for it, Molly.
Yeah, go for it, Molly.
I'm going to respond to AMD's question in the channel.
So he's asking, why does it mean a foundation go back to the U.S.?
Wouldn't it bring more visibility and easier partnerships if you're U.S.-based?
visibility and easier partnerships if you're U.S. based. So, yeah, so just this seems to be a point
that I guess maybe the dots aren't being connected. But as Josh said earlier, we're not going back to
the U.S. because we're not going anywhere. In fact, our plan is to go away completely. That goes along
with, you know, with the regulatory approval to give all of our assets to, you know, the vast majority
of our assets to the decentralized treasury, the idea is that this foundation will no longer exist.
And so it doesn't really make a lot of sense to spend all the money and approvals to go back
somewhere. And then also just along the last question, partnerships based in the U.S. The
MENA Foundation is no longer responsible
for partnerships. We're not responsible. This is being led by O1 now. So our one and only goal
right now is to deploy the decentralized treasury at a vastly reduced burn as quickly as possible,
getting all the regulatory approvals to do so. Yeah. And one thing I would, that's, that's absolutely right, Molly. Thanks for,
for highlighting that question. I'm sorry. I didn't see it. Yeah. And the other thing that
I would say is like, to people who say that, like, why don't you transfer to the U S that is
virtually what we did with the handover with. Oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so I, I know that,
yeah, we can't take the exact organization that we have and just uproot it and bring it back to the U S I protocol and marketing and everything else directly to
O1 Labs, right? And then we, as the foundation, have this last remit to basically deliver as
much of the capital back to the community through the decentralized treasury and then to scale down
and, as Molly said, pending regulatory discussions and approval, and then to scale down and, as Molly said, pending regulatory discussions and approval,
and then to basically not exist anymore.
That is what we want to do.
And I know that we haven't been able to communicate
that effectively earlier because we were in the process
of this negotiation and transition,
but we want to be as clear as possible about that,
that that is our intent, and that's where we want to be as clear as possible about that, that that is our intent,
and that's where we want to go forward.
Cool.
Really glad these questions came up.
I really appreciate them.
Yeah, I think one... Okay, hold on.
Sorry.
I'm still struggling with this interface,
but I think... HackServe, you on, sorry. I'm still struggling with this interface, but I think,
Haxor, you're up again.
Yeah, gotcha, here.
Okay, one thing came to mind,
to be the devil's advocate,
like how could the community make sure
that O1 is not, not literally speaking, but holding their knowledge, like holding,
like holding the progress hostage, like, who's going to develop the protocol if they're not doing it like
if the community is not happy with their way of running things or performance or delivery or
whatever you want to call it like what choices do the community have other than to accept continue funding them? Like, what are the choices if we are not happy with what they are performing?
Yeah, I think that's a fair question.
And that part of the reason that, I mean, again, I don't know O1's plan,
so I can't speak to whether they're going to go to the treasury to request funding. But if the community of MENA holders is not happy
with the progress they're making on the protocol, and the treasury is the primary place with a
significant amount of capital, which we are really on target for it to be, and that is their only
source of funding, then you as the community have the ultimate leverage over their, their like lack of performance.
Right.
And, and, and that is again, only in that, in that hypothetical case, you know, in an
ideal world that won't, that won't be the, uh, you know, the, the future that we see,
but I appreciate the, you know, the hypothetical and the idea of like, well, what, what, what
lever do you have?
And the lever that you have, I think if, if, um, the community is the one that the community
of MENA holders are the ones that have all the power to restrict that funding, um, going
there, then, then that is the ultimate lever, you know, the ultimate lever of accountability.
And, and it's not one to be used lightly, I suppose, but it's still one that is, that will be in control of, of the community.
And even in the case where there is a, you know, still a break glass mechanism on the foundation side, that's only going to be used to prevent funds from being sent.
It's not, it's not going to be used to, you know, it's not going to be used to like actually dictate where the money has to go.
And, you know, it's not going to be used to like actually dictate where the money has to go.
So it's not like the foundation or whatever existing organization that has that, you know, key power will have the ability to to force funds out of the treasury that way.
So I do think I do think that's a fair, you know, it's a fair hypothetical to ask.
to ask, but ultimately, you know, they are a company that's accountable to their shareholders,
but they obviously are also, I think, in a large part, accountable to the community. And that is
one very, very big lever that the community will have in that case. And again, I mean that in a
very speculative way. I think everything that I've seen from O1 Labs, to me, suggests that they are treating this responsibility really seriously in their endeavoring to really have a more focused and directed vision for MENA.
But I appreciate trying to think about what you do in a scenario where that might not be the case.
What's the runway now? Do you know, in a, in a, in a scenario where that might not be the case. What's the runway now?
Do you know that they're probably like, I, I don't, I, I really, again,
those are the things that like, I think it would be very, and I know that
they're doing that Brandon has been having community calls, um, as well.
Um, maybe not on spaces, but I think he had a zoom call recently.
Um, so that is the kind of thing that is out of scope for us in the foundation now,
but definitely worth chatting with Owen directly. Okay, thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
Okay, for maybe the fifth, the tenth, but I'm glad, I will say, as I said, I'm glad all these
questions came up. It was really good to hear them and to keep clarifying and sort of communicate like where we're going. It's been great. I'm happy to hear all these questions and glad we can answer them. and amina research. And as I mentioned before, I really definitely have a preference
for seeing the discussion
of amina research
because I think that that long form,
that long form mode of discussion
leads to better and more nuanced
debates and outcomes.
But always happy to have
these spaces as well
and to have more responses
in the comments on X too.
So yeah, really, really, really appreciate the questions.
Glad that we had an opportunity to talk through this.
And yeah, looking forward to updating everyone
as we make further progress.
