I am against this proposal for several reasons.
Currently, the treasury is valuated at ~14M. This is a pile of money, but it isn’t much for a treasury. I expect about 300k fixed running costs per year. If we hand out 100k a month, this is sufficient for about 9 years at the current token price. While we certainly hope for it, we cannot guarantee a pump. Once funds are depleted, the treasury is dead, so we need to be sure that we can survive a bear market. If the price goes down 50%, that 9-year countdown runs double speed. Currently, a two-year bear market with an average price of 0.04 wouldn’t be too much trouble, and the treasury would be down to 57% of the tokens. If we only run with half, we are down to 14%! And run dry the year after, even if the price rises to 50% above current levels. That is a significant increase in risk. I do not think we can afford this.
Also, this proposal would dump up to an additional 5% of the supply over the next year. This will significantly affect the token price. Don’t forget that.
If I understood the proposal right, this would make it three organizations, treasury DAO, TEA, and the Growth Committee. Every organization has fixed costs, which will quickly eat up the budget. In the current scenario where we have to housekeep our money, adding additional members to the payroll feels off.
Also, do we need to rush this so hard now? We are currently implementing community feedback into the grant committee setup. I expect this to be voted on-chain in late November/early December. After this, we would have to run the big election in the following months and set the entire thing up from a legal PoV. How much would of a “time save” would we achieve with this? Not too much, if you ask me.
In addition to this, I feel like mass marketing is not going to help us right now. Aside from minting and sending tokens & NFTs, there are no use cases to try out. They come with EVM, once our community has built the first dapps on it. IOTA still is burned in the crypto space for not delivering due to all the 2018/19 drama. If we make up big promises again, those people won’t follow. We need things working. Period. Rushing this is contra productive and a waste of money in my eyes.
And last but not least, why take the community funds for this. The reasons you described (non-public partnerships, industry knowledge) work perfectly for the TEA. I do not see any need for an additional committee. TEA has 10% of the supply for itself. If IF wants to go and do marketing, go for it. Task us to elect some community liaisons for TEA - no big deal. But I do not see any reason to use the community funds for this.
As described in the grant committee draft, everything above 200k dollars (since MCap is above 100M) is a Tier 4 proposal and requires an individual vote from the community. In my eyes, the community undeniably deserves a say if we spend more than 1% of the entire treasury in one go. The growth committee would bypass direct community engagement for quick actions. Having five people control 50% of the treasury clashes with the core principles of a DAO.
If we truly need some quick dollar, we have to vote for this. The budget can be topped up if a majority wants this chance. Or we can decide to spend funds bypassing the grant system. We can look for ways to speed up the governance process in extraordinary cases, like going directly to firefly or making exceptions to phase 2 timings. But using the community funds without engagement is an absolute no-go to me.