ProposalsProposal 831
ProposalsProposal 831
After we asked "Should Nouns DAO Explore Escrowed Milestones?" in this topic and with the Nouns treasury declining, we are upgrading this topic to a candidate. Given your feedback, we are certain that enabling Nouns to escrow milestones will significantly improve Nouns DAO's ability to continue to back ambitious ideas while minimising risk, when each funding decision is carrying more weight.
Nouns treasury and token sales are decreasing, but Nouns community members are committed to experimenting with new ways to achieve sustainability for the DAO. Although the creativity and determination of the community is commendable, the smaller the treasury gets the higher opportunity costs and risk associated with every proposal.
The Nouns DAO currently lacks the tools to appropriately address these risks. Both send proposals and Streams follow an optimistic approach that lacks the teeth to instill accountability in the proposers. Without escrowed milestones, the DAO is left vulnerable to rogue proposals.
Streams are great to disperse salaries and recurring service charges, but for funding proactive work they remain risky. While the DAO deliberates and coordinates whether to cancel a stream, the DAO is bleeding funds. The cancelled stream of Prop 711 and the feedback on the defeated Flows proposal are two recent examples that emphasise Nouns DAO’s need for escrowed milestones:
After community feedback led by @0xmonografia, we are deprecating our initial candidate (https://www.nouns.camp/candidates/enabling-nouns-dao-to-escrow-milestones-7bc48221928f11184b376da7a57650768dfd3332?edit=1) in favour of upgrading this topic to a candidate.
This proposal introduces milestone-based escrow payments as a new proposal type for Nouns DAO’s governance and voting system, enabling pro-active fund disbursement. The integration is done by SmartInvoice.xyz, a solution incubated by RaidGuild. Instead of proposals relying on follow-up from the community, it is up to the proposer to convince the community when they're ready for release. Any community member can raise a release (or dispute) proposal at any time.
To ensure fair dispute resolution and bespoke arbitration features, this proposal is jointly submitted with Kleros, the leading decentralised arbitration provider specialising in blockchain-based dispute resolution.
Nouns DAO has historically funded projects through lump-sum grants, which require high trust in proposers and caused significant losses in the past, which is already being discussed:
However, as project scopes increase, ensuring that deliverables align with funding commitments becomes more complex. With escrowed milestones:
This integration will help Nouns DAO fund larger-scale projects with greater confidence, and reduce the social cost of protecting its treasury, ensuring that funds contribute to meaningful, measurable outcomes.
The SmartInvoice team requests 35 ETH to cover development, integration, customisation, and support.
| Item | Description | ETH |
|---|---|---|
| Core Functionality Development | Escrow Milestones Proposal Action (10 ETH) Frontend form for milestones, recipient, controller Controller selection logic Backend encoding of SmartInvoice creation transaction Milestone Viewer on Proposal Page (5 ETH) Display milestone list and current status View-only interface Link to full invoice on https://smartinvoice.xyz app | 15 |
| oSnap Release Integration | Snapshot and Gnosis Safe milestone release mechanism with controller-aware flows | 5 |
| Testing and QA | End-to-end integration tests, edge case handling, Snapshot and controller logic QA | 2 |
| Documentation & Training | Contributor onboarding, Snapshot/oSnap guides, developer documentation, user guides | 3 |
| Maintenance & Support (2 years) | Support for milestone release, arbitration, off-chain delegation, DAO onboarding | 5 |
| Project Management & Coordination | Sprint planning and delivery tracking Weekly reviews and stakeholder syncs Coordination with nouns.camp, Snapshot, and Kleros teams | 5 |
| TOTAL | 35 |
To make this initiative successful, we will engage with key ecosystem participants, including DAO sub-groups, such as Nouncil, LilNouns, and SharkDAO to ensure they understand and adopt the milestone-based escrow system. By integrating feedback loops, offering continuous educational content, and providing hands-on support through dedicated communication channels, this will directly save Nouns money with each proposal refunded that doesn't fully get completed.
After the integration is completed at least 10 proposals use milestone-based escrow within the first 12 months.
Work together with the community to prioritise the integration in frontends, such as nouns.camp, and determine whether a standalone hosted frontend is desirable.
As part of our maintenance and support, we will engage and educate the Nouns community.
The Smart Escrow proposal type is available through nouns.camp, or a standalone hosted frontend (up to 2 in total). Kleros is integrated through Recognition of Jurisdiction under Kleros v1, and disputes are resolved transparently within agreed timeframes on the appropriate Court and can be appealed several times up to the General Court.
Milestone release via off-chain voting is enabled through the integration of Snapshot’s oSnap module.
This allows the community to vote on milestone completions using Snapshot proposals, which – when passed – trigger Gnosis Safe transactions that release funds from the smart escrow. This provides a streamlined governance implementation and reduces proposal overhead on Ethereum mainnet while retaining DAO control.
To make this integration future-proof and enable sub-DAOs to settle small claims, SmartInvoice is finalising its feature complete integrating with Kleros on a smart contract level.
Integrating a milestone-based escrow proposal type into Nouns DAO brings financial discipline, increased accountability, and stronger dispute resolution mechanisms. This proposal represents a natural evolution of Nouns DAO’s funding model, allowing it to support more complex and ambitious initiatives with reduced financial risk. So far, SmartInvoice has secured contracts with a combined value of over $400,000 (https://dune.com/sunsakis/smart-invoice). We actively service the majority of internal and external work at RaidGuild, and recently supported Nouns.builder DAO in rolling out escrow proposals to all Nouns Builder communities on Base:
Enabling escrowed proposals would not replace Streams or direct sends, it would add optionality. It could help the DAO support more complex proposals with better oversight, especially in cases where:
After we asked "Should Nouns DAO Explore Escrowed Milestones?" in this topic and with the Nouns treasury declining, we are upgrading this topic to a candidate. Given your feedback, we are certain that enabling Nouns to escrow milestones will significantly improve Nouns DAO's ability to continue to back ambitious ideas while minimising risk, when each funding decision is carrying more weight.
Nouns treasury and token sales are decreasing, but Nouns community members are committed to experimenting with new ways to achieve sustainability for the DAO. Although the creativity and determination of the community is commendable, the smaller the treasury gets the higher opportunity costs and risk associated with every proposal.
The Nouns DAO currently lacks the tools to appropriately address these risks. Both send proposals and Streams follow an optimistic approach that lacks the teeth to instill accountability in the proposers. Without escrowed milestones, the DAO is left vulnerable to rogue proposals.
Streams are great to disperse salaries and recurring service charges, but for funding proactive work they remain risky. While the DAO deliberates and coordinates whether to cancel a stream, the DAO is bleeding funds. The cancelled stream of Prop 711 and the feedback on the defeated Flows proposal are two recent examples that emphasise Nouns DAO’s need for escrowed milestones:
After community feedback led by @0xmonografia, we are deprecating our initial candidate (https://www.nouns.camp/candidates/enabling-nouns-dao-to-escrow-milestones-7bc48221928f11184b376da7a57650768dfd3332?edit=1) in favour of upgrading this topic to a candidate.
This proposal introduces milestone-based escrow payments as a new proposal type for Nouns DAO’s governance and voting system, enabling pro-active fund disbursement. The integration is done by SmartInvoice.xyz, a solution incubated by RaidGuild. Instead of proposals relying on follow-up from the community, it is up to the proposer to convince the community when they're ready for release. Any community member can raise a release (or dispute) proposal at any time.
To ensure fair dispute resolution and bespoke arbitration features, this proposal is jointly submitted with Kleros, the leading decentralised arbitration provider specialising in blockchain-based dispute resolution.
Nouns DAO has historically funded projects through lump-sum grants, which require high trust in proposers and caused significant losses in the past, which is already being discussed:
However, as project scopes increase, ensuring that deliverables align with funding commitments becomes more complex. With escrowed milestones:
This integration will help Nouns DAO fund larger-scale projects with greater confidence, and reduce the social cost of protecting its treasury, ensuring that funds contribute to meaningful, measurable outcomes.
The SmartInvoice team requests 35 ETH to cover development, integration, customisation, and support.
| Item | Description | ETH |
|---|---|---|
| Core Functionality Development | Escrow Milestones Proposal Action (10 ETH) Frontend form for milestones, recipient, controller Controller selection logic Backend encoding of SmartInvoice creation transaction Milestone Viewer on Proposal Page (5 ETH) Display milestone list and current status View-only interface Link to full invoice on https://smartinvoice.xyz app | 15 |
| oSnap Release Integration | Snapshot and Gnosis Safe milestone release mechanism with controller-aware flows | 5 |
| Testing and QA | End-to-end integration tests, edge case handling, Snapshot and controller logic QA | 2 |
| Documentation & Training | Contributor onboarding, Snapshot/oSnap guides, developer documentation, user guides | 3 |
| Maintenance & Support (2 years) | Support for milestone release, arbitration, off-chain delegation, DAO onboarding | 5 |
| Project Management & Coordination | Sprint planning and delivery tracking Weekly reviews and stakeholder syncs Coordination with nouns.camp, Snapshot, and Kleros teams | 5 |
| TOTAL | 35 |
To make this initiative successful, we will engage with key ecosystem participants, including DAO sub-groups, such as Nouncil, LilNouns, and SharkDAO to ensure they understand and adopt the milestone-based escrow system. By integrating feedback loops, offering continuous educational content, and providing hands-on support through dedicated communication channels, this will directly save Nouns money with each proposal refunded that doesn't fully get completed.
After the integration is completed at least 10 proposals use milestone-based escrow within the first 12 months.
Work together with the community to prioritise the integration in frontends, such as nouns.camp, and determine whether a standalone hosted frontend is desirable.
As part of our maintenance and support, we will engage and educate the Nouns community.
The Smart Escrow proposal type is available through nouns.camp, or a standalone hosted frontend (up to 2 in total). Kleros is integrated through Recognition of Jurisdiction under Kleros v1, and disputes are resolved transparently within agreed timeframes on the appropriate Court and can be appealed several times up to the General Court.
Milestone release via off-chain voting is enabled through the integration of Snapshot’s oSnap module.
This allows the community to vote on milestone completions using Snapshot proposals, which – when passed – trigger Gnosis Safe transactions that release funds from the smart escrow. This provides a streamlined governance implementation and reduces proposal overhead on Ethereum mainnet while retaining DAO control.
To make this integration future-proof and enable sub-DAOs to settle small claims, SmartInvoice is finalising its feature complete integrating with Kleros on a smart contract level.
Integrating a milestone-based escrow proposal type into Nouns DAO brings financial discipline, increased accountability, and stronger dispute resolution mechanisms. This proposal represents a natural evolution of Nouns DAO’s funding model, allowing it to support more complex and ambitious initiatives with reduced financial risk. So far, SmartInvoice has secured contracts with a combined value of over $400,000 (https://dune.com/sunsakis/smart-invoice). We actively service the majority of internal and external work at RaidGuild, and recently supported Nouns.builder DAO in rolling out escrow proposals to all Nouns Builder communities on Base:
Enabling escrowed proposals would not replace Streams or direct sends, it would add optionality. It could help the DAO support more complex proposals with better oversight, especially in cases where: