Dionysus thank you for addressing these points.
On the merits of the separation: KlimaDAO is aiming to disrupt a high margin, low volume incumbent industry with a high volume, low margin business model.
That model relies on demand for carbon credit retirement, and the biggest consumers of carbon credits are outside of the web3 bubble. Furthermore, most web3 projects are not prioritizing sustainability initiatives given the difficult conditions and need to preserve runway.
So we must seek out end-users who are not yet onboarded on-chain, which requires providing a clean, clear and user-friendly experience, more akin to Goldfinch's new UX or friend.tech rather than assuming users have a wallet with funds onboarded already. Automated integrations via Provide's SAP integration and the Carbonmark API also represent key levers for attracting new demand.
On the specifics of the proposal, my concern with tranched funding is that it perpetuates the tenuous short term funding asks that have created uncertainty for existing KlimaDAO contributors and limited our ability to attract and retain top talent (especially engineers).
That said, I am in favor of some formal mechanism to ensure that Carbonmark's product development accrues value to KlimaDAO.
This has been one of the biggest disappointments in the development of the ReFi/Digital Carbon ecosystem: very few players are proudly standing alongside and building products that support KlimaDAO's pioneering infrastructure, instead extracting value from the pools we provide liquidity for or building around it by avoiding the retirement aggregator.
As Dionysus said, all of the initial contributors to the new Carbonmark organization will be KLIMA holders, and therefore values-aligned, but some formal mechanism in the new Carbonmark organization would ensure that even if those contributors move on, the new organization would still be aligned with KlimaDAO's long term success.
I think a revised version of this proposal, KIP-45a, could incorporate the feedback provided so far and chart a clearer path forward for the new Carbonmark organization. In particular:
- Lay out the planned roadmap for Carbonmark (though it will be much the same as that outlined in the previous funding ask for Product & Engineering)
- Clarify the source of funds, estimated budget breakdown, etc. that 0xy as shared in his responses to comments since the original proposal
- Specify that a mechanism must be included in the founding docs/bylaws of the new Carbonmark organization to align with and accrue value to KlimaDAO based on the success of Carbonmark's products.
As for the size of the ask, personally I don't find it excessive at the reduced burn rate, and 18 months is already on the edge of a viable runway for a new organization just starting out (especially in the current funding environment).
There is a lot of work to be done integrating new credit supply into Carbonmark from ICR, Coorest and others in the pipeline pending governance approval.
This important work will both benefit KlimaDAO by providing more throughput in the retirement aggregator and any liquidity pools launched to support these new credits, as well as Carbonmark by providing users with a broader range of high integrity credits. There is also potentially an opportunity to integrate forward credits from the Solid World pools into Carbonmark, which will entail additional engineering work.