# RRC-44: Response to Current Crypto Markets & DAO Strategic Workshop

#1

Abstract

This proposal summarizes discussions held during the Strategic Workshop and subsequent conversations with Delegates and key ecosystem stakeholders. It outlines a focused strategy for the RARI Foundation, reflecting current market conditions, DAO treasury size, and near-term growth opportunities.

Rationale

Given evolving crypto market dynamics, the RARI Foundation aims to sharpen its impact by concentrating on core functions and strategic partnerships. This strategy leverages brand associations, product marketing, and token infrastructure to onboard new communities to RARI technology more effectively.

Motivation

To accelerate growth and long-term sustainability of the RARI ecosystem, the Foundation proposes to:

  • Realign with Rarible as the primary user of the DAO’s decentralized infrastructure
  • Streamline operations by reducing headcount
  • Accelerate protocol adoption by deploying in emerging ecosystems and driving onboarding via the Rarible marketplace
  • Increase ecosystem visibility through enhanced marketing, including a KOL/ambassador program
  • Promote token utility and awareness to increase engagement and adoption

Specifications

1. User Acquisition Strategy

Instead of distributing RARI rewards via community marketplaces as intended in RRC-7, the Foundation proposes redirecting these rewards to user acquisition through Rarible.com, in collaboration with the Rarible team. This incentive program will span multiple chains and target marketplace liquidity through bids, listings, and mint incentives, prioritizing chain dominance (i.e., becoming the leading marketplace on a given chain).

This structure aligns with upcoming Rarible product updates and builds on the spirit of RRC-7, while optimizing for impact and coordination.

2. Strategic Investment via Grants Fund Reallocation

The Foundation proposes reallocating 85% of the existing Grants Fund to the Strategic Partnerships Wallet, where it will be used for high-impact, transparent strategic investments, reported under the EGF framework. Examples include:

  • Discounted OTC token deals with high-signal institutions (VCs, angels, KOLs)
  • Co-marketing campaigns with CEXs
  • Paid partnerships with token-awareness platforms such as CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, or DexScreener

The remaining 15% of the Grants Fund will be allocated to the Creator Fund.

3. Creator Fund

The Creator Fund, first announced at the RARI Chain launch, is funded by sequencer revenue and targets creators launching collections on Rarible. It supports ecosystem KPIs like GMV and mints, excluding volume without platform fees. The proposed reallocation of 15% of the Grants Fund will supplement this fund, alongside redirecting all future sequencer revenue into it.

This fund functions as the RARI chain-based subtreasury of the DAO and sole destination of the DAO’s sequencer revenue, replacing the prior sequencer revenue split of DAO revenue across two destinations.

4. Treasury and Operational Budget Management

Due to market volatility, the Foundation paused RARI token sales. No RARI allocated in RRC-37 (the 2025 operations budget) has been sold. Instead, operations are being funded from earlier cash reserves.

The Foundation proposes rolling over the 2024 operational surplus into 2025 to avoid submitting an additional funding proposal. This maintains financial prudence and reduces the burden on delegates. Transparency reporting for 2024 operations is available for reference.

KPIs

To assess the success of this strategic shift, the Foundation proposes the following metrics:

  • Treasury Management: Total USD value of all funds under Foundation and DAO mandate

  • Supporting Rarible: Gross marketplace GMV and number of paid mints (mints with platform fee)

  • Token Awareness:

    • ±2% liquidity on exchanges (indirect KPI)
    • Organic trading volume (indirect KPI)
    • Number of unique tokenholders

Steps to Implement

  1. DAO Approval: Formal ratification of strategic direction and fund reallocations
  2. Initiative Execution: Launch of incentives, marketing campaigns, and protocol deployments
  3. Treasury Actions:
  • Reallocate 85% of Grants Fund to Strategic Partnerships
  • Allocate 15% of Grants Fund to Creator Fund
  • Redirect sequencer revenue to Creator Fund
  • Retain 2024 surplus as 2025 operational buffer

Timeline

  • Week 1–2: DAO review and approval
  • Week 3–6: Begin incentive rollouts, partner campaigns, and fund movement
  • Ongoing: Monitor performance and adapt based on KPIs and market conditions

Costs

No direct new costs; all actions utilize existing resources and reserves.

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RARI DAO Highlights - April 7-13, 2025
RARI DAO Highlights - March 31-April 6, 2025
#2

Sounds like a plan

Love to see this, the remaining 15% can be used for top initiatives.

Lets hope Trump cools down a bit, the markets are going wild last weeks after his import tax announcements.

Can’t wait to help!

5 Likes
#3

I like the proposal. just have one question for now

Regarding the 85% reallocation from the Grants Fund to the Foundation’s treasury for strategic investment diversification

how will the Foundation share what these strategic investments are? Will the DAO have any say or be involved in the process?

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#4

I do support this new strategy, that I see should increase growth and provide sustainability with this narrow focus, and if executed successful. I do have a couple questions to understand this revised strategy:

  • Can you provide some more details of what the acquisition strategy will be to acquire users for Rarible product updates, and will this be a coordinated effort between Rarible and the Foundation?

  • I don’t see any KPI’s to measure the success of this revised strategy. Will this be provided to the DAO after the completion of step # 2 for implementation of growth initiatives?

  • Regarding the 15% allocation and sequencer revenue to the Creator Fund. Is the Creator Fund similar to a slimmed down grants program, or some other reward fund? Can you provide some details that if this fund treasury and program will be managed by the Foundation, what specifically are the types of rewards that will be allocated, and what is the current total value of this fund (based upon the 15% of existing grants program treasury and current sequencer revenue)?

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#5

Thanks for posting this strategy and summarizing the workshop. I support the five action points—especially the focus on realigning with the Rarible marketplace and streamlining operations, as well as distributing rewards through Rarible.

Regarding treasury diversification:

  • Does the reassignment of the grants fund mean there won’t be a grants program in the future? It would also be helpful to hear some concrete figures—what kind of amounts are we talking about?
  • In line with @coffee-crusher’s / @Jaf’s question, what does strategic investment diversification mean in this context? And is the “foundation treasury” considered part of the operational budget? I also agree with @coffee-crusher’s point on adding some expectations or KPIs around these investments.

The last two points—on sequencer revenue allocation and operational budget management—sound reasonable.

More generally, I noticed the strategy doesn’t mention any goals for the RARI chain. Is the chain still being developed or promoted? I get the rationale given the current state of the chain and the competition, but it still seems like a significant strategic change, also for the purpose of the DAO.

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#6

Thanks for this follow up to the strategic discussions we had with the community.

We are really supportive and have been advocating for a DAO alignment with Rarible for a long time and we are happy to see it come to fruition.

Regarding the Revised Strategic Approach, we have some questions:

  • We are really supportive of issuing rewards to support activity in Rarible. However, as DAO oversight for Rarible is limited, we wonder how will Rarible keep up with Transparency and accountability commitments toward the DAO for the funds used.
  • What exactly means “reassigning” the Fund? Will the DAO still own it and be able to reclaim it? Could you share some more details on the Rationale behind turning 85% of the Grants Fund into a Fund for Strategic Investment? Similarly, the Grants Fund was subjected to Transparency commitments toward the DAO to report on spending and results of the grants program. How is the Foundation going to keep the DAO informed about the state of the Fund.
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#7

Thank you for posting this, I support the items laid out in the motivation section, however I am unable to work out how these link to the majority of the items in the specification section. Therefore, I would oppose this proposal in its current form.

I am unable to comment on this item as there is no detail provided. I would welcome a proposal outlining the plan so that delegates are able to vote on it after being provided with sufficient knowledge of the details.

I believe that all funds should be returned to treasury and then further disbursals from the treasury requested as needed. In my opinion, the “reallocation” of funds from grants to Foundation should not be performed until the Foundation has fulfilled its previous treasury diversification tasks and there is no benefit to the Foundation stacking up funds to sell until the DAO has seen evidence that the Foundation is able to perform this satisfactorily.

Again, I believe this is DAO funds, which should be returned to DAO treasury and then requested as needed for specific initiatives which are explained in detail along with relevant KPIs that they are targeting.

I believe this is a reasonable approach but the Foundation should request this from the DAO in a separate proposal and not bundle multiple potentially contentious items into one proposal. We were previously promised a proposal to return this cash to enable delegates and tokenholders to vote on this matter. Retaining a large cash reserve removes the significant incentive alignment between Foundation, tokenholders, and DAO which results from holding significant amounts of $RARI tokens.

For these reasons I would vote AGAINST on this proposal in its current form and would encourage other delegates to do so.

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#8

Thanks, everyone, for their patience while the Foundation restructured. Below are key points of feedback addressed by the Foundation team:

  1. Strategic investments destination of the 85% of the current grants fund:
  • to clarify this is the same as the strategic partnerships so the funds would be added to the partnerships wallet and subject to EGF transparency reporting. We recognize that the wording wasn’t the clearest and apologize for the confusion
  • The current value of the Grants Fund can be viewed in this multisig.
  • Examples of strategic investments are larger partnership deals that involve the counterparty investing in the RARI token:
    • Discounted OTC deals with high value and high signal institutions. e.g. a VC/Angel/KOL
    • Marketing Campaign with a CEX
    • Partnerships with Token Awareness platforms e.g. Coinmarketcap, Coingecko, DexScreener
  1. Acquisition strategy for Rarible product updates:
  • User acquisition strategy is a coordinated effort between Rarible and Foundation. It’s core part - incentives program for marketplace liquidity
  • Incentive program is quite similar to RRC-7, but RRC-7 was targeted at community marketplaces while this proposed incentives is targeting main Rarible.com marketplace across multiple chains. The idea behind incentives is “Winning chains”. To win a chain means that Rarible market share on a chain should be more than any other marketplace on a chain. If there’s a competitor on a specific chain, for example right now Rarible is #1 marketplace on MegaETH and a new player arises - Foundation and Rarible together will deploy incentives program to make sure users stay with Rarible. Program will be targeting Bids, Listings, Mints incentives for a top collections on a Specific chain.
  1. KPI’s to measure the success of this revised strategy:
  • Treasury Management - KPI: Total $ amount of all funds under foundation mandate + under DAO mandate. E.g. overall financial health of the ecosystem.
  • Supporting Rarible - KPI: GMV+Number of Mints - effectively the amount of paid activity running through Rarible.
  • Promotion of Token awareness is harder to measure, but indirect KPIs are: Liquidity at ±2% on exchanges, organic trading volume, number of tokenholders
  1. Details on Creator Fund
  • Acocunced during RARI chain launch and funded from the sequencer revenue. It is similar to Grants program but focused on Creators instead of Developers. The goal would be to support the KPI of marketplace GMV and the number of mints excluding mints and GMV that do not include the platform fee.
  • Upcoming collections on various chains and launchpad participants can apply for a grant and receive a payment for bringing their launch to Rarible
  • Creator Fund is a subtreasury of the DAO as outlined in the revenue sequencer split proposal. Given the modest sequencer earnings, we’re proposing to send the 15% of the Grants budget to boost this fund and moving forward to direct the full sequencer revenue to this subtreasury instead of splitting it between two treasuries.
  1. Future of Grants programs
  • Builder focused grants are momentarily discontinued. Instead, funding is available through Creator Fund and Strategic Partnerships.
  1. Inclusion of 2024 surplus in this proposal:
  • Rationale for including the rollover of 2024 surplus to 2025 operations funds is to minimize the proposal burden to the delegates. With the 2024 Transparency report published, the financial information is available.

Please let us know if any questions remain outstanding. The above forum proposal was edited to incorporate the feedback points.

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