Rari Foundation

Authors: JanaBe

Reviewers: Campbell Law, Autonomous

Abstract

This draft proposal outlines RARI Foundation’s funding needs for 2025, along with laying out high-level objectives of what the team will be focusing on. The budget estimated for 12 months of operations is 2,040,000 USD and it enables continuity of operations and team & vendor growth as it reflects on the RARI ecosystem growth.

Motivation

The RARI Foundation works on behalf of the RARI DAO and helps it achieve its mission of building decentralized NFT infrastructure to power innovative NFT use cases. In doing so, the Foundation deploys resources that span contractor salaries, vendors, legal, and marketing costs, amongst others, that ensure a smooth continuation of operations and allow for the expansion of the Foundation’s efforts to help grow the RARI ecosystem. The assumption is that the Foundation will continue working with the most skilled and professional contractors in the market, and it is necessary for the Foundation’s success to be able to offer compensation in stable coins or fiat money instead of $RARI in order to be competitive.

Rationale

The Foundation has been actively expanding the RARI ecosystem in 2024, seizing new growth opportunities.

Most notably, it spearheaded the launch of RARI chain, initiated Treasury diversification, completed the technical decentralization of the Rarible protocol. The Foundation also aided increased governance participation, and embarked on governance upgrade to minimize barriers to participation in the RARI DAO and to enable multichain governance of the Rarible protocol opening paths to multichain revenue.

In doing so, the Foundation proposes a budget that will allow for accomplishing of the following goals:

1. Governance

• Transition governance to RARI chain as the governance hub
• Support the DAO in efforts to enable RARI token staking for governance
• Design and audit cross-chain revenue collection model
• Adopt Multichain governance (flexible voting governor contract)
• Assist in decommissioning of veRARI and Mainnet DAO
• Transfer ownership of RARI chain to the DAO
• Relaunch the delegate launchpad program & run 2 cohorts

2. Ecosystem growth

• Support key ecosystem projects in driving user acquisition that will benefit protocol transaction volumes
• Collaborate with partners in developing growth initiatives and activating RARI ecosystem
• Targeted grant deployment to drive adoption of RARI tech stack

3. Marketing

• Raise awareness of RARI ecosystem, and drive acquisition via the usage of owned channels, PR, co-marketing, ambassadors, IRL events, and sponsorships
• Focus on Q1 and Q3 as tentpole moments

4. Finance

• Execute Treasury diversification strategy per the mandate given

KPIs:

• Fully transition to multichain governance and mainnet DAO decommissioned by end of Q2
• Attract 500k+ RARI for governance
• Aid DAO-approved efforts in increasing 5x monthly active end users and transactions of Rarible Protocol
• Continue promoting RARI chain projects, aiming for incremental 4M+ transactions on RARI chain

Note: the Foundation will publish an end-of-year transparency report that will summarize the results of 2024.

Key Terms

Rarible Protocol - multichain indexer and order book with SDK

RARI Chain - royalties enforcing L3 built with Arbitrum Orbit

RARI Ecosystem - applications utilizing the Rarible Protocol and/or the RARI Chain

$RARI - ERC 20 token, used in the RARI DAO governance

Specification

The proposed 2025 budget of 2,040,000 USD reflects the above goals, team, and resource needs. It’s roughly one-third higher than the 2024 operational budget, which reflects on the growing operations and RARI ecosystem.

Salaries 1,030k

Legal costs 170k

Vendors 255k

Marketing 300k

RARI chain 80k

Security audit 150k

Others 55k

Total 2,040k

Specifics:

• Salaries cover 8 FT and 2 PT contributors (FT: 1x Strategy, 2x Growth, 1x Community, 2x Marketing, 1x Tech, 1x Treasury; PT 1x Tech, 1x Design)
• Legal fees include Cayman Island counsel, US counsel, and a paralegal
• Vendor fees include administration costs (Director of the Foundation and the Supervisor of the Foundation, both roles are required for the set up of the Foundation under the Cayman law), professional delegate fees, Security Council compensations, accounting services, engineering vendors
• Marketing costs cover sponsorships, production, marketing agency fees (to be incurred ad hoc as needs arise), and ambassadors
• RARI chain costs include infrastructure vendor fees
• Security audit costs include review of smart contracts related to multichain fee collection for the DAO
• Other costs include travel costs to crypto conferences, and miscellaneous expenses such as office supplies, subscriptions, and event tickets.
• This proposal uses the 7-day average price of 2.54 USD for RARI (as of Jan 7 using coinmarketcap data) and requests 803,145 RARI for 2,040,000 USD

Notes:

1. The Director of the Foundation is responsible for the budget. They may opt to delegate day-to-day budget management tasks to the Foundation team.
2. Budget spending shall be monitored by the Foundation’s appointed accountant.
3. Periodic budget spending reports shall be shared with the community quarterly, no later than 45 days after the end of the quarter. The community may request budget updates at any point. In such event, the Foundation shall present the budget status no later than in 15 working days.
4. If there are unspent funds at the end of the budget cycle, the Foundation may propose to keep the amount in an operational reserve. Otherwise, it shall be returned to DAO’s treasury within 90 days of the budget cycle’s end.
5. The Foundation team shall respect the budget allocations as specified in the subtotals. It is understood that variations may occur. However, transfers between the budget groups should not exceed 30%. Budget reallocations larger than 30% will require DAO approval.
6. Should $RARI price deviate from the USDC conversation rate at the date of the proposal submission, the Foundation shall either submit an additional proposal to request funds to cover the exchange loss or report the excess funds at the end of the budgeting cycle.
7. Contributors (Team) are to be paid once a month in USDC unless otherwise agreed in their contracts.
8. Legal and Administrative costs are to be paid upon receiving invoices from the Foundation service providers as per engagement letters or agreements with such entities.

Steps to Implement

Upon the budget approval, the full corresponding $RARI amount will be transferred to the Foundation’s operational wallet (0x2a83d2891Ef3df6967E3C2e9b69cCc7aD029736B), the Foundation will convert it to USDC to reduce the exchange rate fluctuation risk and the exchanged amount will be stored on the operational wallet (0x2a83d2891Ef3df6967E3C2e9b69cCc7aD029736B).

The Foundation may opt to halt conversion to USDC, should the exchange rate start falling below the desired conversion rate, and resume when the desired rate is met or if a conversion must be made in order to meet Foundation’s payment obligations. Payments within the approved budget in accordance with signed contracts are to be made by the Foundation administration, who will be responsible for the budget.