DAO Treasury & Working Group Budgets

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) face significant challenges managing treasury funds, ensuring transparency, accountability, and efficiency in budget allocation for various working groups or sub-committees. Often, funds are either prematurely disbursed without clear milestone tracking or remain locked and inaccessible due to governance overhead. This leads to inefficiencies, potential misuse of funds, disputes, and governance friction.

Solution:

Trustless Work provides DAOs with an easy-to-integrate, blockchain-based escrow infrastructure that clearly defines milestones, roles, and permissions within each funding allocation. Using smart escrows, DAOs can securely allocate budgets to specific working groups or sub-committees, with funds automatically released upon completion and approval of defined milestones.

Benefits:

• Enhanced Transparency: Each transaction and milestone status is transparently recorded on-chain, promoting trust and accountability.

• Reduced Governance Overhead: Automated escrow conditions reduce frequent voting rounds for releasing funds, streamlining operations.

• Improved Fund Management: Funds are only released when pre-agreed milestones are met, reducing risk and ensuring proper usage.

• Easy Integration: Trustless Work's API and escrow management platform can be quickly adopted without extensive development or audits.

Typical Workflow:

1. Initiation: DAO defines working group, budget amount, milestones, and assigns roles (Milestone Marker, Approver, and Release Signer).

2. Funding: DAO treasury deposits funds into the smart escrow.

3. Milestone Completion: Working groups complete tasks and mark milestones as delivered.

4. Approval & Review: DAO-appointed approvers review milestone completions, approving or disputing them.

5. Automated Release: Upon approval, funds are automatically released to the working group without additional governance delays.

Example Scenario:

A DAO allocates a quarterly budget to its Product Development Working Group using Trustless Work. The Working Group clearly outlines their deliverables (milestones) for the quarter. Funds remain securely held in escrow until deliverables are marked as complete by the group and approved by DAO reviewers. Once approved, the smart escrow instantly releases the allocated budget to the Working Group’s wallet, ensuring transparency, accountability, and streamlined budget management.