Badgers In the Sett: A DAO Treasury Retrospective (Volume 01)
Badger is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on building products and infrastructure necessary to accelerate the growth of Bitcoin in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) across multiple blockchains. An ecosystem where projects and people from across all DeFi can come together to build and release collaborative offerings.
Revenue
Since launching in December, Badger DAO has generated over $18.1MM total revenue at booking ($15.1MM at current prices), >90% of cumulative revenue has been driven by core strategies; and in the month of May the DAO generated more than $2.8MM of booked Revenue across all product lines including the new Bridge and ibBTC.
Net income over the first 6 months of operations was $15.2MM, or $3.41 net-income (earnings) per share, and Badger currently trades at 3.7 times earnings.
More recently the DAO has begun launching Bitcoin focused setts in partnership with other DAOs to grow BTCs use across DeFi; already seeing positive signs, Badger expects to see accelerated growth over the next 6 months.
- yvwBTC multi strategy vault with partner Yearn Finance has already accounted for >8% of total revenue booked (~$1.5MM in income) in the first five weeks of launch the DAO has earned 33 wBTC.
- Badger Bridge, released at the beginning of May, has already booked 6.9 renBTC; and the 2:1 ratio of inflows to outflows speaks positively about future revenue projections in coming months.
The Bridge will function as the primary on ramp to accelerate BTC in Defi and drive new products releases such as:
- ibBTC — Badger DAOs newly launched single-asset multi-strategy BTC token built with DeFi Dollar.
- CLAWS — Badger DAO stable asset planned for launch in coming months
ibBTC will soon be useful broadly across the DeFi ecosystem as collateral on L2 Money Markets, allowing wallets to to issue stable assets (i.e. CLAWS) opening up further DeFi use cases for Bitcoin collateral; this will position the Badger DAO as the premier BTC onboarding ramp to DeFi and further accelerating revenue projections.
The Badger DAO has plans to further grow this ecosystem by continuing to work and partner with other DAOs, such as Opolis, a Professional employment organization that is a Badger Annexe Investment, to include ibBTC as an option through which employees in web3 (and soon beyond) can take payment.
Treasury
Despite the recent market turmoil, the Badger DAO proactively worked with strategic partners to diversify holdings to provide plenty of runway to navigate the volatile crypto markets. The Strategic Diversification gave Badger $21MM in USDC at an average price of roughly exchange rate of $34 per $BADGER; of which $6.4MM of USDC has been deployed under the A tranche of the USDC Productivity Protocol, half in Aave, and half in Compound.
Broken across our diverse assets DAO token holders currently control over $120MM in value between $Badger, $Digg, Revenue BTC’s, SLP Positions, xSUSHI, FARM; of which, 15% is held in stable assets from diversification.
Badger DAO is considering further efforts to create recurring diversification strategies and earn interest on holding; such as depositing Alchemix and buyback $BADGER below the prices at which it was strategically sold once ALCX raises its debt ceiling. Further tranches will be considered dependent on the risk spectrum all with the central focus on ensuring liquidity and longevity of Badger assets.
As venues to utilize Badger assets productively grow (C.R.E.A.M, Ruler, and Unit are examples of places Badger, bBadger, Digg, and ibBTC can currently be utilized as collateral) so too will DAO farming activities with native assets.
Operating Expenses
The DAO currently has 10 Full-Time Contributors totaling $1.04MM USD and 135,300 $BADGER annually. The team expects future growth to require additional contributors on a full-time basis and has set aside upwards of $4.5MM in liquid USDC in the Dev Multi-sig. All of these funds are under token holder control.
Additionally, the DAO has a robust community of contributors who support in many ways. Since inception the DAO has given out more than 40K $BADGER to active community contributors through the grants program and bounty initiatives such as those put together by contributor VLK.
On just under $1.8MM in Operating Expenses to date the DAO’s $18MM Revenue at booking brings current Net Operating Income to around $16.2MM.
Moving Forward
Moving forward we’ll be surfacing data more regularly: weekly updates on revenues, bi-weekly office hours to share and discuss DAO activities, monthly highlights (similar to this document), and quarterly reporting will all be ramping up over the coming weeks.
I look forward to sharing more of what’s going on at BadgerDAO as well as contributing to the broader ecosystem through ideation and education. Many of us are ‘new here’. It’s a new space but we each have talents, perspective, and experience to bring to the table.
My experience from education to risk management, accounting to equities analysis, and through various stages of the startup and fundraising world have only begun to prepare me for what’s coming; to keep up in this space is a full time job but it is one I love more and more each day. In this moment we have the opportunity to build the tools to lift one another and many more to higher levels of coordination, cooperation, and generally… happiness. Let’s use it.
We’re always looking for new talent, come do what you do best with a DAO that has a true community first ethos, the Badger DAO. Reach out over twitter @summmason or through the Badger Public Discord if you want to talk treasury!
How Do I Learn More?
There are many ways to engage the Badger DAO community and educate yourself on the use of our protocol.
