[Retracted] Retrofunding for the Contribution Efficiency System (CES)

Safe Ecosystem General Discussion
1

Title: [Discussion]; Retrofunding for the Contribution Efficiency System (CES)

Authors: Areta

Created: 2025-07-11

Abstract
The Areta team is proud to have taken on key functionalities related to the operations of OBRA via the Contribution Efficiency System (CES) mandate for SafeDAO for 15 months in total.

Our work in OBRA operations includes everything from, project onboarding, milestone-setting & alignment, communication, reporting, and payout facilitation. The CES team was also a part of designing and facilitating OBRA retros and stakeholder feedback, which informed new iterations of the allocation program.

From the end of March 2025, we have operated the CES unfunded. During the OBRA restructuring phase, we continued supporting OBRA participants via Areta on a goodwill basis, with the intention to request retroactive funding once the DAO or Foundation decided on OBRA’s future. The Foundation appreciated this continued engagement and offered to share its positive experience with the DAO while noting that the final decision rests with the DAO.

In totally, we covered operations for 3 months at $7K/month, bringing the total retrofunding request to $21k.

Proposal types
SEP: Constitutional Proposals
SEP: Governance Proposals
Other SEPs

Proposal details
Purpose and Background

At the end of December 2024, SEP 52 extended CES funding for three additional months explicitly to bridge critical onboarding, reporting, and transparency functionality for OBRA until new funding structures emerged for SafeDAO that could adopt or institute its own frameworks.

This bridge mandate ended on March 31st, but appreciating that halting CES coverage for ongoing initiatives would’ve been disruptive to progress, we discussed a further bridge with the outlook for retrofunding when the next OBRA season is live. Thus, we continued to operate in full through to today.

During this unfunded gap, we:

In light of the proposed Safe DAO funding pause, which eliminates any later opportunities for retroactive funding for the CES, we are including this proposal in the current and final voting sprint.

Funding Request
We are requesting 21,000 USDC, in alignment with our bridge mandate’s monthly coverage of 7,000 USDC.

Context on CES
Since its inception, the CES has managed onboarding, milestone tracking, and reporting for 25 OBRA initiatives. In the latest stakeholder survey, the CES scored on average 8.7/10 across onboarding, communication, and reporting quality, meeting every target KPI set out for the program.

We hope that the CES’s transparent dashboards and structured workflows now serve as the reference point for any forthcoming reporting and transparency processes.

Implementation
Not applicable.

Copyright
Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

1 Like
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For me it’s very hard to see that this funding request being justified. As the relationship to the actual work put in is hard to draw.

  • Supported 4 OBRA initiatives through final milestone completion and payouts;

Maybe it helps explaining a bit more what “supported” here means exactly. E.g. what was done with the OBRA initiatives and how many hours of work went into it?

  • Published monthly reporting updates (ie. 1, 2, 3)

These are short reports with mostly the same structure / content, so only slight changes each month.

I can’t really see significant changes in the Notion over the last 3 months. Even the change-log doesn’t mention anything new.

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Given this, I don’t support this proposal. I think generally the compensation Areta received over the last months compared to the effective workload seems very fair to me and I think the minimal optimistic effort over the last three months should be seen in that context. The resource allocation pause proposal acknowledges that generally the DAOs resource allocation was not most impactful in the past, and I think it would be a strange signal to at the same time accept this one.

In any case I thank you for your service over the past months and hope that there can be collaborations on other fronts going forward.

2 Likes
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To be honest, I don’t know what your “CES” has contributed

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Hey Lukas, thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts.

For transparency to the DAO, we have now discussed this proposal bilaterally with Lukas and have agreed to bear the costs of the past three months of CES operations internally, and as such, will be retracting this proposal. We’re doing so in recognition of our long-standing relationship and previous mandates with Safe Foundation and as a gesture of goodwill, with the intention to continue supporting the DAO transition on an ongoing basis as both a DAO member and delegate. We look forward to what’s to come!

If you’re interested, the CES has taken many shapes over the past year, always with the goal of supporting OBRA. To see more a more detailed view of what that support entailed, here’s an updated list of CES deliverables.

2 Likes