TL;DR
BadgerDAO was relentless in building through very difficult conditions in 2022 (see retrospective report). The challenges faced acted as a catalyst for elevating the DAO's business maturity:
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Numbers are more clear and sustainable, leading to better informed decision making
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Service providers are upgrading with more narrow focus and higher quality, at less cost
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The protocol is progressing towards more decentralization and censorship resistance
Performance highlights include:
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2022 revenue of $4.6M is 25% higher than initial projections
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Year-over-year contractor costs were reduced by 45%, consulting support was lowered by 50%, and emissions will drop over 90% for Q1 2023
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Various products were discontinued, either due to their profitability or discontinued technical support elsewhere (i.e. renBTC)
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BadgerDAO ended the year with $22M worth of assets in its treasury, of which $3.5M are stablecoins. With a budgeted stablecoin burn rate of $192k/month for 2023, and without assuming any revenue or selling of assets, there is a 20 month runway. Also taking projected revenue into account, this runway extends to about three years
The following report provides more depth into performance and supporting financials:
Assets
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Bitcoin was swapped for ether to create a more balanced exposure to both (TCD#15)
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Again, to increase exposure to Ether, auraBAL was divested of (TCD#16)
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The total treasury devaluation of -$13.5M is mostly due to BADGER's price dropping from $3.44 to $2.10, next to general downturn in the cryptocurrency market (S&P Cryptocurrency MegaCap Index lost -13,6% during the last quarter of 2022) and a minor negative result over Q4 (see Profit & Loss)
Investments
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Opolis (BIP#49): 17.9M WORK staked (~$225k), plus another 10.1M WORK vesting over the next 33 months (~$126k)
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zeroDAO (BIP#50, BIP#96): zeroDAO is actively raising funds. BadgerDAO will receive 30% of funds that are being raised pre-token. At token launch, BadgerDAO receives 12% of total supply
Profit & Loss
Non-native (i.e. excluding BADGER and DIGG) P&L:
For a full profit and loss statement inclusive of BADGER and DIGG, please refer to this particular P&L report.
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The 2022 revenue of $4.6M is 25% higher than the initially projected 2022 revenues. The extra performance comes from BadgerDAO’s success in the Aura ecosystem, the launch of new products, and coinciding treasury management.
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Diminishing performance and withdrawal fees (especially in Q3 and Q4) for certain vaults forced product discontinuation per the policy. This has allowed for a better focus on the remaining, profitable vaults.
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At the beginning of 2022 the total projected expenses for 2022 were $5M stablecoins, 450 ether, and 2.5M BADGER tokens (excluding restitution). Actuals for 2022 show a spend of $3.9M stablecoins, 149 ether, and 3.5M BADGER tokens respectively (excluding restitution). This is a 20% reduction in planned stablecoins spend, ~63% reduction in ether spend and a 40% increase in BADGER spend due to market conditions and a one time restructuring cost. For more details, see this costs report.
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Further operational cost reductions in Q4 should lead to another 10% savings in stablecoins spent in 2023. Cuts to emissions and operating costs could lead to a 50% reduction in BADGER spend in 2023. The amount of ether will likely be the same as 2022.
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Contractors and (native) emissions continued to be the largest expense for the DAO in Q4 2022.
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After the reorganization, a large portion of the contractors is now being paid in BADGER only, hence the reduction in non-native costs for contributors. Going forward, there is expected to be another 10-20% reduction in contractor spend, as well as a ~50% reduction in consulting spend.
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A BIP was passed in Q4 allowing the DAO to cut back emissions to unprofitable products. For this reason, emissions in Q1 will be reduced by 90%. This will greatly reduce the sell pressure on the token and extend the operational runway.
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Cashflow
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At the beginning of 2022-Q3 the DAO successfully reorganized its operating structure in order to extend the operational runway. These efforts were pushed further in Q4 reducing the total number of contractors and contributors. This has resulted in another ~10%+ reduction in stablecoins spent and extended the DAOs runway.
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With a budgeted stablecoin burn rate of $192k per month for 2023, and without assuming any revenue or selling of assets, the DAO will be able to continue to operate for another 20 months. However, based on results from Q4, a monthly stablecoin inflow of $50k-100k is expected. This would extend the runway to roughly three years without selling any of the current assets.
Restitution
The DAO has expended native and non-native assets to pay back victims of the December 2021 exploit. With a one time 600k BADGER outlay to seed remBADGER in 2022 and a one time expense of $10M USDC was used to buy BTC to distribute to victims of the December 2021 exploit. An additional 700k BADGER was deposited into remBADGER over the course of 2022 and the remaining 700k BADGER has been queued to be automatically emitted in 2023 to the remaining holders.
In Q4 the total outstanding denominated dollars from the restitution program reduced from $62.2M to $59M (-$3.2M). Due to market conditions and participants in the program choosing to withdraw, the nominal value of the remBADGER vault was reduced from $1.9M to $1.1M during Q4.
As of the end of Q4 a total of $2M BADGER have been distributed and $1.1M worth of BADGER are claimable from the remBADGER vault at current market prices. Were BADGER to return to its current 20 week moving average ($3.05), this would give a total of $3.7M paid to the victims who continue to participate in the restitution program. Note that the estimate is $13.7M if one includes the initial $10M in WBTC airdropped directly to victims’ wallets regardless of their participation in remBADGER restitution program.
Live Dune dashboard tracking the remBADGER program.
Sources
Most of the data presented here is sourced from various interactive reports in Google Looker Studio, all updated at least once a day:
For a technical review of these reports, such as what (on-chain) sources they use, see this post:
List of treasury’s on-chain addresses and corresponding links: https://github.com/Badger-Finance/badger-multisig#multisig-addresses
Be relentless. Be Badgers