Gnosis DAO is facing a massive treasury withdrawal proposal as the "Treasury Raider" makes a comeback

Original Title: "RFV Raiders" target Gnosis DAO for treasury redemption proposal

Original Source: Protos
Original Translation: Chopper, Foresight News

A group of radical investors (or so-called treasury "raiders") is targeting GNO token holders with a treasury redemption proposal.

GIP-150 proposes a one-time, opt-in, proportionally distributed treasury redemption scheme. If the proposal is approved, supporters will proportionally split a portion of the over $220 million reserve funds in the Gnosis DAO treasury.

This proposal comes less than six months after the removal of treasury steward KPK from the Gnosis DAO. The proposer, Wismerhill, stated that the GNO token has been trading at a discount to the net asset value of the Gnosis DAO treasury for an extended period, with the discount gap widening.

He further added that despite the recent allocation of $22.5 million in funds from the DAO to Gnosis Ltd, the discount relative to net assets has only increased, providing minimal value capture for GNO.

The proposal is currently open for voting, with a deadline of May 12. While early support votes were significantly ahead, of the 330,000 votes cast, 65% are against.

The redemption amount will be based on 1.3 million eligible GNO tokens on a pro-rata basis, excluding tokens held by Gnosis Ltd, as this entity has historically received DAO funding support.

Based on this calculation, the redemption value per token is approximately $170, nearly 30% higher than the current $131 market price of GNO.

DeFi Community Reactions

DeFi commentator and GNO holder Ignas admitted, "The logic behind RFV's approach does make some sense," but also noted, "It is purely an arbitrage transaction, hardly a moral act," as he has voted against. (Note: RFV stands for risk-free value.)

Ethereum Foundation DeFi lead ivangbi also shares a similar view, stating that since Gnosis has never claimed to peg treasury assets to token price, holders do not have a moral claim to treasury redistribution.

Many people also consider Gnosis's contribution to the industry's ecosystem and do not agree with this proposal. Gnosis oversees core infrastructure projects such as Safe, CoW Swap, Gnosis Pay, and Gnosis Chain.

Gnosis founder Sebastian Bürgel bluntly asked, when did the industry's most respected ecosystem builder become a target for hedge funds' harvesting? Jito's ecosystem lead, Nick Almond, directly characterized this proposal as a blatant treasury rug pull exit.

Anthony Leutenegger, representing the Aragon team that was previously targeted by similar forces in 2023, offered a more moderate and rational view. He called for the industry to improve the programmatic token holder rights mechanism to better coordinate incentives and resolve such disputes.

Past RFV Sniping Cases

This group had previously launched similar treasury arbitrage actions in 2023, leading the industry to label them as RFV raiders, although the group does not acknowledge this title.

The projects targeted that year included Rook, FEI/Tribe, and Aragon, with Aragon ultimately being forced to reallocate treasury funds to transform it into an ecosystem donation support plan.

Not long ago, after the Beefy Finance token BIFI fell below its treasury's net asset price in April, the DAO swiftly introduced a buyback mechanism to avoid being exploited by RFV forces.

Regarding the current Gnosis incident, proposal initiator Wismerhill had previously admitted to greatly admiring the Gnosis DAO and had predicted that after the removal of KPK, Gnosis would make more business-oriented decisions in the future.

This current vote will ultimately test whether GNO holders prioritize short-term commercial arbitrage gains or long-term ecosystem development value.

Original Article Link