ReFi DAO · Steward Council Election – Office Hour

Friday, May 1, 2026 · 14:00 UTC

Thank you to everyone who joined the call. Here's what we covered, what got surfaced, and what comes next.

What we walked through

We spent the first part of the call on the one-pager — what the Council is, who can run, how voting works, the timeline. Then surfaced into open Q&A. The v3 Proposal and the Commons v1 page are linked at the bottom for anyone who wants the deeper detail.

Key points discussed

• 🪑 Council size: 7 stewards to start. No pushback from the room. Monty added the team-effectiveness research framing — 4–6 is the high-performance sweet spot, 7 leaves space for varied contribution levels. The Council can vote within its first 60 days to expand toward 10 (drawing from the same May ranking).
• 🗳️ Voting on Snapshot · May 15 → 30 · allowlist · pick up to 7. 15-day window, change-your-vote until close, public live tallies, full results published at close.
• 🤝 Decision-making framework — Regen Commons matrix as the seed. Decisions get classified by importance × knowledge distribution: low-impact moves go ahead; medium-impact gets announced and proceeds unless blocked; high-impact goes through consent. The seated Council formalizes the practice in onboarding.
• 💰 Funding sustainability — substantial discussion kicked off by John Ellison's question about what's realistically operationally feasible with the current treasury (~$10–15k cross-chain across 7 networks):
  • John proposed a steward compensation model tied to partnership capital they bring in — incentive-aligned business development.
  • Monty: more bullish on partnerships outside Web3 — institutional channels via the Bridging Worlds work; ReFi DAO Global in a "lightweight global coordination" role while Local Nodes pursue local partnerships.
  • Luiz: Artisan grants (potential summer windfall), Marcelo's Good Dollar proposal (recurring income), and continued contribution-points tracking as a forward-looking reputation/token signal.
  • Afo (Greenpill): Endowment model is the most attractive near-term — Greenpill's Greengoods pilot uses wrapped ETH + DAI vaults on Arbitrum, garden-localized, governed by each garden's community. A few ReFi nodes are already in the cohort.
  • Compensation will be one of the first decisions the seated Council takes — including how to incentive-align with capital being brought in.
• 🛡️ OPSEC concern raised by Raam (arbitrum DAO experience). The contributor list is currently public; a Tally form for covenant-signing creates an impersonation vector — anyone could copy a name + wallet from the public list and submit it claiming to be that person. Mitigations going into the Network Member flow:
  • Wallet-signature gating on the covenant (signed message, not just typed)
  • Move the contributor list to non-public reference (used internally for fast-tracking past contributors, not displayed)
  • Raam offered to share advice from arbitrum DAO's elections — much appreciated.
  • Action: revising the flow before the form goes live; will be settled at the Tue May 5 working session with Monty.
• 📊 Prosperity Pass status. Antonio asked. Celo's product environment has shifted; Prosperity Pass is paused / under review. ReFi DAO contribution tracking continues independently in our own database — Prosperity Pass was an additional on-chain badge layer, not a dependency. The historical contribution record stands either way.

Where the candidate slate stands

Currently 7 candidates registered through the Tally form (5 form submissions + Luiz + Monty). No new live signals during the call — but the nominations window is open through May 15, and we're encouraging people who've been on the fence to come forward over the next two weeks.

If you're considering it: 👉 Steward Council Interest Form

If you know someone who should be in the seat: tag them, DM them, or just point them at the one-pager.

Where things go from here

A note on the recording