BankFi

I'd prefer to abolish the concept of an NCL in general, since it seems to be used as a spending target rather than a limit. But since that's not an option at the moment, I prefer to see it increased. DReps have a responsibility to take treasury fund availability into account when approval proposals. An arbitrary limit on this amount is akin to training wheels for the DReps and prevents the ability to seize opportunity as it arises. For any DReps reading this, please do not look at the NCL as an allowance that you need to spend all at once... if the proposal will not net positive value for Cardano relative to the ask, do not approve it just because we have funds available...

BlockFrost has been pivotal to our team's infrastructure for 6 years without a single lapse in service. They are one of the most, if not THE most, reliable data providers on Cardano. We are not voting YES out of a bias to avoid changing our tech stack -- but our history with BlockFrost does give us confidence in our vote to support them. There may be competitors, but high-throughput data infrastructure is not a commodity; not all companies have the same offerings and capabilities. We do not have enough confidence in other data providers to readily sunset BlockFrost, and that does not even factor in all of the existing companies that utilize BlockFrost and would need to either migrate to another provider or shut down their Cardano integrations.

Eternl is a staple of Cardano, and we just purchased their Pro plan to vote on this proposal. With that said, this proposal circumvents the Cardano Builder DAO, which we firmly believe should be the key funding mechanism for revenue-producing companies on Cardano to reach profitability. By placing this decision in the hands of the DReps rather than the other expert builders on Cardano, this commercial funding decision cannot be compared alongside all other commercial funding proposals in the Cardano Builder DAO, which reduces competition and restricts the ability of the CB DAO to fulfill its purpose. Because our view is not shaped by the proposal itself but rather our preferred funding mechanism for a proposal like this, we choose to abstain.

From the perspective of innovative products and builders, Cardano is bleeding out. Many sources of funding for builders have been discontinued and the current market is not effective at fostering successful companies who operate primarily on Cardano. The CB DAO has shown a concerted effort for fair, effective, outcome-based funding for builders that have a track record and practical path towards sustainable revenue and long-term growth. Cardano's history has been marred with grifts, inefficient grants, and excessive administrative overhead. The CB DAO tackled all of those problems and continues to constantly evolve towards a better system. Many case studies of funded projects have shown tangible, meaningful growth for Cardano's 2030 vision KPIs. The DAO is not only a source of funds, but also a collaborative environment where Cardano companies are able to drive business development through partnerships and competition alike. Without funding of the CB DAO, we will see many Cardano products -- several on the cusp of profitability and sustained success -- shut down. Cardano does not actively have a user base that makes it financially viable to focus a company's operations in the ecosystem. Subsidizing application/product development in a responsible way is the only path towards adoption, and the CB DAO is the only vessel we trust to meet our standards and operate effectively for this purpose.

While we support the initiative as a whole and see value in DeFi (specifically stablecoin) liquidity, we cannot justify the overhead costs that accompany the liquidity management. For legal formation with a limited 1 year of regulatory oversight, we foresee potential complications arising after the first year. Ultimately, we are not confident that the DeFi Liquidity budget as a whole will be successful in its mission of creating organic trading activity, and the overhead described in the first withdrawal further decreases our confidence in an effective deployment of these funds.

It is our stance that any treasury funding given to a private, for-profit entity, in the pursuit of growing a for-profit product, should be denied unless there is a clear and risk-adjusted repayment schedule. The treasury may invest in public infrastructure with no repayment schedule, and it may make strategic investments in companies with a repayment schedule, but we do not see it as viable to fund projects in the way this proposal requests.

Although Cardano's network is decentralized, it would be naive to ignore the significance that the founding entities (and others in the proposal) have on the direction, adoption, and overall success of Cardano. These entities working together, on goals that we have seen echoed throughout the community consistently, is one of the most effective uses of Treasury funds that we can imagine in the current context of the ecosystem.

While this proposal may be well-intentioned, it lacks the transparency necessary to earn our support. Perhaps the most pivotal aspect of this proposal, as it pertains to ensuring a positive outcome for Cardano, is that it is structured as a loan. While the terms of the loan seem reasonable, the entirety of how the loan is enforced is covered by the following: "the obligation will remain enforceable under the binding loan agreement administered by Intersect". Without a clear ability to enforce the loan, this proposal loses its core value proposition. Without a clear ability to enforce the loan, all terms of the loan become irrelevant. The proposal does not detail a transparent collateral or revenue-based obligations with historical data to allow for risk analysis. Due to this, it falls short of demonstrating the risk factor that the Cardano Treasury is exposed to by issuing this loan.