2025 DIC Election

1

This proposal is to ratify 4 of the existing 5 DIC members. The options for the vote are as follows:

  1. Agree to continue the roles of Tridog, Smoke, Shubh and Ellio on the DIC, as well as all other recurring costs. Tridog will take on the role of “Communicator to Atsuko” as specified in the constitution.

  2. Reject this proposal and call a full election of the DIC and review of all spending.

The link to the snapshot vote is here: https://snapshot.org/#/s:ownthedoge.eth/proposal/0xafebb5d19bd94042737df7952d920825647aeafe744a32ff8190ca06dc38c9e7

This post is to communicate details of the work done by the existing members, as well as the salaries they are paid by the DAO.

The existing structure and running costs were deemed acceptable by myself, as the largest token holder, when I joined the team, in the handover from PleasrDAO.

A breakdown of all costs for the previous year can be found in the token-gated discord channel:

If you have any questions, please post them in the channel.

Existing members have written a short description of themselves as part of their reapplication process. They are posted below:

Ellio:

Hi I’m Ellio, I’m helping as a jack of all trades within Own The Doge, from IP, Marketing, and mainly helping out the Brand “Own The Doge, Wow By Doge” together with the other team members.

My background comes from a decade in agency work spanning from multiple clients, and i’ve grossed over 1 billion in combined views with content.

Shubh:

Hi, I am Shubh- head of socials and marketing for Own The Doge. It has been almost 2.5 years since I have been associated with OTD; transitioning roles from a content writer, woof weekly co host, social media intern, DIC member, MSIG, head of socials and now the CMO. I have had the opportunity to meet with Atsuko twice and have deep love and respect for her.

OTD is the only project I have ever associated with in the web3 space. I have seen it evolve each day in our journey towards starting the Do Only Good Everyday movement. It is a unique organisation where culture and values preceed money. Today, the name OTD is a brand established as one of the most ethical organisations in the market. We hold ourselves to a very high standard. In teams as enthusiastic yet small as ours, there has always been individuals wearing multiple hats- advising and strategising together. All achievements of OTD are collective and I have played a significant role in everything done and achieved in the last couple years.

For areas directly under my supervision, our socials have grown exponentially. I took complete control in mid 2023 with 18k followers on X and 12k combined followers on Instagram and TikTok. From there, we have grown to a whopping 220k+ cross channel following for OTD, including X, Instagram, TikTok, Warpcast and other experimental channels. Our engagement rate has been shot up from <5% to 8.7% as well. Social media campaigns and marketing around

  • Base airdrop [60k+ followers increased]
  • Doge Days [150M+ impressions, #DogeDay trending]
  • activations with Atsuko [impact report, Doge and Neiro IP announcements, etc]

have been some of my major success meterics that have taken OTD to the next level.

Being in the council have consistently given me an overall perspective of all day to days of the project, assisting me deeply in my roles. I would love to serve the Doge for another term and continue excelling on what we have built. My vision for 2025 highly focuses on X activations, awareness campaigns, community building and marketing strategies for all our web3 activations. We have built a lot in the last few years and will continue to do so in the coming years. Now is also our time to show and shine, making Kabosu and Atsuko proud!

Smoke:

Hey frens It’s Smoke, I’m Chief Operating Officer, Head of Partnerships and member of the Doge Improvement Council at Own The Doge.

I’ve been with the team for 3 amazing years and look forward to more to come.

Some accomplishments I’m proud of:

DIC

Created the DIC “How To Create a Winning Proposal” structure
Created much of the DIC process we currently use today.
Drafted the original basis for the Constitution along with Zona, Coldplunge and Daogeshi that was later added to and ratified by Path. You can mint our Constitution here:
Lead DIC meetings for multiple years, helping to coordinate and execute on all ventures.

Chief Operating Officer & Head of Partnerships

Assist across all major activations and provide team support
Secured and finalized our MM deal with Wintermute
Secured and project managed all Magic Eden activations including our Doge Ledger collab
Lead the Revenue Meeting and most of the projects in this realm

Secured the large majority of Doge Day 2024 Sponsors and assist with Doge Day operations yearly
Recruited at least 50% of staff including all current moderators
Project manage the large majority of launches
Secured partnerships with major projects and platforms across the ecosystem
Host the Woof Weekly Call for the last 2+ years and have secured the majority of guests over this time.

Tridog:

TLDR

Tridog currently sits on the DIC (Doge Improvement Council), oversees project operations as Chief Dog, as well as the Atsuko relationship he has built over the last 3 years leading the Own The Doge project.

BACKGROUND

Tridog is a startup founder, cult builder, and dog lover who’s built and sold 2 companies and directed $69M in venture capital in Silicon Valley. He’s led the DOG project for the past 3 years, guiding initiatives like the Hollywood-backed Doge Documentary, building the strongest relationship with Atsuko Sato leading to an exclusive license agreement, and bringing on Path to lead tokenomics.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Since launching the Own The Doge project in 2021, we’ve built a dedicated team and community of Doge fans who’ve helped us accomplish more in 3 years than most other culture DAOs or memecoins have ever done. I often like to say we are more Doge than Dogecoin, and that’s not a slight to $DOGE, they are the people’s currency, and we are the people’s art, but I think we’ve proven our dedication to furthering Doge culture and bringing Doge to all the places she’s never been, from Hollywood to Bronze to Space.

Some of these accomplishments include:

  • Grew holders from 5,000 to 1,100,000 over 3 years
  • Became the only endorsed project by Atsuko Sato, the owner of the Kabosu/Doge
  • Secured the exclusive Doge IP and have returned funds/attention to Atsuko, charity, and Doge culture via partnerships with Revolut, D3 (.doge), FuckJerry, YouTooz, Ledger, TASCHEN’s "On NFTs” coffee table book, and other Doge collectibles and initiatives
  • Began building THE Doge Brand to become the Disney of crypto
  • Brought on Path to the DIC to lead tokenomics
  • Secured the exclusive Neiro IP to protect and steward Atsuko’s newly adopted dog
  • Signed with Scout, one of the top Hollywood unscripted producers (Queer Eye, Merpeople) for the Doge Documentary (in partnership with X, Republic)
  • Launched Wow by Doge store and merch
  • Built a bronze Doge statue in Japan where we host an annual pilgrimage for International Doge Day (an official holiday on the National Day Calendar) where we’ve created 2 viral meme collisions with Doge, Bad Luck Brian, Awkward White Guy Smile, and Scumbag Steve
  • Grew cross-channel social audience from 10k to 300k
  • Secured 500+ news stories covering Own The Doge and our initiatives
  • Continue to build Doge lore by minting the FIRST DOGE photo, auctioning off the literal Doge couch (for charity), and planning the first Doge Pilgrimage to bring Doge superfans back to Japan where the story began almost 2 decades ago
  • Doge as art: Largest Doge art on Ireland beach, Doge displayed in a castle, first Doge art gallery exhibit,
  • Doge in major book publication on NFTs
  • Donated the largest crypto gift ever to Save The Children
  • $4.25 million total donated between Own The Doge and Atsuko to dog and kids charities
  • Sending the Doge meme to literal lunar orbit on DOGE-1 (soon)
  • Sequenced the Doge’s DNA
  • Doge mask TEDx Talk

Overall, I think our most powerful act has been maintaining the Do Only Good Everyday values of Doge and through it spreading joy and leaving a positive pawprint on the world. This ethos is why the Doge movement began. Atsuko saved Kabosu from a kill shelter and posted the iconic photo as an ode to her love for her best friend. It’s a love story.

STRATEGY MOVING FORWARD

I would like to do a few things as we continue evolving the project.

  1. Fuel the growing meta in crypto around IP with Doge IP as the most recognizable success story by scaling our licensing deals and brand partnerships with ramped outreach and platforms like Story, Purr, Spaceport, and other licensing partners we use.
  2. Become THE Doge brand and build a HUGE Doge fandom uniting the meme audience on X, socials, and beyond. Success is Doge being recognized as the Disney of crypto.
  3. Continue working closely with Path/DIC to drive DOG adoption via our tokenomics initiatives in collaboration with Pleasr, Wintermute, airdrops, and other key partners while staying true to our ethical memecoin, provenance coin approach.

NEVER FORGET

Doge is…

  • Most famous dog in the world

  • Most famous meme in the world

  • 1B memes created annually

  • The Internet’s Mona Lisa

  • Crypto’s Disney

  • One of the most expensive memes/photos ever sold

6 Likes
2

I’d love for this team to stay and will vote as such, great job guys and please continue the good work :+1:

Neiro BroPump

7 Likes
4

I voted yes regarding the DIC elections. However, I do think the salaries are aggressive, especially relative to OTD revenues/mcap. I voted yes bc I think if we restructure the DIC now, we would be vulnerable for the next 3-6mo arriving at new terms, getting potentially new people aligned operationally, etc. Doing this while ‘managing’ Neiro and the IP stuff just doesn’t make sense from a timing perspective.~

I’m willing to bet on the team (they’ve earned it) given the momentum but I’d need to see us 20x+ and more importantly, grow ourselves out of our burn with revenue, not OTC/Treasury. $80-90k burn/mo today is not sustainable.

I 100% love paying our people but for a $50m ‘startup’, our OPEX is too high. Introducing bonuses/milestones or something more performance based makes a lot of sense to me. This can be revisited but I think it’s important we’re all on the same page, that expectations are high and accountability is high under the current structure.

Update: I’ve changed my vote and rejected this proposal. I think we need to have a better sense of our recurring revenues as it stands today relative to expenses. This will inform our salary budget and general operating needs.

Thanks,
Dres

7 Likes
5

I don’t want to upset current DIC members who I consider frens and have worked with closely since just after the project’s conception.

However, I agree with Dres that salaries are aggressive and potentially unfairly distributed.

I would like to see this changed so have voted to reject. I don’t want to see a complete reworking of the DIC members, but I’d like to see an opportunity for new members to join and for salaries to be renegotiated based on the amount of work/impact provided by individuals.

With the constitution in place, and with demonstrative longterm contributors remaining attached to the project, I am not overly concerned with the timing of this.

Performance based payment sounds more sensible to me.

5 Likes
6

while I appreciate the previous team efforts with getting the IP and working with the doge mom closely for all those years i think it’s time to let new fresh blood in. There’s hundreds of high energy community members that should be given the opportunity to lead especially with those insanely high salaries. Getting constantly outperformed by anons leading other similar projects like neiro is embarrassing. We need enthusiasm and energy and hustle not getting paid insane salaries to be wholesome on twitter.

3 Likes
8

i agree 100%.
(Post must be 20 Letters, because of that you are reading this)

10
  1. The 4 DIC members have my full support, based on what they have achieved in their respective domains.
  2. BUT, I don’t think it’s fair to tie spending review and role continuation into the same snapshot.
  3. There are sure aspects that are not fulfilled by the current DIC, that whether such aspects must be addressed or not (e.g. speculation?) is another question. I personally don’t see this as incompetency of the current DIC - I mean, if nobody asked for that in the first place or if it’s simply not the priority/doesn’t align with project vision etc…so the DIC didn’t work on those, doesn’t mean they don’t know how to.
  4. In this case^, you need plans, OKRs (in a way that they won’t be mistaken as KPIs that must be achieved), something you can come back to and see if the DIC’s performance is satisfactory.
2 Likes
11

is there anywhere i can find the overview of current monthly spending? Because i just saw someone mention 80-90k / month which is insane tbh.

1 Like
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via discord link in path’s proposal above. spreadsheet(s) at top of ‘2025-elections’ channel

14

Regardless of the outcome of this vote there needs to be a restructuring of salaries and a cap. The top salaries are unsustainable and hurt our runway. Even if that means a vote.

3 Likes
15

who am I and why does this vote matter?

16

My vote has nothing to do with anyone on the DIC or to change their roles, but the salaries and the “spending” bring more questions than answers. That’s my reason to reject.

4 Likes
17

Gonna Echo many other people’s sentiment here.
Nothing against current members of the DIC. Quite the opposite in fact, but some of the top salaries are quite insane.
I know money can seem just a digit and in the crypto world things can get bloated but I just can’t justify top 1% salaries for what we have here, and it’s not about the work that has been done, it’s about common sense.

Whatever the result of the vote I think it’s sensible to restructure top salaries

4 Likes
18

yes, please check OTD discord on 2025-elections channel o/w we will also be having an AMA w/ DIC in our bark chat channel tomorrow that you are welcome to join as well to ask any qs.

20

I do agree here.
I’ve been active in this forum and lurked into the last DAO votes. It feels like most decisions are profit driven now.

Especially the moderation on the Neiro IP vote seemed extremely biased.

Atsuko is now associated with a project that is shady to say the least. Her veto right was violated and voting manipulation was accepted.

If there’s no systemic change here, I don’t see a net positive in the future for anyone but a handful of people.