Introduction of Astar Finance Committee (AFC)

Astar
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Update Notice (as of 16:05 UTC+0)

The proposal has been updated with the following changes:

- Adjusted the cadence for performance reporting: minor reports will be shared monthly, and major reports quarterly

- Added a requirement for applicants to disclose any affiliations with specific projects to ensure neutrality. Also noted that any member of the Astar Collective may ask questions to applicants

- Clarified that buybacks must be conducted transparently to comply with MiCA and SEC regulations regarding token price manipulation

- Refined certain wording throughout the document for improved clarity

TL:DR;

The DAO Allocation currently lacks clear ownership. By transferring this allocation to a newly established Astar Finance Committee (AFC), AFC can actively utilize the resources to support strategic growth and strengthen the Astar ecosystem.

This proposal has already been shared with the following groups for initial feedback:

  • Astar Community Council (March 24th, 2025)
  • Astar Agents (April 2nd, 2025)

AFC Diagram - Frame 1
AFC Diagram - Frame 11868Ă—836 98 KB

Background

Over the past 12 months, the Astar ecosystem has faced several challenges, including sustained sell pressure and limited strategic intervention. At the same time, Astar is well-positioned within the growing Soneium ecosystem—an opportunity that can be leveraged to overcome these structural issues and revitalize the ecosystem. However, the current absence of non-native assets in the treasury limits the ability to offer diversified and sustainable incentives. As a result, incentive recipients often convert $ASTR rewards into cash, which reinforces the sell pressure and diminishes the long-term effectiveness of incentive programs.

Establishment of the Astar Finance Committee (AFC)

To address this structural limitation, the Astar Foundation proposes the Astar Finance Committee (AFC) as a dedicated body to receive and utilize the DAO Allocation for generating sustainable revenue streams, accelerating ecosystem growth, and ensuring long-term value returns to the Astar ecosystem. The AFC will actively manage the grant from the DAO and implement strategic treasury operations, including mobilizing revenue from Layer 2 networks such as Soneium and the Superchain back to the Astar Collective.

The committee is proposed to be composed of a group drawn from the Astar Collective, with expertise across risk, growth, and treasury management. Based on prior experience, a 3-out-of-5 signature threshold is being considered for operations. To ensure responsiveness to market conditions, the AFC will operate on weekly or bi-weekly basis, sharing a minor report every month and a major report every quarter on the Astar Forum.

Possible Revenue Generation Strategies for Astar DAO

While specific strategies will be determined through discussions following the establishment of the AFC, the following approaches represent potential directions of AFC for revenue generation:

1. Provide $ASTR Liquidity on Lending Protocols
Supply $ASTR to lendings such as Untitled Bank and Sake Finance to earn yield and airdrops, while reinforcing $ASTR’s role as a primary currency within Soneium.

2. Provide Liquidity on DEXs
Utilize $ASTR in LST protocols (e.g., Algem, Astake, Bifrost, or Neemo) and create $ASTR/$ASTR LST pairs on DEXs such as Velodrome or Kyo Finance to generate yield.

3. Stake $ASTR on dApp Staking Projects
Stake $ASTR in selected dApps to increase staking TVL and receive additional $ASTR. For example, the AFC could select five projects and stake 25 million $ASTR in each, amplifying both on-chain activity and the DAO’s staking rewards.

4. Stake $ASTR on Other Protocols
Stake $ASTR on platforms like Ethereum L1’s Fast Finality layer to generate returns and earn future airdrops.

5. Partner with Experts for Optimized Yield
Collaborate with treasury managers (e.g., Gauntlet) to build customized and optimized treasury strategies.

6. Invest in Early-Stage Projects
Allocate capital to startups aligned with Astar’s vision through token swaps, grants for future tokens, or early investment in NFT sales and pre-seed rounds.

Possible Revenue Utilization Strategies for Astar DAO

While specific utilization plans will be determined by AFC considering various discussions, the following strategies outline potential ways AFC will deploy the revenue to benefit the Astar ecosystem.

1. Burn $ASTR
Burn a portion of $ASTR earned from staking or liquidity provision to support tokenomics and mitigate inflation.

2. Buy $ASTR
Use non-$ASTR revenue to buy back $ASTR from secondary markets. All buybacks must be conducted in a transparent manner to ensure compliance with MiCA and SEC regulations. The repurchased tokens can be burned or restaked for additional returns, based on future decisions of AFC.

3. Diversify the Treasury Portfolio
Hold alternative assets such as BTC, ETH, or stablecoins to reduce volatility risk and expand Astar DAO’s strategic reach. The future usage of earned $ASTR can be determined later through AFC’s decisions. One potential direction is to allocate this capital to high-growth startups building within the Astar ecosystem, either through direct investments or strategic partnerships.

Technical Implementation Details

To ensure a structured and transparent launch of the Astar Finance Committee (AFC), the following implementation steps are proposed.

AFC Formation
A committee will be formed through multisig operations, composed of representatives from key ecosystem stakeholders:

  • 2 members from the Astar Foundation
  • 1 member from the Community Council
  • 2 members from the Astar Collective

AFC Member Application Process
A new forum category will be created to facilitate the AFC application process. For a one-week period, any qualified member of the Astar Collective may apply to join the committee. Applicants should demonstrate strong financial expertise and a solid understanding of treasury strategy. All applicants must disclose any affiliations with specific projects to ensure neutrality. The Astar Foundation will review all submissions and may conduct interviews with select candidates. Any member of the Astar Collective may ask questions to the applicants during the application period. AFC members will receive compensation for their work, with the budget allocated from the onchain treasury with an onchain treasury proposal. Once the final members are confirmed, each will be provided with a hardware ledger through official vendors. To ensure transparency and security, an audit will be conducted during the unboxing and setup process.
In addition to full members, a small number of observers will also be selected. Observers are non-voting participants who may attend AFC sync meetings.

DAO Allocation Transition
The Astar Foundation and AFC will be authorized to establish the necessary legal and operational structure for AFC to receive the grant and to execute token burns, buybacks, and strategic investments in a compliant and transparent manner.

Evaluation Process
The committee will hold weekly or bi-weekly calls to discuss ongoing strategies and operational matters. To ensure accountability and transparency, the AFC will publish a minor report every month to provide updates on key initiatives. In addition, a major report will be released every quarter to summarize significant actions and current outcomes, including the yield earned and the amount of ASTR that was buybacked or burnt. All major activities will be shared with the Astar Collective, both for transparency and for historical recordkeeping. Furthermore, all multisig wallets and their transactions will be made publicly accessible to allow real-time tracking of treasury operations. Following the initial phase of operations, the multisig structure and overall performance of the AFC will be reviewed. If any member is found to be inactive or not fulfilling their responsibilities, the member will be removed and application process will be reopened to fill the position.

Strategy Execution
The AFC will be granted a portion of the treasury to be utilized across other blockchain protocols, delegate assets to qualified partners, and invest in projects that align with Astar’s long-term vision. Additionally, the grant (and returns from the grant) can be used to burn $ASTR, purchase $ASTR from secondary markets or through market-making partners, and transfer the acquired tokens to the ecosystem reserve. All operations conducted by the committee will be executed in real-time with cameras turned on and backgrounds disabled, ensuring full transparency.

Next Steps

The community’s input is essential to shaping the future of Astar. Feedback on this proposal is welcomed—from Collective partners, DAO contributors, and individual holders alike.

Now is the time to turn untapped resources into sustainable revenue, unlock new possibilities for ecosystem growth, and Make Astar Great Again—together!

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There have already been discussions in other threads regarding structural improvements to the DAO treasury, and I believe this proposal represents one possible solution. Looking ahead, relying solely on inflation-based mechanisms to grow assets is not a sustainable approach. In that sense, this could be seen as a proactive and healthier strategy.

The core idea would likely focus on growing non-ASTR assets through DeFi operations. For that reason, when selecting members to manage these operations, it’s advisable to avoid individuals directly affiliated with specific dApps to ensure neutrality.

Additionally, campaigns like the currently ongoing ACS campaign could potentially create conflicts of interest between DeFi operations and the broader community. Personally, I don’t see it as a significant issue, but if the community finds this problematic, we should take care to avoid overlapping with future campaigns by Astar or Soneium. A straightforward solution might be to simply exclude the AFC from being eligible for such campaigns.

I’d like to hear what other community members think about this point.

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Thanks a lot for your comments You :person_bowing:

Are you refering to this one: Thoughts on Treasury Management ?
This topic is related to our onchain treasury, this treasury is hand in hand with our governance system meaning it would be very slow to execute any active management through this threasury. This proposal would lift that burden by giving a mandate to the AFC.

100% aligned!

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Hi everyone,

The establishment of an AFC (Astar Financial Committee) to manage a DAO allocation by optimizing revenue through Soneium’s DeFi ecosystem (with the goal of buying, burning, and diversifying the treasury) feels like a key piece of the puzzle that was missing. I believe it adds real value to our tokenomics strategy.

It’s essential to have a committee that can operate autonomously, without the need for lengthy governance proposals for every single operation. Of course, this autonomy must come with full transparency and regular reporting on the operations and performance of the investment strategies being applied.

Regarding the reporting cadence, I believe a 6-month interval may be too long. Given how fast-paced this market is, I’d suggest a report every 3–4 months instead. That way, the community can track how the DAO’s funds are being managed more frequently—ideally not just twice a year.

As @you425 pointed out, I strongly agree that careful attention must be paid to the selection of AFC members. They should remain neutral and independent, with no internal ties to any specific dApp or project that could influence decision-making around fund management.

Regarding this point, I believe the AFC should assess each situation and ongoing campaign individually (currently, the ACS campaign) to determine whether specific strategies or fund allocations to certain platforms/dApps/campaign might conflict with the benefits intended for the community. If that’s the case, alternative approaches should be considered.

I don’t think this is a major issue, and there are possible solutions, such as:

  1. Redistributing ACS points directly to the community
  2. Limiting or removing the DAO’s eligibility to earn ACS points
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I agree.
I believe bi-monthly at least to inform outcomes with Astar community. Everything will be transparent in the way you would see it in Debank or Zerion regarding the funds and how it’s utilized but a monthly or bi-monthly report is at least also my expectation.

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As already mentioned, I believe that this initiative to transfer the DAO allocation to the Astar Collective to create an active and strategic mechanism is a move that can bring concrete results in the long term.

As @you425 and @SimonB also rightly pointed out, it is essential that the members of the AFC committee are not directly involved in dApps or projects that could generate conflicts of interest in the management of the funds. We need competent, neutral people who are solely focused on the goal of creating value for $ASTR.

The proposal to diversify the funds seems well balanced to me:

From the use of DeFi protocols on Soneium strengthens the presence of $ASTR in the ecosystem.

To staking on external protocols (such as those on Ethereum) by expanding and diversifying investment possibilities and
investments in early-stage projects are a good opportunity, but here too it is essential that decisions are taken impartially and with the sole objective that they are projects that bring real value to our ecosystem, without favoritism towards startups connected to the members of the committee.

Finally, to further strengthen transparency towards the community, I would suggest reducing the frequency of reporting from every 6 months to every 3 months. A quarterly update would allow to maintain high attention and engagement, as well as strengthen trust in the management of the treasury.

Overall, a great proposal.
Let’s keep going, all together for the future of Astar.

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I love this proposal!

Having a dedicated team to manage, enhance, and distribute our treasury is absolutely fantastic—simply beneficial for the entire ecosystem, from users to investors and dApps. I fully support the idea!

My only comment remains the six-month period to present results to the community. In my opinion, the crypto market moves at an incredible pace, and evaluating the AFC’s overall performance only twice a year feels like too long a timeframe.

My solution: present a full performance report every quarter (3 months).

In conclusion, I congratulate the team for doing an outstanding job on this matter.

MAGA!

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This is a good proposal. I agree, but we need report monthly, not 6 or 3 months. Too much time, If you can’t please delegate someone, we need trust and transparency with this price of the token. Community need to be assured more and more time, what is missing in the last year. I propose 1 report each month.

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I find this strategy very exciting. It shows that we are heading in new directions, led by the Ethereum Foundation , which allocated 50,000 ETH for DeFi participation through Aave and others . Seeing the Astar Foundation paving a similar path and strengthening DeFi within our own ecosystem (Soneium ) demonstrates a very smart move.

However, I believe the concerns regarding the strategies to be used and the dApps involved are relevant. We are still a new ecosystem, and we have yet to prove ourselves over time, particularly in terms of security, unlike Aave, for example.

I also believe that bringing @you425 into the discussions is important due to his advanced understanding of tokenomics and DeFi.

I like this allocation, especially when using the Ethereum Foundation (EF) as a benchmark—they allocated 50K out of 300K ETH (1/6) of their treasury. That’s why this structure makes a lot of sense:

33% of the treasury: Generate yield through DeFi.

33% of the treasury: Invest in projects or acquire IPs.

33% of the treasury: Keep idle.

However, investing in projects and acquiring IPs comes with high risk, something that should be approached with caution. Many dApps may not be able to generate the revenues that Astar Foundation (AF) is aiming for.

Additionally, it’s crucial to adopt an investor mindset rather than a supporter approach. Buying and selling should be profit-driven, ensuring the treasury maximizes its earnings. A long-term support strategy might not be the ideal approach for a DeFi-focused group that prioritizes treasury growth and revenue maximization.

That’s a good time frame for an informative outcomes report
The full report should be works by 6 months (once in one month we can’t even see the results of financial investments)

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Agree on all the points above.

  • Each member should be neutral, without any direct relationship with the projects.
  • The reporting cadence should be every 1–3 months.
  • Strategy establishment should be very cautious, including allocation, project risk analysis, and conflicts of interest with campaigns by Astar or Soneium
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It’s true that a monthly report clearly can’t tell us whether something implemented worked or not, but it will provide data that we can observe, compare, and improve upon month by month. As a community member, I would feel more comfortable being able to monitor the strategies carried out by the council on a monthly basis, rather than receiving a report every six months with results that could be either positive or negative.

I believe there shouldn’t be an issue with this. We can create a template that the council can use to generate these monthly reports, simply containing:

  1. Actions carried out during that month
  2. Metrics proposed for those actions
  3. Results achieved during that month

With this, anyone will be able to monitor the state of our treasury month by month—a treasury we must take great care of.

Six months is too long a time frame to assess strategies, their metrics, and achieved results in a market like ours, where we are still building solid technological foundations.

In fact, Simon’s and Maarten’s proposal makes much more sense to me than biannual reports.

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I agree that reports are also needed for community members to support us with new ideas or initiatives we can do. This proposal is now based on what the Foundation thinks works best but I’m more than happy to hear other thinks we can do to maximize the direction of buyback & burning.

Looking forward to hear more.
Also looking forward bringing it to our onchain governance to set it in stone.

Just out of curiousity, how would be interested in applying as being part of AFC?

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Seems I’m only allowed 3 replies. so editing to group some points together.

Concerns & Recommendations for the Astar Finance Committee Proposal

After reviewing the proposal in detail and following the discussion so far, I’d like to share some opinions and suggestions in regard to the proposal.

:memo: TL;DR

While the AFC could be a powerful tool for ecosystem growth, the current proposal structure:

  • Centralizes too much control in the hands of a few;
  • Fails to provide real DAO-based oversight;
  • May cause conflicts of interest and insider bias; and
  • Could be perceived to undermine transparency.

What I’ve Done:

I’ve broken down my feedback into seven issues. I also include practical recommendations — not just criticism — so we can move forward constructively as a community.

Please read through the posts and feel free to challenge or build on any point.

See the numbered replies below for each issue.

1. Conflict of Interest & Group Overlap

The AFC is to be composed of members from the Foundation, Community Council, and Astar Collective — many of who already sit on other councils, Astar governance groups, or are project leads. This raises clear concerns about power concentration and unchecked influence.

Further, many of these individuals are already involved in ACS-incentivized projects, meaning they could directly benefit from DAO decisions — which opens the door to real or perceived conflicts of interest.

Recommendations:

  • Require applicants to disclose any affiliation with projects, either ACS-funded or otherwise.
  • Avoid AFC compositions dominated by Foundation-linked or ACS-incentivized teams.
  • Enforce a rule limiting any project/team to one active governance seat across the AFC, Council and Collective. And
  • Require disclosure of any other committee or governance role held.

2. DAO Control Undermined by Foundation-Led Process

The DAO allocation is meant to be governed by the community, yet the proposal grants the Foundation control over:

  • Selecting AFC members;
  • Structuring the legal framework; and
  • Overseeing committee activity.

This effectively removes the DAO from meaningful decision-making. Even if the community is passive today, our framework should invite future participation, not hard-code around it.

Recommendations:

  • Require AFC member selection and mandate approval via onchain governance.
  • Submit the legal/operational structure for DAO review before implementation.
  • Even if only AFC members are voting in practice, all major spend and structural changes should go through the DAO for transparency and historical tracking.
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3. Lack of DAO-Based Accountability

The proposal says the Foundation can remove inactive members — but this isn’t decentralized accountability. The DAO can’t:

  • Vote to remove underperforming members;
  • Set performance expectations; or
  • Review strategic alignment.

Without DAO levers, the AFC risks operating like a Foundation subcommittee, not a decentralized treasury body.

Recommendations:

  • Implement milestone-based performance reviews, approved by the DAO.
  • Create a recall mechanism that lets DAO members initiate member removal.
  • Add a community-elected audit or review role to oversee AFC performance and governance alignment.

4. Unclear Compensation & Performance Alignment

The proposal includes compensation for AFC members, but offers no details. Even if the amounts are small, trust, optics, and alignment matter.

Recommendations:

  • Disclose proposed compensation levels and funding sources before member selection.
  • Link compensation to clear KPIs, not just time served.
  • If $ASTR is used, consider vesting or lockups to discourage short-term sell pressure and improve alignment.

5. Centralized Control Over Strategic Treasury

The AFC will control investments, yield farming, and token buybacks with no safeguards or DAO oversight. This exposes the DAO to:

  • Value leakage;
  • Insider bias; and
  • Strategy misalignment.

Recommendations:

  • Require DAO pre-approval for high-risk actions like startup investments and market-making deals.
  • Use time-locked execution windows for major treasury transactions.
  • Publish a pre-approved treasury strategy framework that can be updated through governance.
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6. Market Manipulation & Insider Risk

The proposal lacks controls for managing market risk. Without protections, there’s potential for:

  • Front-running of buybacks;
  • Insider profit-taking; and
  • Unintentional token volatility.

Recommendations:

  • Publish large buys/sells in advance and use rate-limited or TWAP execution.
  • Commit to full real-time transparency.
  • Publicly disclose wallets used for AFC operations and publish trade logs.

7. Observer Role Is Currently Cosmetic — Better Transparency Options Exist

The observer role is described as non-voting and undefined — offering no real oversight or accountability.

If transparency is the goal, there are more robust alternatives.

Recommendations:

  • Record AFC sync meetings and publish them, or publish detailed meeting minutes.
  • Host key strategy discussions on the Astar Forum with open feedback.
  • Give observers formal responsibilities, like writing public summaries or flagging concerns to the DAO.
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Thank you for the thorough review and feedback.

  1. Aligned. Applicants definitely need to disclose any affiliation with projects or other committees.
  2. Onchain selection should be carefully considered. The yield-generating strategy is complex and requires high financial knowledge. Additionally, All the work should be transparently reported to the DAO every month or every 2 months.
  3. Milestones can be introduced later, but I recommend not setting any at first. We need time to see whether it works well or not. The yield depends on market conditions, especially in the crypto space, and the current market is very volatile.
  4. Compensation needs further discussion. I already mentioned this in the proposal: “AFC members will receive compensation for their work, with the budget allocated from the onchain treasury with an onchain treasury proposal.”
  5. I’m very against it. It requires quick and agile decision-making, while getting DAO approval or waiting for time-locked execution takes time. If you delegate authority, you need to trust the delegate to some extent. Instead, we can divide the fund into small portions and let the AFC utilize assets within a certain portion initially.
  6. Fair point. Let’s hear others’ opinions on this as well.
  7. Agreed. We definitely need clear roles and responsibilities for observers, including taking detailed meeting minutes, writing public summaries, and flagging concerns, as you mentioned.
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Thanks a lot for your time responding to this thread and taking time to structure your feedback. I value your overview and recommendations. As part of moving forward based on your posts, I would like to focus on your recommendations:

As stated in the proposal we would like to open up a forum catagory where everyone needs to apply. This includes those from Astar Foundation, Community Council or anyone from the Collective. Their proposal can hold this kind of information or can be asked by anyone if information is missing to vote for a certain member of the ACF.

You are correct that Foundation takes this initiative moving forward. The main reason is that we have the ability to set up an entity to do all those kind of activities. If there is no entity behind it, people operating can face legal issues. Without any entity none of these activies can be executed.

I’m aligned that all major activities should be shared with the Collective for transparency and historical tracking. Also all multisigs will be shared where activies can also be tracked in-real time.

The reason why we added to remove inactive members was when there is a market conditions that requires ACF attention, we should be able to rely on everyone. It’s ok if it doesn’t work ones but when a member is multiple times not active, that person should be able to be removed and replaced to ensure smooth operations.

Your recommendations are valid but should come from the Collective if there is a community-elected audit needed. It’s something that Foundation or ACF can’t do but has to be proposed by external party and ACF should follow the Collective decision if passed through Astar governance. A solution can be that we can also add a mandate to the Collective where approved Governance decisions coming from the Collective related to AFC should be followed.

This needs to be worked out further. I personally found it was not needed but it was pointed out that people are not interested joining this initiative if there is no incentive. Compensation also needs to go through our Governance because it will be paid by our onchain treasury, so reports and alignment with community is needed before any member of ACF receives this incentive. Not sure if vesting or lockups can be set through a Governance call on treasury, it should go through referendum in this case.

I’m not aligned on that investment part, some early seed rounds are tight with NDA where information can’t be disclosed to the public. Having DAO to pre-approval will result is missed opportunities in early stage scenario’s. The proposal is designed to work as a centralized control over it’s execution to ensure maximize upset for the ASTR token and the ACT.

Regarding buyback I’m aligned this needs to go through Governance and is also in my initial design. The buyback has to be done in a transparent way to ensure we meet MiCA and SEC rules of not manipulating the token price. This answer is also an answer to your 6th topic.

Buyback initiatives pose legal vulnerabilities under MiCA’s market manipulation rules. A program could be deemed manipulative if it artificially influences a crypto-asset’s price or trading volume. MiCA prohibits transactions or conduct creating false signals regarding supply, demand, or price, as well as deceptive public communications. These prohibitions apply to all individuals and entities, as Article 91(1) states: “No person shall engage in or attempt to engage in market manipulation”.

This proposal structure needs to provide a strong counter-arguments to potential MiCA claims. Purchases occur on the open market or through arrangements with market makers, ensuring transparency. The AFC can only conduct buybacks under treasury management, each requiring thorough public discussion through governance forum, temp check, and Governance phases before execution. Nothing is concealed from public scrutiny, making the token acquisition process fully transparent.

Detailed actions should be in the report shared with the community. I not sure if the meeting can be published from legal and security point of view.

I hope these answers gives you a better understanding of what I have in mind @tora0515

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I believe that this administrative figure will help manage the Astar ecosystem, making it more efficient in the face of market challenges, facing the difficulties related to the management of ASTR is a win-win, we may be facing the most difficult market in the history of cryptocurrencies and strategies like these will be an escape valve to get through the difficult times.

I am a little concerned about the VC approach, as there are many projects that receive funding and do not result in executing the roadmap, I hope each case is studied and an internal protocol of choice with legal support is created.

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This has been passed onchain voting

The application process will begin on April 24th, so please read this post and post your application in the Governance-Astar Finance Committee category.

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Application process has begun!

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