[GNS] GNS Rebirth Plan

Proposals GNS Proposals
1

Summary

This proposal was drafted at the explicit request of long-standing GNS contributors and major holders who reached out to coordinate a path forward for the protocol. It reflects shared frustration with the recent trajectory and a collective conviction that GNS can do dramatically better. The goal is simple: bring GNS back to ATH, and beyond. The team behind this proposal is here to execute on that mandate alongside the community that asked for it.

This proposal seeks approval to authorize a new operating team — Sacha (Tech - Mobula founder), Tom (Ops & Marketing), Giba (BD) and a DAO Board of OG GNS contributors - to take operational stewardship of Gains Network under a fully performance-conditional structure. The team takes no fixed base; the protocol’s entire current operating budget plus freed buyback fees pool into a Growth & Marketing Treasury, and the team is compensated exclusively for revenue growth and token appreciation it delivers for existing holders.

Context & Background

1. Current Situation - The Window Is Closing

GNS revenue is falling - and the decline is accelerating. Both protocol revenue and token market cap have been on a sharp downtrend for several consecutive months.

The asymmetry the DAO has to internalize: every month that passes without a course correction makes the course correction harder. The math compounds against the protocol:

• Less revenue → less treasury inflow, less buyback impact, less margin to fund anything new.

• Less treasury → no real budget left for marketing, listings, market-maker partnerships, or KOL acquisition.

• Less market cap → no leverage in negotiations with integrators, partners, or traders.

• Less attention → the window to ship a credible comeback narrative narrows toward zero.

2. The New Operating Team

• Sacha, Mobula Founder. Operates the data and execution infrastructure powering a wide range of trading applications via mobula.io. He built it into the leading trading infra in an ultra competitive space where the incumbent had tens of millions of dollars and still couldn’t replicate what mobula has (data + trade on-chain execution, bridging). To put things in perspective Mobula is netting 3.3m ARR and on track to reach 10m ARR this year, currently serving 60% of the 10 largest apps/wallets by volume

• Tom. Cofounder of Minea (minea.com), a SaaS that crossed $30M+ in revenue. Generated 1B+ organic views across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and managed 8-figure paid-acquisition budgets (KOLs, Google Ads, Meta Ads). 7+ years leading product and marketing teams. Active crypto trader; previously advised on marketing for a 2,000 ETH NFT collection. (@amdtrades on X)

• Giba, Trader Acquisition, Planning & Growth. Executive in one of the largest industries in the world during the mid-2010s before fully pivoting into TradFi and then DeFi. Contributed to multiple projects’ growth to 10-figure valuations. Reached #1 in futures trading across different exchanges with an average of $100M–$600M volume per month.

• DAO Board. A small advisory board of long-standing GNS contributors and OGs, sitting alongside the new operating team — providing institutional continuity with the protocol’s history, weighing in on strategic decisions, and sharing accountability for the turnaround so it is not owned solely by the new team.

Rationale for a New Operating Team

1. The Status Quo Is the Riskiest Path

Doing nothing is the most expensive decision available to the DAO today. Aster, Ostium and Hyperliquid are all compounding harder every quarter; standing still is a slow capitulation.

2. Alignment by Design - No Fixed Base

Under this proposal, the new team takes no fixed salary. The protocol’s entire current operating budget (team payroll, marketing spend, any other operating outflows) is redirected to growth alongside the freed buyback fees. The team’s compensation is exclusively:

• A tiered share of incremental revenue above the last 3-month baseline (at the time of the vote).

• A market-cap and price-gated token mint that only vests when GNS actually reprices.

3. Reversible by Design

The structure runs for a 12-month reviewable period. At month 12, the DAO reviews the impact on revenue, OI, and market cap. If the playbook has not delivered, the DAO can vote to restore the full 55% buyback and end the engagement. Performance share earned to date is not clawed back; future entitlements stop. There is no permanent loss of optionality.

Details of the Proposed Structure

Use of Funds & Buyback Policy

The current 55% buyback is the largest single line of capital allocation in the protocol and is producing no measurable token-price impact. The proposal reduces the burn and redirects the freed fees plus the protocol’s existing operating budget into a single Growth & Marketing Treasury managed by the new team.

• Reduce burn to 10% of fees. Frees ~80% of the current buyback budget.

Growth & Marketing Treasury sources of capital:

• Fees freed by the buyback reduction.

• The protocol’s entire current operating budget - team payroll, existing marketing spend, and any other operating outflows - redirected in full because the new team takes no fixed base.

• Active reduction of infra costs, with internalization of parts of the stack where possible (Mobula already operates much of the data, oracle, and execution infra GNS depends on).

What the freed capital actually funds:

• KOL retainer program - the “trading terminal” playbook. Pay 30+ vetted traders and crypto KOLs monthly retainers in exchange for trading on GNS, posting their PnL, and bringing their audience.

• Affiliate program with proper attribution and benchmarking vs. competitor programs.

• Paid acquisition (ads, sponsorships, creator partnerships) with hard ROAS tracking - none of which exists today.

• More aggresive market listing.

• Cabal-building. A tight, public community of high-volume GNS traders that compounds via word of mouth and on-chain visibility.

Compensation Structure

The new team takes no fixed base. All team compensation is performance-conditional and falls into three components.

(a) Tiered performance share on incremental revenue (above the 3-month baseline, paid in stables):

• First $500K of incremental revenue → 50% team / 50% protocol

• Next $1M (cumulative $500K–$1.5M) → 40% team / 60% protocol

• All revenue above $1.5M over baseline → 30% team / 70% protocol — applies indefinitely

For context, integrators currently take 35% of all revenue — meaning at scale, the team’s per-dollar take is below what current integrators capture today.

(b) Buyback hedge — while GNS market cap is below the repricing zone, a defined percentage of the team’s cash compensation automatically buys GNS on the open market. The GNS purchased this way is held by the team, not burned or sent to the DAO treasury.

• MC < $15M → 75%

• $15M ≤ MC < $20M → 50%

• $20M ≤ MC < $25M → 30%

• MC ≥ $25M → 0% (commitment ends)

This creates a constant buyer in the $10–25M MC range while the protocol most needs price support.

(c) Performance-conditional token mint — 20% of current GNS supply, price-gated, vesting linearly over 30 days per tranche. Each milestone unlocks a 4% tranche, split:

• 3.25% per milestone → new operating team (16.25% cumulative)

• 0.75% per milestone → community pool (3.75% cumulative, distributed among advisory members and aligned community contributors)

Tier schedule (30-day TWAP):

• GNS price reaches $2.50 → 4% mints. Cumulative: 4%.

• GNS price reaches $5.00 → 4% mints. Cumulative: 8%.

• GNS price reaches $7.50 → 4% mints. Cumulative: 12%.

• GNS price reaches $12.50 → 4% mints. Cumulative: 16%.

• GNS price reaches $17.50 → 4% mints. Cumulative: 20%.

If GNS does not appreciate, no tokens mint. The 20% sizing is intentionally conservative as a starting point; with sustained price recovery, the DAO can revisit and extend in good faith.

Roadmap

• Phase 1 (Weeks 0-6) - Quick wins. Aggressive listing pipeline and a 24/7 market-monitoring desk (top 30 missing pairs in the first month). Structured marketing funnel with affiliate program and creator partnerships. KOL retainer program live. Public competitive benchmark dashboard. DAO Board formed and publicly announced.

• Phase 2 (Months 2-6) - Unified liquidity & universal deployment. Solver-based unified liquidity layer routing orders against a single pool, removing the per-chain TVL-bootstrap problem. Integration playbook designed to be as easy to plug in as Stripe.

• Phase 3 (Months 6-12) - Appchain, CLOB & ecosystem. Dedicated appchain for gas economics and MEV/sequencing revenue. CLOB upgrade alongside the existing synthetic/vault model. Appchain opened to complementary apps (vaults, structured products, copy-trading) so GNS captures ecosystem fees.

• Phase 4 (continuous) - Token repricing narrative. Monthly revenue/OI updates with YoY and competitor comparisons. Roadmap milestones tied to quantitative outcomes. Consistent positioning (“GNS is the capital-efficient, multi-chain, CLOB-enabled perp DEX”) repeated across every channel.

Governance & Accountability

• Monthly public report. Revenue, OI, listings shipped, marketing KPIs, roadmap progress, full Growth & Marketing Treasury spend with attribution.

• Quarterly DAO review. The DAO can vote to terminate the engagement at the end of any quarter with 30-day notice.

• Total transparency. Every dollar from the Growth & Marketing Treasury is reported publicly. No exceptions.

Requested Action

This proposal seeks community approval via Snapshot to authorize the new operating team (Sacha, Tom, Giba + DAO Board) under the structure outlined above, and to set the new buyback rate.

Voters will choose between:

  • Approve team restructuring - Buyback reduced to 10%

  • No restructuring (status quo)

Decision rule:

• « Restructuring » must receive >50% of all votes to win.

• Otherwise, the current set up will be continued.

If passed, transition begins immediately and the 12-month structure begins on adoption.

The current GNS team in the transition. This proposal is not about replacing the contributors who have been carrying GNS until now. We respect their technical depth & knowledge - and we want to continue working with them.

We will work directly with each existing contributor to figure out the best long-term role for them inside the new operating structure - advisory, operational, technical, ecosystem, or otherwise.

Conclusion

GNS is in existential territory. The community has been carrying this protocol for a long time, and the trajectory is turning irreversible if nothing changes.

This proposal puts forward:

• A new operating team with relevant experience, taking no fixed base.

• A coordinated effort with the major holders and OG contributors who have been backing the protocol.

• A 12-month reversible window with full DAO termination rights.

• Compensation that aligns the team with the project.
• A concrete operating playbook (KOL retainers, listings, affiliate, paid acquisition, cabal-building) that the protocol is not currently running.

Doing nothing is the most expensive decision available to the DAO today. We invite all GNS holders to participate in this Snapshot vote.

Appendix - Revenue Baseline

Per the Compensation Structure section, the team’s performance share is calculated against a trailing-revenue baseline. For clarity and so the DAO can independently verify the math, the baseline at adoption will be the last 3-month average of protocol revenue before the restructuring as reported on DeFiLlama. Last three full months on record:

• February 2026 → $495,324

• March 2026 → $428,092

• April 2026 → $295,400

• 3-month average → ~$406,272 / month (baseline used for the compensation calculation)

Source of truth: defillama.com/protocol/fees/gains-network.

2 Likes
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As one of the community members who contributed to this proposal, the bulk of the proposal has my full support. Following Seb’s departure, the team has seemingly shut the community out and development has slowed. Furthermore, the the current team’s incentive structure no longer aligns with the needs of the community and protocol as a whole, with compensation being heavily skewed toward a base salary component (stablecoins) instead of equity in the form of $GNS.

Sacha, Tom, and Giba have a solid track record and are enthusiastic about the protocol’s success; the incentive structure proposed by them in this post makes that evident. I’m confident that the protocol will be in good hands with the new team and we’ll be able to breathe some life back into gTrade as a result.

With that being said, I’m a little skeptical about the minting for the community pool. I’m of the opinion that community members should already be aligned with the success of the protocol through their own holdings, and if that incentive isn’t already great enough, the token price is at historical lows right now; increasing your stake in the protocol is very cheap. Introducing a community pool also brings into question who from the community deserves to be compensated, by how much, and could lead to some inner turmoil that I think we’re better off without. This component of the proposal could warrant another discussion, though, and it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me to see the proposal go to a vote as-is.

3 Likes
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Agree with this proposal - alignment between the team and token holders is something we’ve been sorely missing.

Obviously seems quite drastic but unfortunately the stats speak for themselves about where we’ve been heading. There’s been an increasing divide forming between the community and the current team since Seb left and that needs to stop.

In regards to the community pool I think it’s a good marketing warchest to have, how it’s used will be crucial but important to remember it would only unlock if the team is delivering results via the GNS price.

2 Likes
4

Seconding the proposal as things need to change drastically.

But I will express doubts on the whole “CLOB transition” as the CLOB dex environment is already oversaturated so we wouldn’t have any competitive advantage and the bootstrapping issue is way higher on CLOB than a properly designed pool based perp dex, where we’d have a competitive advantage (guaranteed execution, low fees with high pool utilization). Besides as we move to more and more RWA trading with robust price feeds, the price discovery element of a CLOB is unnecessary and in fact a hindrance to efficient trading.

2 Likes
5

After reading the proposal thoroughly, I am in favor. This is an efficient opportunity to align the interests of holders, traders, and the team. It is a great chance to expand and finally reach the position we deserve. Since Seb’s departure, the current team has lacked leadership; the developers have continued to do a good job, but the failure in leadership and marketing is noticeable.

​Mobula’s proposal has great potential since they will not be working for a base salary like the current team does; instead, they will work for rewards that unlock as growth milestones are achieved. If GNS does well, the team will be rewarded, and so will the holders. It is a win-win. And this is something that must be done quickly—we cannot keep waiting and losing market share every day.

1 Like
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Good proposal. I appreciate the aligned incentives which increases my confidence in the team’s energy.

As a user (30 days volume = $11 million) and holder of GNS, I’ll support your efforts.

If you can manage to increase efficiency and reduce fees so that the platform becomes more competitive relative to traditional CFD brokers, especially in the forex, commodity & index categories, the potential is vast. No existing perp DEX - including Hyperliquid - is remotely close to the trading conditions of tradfi brokers.

Even if technical hurdles prevent a complete convergence to tradfi conditions, a more efficient, permissionless, no-KYC trading platform with account abstraction to onboard normie traders has immense potential. “More efficient” in my book means cutting Open/Close fees by >50% in non-crypto markets, and limit the volatility and amplitude of funding rates (especially in crypto markets).

If the product is superior, marketing and customer retention falls in place naturally, so I hope that product improvements will be prioritized accordingly. That said, the outlined marketing strategy improvements are encouraging as well.

Let’s go!

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Hi Sacha, Tom, Giba, DAO Board, and all GNS holders,

Thank you for this proposal. The performance-only pay (no fixed salary) and growth-focused playbook are promising steps to reverse our revenue decline. As a long-term GNS holder, I’m open to voting **Yes** on a strengthened version.

For context, the current team costs about **$99k per month** (Atlas $24.5k, Crumb $24.5k, and others). This entire operating budget with most of burn revenue would move into the new Growth & Marketing Treasury.

**My main suggestions to reduce risk** (with brief reasons why each matters):

1. Current Team Transition & Knowledge Retention

- Publish a clear transition plan before the vote: targeted roles and retention incentives for Atlas, Crumb, Konrad, Ben, Joseph, Ves, Seb, etc.

- Require a 3–6 month structured knowledge hand-over with documented reviews and shadow operations.

- Include DAO Board + community oversight.

Reasoning: The current team built our custom oracle, synthetic assets, security model, and multi-chain system. Losing their knowledge mid-transition could create real safety risks.

2. Preventing Self-Dealing (Especially with Mobula)

- Share the last 6 months of actual infra and governance fund spending.

- Add a simple rule: **No more than 10% of the Growth Treasury** can go to any single related company (including Mobula) per month. Anything above 10% needs a DAO vote.

- Require competitive quotes and public invoices every month.

Reasoning: Sacha’s Mobula already handles parts of our infra. Without this cap, treasury funds could quietly flow to insiders instead of real growth. This keeps the team honest.

3. Strong Controls on the Growth & Marketing Treasury

- Use an on-chain multisig wallet (multiple signers required, with public names) + 24–48h timelock.

- Set category limits (e.g. max 40% on KOL retainers).

- Require clear monthly reports with on-chain links and **ROAS results** (ROAS = Return on Ad Spend — how much extra revenue each marketing dollar generates) for every spend (automatic pause if reports are late).

Reasoning: The treasury will control ~$200k+ per month. These basic checks prevent inefficient or unaccountable spending in a tough market.

4. Token Mint, Team Pay & Trial Period

- Reduce the new token mint to 12–15% total (instead of 20%).

- Add clawback protection: if revenue falls below baseline for two quarters after any mint, some unvested tokens are returned.

- Shorten the initial term to 9 months with a mandatory confidence vote at month 6 (automatic end if revenue is still below baseline).

Reasoning: The 20% mint is large dilution at current prices. These changes protect existing holders if growth is slower than expected.

5. DAO Board Transparency

- Full public disclosure of all DAO Board members’ identities and any conflicts before the vote.

Reasoning: This ensures no hidden extractors or conflicting interests.

These safeguards are reasonable, common-sense protections. They keep all the strong incentives in the original proposal but dramatically lower the risk of self-dealing or talent loss.

3 Likes
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Those are great points @Phantom

I second most of what you listed, especially the publishing of a clear transition plan before the vote. Transparency also never hurts, so thanks for the thoughtful comments, and I’d like to see them reflected in the proposal as well.

A few points I’d disagree with:

  1. Reduction of incentives. While I wouldn’t describe 20% as “conservative as a starting point” as stated in the proposal, I also don’t think it’s too much given the ambitious price targets based on TWAP. 8% mint for a 10x price increase from here that is sustained over 30 days is quite reasonable and achieving the full 20% requires success of unprecedented levels in the history of GNS. That deserves a windfall.

I’m confused by your reasoning “These changes protect existing holders if growth is slower than expected.”
If growth is slower, then the milestones will not be reached and the team won’t receive any mints or only reduced amounts according to reached milestones. This is as incentive aligned with current investors as it can be.

Imo the 20% strikes a good balance and incentivizes the new team strongly without underselling the historical achievements of GainsNetwork which provide the base for the turnaround efforts.

  1. The clawback structure that you propose doesn’t seem very effective given the already short timeline of the proposal. Shorting the contract window even more seems counterintuitive to me considering the ambitious goals. However, I do like your idea of a confidence vote at month 6, basically a re-affirmation that the team is on the right track and shall continue as agreed. This gives us token holders enough agency, so no need to complicate things with clawbacks & shortening imo.
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I understand the frustration with the token price and the revenue trajectory. The decline is real and I’m not here to argue otherwise. But I want to share some on-the-ground perspective as someone who’s been close to Gains Network as a builder rather than a forum/chat participant.

For context, I’ve been involved in shipping several products built directly on gTrade:

  • CarrotFunding – a DeFi-native prop trading firm powered by gTrade

  • Open Alpha – an AI alpha engine built by ex-Consensys and ex-Bridgewater team powered by gTrade

  • Techno Trading – Python adapters for algorithmic trading on gTrade

  • rethink.finance – Vault infrastructure with $6M AUM supporting composable on-chain strategies across all of the above use cases and beyond

These are real products with real capital at stake, built by teams that evaluated every major perp DEX and chose gTrade. While we are still early in our rollout and the real volume impact is yet ahead of us, for us this represents real business risk. We’re hoping that whatever steps the community takes will take into account safety and continuity for the projects already building here.

Why we choose gTrade

Two reasons:

  1. EVM composability. gTrade’s synthetic model runs natively on EVM. Our vaults, trading bots, and prop trading infrastructure plug directly into the broader DeFi stack without bridging complexity or off-chain workarounds. This is a genuine competitive moat (Hyperliquid’s appchain, by contrast, breaks composability. Even trading through HyperEVM is a painful experience: very delayed execution, limited interfaces, friction at every layer).

  2. Team responsiveness. The team (Crumbs, Rick, Joseph, and Atlas) were genuinely helpful during integration. Fast responses, real technical depth, willingness to work through edge cases. That kind of builder support is invisible from the outside, but it’s what determines whether projects ship on your protocol or go elsewhere.

Possible rebirth plan concerns

I’m not opposed to improving the status quo. But several elements here raise flags.

Marketing-first thesis. Marketing matters; awareness and distribution are real levers, and gTrade could use more of both. But I’d personally want to see the energy go toward unique positioning and product-market fit first. KOL retainers and paid acquisition don’t move the needle unless the product is clearly differentiated. Without that, you’re paying to send people to a protocol they have no structural reason to stay on. The projects with real longevity in this space won by being the obvious choice for a specific use case, not by outspending competitors on attention.

Appchain and CLOB as the roadmap centerpiece. This is essentially the same playbook every other perp DEX is running right now. It’s not clear to me how GNS executes this with meaningfully fewer resources than Hyperliquid and wins. More practically, it introduces new challenges, an appchain breaks EVM composability, which is precisely the reason my projects and others chose gTrade over competitors. You’d be abandoning a real, defensible advantage to compete on a field where you’re outgunned.

Incentive alignment on the buyback reduction. I don’t have a strong opinion on the specific buyback number. What concerns me is the structure: the team manages the Growth & Marketing Treasury (funded by the freed buyback capital) and is simultaneously compensated based on incremental revenue above baseline. That means the same team controls the spending and benefits from the results of that spending. Without independent oversight or clear criteria for what counts as organic revenue, this creates a structural incentive to subsidize volume that inflates the numbers – wash trading, recycled affiliate payouts, or short-term activity that triggers compensation but doesn’t retain.

What we’re hoping to see

Whatever the community decides, I’d urge that any restructuring preserves:

  1. Operational safety and continuity for existing integrators. We have live products with real capital deployed on behalf of users. As an institutional integrator, we need assurances that any transition preserves the current level of technical competence, platform risk management, and integration support.

  2. EVM composability as a first-class priority. This is gTrade’s defensible edge. Any roadmap that treats it as secondary to an appchain pivot is dismissing a real current advantage for builders and composable vaults.

  3. Builder-facing support. Given that this is a direct business risk for us, we’d need a responsive technical team we can work with as we ship and scale our products.

We’re hoping that gTrade continues to be a place where we can build – and doesn’t force us to migrate to alternative solutions. We chose gTrade because it was the best protocol to build on and the best team to work with, and we’re hoping that to still be true in twelve months.

2 Likes
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You make excellent points @Rook_DeFi, thank you for sharing your view from an integrators perspective.

The status quo isn’t as catastrophic as it may appear and Gains has a clear position in the market with a different trade-off space than its competitors.

Interoperability is a revenue driver and can create network effects over time. Bootstrapping such network effects on an app chain is incredibly expensive as we can see with Hyperliquid, MegaEth, you name it. Gains can’t compete on that level of spending, but we already have multiple integrations and years in the market to our advantage.

The proposal has many green flags, including the team’s experience, however, a complete shift in product strategy is risky.

Preferrably, the applicants can find and propose a middle ground where product improvement goes hand in hand with marketing, without replacing the entire tech stack in one go and breaking composability.

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Hey @nbmsacha, could you explain the revenue split comparison in more detail?

Specifically, why is a comparison with rev share to integrators relevant here? Are you planning to replace integrators? If not, then the integrator share must be paid ON TOP of your share, which completely changes the calculation for investors.

Also, what are integrators in this context? Is it businesses that build on top of Gains, like the ones mentioned by @Rook_DeFi ? Or just technology providers that facilitate Gains’ operations, like oracles?

Partners that build their own business on top of Gains bring additional volume that we wouldn’t otherwise have. A new operative team should not be a replacement of these business partners - that wouldn’t make sense.

Thanks in advance for clarifying the economic impact and intent.

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This proposal in its current form would probably mean the end of GNS, but I would definitely still vote for it anyway because the siphoning of the protocol’s revenue by the current team has to stop here…

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This was just to highlight that integrators earn this % (I’m not sure everyone is aware) and to use it as a point of comparison.

1 Like
14

Thanks for the response, but my baseline question remains:

what are we comparing here - the new team replacing integrators?

If there is no replacement happening, the comparison is not functionally relevant.
The correct comparison would be the rev share of the new team compared to the rev share of the old team. (which is 45%, the current operating budget as share of all revenue)

There might be a misunderstanding on my side, hence my questions.

Is there any intention to replace current integrators? If so, what are they being replaced with, why, and what are the anticipated economic effects?

if not, how is the continuity of revenue-adding integrators ensured given the idea to create an app-chain L2 that is by definition isolated and/or permissioned?

These parts of the proposal could use additional clarity before voting.

15

We’ve revised the proposal based on all the feedback received so far. Better if you check the new version directly, but to answer your question: we have no plans to remove integrators. If anything, doubling down on that is one of our goals.