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 is supported by Seb.
This proposal is led by Tom, Sacha and Sam with support from key Gains community members, such as Midget and renowned traders such as Giba (see below). They have assembled some of the strongest operators in the space around this project. To make sure both the product and the trading execution operate at the highest standard, we have partnered with two specialized teams, one focused on product, the other on trading infrastructure, described in detail below.
Reflecting how bullish the team is on this proposal, we are already in advanced discussions across our broader network to coordinate a spot buy of the GNS token and collectively we are targeting several millions of dollars in spot buying power to back the relaunch, align incentives, and make Gains great again.
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
The team we are bringing for the rebirth of GNS is anchored by two Project Leads who have assembled some of the strongest operators in the space around this project as well as advisors with deep crypto and infra experience, and a DAO Board of contributors providing institutional continuity.
Project Leads
- Tom, Project Lead. Cofounder of 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. Tom owns the growth and overall execution plan for the restructuring. (@amdtrades on X)
- Sam, Project Lead. OG Gains Trade contributor with longstanding relationships across perp DEXs, DeFi, and the broader crypto ecosystem, and deep knowledge of the protocol’s history, technical architecture, and stakeholder map. In crypto since 2014, he was a key growth and ecosystem contributor at Terra and co-founded Orion Money - bootstrapping $130M+ TVL, a $2B FDV launch, $4B AUM and the #1 validator on Terra. He also co-led the ~$30M Arbitrum STIP inclusion program on behalf of 50+ protocols across the ecosystem, and is a hands-on angel investor. Today, Sam serves as the operational bridge between the new team and the existing Gains Trade community.
Growth team
- Giba, Trader Acquisition and BD. 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 in monthly volume.
Product & Trading teams: To execute on the product and technical roadmap of Gains, we are onboarding the team that built Lute.gg - a leading cross-chain trading terminal.
- Hunter. Focused on trader behavior, growth, and consumer UX for DeFi. Previously led AI at Canon Inc, GP at Futureproof with 60+ venture investments (beehiiv, Gondi, Oats Overnight, LooksRare), and co-owned professional football club Crawley Town - grown into one of the most-followed clubs in the UK under his tenure (+500K social followers added). Cofounder of ReadyPlayerDAO alongside Alexis Ohanian and others; raised a $15M round at $150M valuation.
- Counter. Owns product vision and the systems behind the real-time multi-chain trading terminal. Built Lute’s low-latency Solana indexing, contributed to trade execution and secure key management, and led frontend and creative work across the trading experience. Previously cofounded Kojo AIO (retail automation bot scaled on AWS to 1,500+ users and $150K+ monthly volume) and Kraken Notify (reseller network, 5,000 active users). Engineering degree from a top-10 international university; depth across distributed systems, low-latency data streaming, UI/UX, cross-device tooling, and secure key management.
- Gabe. Background in theoretical and applied cryptography - specifically trusted execution environments and multiparty computing. Designs and implements secure cryptography protocols; works on the MPC protocols, network, runtime, and programming language (including compiler) of StoffelMPC. At Lute, works across the stack: Solana/EVM indexing infra, transaction execution, and the full user-facing backend (rewards tracking, social features, cross-regional deployment architecture, live issue triage).
- Rayhan. Software Engineer at Lute and the team’s first engineering hire. Led the Rust refactor of the legacy codebase and built Lute’s EVM indexers powering high-throughput data across 6 blockchains, plus the EVM trade execution and prediction-market integrations that pull liquidity from every chain into a single platform. Previously created MintX, one of the earliest Solana sniping tools - $50M+ in volume across 400 users, clearing $2M+ in revenue at minimal operating cost. First-class Mathematics degree; works in Rust across the indexing, execution, and infrastructure layers.
Trading team: 4 members (ex-Flowdesk, ex-Kaiko & a quant who was previously head of trading at 2 major market makers)
Advisors
- Sacha, Mobula founder. He operates the data and execution infrastructure powering a wide range of trading applications via mobula.io, built into the leading trading infra in an ultra-competitive space. Mobula nets $4.5M ARR, is on track to $10M ARR this year, and serves 60% of the 10 largest apps/wallets by volume (Phantom, etc.). Sacha advises on infra, data, and execution architecture.
- Midget. Long-term community member and one of the largest $GNS holders.
- Jamie (https://x.com/cryptojamie7): Jamie is one of the highest-volume perps traders in crypto, with billions in cumulative trading volume and deep expertise in high-leverage strategies on the leading centralized exchanges. A well-respected figure in the space with an extensive network, he will advise Gains Trade on product and UX/UI direction, privacy features, and key roadmap priorities.
Governance
- DAO Board. A small advisory board of long-standing GNS contributors and influential industry figures, sitting alongside the new operating team. It provides institutional continuity with the protocol’s history, independent input on strategic decisions, and ongoing guidance to the 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
Under this proposal, the new team takes no fixed salary. The protocol’s entire current operating budget (team payroll, 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 2-month baseline (at the time of the vote).
- A price-gated token mint that only vests when GNS actually reprices.
We get paid only when we perform - and we front the cost of building until we do. Assembling an operating structure of this scale, across product, trading, and the broader staff needed to relaunch the protocol, requires real funding to secure their commitment and ensure they are fully engaged from day one. Rather than charging those costs back to the protocol, the current team will inject its own capital to cover them upfront. In practice, this means we personally absorb the operating expenses required to stand up the new structure, for as long as it takes performance to materialize. If GNS doesn’t grow, we don’t recoup so we are taking on substantial real financial risk to run the protocol, and our downside is fully aligned with token holders’.
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 reallocates this budget across two phases, calibrated to the protocol’s stage of growth.
Two-phase logic.
- Phase 1, getting on the map (until GNS reaches $20). The full 55% buyback budget is redirected away from the burn and into the Growth & Marketing Treasury. Burn is paused at 0% during this period. The thesis is simple: at the current market cap, the 55% buyback is producing no measurable price impact, so reallocating those fees into growth and marketing creates far more leverage on the token’s long-term value than continuing to burn.
- Phase 2, focus on token appreciation (GNS at or above $20). Once the protocol has hit the repricing zone, marketing intensity dials down and the structure pivots toward maximizing token appreciation. The price-based step-down on the team’s revenue share already redirects most incremental revenue back to the protocol at this stage (15% team at $20, 0% at $30), and the DAO can re-introduce the burn / buyback at the level it considers appropriate for this mature phase.
Allocation during Phase 1 (until GNS reaches $20):
- 100% of the freed 55% buyback budget is redirected into the Growth & Marketing Treasury.
- The protocol’s entire current operating budget (team payrolls etc.) is also redirected in full, because the new team takes no fixed base.
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.
- Integrator Program - the “Builder Code” playbook. Open Gains to wallets, trading terminals, and third-party apps that want to route order flow to the protocol, with a transparent revenue share on every trade they bring in. This is the mechanism that turned Hyperliquid from a destination into a distribution network.
- UGC program - turning Gains’ USP into a content engine. A structured UGC program (briefs, prize loops, creator tooling) turns traders into a permanent top-of-funnel via PnL screenshots, “only on Gains” angles, and market commentary, compounding the KOL program into a real social footprint.
- Paid acquisition (ads, sponsorships, creator partnerships) with hard ROAS tracking - none of which exists today.
- Cabal-building. A tight, public community of high-volume GNS traders that compounds via word of mouth and on-chain visibility.
- More aggressive market listing.
Compensation Structure
The new team takes no fixed base. All team compensation is performance-conditional and falls into three components. Every single person in this proposal is heavily incentivized by Gains’ performance: while a few team members requested a fixed fee in order to commit full-time to the project, the vast majority of compensation across the board, for everyone involved, is tied to the protocol’s upside.
(a) Tiered performance share on incremental revenue (above the 2-month baseline, paid in stables):
- First $500K of incremental revenue → 50% team / 50% protocol
- Next $2M (cumulative $500K-$2.5M) → 40% team / 60% protocol
- All revenue above $2.5M over baseline → 30% team / 70% protocol
For context, integrators currently take 35% of all revenue, meaning at scale, the team’s per-dollar take is already below what current integrators capture today.
Price-based step-down on the full performance share. Once GNS has repriced into strong territory (30-day TWAP), the team’s share collapses across all tiers, so incremental revenue increasingly flows back to the protocol rather than the team. At those price levels, the team is already being compensated primarily through the price-gated token mint below, and keeping a high revenue share on top would over-pay the team relative to holders.
- GNS ≥ $20 → all incremental revenue split 15% team / 85% protocol (flat, replaces the tier table above)
- GNS ≥ $30 → 0% team / 100% protocol, the team stops taking revenue share entirely
(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, 24% of current GNS supply, price-gated, vesting linearly over 30 days per tranche. Each milestone unlocks a tranche, split between the new operating team and a community pool (distributed among advisory members and aligned community contributors).
Tier schedule (30-day TWAP):
- GNS price reaches $2.50 → 4% tranche mints (cumulative 4%). Team 3.25%, community 0.75%. Rev-share at this level: 50% / 40% / 30% (standard).
- GNS price reaches $5.00 → 4% tranche mints (cumulative 8%). Team 3.25%, community 0.75%. Rev-share at this level: 50% / 40% / 30% (standard).
- GNS price reaches $7.50 → 4% tranche mints (cumulative 12%). Team 3.25%, community 0.75%. Rev-share at this level: 50% / 40% / 30% (standard).
- GNS price reaches $12.50 → 4% tranche mints (cumulative 16%). Team 3.25%, community 0.75%. Rev-share at this level: 50% / 40% / 30% (standard).
- GNS price reaches $17.50 → 4% tranche mints (cumulative 20%). Team 3.25%, community 0.75%. Rev-share at this level: 50% / 40% / 30% (standard).
- GNS price reaches $20 → 2% tranche mints (cumulative 22%). Team 1.875%, community 0.125%. Rev-share at this level: 15% flat.
- GNS price reaches $30 → 2% tranche mints (cumulative 24%). Team 1.875%, community 0.125%. Rev-share at this level: 0%.
Cumulative split: team → 20%, community → 4%, total → 24% of current GNS supply.
Roadmap
Weeks 0-12 - Quick Wins
Phase 1 runs four parallel pools, each owned by a dedicated lead from the new operating team. The intent: rebuild the operational baseline of the protocol within 12 weeks, across growth, ops, trading, and product.
- Marketing pool
- Structured marketing funnel with affiliate program and creator partnerships.
- Self-serve referrer account creation and simplified referral / ally compensation structure. Remove the manual onboarding bottleneck and make it trivial for affiliates and allies to plug in, track, and get paid.
- KOL retainer program live.
- Trader sponsorships. Direct sponsorship deals with high-volume, high-profile traders who anchor the platform’s narrative.
- Public competitive benchmark dashboard comparing GNS to other perp DEXs on the metrics where it actually wins.
- Cabal-building. A public community of high-volume GNS traders that compounds via word of mouth and on-chain visibility.
- Operations pool
- DAO Board formation - members confirmed, mandate formalized, composition publicly announced.
- Monthly public-reporting cadence kickoff - Growth & Marketing Treasury spend (with attribution), revenue, OI, listings shipped.
- Internal weekly operating cadence between Project Leads, operating bench, and advisors.
- Transition handover with existing contributors.
- Improve the support process. Ticket resolution today can be slow and inconsistent. Phase 1 builds a dedicated support function with defined SLAs on response and resolution time.
- Triage system separating technical incidents, account issues, and general inquiries.
- Refreshed help center / knowledge base so common issues are self-serve.
- Public status page so traders see when something is degraded - and when it is fixed.
- Trading pool
- More aggressive listing pipeline and a 24/7 market-monitoring desk.
- Risk engine review. Assets getting delisted under volatility and weekend stock closures are well-known pain points versus Hyperliquid. These are issues we’ve analyzed and a core priority of the trading workstream will be to assess what can realistically be addressed within the current virtual-order-book architecture, and to ship solutions wherever feasible.
- Force close on market close (0DTE) for high effective leverages - configurable per pair. Already largely built by the current team and ready to be brought live. Unlocks RWA “degen” pairs by neutralizing weekend / overnight gap risk at close, so the protocol can list aggressive RWA markets without taking on the tail exposure that gaps would otherwise create.
- Increase offering on Degen pairs.
- Execution bug fixes.
- Continuous monitoring of execution quality, slippage, and uptime - with public reporting on the metrics that matter to active traders.
- Product pool
- Audit refresh. Current audit status is unclear and the old audit appears to have been removed from the repo. Re-establish a current, public audit so integrators and traders have a clean security posture to reference.
- Onramp refresh. Audit Apple Pay/Google Pay and alternative onramps - ship a cleaner, faster onboarding flow.
- Automatic bridging. Trade with a single balance regardless of source chain - kill the “which chain do I deposit on?” friction that loses users before their first trade.
- Chart improvements. Show liquidation lines while setting up trades (plus other contextual overlays) + add shorter chart timeframes + preset 1 click execution.
- Design overhaul. Refresh the visual language, information density, and overall trading interface to match the modern perp DEX standard - the current UI is a competitive liability when traders compare side-by-side.
- Unify Base and Degen in the UI. Today the two pairs sit as separate markets, creating navigation friction and confusion. Merge them into a single market view where leverage profile is selected inline, so traders stay in one place.
- Gas sponsorship.
- Copytrading. Ship native copytrading so users can follow top-performing GNS traders directly inside the app - expanding the addressable base beyond active discretionary traders and giving the platform a new acquisition surface.
- Privacy layer. Bring privacy features to Gains!
Months 4-6 - Unified Liquidity, Mobile App & Various improvements
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. Add USDT as collateral.
Months 6-12 - RFQ and more
For months 6 to 12, this is only an indicator of what we think is the best idea to do but we will be really flexible on it based on the first six months of operation.
Requested Action
This proposal seeks community approval via Snapshot to authorize the new operating team (Tom and Sam as Project Leads and the product and trading teams, Sacha, Midget and Jamie as advisors, alongside a DAO Board) under the structure outlined above, and to set the new buyback rate.
Voters will choose between:
- Approve Team Restructuring & Compensation - Buyback reduced to 0% until $GNS reaches $20
- No restructuring (status quo)
Decision rule:
- “Team restructuring” must receive >50% of all votes to win.
- Otherwise, no restructuring is adopted.
If passed, transition begins immediately.
To make the handover smooth and protect the institutional knowledge built into the protocol, the current team’s transition is structured around three commitments:
- Salary continuation through the cutoff date. The outgoing team continues to receive their regular salary up to the cutoff date. This covers all of May 2026 and any days in June 2026 leading up to the handover.
- Cutoff date. The cutoff date is defined as the day on which the outgoing team receives the first 3 months of severance funds from the OC pull. The cutoff date is also the formal handover date.
- Severance amounts and payment schedule.
- Long-term employees: 4 months of salary in total. 3 months paid upfront on the cutoff date, and the remaining 1 month paid 1 month after the cutoff date.
- Short-term employees: 2 months of salary.
- Atlas (outgoing project lead): reference monthly salary set at $14.75k, his average monthly salary over his tenure.
- For all other current team members, the reference salary level used is April 2026.
- Continued advisory role. Crumbs remains involved for 8 months post-transition: the first 4 months are covered by his full-salary severance package, and the following 4 months are paid as advisory at $10k/month. Throughout this window, he supports the new team with protocol context, technical handover, and any historical decisions the new team needs to be brought up to speed on.
- Source of funds. Both the severance and the advisory compensation are funded from the OC Vault, in addition to governance fund revenues.
Conclusion
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 full support of the current team during the transition period.
- 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
In parallel with this proposal, the new team is actively negotiating with its network of long-term holders, and committing personal capital alongside them, to secure multiple millions of dollars in GNS spot buys to be executed after the new structure’s adoption.
- No team sales for the foreseeable future. The mandate is to bring GNS far past its previous ATH. The team has no intention of selling any of the tokens it acquires - through this spot buy or the price-gated mint - for the foreseeable future.
- Why this matters for the DAO. The compensation structure already aligns us with token-holder outcomes by design. This additional spot buy is the explicit demonstration that the team is willing to put real personal capital on the same line we are asking the DAO to back us on. This is also why we are comfortable taking no fixed base and tying our entire upside to performance: we are fully sold on the thesis ourselves.
- On top of this spot commitment, the team is also fronting personal capital to fund operations from day one. Standing up a structure of this size, covering the costs required to bring in and engage the operating teams introduced above, demands real upfront funding. Rather than billing those costs back to the protocol, the current team will invest its own capital to cover them. If Gains doesn’t grow, we don’t recoup that capital, neither the spot buy nor the operating outlay.
Revenue Baseline
Per the Compensation Structure section, the team’s performance share is calculated against a fixed revenue baseline locked in at adoption. This baseline does not roll, recalculate, or update over time. For full transparency and so the DAO can independently verify the math, the baseline is anchored to publicly reported protocol revenue on DeFiLlama.
Why a 2-month window. Gains’ revenue has been on a clear declining trajectory over recent months, and the team taking over is already absorbing substantial risk on multiple fronts: assembling and funding a top-tier operating bench out of our own pocket, fronting operating costs until performance kicks in, and committing personal capital alongside our network into a multi-million dollar spot buy. We therefore lock the baseline to the average of the two most recent full months on record at adoption, April 2026 and May 2026, the most accurate snapshot of where the protocol sits today.
Fixed baseline at adoption (not a rolling figure - locked in for the duration of the mandate):
- April 2026 → $295,400
- May 2026 → $239,300
- Locked baseline → ~$267,350 / month (used as the fixed reference for all performance-share calculations going forward)
Source of truth: defillama.com/protocol/fees/gains-network.