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Founding Phase · Private Beta. The Institute is in private beta. Any example content is labelled as such and is never presented as real.

DSI
Checklist

Treasury Request Checklist

This tool has been retired

It stays online so existing links, version history and any work you already started against it still resolve. It is no longer maintained or reviewed.

Use Budget Reconstruction Workbook instead
Type
Checklist
Difficulty
Intermediate
Time
20 min
Version
v1.0.0
Updated
7/21/2026
treasuryproposal analysis

What this helps you do

Treasury requests fail most often on realism, not intent. This checklist targets the parts of a budget that are easy to skim past: contingency, overlap with existing funding, and what happens when work stops early.

Answering every item is not required. Recording which items you could not answer is the point - unanswered questions are useful public information.

When to use this

  • A treasury withdrawal or funding request is up for a vote.
  • You need a consistent standard to apply across competing requests.
  • You are checking whether a budget is intelligible before assessing whether it is reasonable.

When NOT to use this

  • To determine a fair price for specialist work; use expert review for that.
  • On non-financial governance actions.

What you'll need

  • The requested amount and its denomination
  • A line-item budget
  • Day rates or cost assumptions if disclosed
  • The delivery and reporting plan

Estimated completion time

20 minutes

Working time for one governance action, assuming the inputs listed here are already to hand.

How to use it

  1. 1Work through the questions in order and record the answer or its absence.
  2. 2Note who carries currency volatility where the request mixes ada and fiat.
  3. 3Compare disclosed rates against any benchmark you can cite.
  4. 4Publish unanswered questions before the voting window closes.
  5. 5Carry the unresolved items into your rationale rather than dropping them.

The tool

Full checklist - v1.0.0

Sample questions

  • Is the requested amount denominated in ada, USD, or both - and who carries the volatility?
  • Are day rates disclosed, and are they benchmarked against comparable work?
  • Does the budget include contingency, and is contingency justified?
  • What happens to unspent funds, and is the return path on-chain?
  • Is any line item already funded by another active proposal?
Fictional Example

Invented for illustration. It does not describe a real governance action, proposal, or organisation.

Fictional review

  • Amount: denominated in ada only, delivery costs quoted in USD. Volatility sits with the treasury.
  • Budget: three lines, no day rates. Question raised publicly.
  • Reporting: quarterly to a public repository. Adequate.
  • Unresolved at vote: currency exposure. Stated in the published rationale.

How to interpret the result

  • Unanswered items show where a treasury request is not yet decision-ready.
  • A complete answer set means the request is auditable, not that it is good value.

Limitations

  • It does not benchmark rates or judge whether a price is fair.
  • It cannot confirm that the applying entity exists or controls the payment address.

Sources and methodology

Learn this method

This tool records the work. The Training Lab teaches how to do it.

  • treasury-and-budget · Reading a Treasury Withdrawal Like an Operator

    Reading a Treasury Withdrawal Like an Operator

    Reads a treasury budget the way this checklist structures it.

    Open lesson

Downloads

  • Markdown export: the complete tool, including metadata, instructions, the template, limitations, sources and version history.

No other file formats are published for this resource. We list a format only when the file exists.

Version and governance

Current version
v1.0.0
Published
8/9/2026
Last updated
7/21/2026
Next scheduled review
1/21/2027
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Editorial status
Not yet externally reviewed

No named reviewer is shown because no external review has been completed. Attribution appears only once a verified reviewer has signed off.

Changelog

  • v1.0.0 (2026-07-21) - Migrated from the static library into the resource register.
  • v1.0.0 (2026-08-10) - Retired. Superseded by Budget Reconstruction Workbook. Kept for version history and existing member workspaces.
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