Summary
This proposal recommends the formation of a DAO Risk Steward Working Group responsible for identifying emerging yield opportunities, performing structured risk assessments on potential yield sources, and supporting the onboarding and monitoring of new ARKs across Lazy Summer vaults, with a special focus on DAO Managed Vaults.
The working group will serve as a dedicated scouting and risk evaluation layer for the DAO-managed vault ecosystem. By actively monitoring the market and conducting preliminary risk analysis on yield opportunities, the Risk Stewards will help ensure that Lazy Summer remains competitive in capturing high-quality yield sources.
This initiative also reduces operational pressure on the core Labs team by decentralizing the protocol’s yield discovery, evaluation, and monitoring.
Context & Motivation
Lazy Summer recently launched DAO Managed Vaults, expanding the protocol’s ability to explore yield opportunities further along the risk curve.
Unlike the original Summer vaults, which are managed by Block Analitica, DAO-managed vaults currently lack a dedicated risk-stewarding layer for evaluation and monitoring the underlying yield sources. At present, yield discovery and proposal creation primarily come from the core team, external protocol teams seeking liquidity, and a handful of delegates.
A dedicated Risk Steward team allows the DAO to move from reactive yield discovery to proactive yield scouting. This ensures that Lazy Summer:
- Remains competitive with other yield aggregators
- Identifies new opportunities earlier
- Maintains consistent risk analysis standards
- Improves transparency for depositors.
Additionally, the aim is to prevent Lazy Summer from falling into the story of Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.
An initiative of this kind ensures that Lazy Summer does not have to wait for yields to come to them. The protocol can be more proactive in achieving optimal yields and staying competitive.
Proposal
The DAO will establish a DAO Risk Stewards Working Group to monitor yield markets, evaluate opportunities, and support governance decisions related to ARK onboarding and monitoring on DAO Managed and BA Managed Vaults.
The DAO Risk Steward working group will be tasked with the following responsibilities:
- Yield Opportunity Scouting - Regularly monitor for high-performing yields, and evaluate and propose new yield sources.
- Risk Assessment for Proposed ARKs - Provide an in-depth risk assessment for onboarded and proposed ARKs, including descriptions for ARKs to better help depositors in making informed choices.
- Governance Pipeline Tracking - Keep track of proposed yield sources and their progress through the governance pipeline. Ensure that ARK proposals do not spend an inordinate amount of time in the governance pipeline, and all proposals are clearly resolved.
- Monitoring DAO Managed Vault Performance - Regular reporting on DAO Managed vaults’ performance in comparison to DeFi benchmarks. This can additionally be done through a bi-weekly call (or X Spaces) + Newsletter on the Summer Blog.
- ARK Health Monitoring & Offboarding Recommendations - Monitor the health of onboarded ARKs and propose offboarding if necessary.
- Ecosystem Engagement - Actively engage DAOs to use Summer for treasury management (Bonus)
Proposed Deliverables
The working group will produce the following outputs:
- Bi-weekly DAO Managed Vault performance update
- Risk analysis reports for new ARK proposals (DAO Managed Vaults)
- Yield opportunity scouting reports
- Governance pipeline tracking dashboard
- Regular coverage of Summerfi Tweets on Scrolling with Ceazor podcast
Initial Team
@Sixty: Risk Steward
@Ceazor: Risk Steward
Financial
Risk Stewards will receive a monthly stipend for their work supporting the DAO’s risk and yield discovery processes.
Compensation covers:
- research and analysis
- governance proposal preparation
- vault monitoring
- reporting and community communication
Final compensation amounts will be proposed separately or agreed upon through governance discussion.
Open Questions:
- What other important activities does the DAO think risk stewards take on?