Frontier
← Home
Frontier

Treasury policy

Updated October 28, 2026

Version 0.1, 27 October 2026. Status: draft for community comment, then legal review, then adoption by publishing it at thefrontier.space/treasury. Nothing in this document has been applied yet because no money has been raised.

This policy binds the treasury Safe 0x7646b33F3447151f3852901B3F76Bd20645a1e34 on Base and any bank account held by the Frontier legal entity. Where this document and the website disagree, the website's the site configuration is current and this document must be updated.

1. Principles

  1. Every dollar in and every dollar out is public, with a receipt.
  2. Money is split 90% mission, 10% operations at the moment it arrives, not later.
  3. Nobody can move funds alone.
  4. Spending is tied to published milestones, and capped per quarter.
  5. The treasury holds enough stable value that a bad market cannot stop the work for at least a year.
  6. Where this policy is silent, the default is: do not spend; ask the community; publish the question.

2. Accounts

Account What it holds Who controls it Published where
Treasury Safe (Base) ETH, USDC, FRNT (contributor, reserve and liquidity allocations) 2-of-2 Safe: founder wallet and project deployer wallet Address on site; balances read live by the treasury page (roadmap item 31)
Mission sub-account (Base) USDC earmarked for mission work Same Safe; tracked as a ledger category, not a separate address, until volume justifies a second Safe Ledger
Entity bank account (NZD) Fiat contributions, grant income, operating float Entity signatories per the lawyer's structure; two approvers for any payment above NZ$2,000 Monthly statement summary on the ledger
Community lock 4,000,000 FRNT, linear to 26 Oct 2030 On-chain vesting contract 0x4cf4856950C7486DD293B6FE78544dB68339DCe0; released tokens flow to the Safe On-chain
Team lock 3,000,000 FRNT, cliff 27 Oct 2027 then monthly to 26 Oct 2030 On-chain 0x09e5c37b7A1030577D8940680fBf0a5692c1b02F On-chain

Signer rule today: 2-of-2 (founder wallet plus deployer wallet). Both keys are currently controlled by the founder, which means the treasury is in practice single-person controlled. This is disclosed and is the first thing this policy changes:

  • Before contributions open: move the founder signer to a hardware wallet; store the deployer recovery phrase offline (roadmap item 12).
  • Before the US$100k milestone is spent: add an independent third signer (an advisor or the entity's second director) and change the threshold to 2-of-3. The third signer's name and role are published.
  • At US$1M raised: 3-of-5 with at least two signers who are not the founder, and a published signer-rotation procedure.

3. The 90/10 split

Rule. When a contribution arrives, 90% is recorded to the Mission pool and 10% to the Operations pool. The split is applied to the gross amount received after any on-ramp or card fees (those fees are shown on the ledger as their own line so the gross is still visible).

Mechanics by rail:

Rail How the split happens
Crypto to the Safe (ETH, USDC on Base) Nothing moves. The contribution API records the amount, the transaction hash and the two pool balances. The Safe holds one balance; the ledger holds the pool accounting. Reconciled monthly: pool balances must sum to Safe balance within rounding.
Fiat by card or bank (Stripe or on-ramp) Lands in the entity bank account in NZD/USD. Recorded at the USD value on the day. Each month, operations needs are kept in NZD and the rest is converted to USDC and sent to the Safe (section 4).
Grants and prizes Treated as mission income unless the grant contract restricts use; then recorded in a restricted sub-category and spent only as the grant allows. Not subject to the 10% operations cut if the funder forbids it.
Sequencer fees, pool fees, interest Mission income, 100%.

The 1% donation pledge (section 8) is applied before the 90/10 split, so after US$10M raised a US$100 contribution becomes US$1 donation, US$89.10 mission, US$9.90 operations.

Operations may not borrow from Mission. If the 10% pool cannot cover operations in a quarter, operations shrink. Mission may fund operations only by a published community vote that names the amount and the reason.

4. What is held in what

Targets, reviewed quarterly and published:

Pool USDC ETH NZD (bank) FRNT
Operations 50% 0% 50% none
Mission (below US$1M raised) 80% 20% 0% none
Mission (above US$1M raised) 70% 30% 0% none
Reserve (section 6) 100% 0% 0% none
Token allocations (contributor 40%, reserve 20%, liquidity 5%) n/a n/a n/a held as FRNT, not counted as treasury value

Why. USDC is the unit of account for everything we buy (research, engineering, infrastructure) and avoids a crypto crash eating the mission budget. ETH exposure is deliberate but bounded: it is the gas asset, the liquidity-pair asset and a long-term hedge against stablecoin issuer risk. NZD is held only for operations, because salaries, lawyers and accountants are paid in NZD. The treasury never buys FRNT with contributor money, and FRNT held by the treasury is valued at zero in every solvency calculation.

Rebalancing: if a pool drifts more than 10 percentage points from target at quarter end, rebalance within 10 business days, on-chain where possible, and record the trade on the ledger.

Counterparty limits: no more than 25% of the stable balance at any single centralised exchange or custodian at any time, and zero overnight at an exchange except during a scheduled conversion. No lending, staking or yield products without a community vote, and never with Mission funds in year one.

5. Quarterly spending caps tied to milestones

Spending authority unlocks in steps. A cap is the maximum that can leave the Mission pool in a calendar quarter without a community vote.

Stage Trigger (total raised on the ledger) Quarterly Mission cap Who approves within the cap
0 Under US$100,000 US$0 from contributions. Spending comes only from founder funds or grants, recorded on the ledger. n/a
1 US$100,000 reached ("First funded work") The lower of US$40,000 or 30% of the Mission pool Safe signers, each payment with a published scope and receipt
2 US$1,000,000 reached ("Investor conversations") The lower of US$250,000 or 25% of the Mission pool Safe signers plus a published quarterly budget posted 14 days before the quarter
3 US$10,000,000 reached ("Government dialogue") The lower of US$2,000,000 or 20% of the Mission pool Quarterly budget ratified by community vote (simple majority of participating FRNT, 7-day vote, quorum published)
4 US$100,000,000 reached ("First hardware") Set by a budget vote; hardware contracts above US$1M need their own vote Community vote per contract

Operations spending is capped at the Operations pool balance plus nothing. Within that, any single operations payment above US$5,000 (or NZ$8,000) is announced on the ledger 7 days before it is made.

Anything over the cap, any payment to a signer or a signer's related party, and any payment to an entity the founder has an interest in, requires a community vote and is flagged on the ledger as "related party".

6. Reserve rules

  • Operating reserve: 12 months of forecast operations cost held in USDC/NZD, untouched. Forecast is published each quarter. Until this reserve is full, 50% of each quarter's Operations pool inflow goes to it.
  • Mission continuity reserve: 20% of the Mission pool is held back and not available under section 5 caps. It is spent only to finish work already contracted, so a partner is never left unpaid.
  • Frontier chain reserve: separate and additional, 18 months of the chain's running cost (see docs/frontier-chain-design.md section 13), required before the chain build starts.
  • A reserve can only be drawn by a community vote, except the Mission continuity reserve for an already-published contract.

7. The public ledger

Every outgoing payment is published within 5 business days with:

Field Content
date Payment date
category mission, operations, donation, reserve-transfer, rebalance, fees
description What was bought and from whom (company name; individuals may be named by role only with consent)
amount USD value on the day; original currency and amount in the proof
proof For on-chain payments: the Base transaction hash. For bank payments: a redacted bank statement line plus the invoice or receipt, as a PDF with its SHA-256 hash published so it cannot be swapped later.
milestone Which milestone or quarterly budget line it draws from
related-party yes/no

Incoming money is published as totals (daily sums and contributor count); individual contributors are listed only if they opt in to the contributor wall.

Monthly: a "state of Frontier" post with pool balances, reserve status, spend against cap, and any variance over 10% explained. Quarterly: the Safe balance, the bank balance (summary), and the ledger are reconciled by the founder and, from Stage 2, reviewed by an independent accountant whose name is published. Annually from Stage 2: an external review or audit of the ledger against bank and chain records.

Technical note: the ledger is the ledger array in website/data/site.js today. Before contributions open it moves to the contributions database with the same fields and an export endpoint, so anyone can download the full CSV. The treasury page reads Safe balances directly from Base RPC.

8. The 1% donation pledge

Activates the day total raised on the ledger passes US$10,000,000.

  • 1% of every contribution received after activation is set aside in a donation sub-balance (USDC).
  • Donations are made at least quarterly, to organisations or directly to people living in poverty, chosen by a published process (community nominations, founder shortlist, community vote).
  • Each donation is recorded on video, with the recipient's consent, and published with its ledger entry. Where a recipient asks not to be filmed, the transfer record and a written confirmation from the receiving organisation are published instead, and the ledger entry says why there is no video.
  • Donations are not operations and not mission; they are a third category and do not reduce either pool's reported share.
  • Admin cost of making donations (transfer fees, travel to film) is paid from Operations, not from the 1%.

9. Conflicts, mistakes and emergencies

  • If a payment is made in error, it is published as such within 5 business days with the recovery plan.
  • If a signer key is compromised, the remaining signer freezes further transactions by proposing a signer change, and the incident is published within 24 hours.
  • The founder's own compensation comes only from Operations, is published as a line on the ledger, and is capped at NZ$120,000 per year until Stage 2, then set by community vote.
  • No treasury funds may be used to buy FRNT, to pay for listings that require buying volume, or to pay influencers for coverage. Paid advertising is allowed only after legal sign-off per market (roadmap item 27) and is published as operations.

10. Financial model: raise scenarios

Assumptions: fees on the way in average 3% (cards) for fiat and 0% for crypto; we assume half of money arrives by card. Operations fixed cost today is roughly NZ$3,000/month (hosting, domain, tools, accounting) with no salary; it rises with staff. Milestone stages per section 5. All figures USD, rounded.

Line Raise US$100,000 Raise US$1,000,000 Raise US$10,000,000
Gross contributions 100,000 1,000,000 10,000,000
Less on-ramp fees (1.5% blended) (1,500) (15,000) (150,000)
Net received 98,500 985,000 9,850,000
1% donation (activates after US$10M; shown here as the run-rate at that point) 0 0 0 at the milestone; US$1 per US$100 thereafter
Mission pool (90%) 88,650 886,500 8,865,000
Mission continuity reserve (20% of pool) 17,730 177,300 1,773,000
Mission spendable 70,920 709,200 7,092,000
Quarterly cap (section 5) 26,600 (30% of pool, below US$40k) 221,600 (25% of pool, below US$250k) 1,773,000 (20% of pool, below US$2M)
Quarters to deploy spendable at cap about 3 about 3 to 4 about 4
Typical mission uses One university research brief (10 to 25k); prospecting data licence (10 to 20k); one engineering feasibility study (30 to 40k) Two to three funded studies with partners (300k); first instrument concept design (200k); conference and partnership travel (30k); data and tooling (100k); Frontier chain reserve not yet affordable Frontier chain build and 18-month reserve (about 700k); instrument prototype with a partner (2 to 3M); research programme at two universities (1M/year); legal and regulatory for a flight (500k); remainder held for Stage 4
Operations pool (10%) 9,850 98,500 985,000
Operating reserve target (12 months) 22,000 (not reachable; reserve builds from 50% of inflow: 4,925) 110,000 (one part-time hire plus fixed costs) 600,000 (three to four staff plus fixed costs)
Operations spendable in year 1 about 4,900 about 49,000 about 490,000
Founder compensation possible 0 partial (up to about NZ$40k) at cap (NZ$120k) pending vote
Months of operations runway at fixed cost only (NZ$3k/month, about US$1,800) about 3 about 27 (before any hire) well over 12 at a 4-person team
ETH exposure of Mission pool at target 17,730 (20%) 177,300 (20%) 2,660,000 (30%)
Value at risk if ETH falls 50% 8,900 (10% of pool) 88,700 (10%) 1,330,000 (15%)

What the table says plainly:

  • At US$100,000 the project can fund real research but cannot pay anyone. The founder stays unpaid. That matches the roadmap.
  • At US$1,000,000 it can run a small funded research programme for about two years and pay one person part-time; it cannot afford the Frontier chain (which needs about US$430k to 690k in reserve on its own) without cutting research, so the chain waits for the holder trigger or the next milestone.
  • At US$10,000,000 the 1% pledge starts, the chain becomes affordable, and the operations pool can support a small team; the ETH policy means a bad crypto year could cost the mission pool roughly 15% of its value, which is why the share is capped at 30%.

11. Adoption and change

This policy is adopted when (a) a New Zealand lawyer has reviewed it alongside the entity structure, (b) it has been open for public comment for 14 days, and (c) it is published at thefrontier.space/treasury with a version number. Changes follow the same three steps. Emergency changes (a compromised key, a regulatory order) can be made by the signers immediately and must be published within 24 hours and ratified by community vote within 30 days.

Context and sources