It’s time to vote for the next year of funding for the core team! This is the same as the last year in that funding is proposed at 5% of RPL inflation, but different in that additional info has been requested from the team that the team has not yet been provided. @haloooloolo requested a detailed breakdown of team expenses in line with what the lido team provides.
The proposed remedy has been to include an additional option in this sentiment poll that will delay the final vote until the team has provided the requested info to the satisfaction of the pDAO (as assessed by the passage of a future forum poll). If you think the proposed changes are ready to be voted on but would like to wait until the team provides the requested info, select it in the sentiment poll below.
One additional change from last year is that this year the final vote to provide funding for the team will be on-chain. The on-chain vote will be to send 54376.2 RPL from the treasury to the core team’s address at 0xd2A4848a6644749e652c1D9398B5AA317f57395B, and will cover the period from October 24th 2025 to October 22nd 2026.
Sentiment Poll
- This is “good enough” - support on-chain vote IMMEDIATELY
- This is “good enough” - support on-chain vote AFTER team provides additional info
- Oppose moving to on-chain vote
Additional Info
The official RPIP Pull Request can be viewed here.
The discord discussion thread re-uses previous core team funding found here.
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I think at least some amount of the additional information is needed. Maybe it doesn’t need to be as extensive as Lido, for example, but since the pDAO does sign off on giving this money, we need to cover our asses that something weird isn’t going on and we weren’t doing any due diligence to try to discover it.
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Each year, the pDAO MUST vote to agree a protocol development funding budget.
According to RPIP-37 the DAO should not be withholding the vote. It is not a condition of the Core Team funding that we have to produce budgetary information.
Of course, we want to be transparent and work collaboratively with the DAO so we will provide the information.
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That’s fair, in my opinion, and I will change my vote because of this.
My feeling above stands–that the actual funds should not be blindly distributed with no checks on how they are used. This is not a knock on the team and I understand frustration with having more work to do, but from the DAO POV, by voting to approve funds we are taking on some responsibility on how they are used (including legally).
I’m glad the team will provide something, anyway. I would not like to see a contentious snapshot vote on the RPIP, which it might become if this became a standoff. I suppose the funding RPIPs might need to be amended in the future with some agreement between the team and DAO on what info is provided.
I’ve been on your side of this kind of thing, langers, and I know it is a pain when the mob starts making more demands, lol, so thanks for meeting us part way!
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Well, when I develop software and want money, it’s the most natural thing that I make effort estimations grouped by work area/feature. Then people can forgo stuff that isn’t worth the effort since benefit is too little…
I understand it’s not the same situation, but the standard for getting money is telling people what you need the money for.
Yes, it’s also easy to understand that if the official agreement has not included this work and now someone wants you to do it right before the vote to pay you, you might be slightly annoyed even if you understand.
The information was requested on July 15th, so the team has had about two months to supply the requested info before the sentiment poll went live. Adding this option to the sentiment poll was also decided in July, so it wasn’t unclear what the outcome of not supplying the requested info would be.
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I suppose the RPIP should have been amended if new constraints to the vote were added
If we really just want to vote, ok, we can do it. But maybe people then are more prone to vote “no”. So, is a rejected vote a better outcome than a delayed acceptance?
Information is not needed for the vote, we just signal how to increase likelyhood of us voting “yes”…
I think the information requested is reasonable, both now and as we look forward to a relatively short runway for maintaining current operations without RPL price increase. If the DAO is to become more autonomous, it is hard to imagine perpetually paying a lump sum to a contractor without any idea of how it’s being spent, despite very different needs from year to year. If expense need to be cut, sometimes that is easier coming from a somewhat faceless DAO than a tight-knit team.
That said, while it’s certainly poignant to have the threat to withhold money as the renewal comes due, I don’t think we have any other choice than funding and the “price” we are paying for these services is very very very low given the high quality/amount of work provided.
So I would say “go to vote” and ‘fund” now, and someone should bring this up politely in every community call and GMC meeting until we see some progress.
In my opinion we are following RPIP-37 here, since we are in the process of voting, which includes a sentiment poll according to RPIP-4. If people have a problem with that, the additional info request could also be part of an actual snapshot vote, but that just seems to overcomplicate things.