I tend to still believe fiat scaling is nice, but I’m somewhat convinced by the idea that 12 months is essentially not all that long so we can readjust at that time.
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The team are best placed to understand their capability needs and have managed their cash flow perfectly well. This is exactly the sort of mico-management we are hoping to avoid.
EDIT: the reason why I say this is because your statement implies that the pDAO determines the resource level of the team, through funding.
We are working towards a fixed value-based approach to funding. I don’t think having a stepped payment fits into that model anymore. It is particularly vexing because it would be based on a junior joining the team…
I didn’t suggest that the pDAO should micro-manage or that the pDAO determines the resource level of the team. I would love for the team to determine sizing based on needs instead of volatile token price.
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I understand. For us, hiring based on needs is a given. Price movements do present opportunities to fill a need that we would usually “make do” by distributing the role across existing team members. All core team members wear many hats, but that can cause inefficiency at certain times. Essentially there are latent needs, as well as new capabilities, that could be filled over time to ensure we keep delivering value.
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An RPIP has been drafted based on discussion on this topic:
Please let us know any feedback you may have.
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Raising a sentiment poll to support moving this RPIP to final, ready for pDAO vote.
- Support moving to vote; I think this proposal is great!
- Support moving to vote; I think this is “good enough”
- Undecided; I have a specific question I’d like clarified in the comments below
- Undecided; other
- Oppose moving to vote; I have a specific issue I’m mentioning in the comments below
- Oppose moving to vote; other
0
voters
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Protocol development funding is initially set to 5% of RPL inflation.
Current yearly inflation is ~1,000,000 RPL and 5% of that is 50,000 RPL. At today’s prices it is ~$1.8m. (RPL is volatile so it could also end up being half that.)
Team wallet balance is now at ~1.5m RPL (down from ~1.7m RPL in Jan 2023).
I voted “great”, but I do wonder if this document should touch on financial accountability to the DAO beyond “you can hire a new service provider if unsatisfied”. I understand that NDAs and individual privacy are issues, and DAOs are horrendous at micromanaging anything more complex than a raffle. However, if we are talking millions from the DAO, possibly 10-20M/year in bull market conditions, responsibility for some basic accountability seems in order. For example, if net DAO payments are split among team members, then every expense (new hire, audit, etc) is taken from the share of a team member, creating the appearance of conflict with any financial decision; OR if more money is requested, in basic terms the DAO should be able to confirm it is actually going to new programs and not redistributed to existing ones.
I’m not sure what form this should take (prospective budget, retrospective spend summary in general categories, single advocate from DAO allowed into the inner sanctum, external audit), but would like the team’s thoughts on whether financial accountability to the DAO should be a team responsibility?
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The budget proposals at Maker varied enormously in quality depending on team. Here are a couple I thought were good for comparison.
- Protocol Engineering budget proposal
- Tech Ops budget proposal
- DAI Foundation budget proposal
Situation and structure was quite different to what you have going on now at Rocket Pool, and the system had its own problems. That said, most of the approved proposals were informative, budgets were broken down and justified, etc. (Separate documents laid out what the teams were responsible for.)
Personally, I would love to see something like the above examples as part of the team’s funding proposals.
The granularity of financial transparency has been raised already in this thread. Our concerns, were around micromanaging the development team and treating the team as a cost centre, rather than a value adding partner. I truly believe that DAOs that go into that much granularity are just creating less efficient organisations. Corporations suffer from this problem and they have a command and control structure, I would hope that we are trying to build something better. DAOs have the opportunity to be more loosely held and flexible.
That said, accountability is an important element of the RPIP. The team are required to report on their progress, at least quarterly. The team already go beyond this and have the bi-weekly community call to allow the community to engage with the team on progress, hiring, and pretty much anything else.
If we ask for more money, it will be for something specific and we will be held accountable for hiring that role or doing that thing. I believe that constant communication between the team and the DAO is key to ensuring the DAO gets value for money.
Apologies for rehashing. I’m finding it hard to vote for any positive option in the poll, though I do believe this should go to vote. I would describe my position as:
“Support moving to a vote, as this is an improvement over the status quo where no requirements are defined. However, I don’t believe this has resolved enough to prevent debate over this relationship in the future.”
Absolutely, this will certainly be an ongoing development, we are happy to continue that debate, and when appropriate incorporate the feedback into the RPIP.
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I’m voting against. Over the last years, the protocol has been hurt by the core team being understaffed. As langers explains in this post, this is partly due to the need to manage cash flows in a volatile token. This RPIP represents a great opportunity to get rid of this limitation by moving that responsibility over to the pDAO, which is better equipped to handle it at this scale. Unfortunately, the proposal chooses to continue denominating in RPL. I believe this is a mistake that will hurt the protocol significantly in the future and therefore I cannot support it.
Side note: I believe this is proposing to increase funding from 3.33% to 5.8%, not 5% as the snapshot states.
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Hello. Where can I look for a rationale behind funding dev team by pDAO instead of ICO funded dev team wallet?
Also voting against, but explicitly not because I think 5% would be too much. Basically I agree with knoshua. It is not in the best interest of the protocol to let the core team deal 100% with RPL volatility. Yes, fiat is boring, but it gets the job done and pays rents. So maybe something between pure RPL and pure fiat might make sense. Like 50% paid in RPL and 50% in fiat tokens (or a different split). That way the incentives are still there, but the core team has a baseline income and can tackle the required work with some more financial safety.
Also voting against. I feel like past milestones could have been achieved more effectively with quicker hiring decisions and it is hard not to think those were at least partially dictated by RPL exposure and market forces. The hires that have been made and the quality of the product have been great but it feels like we could be further along.
This seems… important to fix. Is the discrepancy just from the vote text including the 49,420.55 RPL figure, why the RPIP itself says only Protocol development funding is initially set to 5% of RPL inflation.? Holding off on voting for now.
I don’t want us to be in a scenario where some parties feel misled.
I tend to agree with @torfbolt that the pDAO should eventually pay total compensation as a blend of stables and RPL, the former to reduce their mandate when it comes to managing their assets and liabilities, and the latter to keep them aligned with protocol growth. This is closer in spirit to the compensation models most tech companies follow, and as @knoshua alludes to, lets the pDAO manage the risk and raid its other budgets as needed.
Mainly, I see this RPIP as a stop-gap to cover up lost proceeds from the oDAO seats held by the team. Based on this I’m inclined to vote in favor (to “keep the lights on”). Napkin math tells me we’re more-than-compensating, which seems fine given the team’s recent growth. I’d also like to call out the existing team members have gained hyper-relevant experience over the last several years and increasing their compensation is an important retention mechanism as they move upwards in their careers.
If the pDAO wants to hire more, they can find arrangements with entities other than the core team. While I believe money spent on the team has very good ROI, I also believe the team’s hiring decisions are best left as a matter internal to the team. I hope they would tell us if funding was the only thing preventing expansion.
EDIT
Knoshua has clarified that the 5.8% number includes the team’s share of oDAO inflation (as it continues to ramp down) for the year in question. Since the discussion around reducing oDAO inflation tried to target a payment that was commensurate to the task of running the odao node, I am not considering this part of dev funding, even though it is still ramping down. Voting in favor.
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