BIP 35: Long-Term Core-Contributors

BIP | Badger Improvement Proposals
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Category: Governance

Scope: Introduce for discussion the proposed framework for long-term core-contributor compensation for Badger Builders.

Objective: To establish a clear incentive structure for full and part-time core contributors to the DAO

Status: accepted

Overview:

Badger has made significant progress since its launch just over two months ago on 12/3/20 going from 0 to $1.9b TVL, reaching #8 on defipulse DeFi rankings, and having one of the largest treasuries in DeFi. It has made it to this point through the hard work of the original founding seeders and the community members that have stepped up across the board - from drafting and moderating proposals, managing the community and driving the design of the product to writing and pushing code for core badger products. An amazing amount has been accomplished but the team and the community have even higher goals for the long term. The treasury has plenty of assets secured to reach those goals but the majority of labor contributing to the project are working for month to month grants, some while juggling full time day jobs. Recent emissions proposals like the emissions extension and badger boost have been focused on monetary sustainability while this proposal is focused on labor sustainability.

We are proposing an initial model for long term compensation for core team members that have contributed greatly to Badger. If the model is accepted by the community we are also suggesting to bring on 11 team members into long term either full or part time roles. We consider this critical to Badger’s future. This BIP proposes a framework for retaining long-term/core contributors and enabling them to focus on building BadgerDAO’s future.

As a reminder, the Badger Grants Program is a great first step in structuring our contributor and developer pipeline and will continue to be active going forward. We Badgers understand the sheer volume of potential and untapped talent not only within the Badger community but also in the greater DeFi ecosystem. The Grants Program will continue to be structured/formalized as the onramp for new contributors that want to get involved and over-time with good performance, they may join this longer-term core-contributor structure as well.

Excerpt from BIP 28: Badger Grants Program

Details

The Badger Seeders and core contributors have drafted an initial framework for determining compensation for a core team to be funded by the treasury for 1 year. This framework applies to long-term, core contributors to operations and development. For roles that are more project-based or temporary in nature, they will fall under the Badger Grants Program.

The team, for compensation purposes, will be structured by 3 tiers: Senior, Mid, and Junior and divided into two categories: Operations and Development. Further, long term contributors can be in full time or part time roles with compensation adjusted accordingly.

It is important to note that there are also core contributors that we refer to as “Badger Seeders” that will not fall under this framework as they will be compensated via the initial Team allocation of BADGER and DIGG.

As of now, there are 11 core contributors that will be part of this framework.

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All compensations will be distributed 50/50 in USDC/BADGER with a pegged price determined by 1) their level of contribution 2) when they began contributing. . If there are ever legal fees in relation to contributors’ work, BadgerDAO will cover these fees

For the purposes of this cohort of long-term, core contributors, I am proposing a total of $1,230,000 in stablecoins (USDC) and 138,667 in Badger to be allocated for distribution over the course of 1 year. This represents ~1.65% of the Badger Treasury to secure the core badger team for the next 12 months.

Distribution

  • All payments (Stable+Badger) to be paid daily through the badger tree
  • $20k recurring yearly “insurance stipend” for full-time contributors. This is to cover those that will be leaving their jobs and must now procure their own health insurances
  • Up to $3k in tax fees paid with proof of receipt

Performance Management

  • Primarily an honor system for continued contributions with council of Seeders + Senior Core to determine quarterly performance levels / satisfaction
  • Anybody part of “Junior” level can be considered for promotion based on performance each quarter
  • Additions to the team, promotions, demotions, and retiring of contributors are subject to DAO vote

This is an initial proposal to ratify a model and secure a base of contributors to badger for the next 12 months. The model will continue to evolve through contributor and community feedback. Once there has been initial approval and implementation, there will be effort and attention put into building clearer paths for people to join as long term contributors. The grants program will continue as a way to incentivize contribution from those not part of this initial proposal.

Implementation

If this proposal is approved by the community the core development team will implement all parameters outlined in phase 1 and share all relevant information with the community including new multisignature addresses. The intention would be to complete this transition shortly after the official snapshot vote if this proposal gets to that point.

If you are FOR this proposal vote FOR.

If you are NOT FOR this proposal vote AGAINST.

  • For
  • Against
0 voters
8 Likes
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Agreed. Incentivizing contribution is important, and I think this allocation can help both pay for the awesome work the contributors have already done and make it clear to others that the DAO is willing to contract more work.

To be clear, we’re not just paying them all $20k, right? That’s just the insurance on top of their actual stipend (which depends on work done/time worked etc.)?

1 Like
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Correct.

For these 11 core contributors it would be

“For the purposes of this cohort of long-term, core contributors, I am proposing a total of $1,230,000 in stablecoins (USDC) and 138,667 in Badger to be allocated for distribution over the course of 1 year. This represents ~1.65% of the Badger Treasury to secure the core badger team for the next 12 months.”

7 Likes
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Hello Spadaboom,
Would like to take this oppurtunity to thank each and everyone to help badger successfull. Loyal badger since day 1

I would like to know if am understanding correctly

A total of 11 core contributors

  • 1230000$ + 138667 badger (@ 50$ price = 6933350$)

So a total of 8163350 $ is to distributed among 11 people over 1 year ?

8 Likes
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I agree but we should also advance “stepwise” and not accumulate BIPs at once if they are not correlative

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I’m conflicted on this proposal. Love the idea and I fully support it, but I don’t know if the numbers make sense. If the Badger token were only 50 dollars a token, and all 11 members were paid equally, that would be an annual salary of 742,122. I’m all for paying developers, but I think the DAO needs some justification for this salary (I think the risk of a new crypto could be one example of such risk).

For comparison, consider the hiring range for a software engineer at Google (53-300K per year). I appreciate the work thus far, and want to have a full-time team, but I don’t have any frame of reference for what we should be paying our contributors.

6 Likes
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138,667 x $70 = $9,706,690 + $1,230,000 == $10,936,690

for 11 guys. if all divided equally, basically a million per person.

not too shabby!!

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I’m happy to see this and glad that stables is a large part of salaries.

The way I see this proposal is:

Base salary= $111818 + $23000/year = $134818 / person (adj. for full/part time)

Bonus salary= 12606 Badger/year/person (adj. for full/part time) = ?

This is a new and volatile asset and I don’t think you can place a # to say whether it’s too high or too low. In my opinion, this whole proposal looks great. The contributors are taking some risk here which aligns well with them furthering this project’s success.

Lets get this to Snapshot!

2 Likes
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Agreed. Proposed salaries feel high at first glance. Badger’s marketcap can easily grow multiples from here, which would make the proposed salaries exorbitant.

If we understand Badger as a start-up, it would make sense to pay a larger % of the salary via equity to more senior positions, while paying a larger % in stables to those in junior roles. In this regard, it would also be good to understand how one contributor’s category affects retributions (i.e. I’m assuming not everyone will be making the same).

1 Like
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I fully support this, it is a smart move, we need a core team to build constantly.
As a smaller $Badger I would love to get involved more(for now I am moderating the Romanian discord channel, more activity will come there) so long story shirt, did the submission form from BIP 28 go live ?

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@Spadaboom Hi sir, I’d like to suggest to add the forum language translation in medium for the grants from the hunt @Ingalandia posted before. Since badger is an ongoing project and many blogs are getting posted every now and then to inspire our translators to continue translating as this will be a big help to the DAO to keep and invite more people not really good at english as badgerDAO is aiming for utility more use of bitcoin. I’d suggest 5-15 badgers per month to keep everyone hyped and active in blogging.

I’m Donzalion from the Filipino translation blog. :slight_smile: Good day! :slight_smile:

1 Like
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We’re currently building out the submission and vetting infrastructure. Some grants are more involved than others (e.g., Referral and Ecosystem require a council while Community is a more straightforward nomination), so keep an eye out for an announcement on next steps.

1 Like
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These numbers are crazy!

This amounts to 1050 tokens and 9318USDC per person (if spread evenly).
Today’s price is $75, meaning they’re getting a $78,750 monthly salary from tokens and $9318 from the stablecoin.

Further, it is expected that the price will rise the more people start using Badger. That’s fair and part of normal vesting - but more importantly it is motivation for less tokens per person as a way to motivate them to make the token mor expensive hence the project better!

How can you explain this astounding wage?

To make matters worse, this is paid out daily.
What is the motivation behind this? Most countries pay employees monthly - some like the US biweekly.

5 Likes
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I thought BIPs had to get to 200 votes to go to snapshot? I’m seeing 98 and we’re already voting? Give time to discuss!

4 Likes
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This BIP was posted 3 hours ago and already moved into snapshot, with only 96 voters.

I appreciate most of the people are FOR this one, but still I don’t think 3 hours is enough to allow for community feedback and discussion.

Again @DeFiFrog and the team rushing things without any need. This is NOT what governance should look like, honestly. Why the rush?

11 Likes
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I might’ve voted for this but given that it was hastily rushed to snapshot, gotta vote no here.

4 Likes
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I know not everyone is going to be happy with the salaries and compensation packages, but we need to ensure we keep growing rapidly with the best talent in all of defi. The worse mistake you can ever make in business is being penny smart but dollar dumb.

All my votes are in support when this moves to snapshot.

2 Likes
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I agree with a bunch of the comments above about the need for the program as well as the appearance of the salaries being high. I think more transparency would go a long way, a few things to consider:

  • break out the actual numbers by senior/mid/junior bundling it all into one number is weird and feels deceptive even if not intended that way
  • provide context of these people, what professional background do they have? what are these jobs they are walking away from. It is not crazy to me that you might pay them 1m+ a year, in the end of the day you need to you need to properly motivate people to work for the project, if their opportunity cost is a 1M/year gig at fb/google etc you have to compete
  • similarly what are their crypto holding or badger holdings? what if anything have they already received from the project? If one of these guys is already sitting on 10’s of millions of dollars of badger, what would it take to motivate them to keep working hard? Also if they’ve received badger already from the project is any of it locked up? Would they consider locking existing holdings or new badger up for a period of time?
  • consider performance based compesnation, either price based upon badger price performance or bonus based upon voting from dao. someone ships an amazing feature that does a ton for the project i would hope the dao would reward them to keep them working on the project and not drift off to some other project in the space.

Figuring out compensation in a DAO for ongoing work is a super hard problem and I applaud the team for going this route. This seems like a good start but could use more detail and refinement.

11 Likes
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This is already snapshot. Why bother posting in the forum if they won’t give any time to discuss anything. Might very well skip the forums if they don’t want any discussion to be held. This is not healthy.

6 Likes
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@Spadaboom !!
You did not give us a time for any discussion. Only 3 h and its in snapshot already? Well play. You could pretend better that community have any voice here.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against giving up the money for hard work but it should be vote after discussion with community.

6 Likes