Contributor Compensations [OLD]

[mugglesect]

@RV_ivangbi

Now to the point of @mugglesect and @asot: you are right, so for not fully dev roles (which do seem to have at par compensation and beyond) there is no current goal to turn it into absolutely full-time stuff in that regard and match a web2 comfy salary of a big specialist. For example, DAO work is not 24/7 and is very ad-hoc, so the proposal was made with that in mind. That is to not end up with too many people truly full-time and then not know what tasks to give to each other. That’s just the start though, please correct what’s wrong. For example:

• for devs, they get truly full-time larger rate higher than market or same. I assume no issues there?
• for non-devs, it’s supposed to be part-time mostly, unless they come up with roles and tasks to rally do daily, whereas then the compensation can be upped with longer vesting

Does this make sense?

While I agree with this to some extent, doesn’t this then contradict the structure for non-devs? ie if pay is basis full time hours fulfilment while non-devs aren’t being looked at for that capacity, they only stand to get lesser tokens to what the structure defines. Moreover, for them to put in 40 hours weekly alongside a job they’ll have to hold kind of seems unlikely… maybe a different look on that then?

Largely, non-devs in start ups are like swiss knives capable of functioning across multiple parts: strategy, revenue, marketing, research, sales, basic finance, HR etc basically larger ops and the goal for them is to come up with the right solutions and execute which with is limited as multiple amazing contributors are present across these to help out.

Or do you think this is an interim issue which will auto correct once V2 and subsequently volumes come in, leading to more work and even non-devs will be needed full time soon enough?

[RV_ivangbi]

Sorry for taking a while with the reply, was moving around.
Overall, agree with your points and suggest the following…

Contributor compensations in terms of GEAR will be taken at 200M FDV right now (for those who have been & are working now) which is approximately (smaller or bigger) FDV of the DAO round which should happen shortly. More on that in the contributor call of May 10 [today]. If a contributor is onboarded later, like mid 2022, the valuation should ideally change to reflect a later-joiner). That is in line with how startups do it too.

The bonus structure would then be for current list of contributors:

• X USDC as per the bracket of the contributor, give or take some amount higher-lower. Monthly.
• $X worth of GEAR at the FDV of 200M. Monthly.
• Vesting of each portion starts at 3 months after the supposed reward (if you worked in March, your March tokens start vesting in June, for example) and is then vested over the course of 9 months after that. This can vary a bit, just setting up a framework for now.

And as an extra incentive to work further, the 200M FDV will stay as a benchmark for these workers (not new ones) for 12 months since the start (until next April) at which point new FDV can and probably should be discussed. It can be lower at that point, if bear market really hits hard. But also if it is higher (imagine Gearbox as a unicorn protocol) then it shouldn’t be benchmarked 1:1 and remove any upside for workers, but be somewhere in the perfect balance scenario.

In turn, new workers should be onboarded at above 200M (even if just a bit above) as well, and not be able to get better terms while being later. Or if onboarded lower FDV, it should then reflect other workers too. It’s an open DAO after all, we wanna strive for most transparency.

Also, to avoid issues of ups and downs like:

“token goes up → everyone is happy because their options are moon. But if it goes down, everyone complains because those options are not moon anymore”…

Everyone at this stage should remember they opted in for such a structure and they saw more potential than downside in Gearbox at 200 mark. So re-negotiating only in a bad case, but keeping full upside - should either not be done or be done with extreme caution, to not abuse the DAO. Just noting down.

Now for cases where devs are harder to obtain (always!), as the “company” (not related to DAO at all, but interested in seeing the protocol grow) can use its portion to offer a higher pay to some onboarded contributors. That is for cases of extreme talent / extreme need (like, SC devs) and in that case those people will not and should not be getting tokens from the DAO. They only get USDC for working. That should be the case for 0xmikko, ilgiz, jared, ivangbi, and those who are onboarded on such terms. If in the next proposal you see someone is clearly seen as only with USDC, you can assume they have the bonus structure given by that other portion. In reality, it’s really about an extra warchest which is not in the hands of the DAO but can be deployed and used for the benefit of it. Such a structure can exist for a year at least probably, but down the line, everything will be streamed from the DAO, including larger pay cuts, even if they are VERY big. After all, founding members need to be retained IF the DAO wishes to retain them. That’s for later anyway!