PIP-36 - Formalize Budget for Operational & Grants

PIP
#1

Summary

This PIP proposes the allocation of a 6-months forecasted budget to PieDAO’s multisig, to enable a higher responsiveness and authonomy over basic operational expenditures.

Abstract

This PIP would allow the Multisig to make budgetary decisions according to the proposed 6 months budget forecast. This power could be removed or revised as per governance decision.

Motivation

As PieDAO evolves, so does the need to cover operational expenses more responsively, enabling a quicker reaction of this growing organisation to the changing DeFi environment.
PieDAO is still in his infancy as a project, at lot has been done with very limited resources ( 2devs + 1 analyst ): going forward it will be crucial to set the conditions to make rapid decisions in order to establish a stronger foundation for growth.

We need DAO contributors to be empowered to act quickly and decisively with regard to all activities aimed at further streamline PieDAO’ success and get rewarded for it. This proposal formalizes a sort of delegation of administrative roles from a strict expenditure perspective, that will serve as a base layer for the organization.

Specification

The budget below forecasts the planned expenditures over 6 months within the 4 domains considered: Security, Grants, Ops. Expenses & Community management.

budget

Expenditures and balance will be documented and reported ahead of 6-months closure, in preparation for the following 6 months’ budgeting exercise. In this sense, the above budget will serve both as a baseline for the monitoring of ongoing expenses variance, and as a driver for the computation of productivity metrics of the organisation.

Overview

This proposal grants the Multisig operational authority on the following decisions for the next six (6) months from implementation:

  • Determining and distributing protocol grants.
  • Determining and distributing community grants.
  • Facilitating business development and integrations.
  • Identifying and engaging analytical firms.
  • Determining and distributing legal + DAO consultation grants.
  • Identifying and executing key hires.
  • Engaging security firms.
  • Continue executing costs related to infra and smartcontracts like the Oven.
  • Hire UI & front-end development.

This proposal does NOT grant the Multisig:

  • Authority over the DOUGH token or emissions.
  • Authority over the Pie rebalancing.
  • The power to ignore any approved PIPs or the governance process in general.
  • The power to create a legal entity.
  • Leadership powers beyond those described above.
  • Any powers over the PIP process or governance.
  • Authority over the composition of the Multisig group.

This PIP was inspired by the approach took by Yearn Finance to effectively streamline their operations, which we consider a successful case within the DeFi space.

7 Likes
Growth Experiments Playbook
#2

Proposal looks good, realistic and reasonable. I’m willing to be one of the signers in the multisig.

Slightly offtopic: The overview has opened my eyes with regards to the amount of gas the oven requires. Finding a way to reduce this can have an significant impact on the burn rate.

4 Likes
#3

Happy to support this proposal and glad to see a clear funding map for these key areas moving forwards.

#4

Nice, looks very promising. I’ll support it. :heart:

2 Likes
#5

Thanks for this. I also agree.

I think 6 months is nice. It gives time to do things but at the same times members can change it relatively soon and extend it if it works

Will you still ask the community ? how do you share grants … I think grants/martketing are the only expenses community can say something. Except if you want to increase the salary of a dev or comm Manager.

I guess it a draft, but would also be nice to add more details later. What do you mean by Support and QA ? Who is behind Dev Grants ( is it the 2 devs you are referring , or is it for external collaborations ?)

And finally i’d say that the budget for Audits should be flexible and be increased if needed , maybe by reducing the Marketing Budget . There is nothing worth for marketing than a hack or an issue with the protocol ! So security should be top priority.

To sum up. I’m in ! That was just some comments :rofl:

Edit:

i guess this answer one of my questions

#6

Assuming this budget proposal I will make a more detailed post about it, in general the goal is to reduce friction and give autonomy in disbursing grants. I like retroactive grants given to people who had skin in the game by doing the work in advance. A 3 tiers system (ie: gold, silver, bronze) with fixed amounts would in my opinion work well and it’s been functional in other communities before.

I mean specifically Technical Support and Quality Assurance, devs are always happy to support on Discord users who are experiencing difficulties, however the most efficient way to do is to have a dedicated person to guide users through the platform, collecting bugs, filing an issue on GitHub and implementing strategies for quality management and testing

In IT, Quality Assurance Engineers are responsible for assessing the quality of specifications and technical design documents in order to ensure timely, relevant and meaningful feedback. They are involved in planning and responsible that every release is as much bug-free as it can be.

I’m referring to external contributors (to be identified )producing efforts which are related to the product but outside of protocol development.

A few ideas:

  • Dune Analytics Dashboard
  • Subgraph (@Pierrick has started on that one )
  • Backtesting platform for pies
  • Adapters for integrators
  • Opyn option contracts
  • DCA Strategies for Pies

I can think of many more.

Absolutely, this is a forecast, the $6k is spread out considering current cost of audits has been on average $15k every 45 days but it should be adjusted as needed. Same comes for marketing, it’s not a given that $15k will be spent every single month, flexibility is embedded in the proposal and every expense will be carefully reported and auditable to make better decisions at the end of the first cycle.

4 Likes
#7

thanks for your answer. Sound nice to me !

gooooo !

2 Likes
#8

@alexintosh are you going to propose a vote for this ? We are already mid-december :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

1 Like
#9

Snapshot proposal:

3 Likes
Funding Gitcoin Grants
#10

The snapshot vote resulted in 100% support for this PIP!

A new onchain vote has been created requesting the disbursement of 730 ETH
(6 months budget allocated or $ 427k, considering 1 ETH = $584.93)

to the Multisig 0xE2eb4bD2aB8b817F514698b7C789C1b7CE10635A

Current signatories
0x857e6FbB7518fe4Fc28667C5581C329f9A571B6c @alexintosh
0x750AF3e3418f4515F98B483de8628fE5361B04E5 @mickdegraaf
0xB4ADB7794432dAE7E78C2258fF350fBA88250C32 @gabo
(2/3 signatures required)

4 Likes