PR with Payload
Introduction
There are some significant changes compared to the last funding proposal and I welcome community feedback as always.
After discussions with other leaders in the ecosystem in the wake of BIP-149’s failure to pass it was decided that Maxis should step into the role of project management. This is in addition to Maxis assuming the role of partnerships & business development in Q4. Despite having significantly more responsibilities, we are not raising net compensation, but we are re-assessing how each Maxi is compensated. Please see the following table for monthly salary specifics.
Some Maxis have opted to take some or all of their compensation in liquid BAL for various reasons. While my salary is increasing to reflect the increased importance of Maxis in the ecosystem I will continue to lock 100% and max re-lock my previous salaries. This is to ensure I have skin in the game and remain highly motivated to ensure Maxis execute at a high level in all of our areas of operation. I’ll point out that net USD compensation is decreasing by nearly 3% while net BAL compensation is decreasing 20% to reflect a higher BAL price compared to last quarter.
Additionally, we are requesting an allocation of 1500 BAL to be used for 3rd party dev bounties. This will be led by Tritium as we look to expand the development capacity of Maxis and automate more of our routine tasks. We will present a detailed accounting of how these 1500 BAL are spent in our monthly updates and the next funding proposal.
Finally, instead of asking for BAL for gas expenses we’ll instead ask for 5 ETH from the treasury. We will also continue the 5000 BAL per month for Coordinape.
Service Provider Name: Balancer Maxis
Leader(s): Solarcurve, joined by the returning cast of Mike B, Zekraken, Xeonus, Zen Dragon, Danko, and Tritium.
Pledge to abide by the DAO’s Code of Conduct (or link to your own): Yes
Pledge to abide by the Accountability Guidelines: Yes
Domains of Operation + Key Objectives & Success Metrics:
As Balancer pursues its path for further decentralization, the Balancer Maxis workgroup presents community contributors aligned with the protocol’s future and long-term sustainability. Whether proposing and executing innovative ideas, or protecting the interests of the ecosystem and helping third-party projects, Maxis have proven to be a key component of Balancer.
Our Q2 proposal is effectively asking veBAL Governance for the continuation of this decentralized collaboration group. Reading the previous Q1 funding post might bring some additional context to the present proposal.The following will be kept brief and at a high level. More granular metrics can be found in our monthly updates for January, February, and March.
Multisig Management
- Linear (boosted) pool settings
- Swap fee and amplification adjustments
- Adding newly approved gauges to veBAL
- Adding new reward tokens to gauges
- Withdrawing and distributing protocol fees
- Verifying and queuing all transactions before execution by the DAO Multisig
- Together with Balancer Labs we operate the Emergency subDAO Multisig
These are some of the basic functions required to ensure smooth operation of the Balancer Protocol for all its end users. We believe the best metric for success is that most users are not even aware that these tasks exist – they simply observe a new gauge being approved by voters then appearing on the voting list or find protocol fees in the claim section every week, etc. Maxis ensure that the various multisigs and their relevant functions are used properly and promptly, and all transactions are verified for accuracy by at least two people.
Governance
- We act as verifiers of last resort for BIPs that require on-chain execution and we post BIPs ready for a vote on snapshot - though anyone with 200k veBAL can also post to snapshot.
- Active participants in Discord and the Forum on governance topics
- Several of us are delegates
- Advise projects on Balancer’s governance process
- Manage admin of the Governance Forum
- We will pursue various strategic initiatives (such as BIP-19) at our discretion, either individually or as a group.
During Q1 Balancer governance passed BIP-163 which represented a pivotal step forward in decentralization of the governance process. Anyone with at least 200k veBAL can now post proposals to snapshot. This BIP also introduced a new process for verifying mutlisig payloads for BIPs that require on-chain execution. Maxis fill the role of “verifier of last resort” to ensure Balancer governance can continue to operate, though anyone can submit a multisig payload and/or verify its accuracy.
Partnerships
- We manage Balancer’s Discord and ensure questions or concerns are addressed
- Help projects use Balancer by offering advice or answering questions
- We often deploy new pools for other projects
- Whitelisting and maintaining token lists
- We help with UI testing for Balancer
- Seek out new opportunities to apply Balancer’s technology, primarily in the DeFi realm
- Manage relationships with partners across the entire lifecycle from initial conversations to implementation to final results
- Coordinate partner needs with other teams in the Balancer ecosystem, e.g. integrations.
Maxis took the lead on partnerships in the Balancer ecosystem during Q4 2022 after the biz dev team at Orb was dissolved. The primary near term goals are expanding boosted pool offerings focused primarily on Aave v3, encouraging adoption of ve80/20 or similar systems, and increasing utilization of the veBAL flywheel (projects bribing, parking POL, etc). Generally we believe Balancer has made solid progress over the last few months despite the various issues we’ve faced like the read only reentrancy bug and the Euler hack.
Community
- We manage a monthly Coordinape circle, open to all DAO contributors
- Onboarding framework for new contributors
- Offboarding for contributors transitioning from the DAO or between SPs
Having an open community for new contributors wanting to join the Balancer ecosystem is a great concern for us. By adopting an easy and seamless onboarding framework, every applicant is being reached through discovery calls and monthly follow-ups. We help contributors understand the DAO operating framework (BIP-1) and set in motion their ideas for Balancer. By keeping contributors engaged, we aim to retain talents in the Balancer ecosystem as Ballers, Grantees or shaping their own Service Provider.
Project Management
- Lead weekly meetings with team leads across the ecosystem to align on projects in flight
- Be the driving force behind the ecosystem’s top roadmap priorities and be accountable for their delivery
- Track project dependencies across the teams and coordinate among relevant parties
Maxis assumed the role of project management for the ecosystem in Q1. We are well positioned for this as we are the point of contact for outside teams & projects and we have established working relationships with all internal teams. Our experience in executing various initiatives in the last 9 months means we have a lot of insight into what it takes to take a project from start to finish.
Record Keeping
- We will maintain a notion page detailing the activity of each of our controlled multisigs. Included will be documentation on how to use the powers of the multisig so a future SP can easily take it over in case we are off boarded.
Length of Engagement & Budget:
3 months.
Budget of 8,550 BAL per month for salaries, of which 60% will be max locked in veBAL by contributors. We also request an additional monthly allocation of 5,000 BAL for Coordinape, a quarterly allocation of
1500 BAL for dev bounties, and a quarterly allocation of 5 ETH for gas expenses.
Total for 3 month engagement: 42,150 BAL+ 5 ETH
Impact on the Treasury: The Treasury currently holds ~4.4M BAL. Funding the Balancer Maxis for Q2 would cost around 1% of the treasury’s BAL holdings, which annualizes to ~4% of the treasury’s BAL.
ETH Address to Receive Funds: 0x166f54F44F271407f24AA1BE415a730035637325
Link to SLA (if going through the Foundation: N/A