PR with Payload
Authored by: @0xDanko
Service Provider / Organisation Name & Overview:
Balancer OpCo Limited (“OpCo”) is a wholly-owned operating subsidiary of the Balancer Foundation. It is an integral element of the Balancer Foundation corporate structure supporting the Balancer DAO. It serves two primary functions (a) Administrative and Operational; and (b) Product Development. This proposal deals with the Administrative and Operational (Admin & Ops) element of the OpCo. The Product Development element of OpCo is dealt with in a separate proposal here.
Administrative & Operations
Serving as the operating entity with which third-party Service Providers to the Balancer DAO will contract, submit invoices to, and from which they will be paid whether that be in fiat or in tokens. This role is integral to the decentralized operations of the Balancer ecosystem. In practice, it helps the DAO achieve its goals, supporting the healthy long term functioning of the Balancer Protocol.
The Balancer OpCo will operate under the direction of the Balancer Foundation, which will oversee / have responsibility for governance, corporate administration and operations. This includes hosting and managing software subscriptions and login credentials for certain ecosystem-wide platforms and social media accounts. It also hosts an in-house counselor for Governance, Legal and Compliance (GRC) that serves the Ecosystem Council.
As a reminder, the Foundation and OpCo operate under the governance of the DAO. The community should expect to see on this budget a higher number overall, mainly due to the moving from other allocations in past epochs to this BIP: either because they are essential protocol infrascruture costs or ecosystem-wide costs, not related to a single service/entity.
Adhere to [BIP-372] and the SP standards: YES
Length of Engagement & Budget: 522,168 USDC + 12,000 BAL (12mo)
Twelve Months (Year 3) - July 2024 (Q3 FY24) through June 2024 (Q2 FY25) divided into four quarters.
The summary below reflects the proposed budget for these four quarters, to be sent in quarterly payments from the DAO. Updates on each epoch will be given according to DAO’s accountability guidelines. If budget changes are requested they will go to a snapshot vote. If no changes are requested, this proposal will serve as the governing decision. Any unspent amounts at the end of the period will either be returned to the Balancer Treasury, or offset against the next period’s funding proposal or other SPs.
The table below shows the applicable expense categories by quarter, followed by descriptions of their make-up (editted for a more granular view).
Requests for USDC transfers:
The OpCo and its parent Foundation company did not request any transfers since its initial setup, funding its operations with savings due to reduction in spend achieved in Year 1. Final numbers for Year 2 are to be presented in due time during Q3. We propose that 522,168 USDC funding for OpCo to be drawn from DAO Treasury, which are estimated to cover the twelve months of the OpCo budget based on current information.
Request for BAL transfer:
Additionally, OpCo requests 12,000 BAL to be allocated in Year 3 towards People Costs (Admin & Ops) to fund Ballers and other user support groups, with no transfers being required at the moment.
Impact on the Treasury:
The Treasury currently holds ~5,7M in stablecoins. Funding this proposal for the next twelve months would cost around ~9,7% of current Treasury stablecoin reserves (not including the impact of projected revenue during the period).
Cost breakdown:
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Administrative costs forecast at 38,750 USDC for the BVI structure of Registered Office/Agent, Registrar of Companies fees, annual compliance services, ongoing legal regulatory expenses (including establishment of new bank accounts, if needed), bank fees, gas fees; Directors’ and Officers’ insurance USDC 20,000 (estimate);
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GRC services (126,000 USDC) will be focused on protecting the resiliency, and facilitating the growth, of the ecosystem through the Council members (and major SPs). GRC efforts will protect Balancer by focusing on regulatory developments as they relate to the current structure and, at the ready, to help respond to third party inquiries, managing regulatory risks through disclosures, issue handling, governance and legal agreement review. GRC services will be aligned with ecosystem objectives to proactively protect against potential threats from legal/regulatory changes. GRC will also include keeping the Ecosystem Council current on matters of regulatory changes and sentiment, monitoring the GRC program including review of marketing/comms, conflicts of interest, VASP, sanctions and exemptions/exclusions from other evolving global requirements, assessment and negotiation of material contracts for disclosed council members and SPs and management of regulatory inquiries, investigations and/or litigation and strategy for Ecosystem Council with external counsel as needed. For more info, please refer to Year 2 proposal here.
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Bookkeeping and accounting services estimated at 30,000 USDC for the year, including a Cayman-based accounting firm and professional bookkeeper. This also is a very low budget given industry comparables For more information, see Foundation budget and changes made here.
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The Ballers have moved from the Balancer Maxis umbrella to live under OpCo, bringing more clarity to user support and attending to community queries, mainly through Discord. This change (budget at 48,000 USDC + 12,000 BAL) carried some savings since Q2’24. The group is running leaner, carrying 1.5 FTE, costing 3,000 USDC+300 BAL in salaries per month, but we’d like to leave room to onboard more people as we approach v3, higher usage and bull market.
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Business and Community Service Providers (forecast at 50,838 USDC) consist in a set of software subscriptions and diverse service providers, currently being utilized by one or multiple DAO SPs for coordination, i.e. Google Workspace, Notion, Twitter, Slack etc.
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Network and Protocol Infrastructure services (forecast at 238,580 USD) is the heavy part of the budget. This was a line item moved from OpCo’s Product budget, being it essential to the core functionality of the protocol and surrounding infrastructure, i.e. API and RFC providers, DNS server, etc. This high increase is expected anticipating the launch of v3 and usage (Our highest allocation is on AWS for API, currently at $12,000/mo, which is a climbing expenditure), but the teams will be actively monitoring and searching for cost-effective alternatives whenever possible/available, likely being able to revisit these costs in 6mo.
ETH Address to Receive Funds:
0x3B8910F378034FD6E103Df958863e5c684072693
Link to Service Provider Agreement (if going through the Balancer OpCo):
Not applicable
Technical Specifications
The Balancer DAO multisig 0x10A19e7eE7d7F8a52822f6817de8ea18204F2e4f will interact with USDC 0xA0b86991c6218b36c1d19D4a2e9Eb0cE3606eB48 by writing transfer passing the OpCo Multi-sig 0x3B8910F378034FD6E103Df958863e5c684072693 as recipient and amount as 522168 as 522168000000.