[BIP-XXX] - Orb Collective - Moving Forward

Governance General Proposal
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This proposal isn’t intended to move employees or contributors from one SP to another or to require any current Orb personnel to work for any particular SP as part of the transition. It merely analyzes Orb’s performance, especially its leadership, and suggests a potential party to work in collaboration with OpCo and the Balancer Foundation to help oversee the winding down of Orb and to provide assistance with the transition of its employees performing critical services who want to continue their work within the Balancer ecosystem. As mentioned by other commenters, we would expect further discussions between individuals and SPs, both current and new, to retain Orb employees under structure and leadership that supports growth and innovation for Balancer.

The conclusion here seems incongruent with the points that lead up to it. The agreement between Balancer and Orb (supported by BIP-20 and their SLA) have clauses for reconsideration/termination. Budgets from Orb are also often not voted upon - they are presented to the community by Orb leadership simply for its review in the manner outlined in the proposal. There have been many issues raised on the forum over the last 9 months concerning Orb’s performance, reporting, and its budget. This history and the fact this discussion is happening here, in advance, and will be voted upon by all of Balancer governance, is the very basis of decentralization.

Furthermore, @solarcurve has suggested that future payments to Orb beyond May 31 be presented on the forum and voted on by Balancer governance. It seems that if Orb or any of those affected by the transition, especially its personnel, have an interest in being more involved in the process or with any future transition payment authorizations, then those issues should be raised collaboratively by working to craft a plan and proposal that would be submitted to Balancer governance, discussed, and then voted on. @immutbl has stated he will provide a deliverable by this Friday. If any current Orb personnel have thoughts about how he should approach this process and the deliverable that is being crafted, would like to raise funding concerns, or have concerns about ops issues that should be addressed as part of the transition, then it would be appropriate to raise them with Orb leadership (by helping to craft and refine the deliverable that is being created), raise them here on the forum or as individuals / a separate group by way of a similarly-crafted proposal or even RFC, and with any other SPs who will be involved in the process.

This path would speed up this transition, which is in the best interest of the Balancer community. We are willing to support this change of specifications in the proposal, and will be preparing the fully fleshed out version to go to vote next week.

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My perspective as an Orb employee (and former Balancer Labs employee), and as someone who wishes to remain in the community moving forward:

First, I think it’s totally fair if veBAL holders choose not to fund Orb Collective moving forward if they believe the work wasn’t up to expectations. Working as an SP for a DAO is privilege and the output should be scrutinized and voted on by members with the most skin in the game.

However, I don’t think it’s fair to insinuate that Orb did not act in good faith. It’s hard to have a healthy community discourse on this topic with this type of unverified innuendo. I’m open to learning, so if anyone, especially regular day-to-day contributors, have any anecdotes or evidence of Orb acting in bad faith, please provide examples.

Integrations is the team most affected by this proposal, so I’d like to provide some further insight into the reality of their year which may not be widely known in the community. Orb spent the majority of its engineering time allocated to the Managed Pools product, which was set as a key priority for the year by Balancer ecosystem leaders. This work was performed under immense time pressure with a deadline driven by a partner. Unfortunately, after a significant time investment, this project was later deprioritized by ecosystem leaders as other products like Generalized boosted pools showed more traction and promise.

In an emerging dynamic industry like DeFi, the reality is that you often work at the edge of innovation. Some products, like Managed Pools, that seemed promising 6 months ago, lose their appeal upon further analysis. That is fine. As a DAO, we have to live with the fact that some work will be discontinued when other opportunities shine brighter.

Because of the amount of work which never saw the light of day, I can understand community frustration around Orb’s output here. However, I truly believe that Orb acted in good faith and with the Balancer’s ecosystem best interest by working on the prioritized projects. Engineering specifically produced a lot of innovative work on Managed Pools (including the creation of novel DeFi features like Guardians) and produced Pool Controllers for Index Coop that were audited.

To Jeremy’s credit here, in probably his biggest test, I believe he acted in good faith and in the best interests of the Balancer ecosystem by agreeing to adjust the plan, to deprioritize Managed Pools, (even though it would be against his personal interest by severely reducing the impact of Orb’s output for the year). It’s healthy to be critical of leadership and performance, and Orb certainly had it’s failings. However, I find the insinuation of him not acting in good faith to be unfair in the absence of evidence.

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I want to influence as little as possible this discussion but feel I have to quickly chime in.

I echo all of the below:

I also think if this vote passes it could be a bad precedent for the DAO to not keep its decision of giving a 3-month buffer to Orb. Orb made commitments with its employees and other contractors/stakeholders that took as an assumption this 3-month buffer. If I were a Balancer SP candidate and saw this happening I would be hesitant about the promises the DAO made to me.

What might have triggered a lot of the push to wind down the agreement sooner than by end of July is this statement by Jeremy:

If a relationship has clearly no future expectations to endure, then both parties should want to speed up the winding down process to make it less painful and costly. Jeremy will likely give more details about this in the coming days/weeks. Also it seems to me this statement reflects what Jeremy wants but I’m not sure that he’s speaking for all of the members as I it seems many want to stay after Orb is off-boarded.

Before making any hasty votes and putting even more pressure on the Orb team I’d advocate for continuing the discussion here as we may already be moving to a closing that satisfies all parties.

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given the speed at which the conversation is moving and the desire from a group of DAO members to move to vote, perhaps it’d be great if Orb leadership shared how they’re thinking about the rapidly evolving situation rather just looping back with financials by end of the week.

i do have sympathy for the Orb leadership. there are lots of conversations that i’m need to happen between them and the Orb team. so, the pace at which they can communicate externally is perhaps a bit slower than the rest but, it seems like the conversation is moving forward without the Orb leadership sharing how they view the situation and we’re left deciphering their cryptic one liners.

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Not making a proposal to continue as an SP for year 2 doesn’t change our commitment to honor our duties for year 1 and shouldn’t change the DAO’s commitment to us for year 1. The agreement wasn’t contingent on us continuing for a second year.

As the team can verify, my conversations with them leading up to posting that statement were about staying focused despite the chaos around us and giving our best to the DAO until we complete the job we agreed to do as an SP— each person showed me they were onboard and committed to this.

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First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their participation in this discussion. While this is an incredibly difficult topic, I truly hope that we are able to use this as an opportunity to come together as an ecosystem and find a path forward that honors previous commitments as well as expedites a transition so that we can all get back to the task of building.

@uxui did a great job of describing how we got here. The integrations team was tasked to work on an innovative high value project, managed pools. The project did not work out, resulting in the bulk of the effort never making it to production. We exist in an industry that is constantly evolving, and Balancer tech is on the cutting edge of innovation in DeFi. Innovation is the process of failing constantly in pursuit of something special. This is not to say that we cannot reflect on this process and learn from it, but in my personal opinion it is short sighted to simply marginalize the effort. Alongside managed pools, the integrations team invested a significant amount of energy into the read reentrancy vulnerability. They were tasked with tracking down any possible integration that could be at risk, supporting the teams to implement fixes and getting those fixes deployed. All of this work was completed under extreme secrecy and with unreasonable time constraints. It is largely due to this quiet effort that the mitigation of the vulnerability was so successful. While I do believe that there is an opportunity to refocus the integrations team moving forward, they are a team of competent engineers that have always acted with the best interest of Balancer protocol in mind.

There seems to be a general sentiment in this and the other thread that a transition process would be as simple as reshuffling contributors to various existing and/or new SPs, reapplying for funding, and getting back to work. In reality, it will be far from simple. Such a transition, if it is to occur, will take time, not weeks, but likely a few months. Pushing to expedite this process for the sake of saving 1-2 months of funding seems shortsighted if we lose several talented contributors along the way. As @rabmarut points out here, orb is an entity that currently employs its contributors, providing them with standard employee benefits. These benefits are likely to not be maintained as contributors transition into contractor roles with other SPs, something that each person will need time to consider from both a financial and legal perspective.

@solarcurve is well intentioned in his goal to ensure that all existing orb contributors that wish to continue will be supported in finding a new home in either an existing or new SP, but I believe this perspective overlooks the operational complexity described above as well the various social dynamics at play. There is a team of engineers who feel that they are under personal attack, and that they may get completely defunded in a matter of days. They have had less than one week to process this, and are receiving conflicting messages from all sides. Several of the orb engineers are new contributors to this ecosystem, do not fully understand the political landscape of Balancer and have deferred to their leadership for guidance. As @joaobrunoah very astutely described, sourcing, hiring, and onboarding new talent is a slow and expensive process, especially for a protocol as complex as Balancer. Purely from a financial cost/benefit analysis, it is in our best interest to preserve productive talent that has already gone through this process.

BeethovenX contributors have and will continue to support Orb contributors throughout this period of change. For anyone that I have not already talked to personally, please feel free to reach out to me anytime.

I understand that the entire Orb Collective are operating in extremely difficult conditions, but in an effort to diffuse tension and reduce misunderstandings, I would urge @immutbl to refrain from short off the cuff replies to this and any related discussion. Instead, please provide a plan for a path forward for Orb Collective. Your detailed perspective is incredibly important to this discussion.

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Thank you everybody to provide such valuable feedbacks.

At this point is clear that the community not only has had a lot to say, but it might have further opinions to share after @immutbl will show Friday his revised financial plan for the rest of the quarter as stated in the thread. We think is for the best to wait for it, analyze it, check for further opinions of the stakeholders, and then finalize this BIP to take it to the vote next week, potentially with some modifications if needed.

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Yes, absolutely. To speed along the process, I believe @immutbl’s revised financial plan should be very line item detailed. This will help immensely with the transition.

It should specify each service/deliverable that is part of the operating cost for each department, the service provider serving Orb, and the purpose of the service/deliverable.

It should specify who Orb will be funding during the transition and how much they will be paid, including benefits and other compensation besides straight payroll.

*EDIT: if @immutbl can’t to accomplish this, I recommend a department, like Integrations, work together amongst themselves to try to provide the info for their department as quickly as possible.

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The idea of the Integration team moving independently if not enough info are provided in a clear and timely way from Orb’s leadership is probably a very good advice.

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Thank you for your thoughtful and understanding message, @danielmk.

I hope that tomorrow’s update answers yours and the community’s open questions about Orb’s path forward and I’ll be here to answer any follow-ups, alongside our team.

I haven’t been intentionally short or off-the-cuff; I’ve been focused on an ever-shifting load of operational work (there would be an impossible amount of work to be done if operations had to shut down and the corporate entity had be dissolved by end of month, with only May funding in hand) and frequent open communication with our team to provide support and maintain a shared understanding of the situation and decisions that affect all of us.

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Gm, here’s a few thoughts:

I spoke with Jeremy quite often over the last few months re: paths forward to Y2 funding. He’s well-spoken. He cares deeply about his position at Orb. At no time did I find him to be acting in bad faith.

I watched the Aura Maxis draft the well-researched proposal, above, over the course of several weeks. It’s a research doc. It lays out facts. The BIP makes no mention of bad faith, nor implies bad faith.

Inexperience, however, is not bad faith. Incompetence is not bad faith.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that this is the case here. These are just counterexamples as the conversation seems to have gotten very sidetracked. I don’t believe anyone is here to point fingers–what’s done is done. We’re here to move forward.

I read all 4 of Jeremy’s posts today, twice, and came away with the impression that I had read nothing at all. Jeremy is an excellent verbal communicator, but a poor writer. His composition style is very corporate, glossy, but lacks precision. There’s a tendency towards self-aggrandizement as well, one reason why results rarely meet expectations. I’ve told him this directly–the very first time we chatted, in fact–and encouraged him to step aside as the voice of Orb, let others speak for themselves, as his public presence often creates more problems than it solves.

To illustrate, I’d like to pose the following question: Does anyone know how much Jeremy’s salary is?

If not, then I’d say that we have a problem here. Our Maxis asked me that same question and I answered in 10 seconds. It’s on-chain. And if so inclined, we could all go count Solar’s fortune at balancermaxi.eth. And, yes, I understand that there may be privacy issues or this factor or that factor at play in this specific example–it’s just one example out of 40 that I could list. At Orb, there’s simply too much comingling of responsibilities and funds, too much opacity, too much silence, from a SP that’s so vital to Balancer. This needs to change.

We’re all sympathetic to the current plight of Orb employees. This BIP was not designed to be antagonistic nor callous. As written, this BIP honors the original funding period. There’s no mention of stripping salaries from any active employee. This BIP proposes a seemingly logical transition partner in Beets, in an attempt to provide employees w/ a soft-landing, should they so choose. Jaoabrunoah makes a great point, however–some may not want to work w/ Beets. And that’s okay. I’ve already recommended to the authors that Beets be removed from the BIP. In the larger scope of things, marketing and integrations make more sense as separate SPs anyways.

This BIP’s purpose is to: 1) formalize Orb’s end date, 2) give generous notice to current employees, so suitable continuing arrangements within the Balancer ecosystem can be made, 3) provide our community with sorely needed clarity into Orb’s closing operations, and 4) this BIP is ultimately a vote of no-confidence in Orb’s present leadership to adequately perform these tasks.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Jeremy would be a good politician–that’s a compliment. However, this role isn’t necessary in decentered orgs, which require forthright and open communication. In the absence of a suitable trustee, it seems logical to allow the Balancer community to have oversight into these final days, through clear communication and proper governance.

This post isn’t meant to be a love letter to Jeremy, however. Orb’s failure is not his alone. Orb’s failure is shared amongst all of us, for not insisting on a transparent, results-driven funding process. This is what the current BIP seeks to change, and to do so in a way that respects both the community and those that continue to dedicate their time and energy to improve the protocol we all adore.

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Thank you everybody for the discussion and insights. We have modified the BIP by incorporating this communities suggestions:

  • Eliminating reference to Beets and, in general, transitions. It’s clear that details for individuals and alternative SPs moving forward will be finalized in the coming weeks and is outside the scope of this proposal;
  • Clarifying the end date for Orb;
  • For the remaining period, Orb should provide on a month-to-month basis, a revised spending report that accounts for the spending projections of next month and reports on the previous months spend.
    The aim being to hold Orb’s spending accountable to the community over its last 3 months, whilst supporting employees through this transition period.

We believe it is now in the best interests of all that we move this forward to a vote this week.

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OK, thank you for the new specs.

It was my expectation that Orb’s update would require a budget solely for offboarding, not the full amount until end of July. This proposal now puts Orb against the ropes at a monthly budget - which, feels even more stressful under the present situation, but quite honestly makes much more sense as we might see other events unfolding, especially regarding transitions.

Executing on this specification might be tricky, tho. Our contract between OpCo/Orb has quarterly budgets and requires monthly invoices already, but payments are (montly) made in advance to fund their activities. So there will be a gap between monthly payments (projections) and reports (previous months). I don’t see how this can be expedited.

I just want to make clear that we won’t be able to halt payments for the approved budget unless there’s a governance vote to override it. If I may suggest, the spec can demand OpCo to cap payments by these latest projections and Orb to require additional funding as needed, including costs for July not in the latest Q2 update.

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This new version of the proposal better reflects a stable way forward for the community, which is good to see.

However the proposal actually serves no practical purpose at this point, as it seeks to compel Orb to proceed exactly the same way it already does, with some minor adjustments that we would voluntarily make if just asked.

Whether this goes to a vote or not doesn’t change the outcome, but we should be considerate of the community’s time, with the heavy load of proposals there are to review each week.

These are already the terms of BIP-20 which was ratified by the community; it’s redundant to ask the community to approve something they’ve already approved.

As @Danko8383 has pointed out, governance-based monthly approvals might not make operational sense.

Since there are only 2.5 mo left, it is logical to make our financial updates monthly instead of quarterly- happy to do it. Our accounting books are normally finalized 2 weeks after the end of each month (standard accounting practice).

So in the 2nd- 3rd week of each month, we can provide a retrospective update on the previous month regarding actual spend (vs forecasted spend) include the addition/reduction of the difference in our forecast for the next month. In August, we’ll provide our update on July spend and reconcile the difference.

This would happen whether the community votes on it or not; it’s simple to just ask us to share monthly instead of quarterly updates. We were never compelled by governance to provide quarterly financial updates either- they’ve been voluntary.

We’re open to other suggestions the community may have for ensuring transparency regarding our monthly spend if this is a concern.

I’ve already stated our intention to return unused BAL and we “return” unused USDC every month by deducting it from our next monthly invoice to the OpCo. The only difference going forward is that after July we won’t be requesting any further funds, so we’d reconcile any difference by sending back or requesting funds.

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Thank you, @immutbl, for reinforcing Orb’s commitment to transparency. Orb’s dedication to voluntarily providing these disclosures should satisfy @Danko’s concerns. This BIP is even more important due to the growing number of unanswered questions from the community. See, for instance, Orb’s updated Q2 budget (at least twice), Orb’s BAL breakdown, Orb’s path forward, and other line item reporting requests, all of which remain unanswered.

The comments on the forum over the last week establish the significance of this proposal and its spec. Rather than debate the issue or make a change to a proposal that doesn’t otherwise require one, the proposal should go to vote so governance can decide.

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Your specification:

Sorry, but OpCo will need you to be super clear on this. If “Payments to Orb are to require monthly approval from Balancer governance … on spending for the previous month”, then we will incur in a contract breach by halting payments because they are made in advance. OK to execute if a vote passes, but I’m making sure veBAL holders are properly informed of the clause.

If the proposal is not intended to halt payments, and it’s fine with the projections made here, then it should be fine either way.

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From the beginning this proposal didnt make sense. It was poorly thought through and smelled like poorly hidden dirty dealings. Now the whole original proposal was torn up nd replaced with new terms. 1 of which is just repeating whats already established in orbs proposal from last year, 1 of which is repeating whats covered in this proposal, and 1 of which would cause a breach of contract. Seriously how I dont know how you post this stuff without thinking first.

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I find this specification a bit to vague to be actionable.
It’s still not clear to me exactly what Orb needs to do and when to maintain funding through the proposed transition.

1: By what date is Orb expected to submit said report in a given month in order to have funding available for the following month. As this is only a 3 month period, I think a schedule of deadlines would help make the specification more clear.

2: Are you expecting one consolidated report from the leader who you stated multiple times in this governance you don’t think is capable of writing it, or is this something on a departmental basis?

3: If departmental, how would partial funding work?

Being that a lot of peoples lives and livelihood are mixed up in this, and that we are potentially breaching contract as described by Danko above. It is very important that:

1: Orb employees know what to expect and understand how this will play out.
2: Executors of the BIP are working off an exact plan that is 100% clear and does not leave any question/room for interpretation that may result in said executors being responsible in part for said breach of contract.

I don’t think it is appropriate to take action on this BIP unless these conditions are crystal clear. The specification still needs more work.

I think this transition is good for the DAO in many ways, but barring a more exact specification, is this BIP really ready for snapshot?

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Thanks @Danko8383 for your concerns. To avoid further misunderstanding regarding this specific point, we will rewrite it to provide clarity:

“Ongoing funding for Orb is on a monthly basis after the presentation of detailed spending projections for the following month and approval of these projections by governance. The projections, presented at the beginning of the new month, will be accompanied by a report on spending for the previous month. The previous month report is for evaluation purposes, not retroactive governance approval.”

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Before this goes to snapshot, I’d like to make one final statement:

The current state of this BIP does not sit well with me at all.

1: It basically says that all orb funding is cut in now 13 days, unless someone who the author of this BIP has deemed to be incompetent produces something by next Wednesday. It then must be approved by a BIP. This means that June funding for Orb will not be clear until the 29th of May.

2: As a result of the very well conducted research in this proposal, the team in question is already in the process of winding down by the end of July.

3: The stated budget for Orb seems to be around$150,000 per month. The potential maximum savings produced by this move is about $300,000.

4: The proposal has been brought forward by a singular person @auramaxi who claims to be the voice of a council of an unknown number of anons, none of which appear to have spoken for themselves in this conversation.

5: My understanding is that these same Aura Maxis are seeking ratification via an AIP and hope to start working closely with Ballers in the near future.

Are there really 6-12 people that stand behind this BIP/insanity as it stands? Why haven’t we heard from any of them? Are these the kinds of people/conditions we want to work with/in?

Orb has been a wasteful entity. No doubt, that being said, there are engineers that are adding value, and if everything evaporates in 13 days. There is no proposal on the Forum from any other SP to take on engineering services, and a couple of senior engineers with many years of experience at Balancer are likely to get caught up in all of this.

This is the right thing to do. It’s the wrong way to do it. I’d really like to hear from anyone but @auramaxi who supports this BIP as it stands.

At very least, could things be pushed back a month, such that all this review and documentation was required for July funding, but not in less than 10 days? That has a total max cost of $150,000 in order to give everyone time to deal with this transition in a way that maintains talent and reduces risk.