[RFC] Orb Collective’s Path Forward

Service Providers Orb Collective
1

Orb Collective would like to share:

  1. Our team’s priorities for the next ~2.5 months until the completion of our funding period on July 31 (below).
  2. Expanded integrations team priorities
  3. Inventory breakdown of BAL tokens granted to us by the DAO
  4. Updated Q2 budget forecast after recent headcount reductions
  5. Report of all invoices paid by the OpCo to Orb (prepared by the OpCo))

Recently I stated that Orb does not intend to continue as a service provider beyond July 31. This was not meant to imply that no one on the Orb team wants to continue working in the Balancer ecosystem.

There is interest on the integrations team to continue contributing to the Balancer ecosystem, whether that’s by starting a new SP or joining an existing one. On design, there appears to be a good fit available in the ecosystem as well. GRC is dynamic by nature, already doing significant work for the benefit of entities throughout the ecosystem; currently through Orb but also possible through a different configuration.

While each individual on this team will take the time to arrange the transition plan that works best for them, we’re ready to put aside the political distractions of this week and get back to work with a renewed focus until we close this chapter on July 31st. Overall, our entire team is all-in on remaining part of Orb Collective until our job is done and to make a smooth transition on August 1st that maximizes productivity for the project.

As community members have recognized, cutting our team’s funding short would result in lost productivity for the project and a messy transition for valuable talent that may feel forced to seek more stability elsewhere. We think it’s in the mutual best interest of Orb Collective and the Balancer community to honor the July 31 end date established in BIP-20.

Below are our planned priorities by team. We’re open to adjusting them based on feedback from the DAO and we want our work to be aligned with the expectations of the community. We also acknowledge that this list is based on what’s visible in front of us right now and that will continuously evolve.

Integrations Priorities (Lead: Rab)

  1. Dev UX
    • Documentation
      • Pricing BPT
      • Decimal scaling and rate providers
      • Building custom relayers
      • Solidity snippets for swaps/joins/exits
      • Scaffold-balancer usage guide
      • Managed pool features/gotchas
    • Example Contracts
      • Custom pools
      • BPT oracles
      • Simplified managed pool controllers
    • Scaffold
      • Work with BeethovenX team to generalize UI component generation
      • Integrate examples above
  2. Partner Engineering
    • BPT as Collateral
      • Aave
      • Interest Protocol
      • Sturdy
      • Midas
    • Cron Finance: arbitrage via flash swaps
    • B.Protocol Boosted Pool
      • Evaluate feasibility of a boosted pool for B.Protocol’s Liquity integration
      • Review or develop wrapped token implementation
      • Possibly develop Linear Pool integration
  3. Small-scope Engineering Services
    • For the Balancer Maxis
      • Code review
      • Deployments
      • Some development (e.g., RateProviders)
    • For Balancer Grants
      • Code review

Design Priorities (Lead: Pon)

  1. UX/UI for web app
    • Cross chain boosts
      • Work with front end team to get cross-chain veBAL boosts live
      • MVP + nice-to-have features already designed
      • Deal with new issues as they arise as implementation progresses and we start working with production smart contracts
        • ie timing mismatches when user starts to sync on Mainnet and when sync is finalized on L2s
      • Lots of testing and CSS tweaks to ensure pixel perfection
    • Misc. web app features
      • New UX/UI work that comes up
      • Prioritized to ensure the front-end team has sufficient time to get urgent items live
  2. Branding & visual aesthetic
    • Continue work with Jedi & Naly from Beethoven X to define a visual aesthetic
      • Moodboards & some UI design to see how it could apply into web app and social graphics
      • Presenting a few options for community feedback and collaboration
      • Once there is consensus, create a brand book
        • Including assets (logos, colors, typography) that can be shared with partners
  3. Improved marketing website UI design
    • Start new UI design to overhaul marketing website once the community is satisfied with a visual brand direction
    • Progress on this will depend upon community consensus around a new visual direction

GRC Priorities (Lead: Beth)

  1. Advise Ecosystem Council and SPs on GRC matters
    • Marketing
    • Regulatory requirements
    • Tech compliance issues
  2. Advise Orb on wind down
    • Managing GRC matters and advising on business implications re:
      • People operations
      • Vendor agreements
      • Corporate governance
      • Legal and regulatory risks of dissolution
    • Liaise with tax and accounting advisors as needed
  3. Advise Foundation and OpCo
    • Transition of Orb work and dissolution
    • Governance
    • Decentralization
    • US regulatory advice

Leadership & Ops Priorities (Lead: Jeremy)

  1. Team
    • Fully resume team operations ASAP after losing nearly all productivity during this week of politics and instability
    • Management of team leads
    • Coordination of team meetings and documentation of weekly internal updates
  2. DAO operations
    • Forum updates and proposals as needed
    • POC for cross-entity coordination
  3. Finance/accounting
    • Budgeting for team operations, wind down, and dissolution
    • Financial reports
    • Payroll and contractor invoices
    • Vendor invoices and outstanding liabilities
    • Oversee bookkeepers, accountants, tax advisors up to and possibly after dissolution
  4. Wind-down
    • Offboarding & transition of team members to their next destination
      • Follow employment laws of each jurisdiction
      • Provide support and relevant info to each person
    • Oversight & coordination of hand-offs of team responsibilities as needed
    • Corporate governance resolutions and terminations
    • Wind down of employment benefits
    • Termination and offboarding of vendors
    • Work with advisors and OpCo to decide on and manage a potential transfer of inactive entity
    • Data and vendor transfers to OpCo
  5. Dissolution of corporate entity
    • Delaware state filings
    • Estimation and filing of 2023 taxes
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are these all deliverables, especially in regards to integrations? if not, what are objectively measurable deliverables the DAO can expect to see by what date?

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Thank you for putting together this list. These are rather stressful and difficult times for Orb and I value as much transparency and communication as possible.

Could you specify a bit more how you plan to wind down exactly? What projects need to be finished? What is really nice to have? Who is the target entity taking over work if there is no continuation planned for that work domain?

In short: I would highly appreciate to see an action plan with domain, target deliverable and outcome as well as a deadline instead of a vast bullet point list. This would help the community to better understand what is expected until when.
This is crucial as you also stated that accounting costs went up now because of the wind down and we don’t fully see why and what to expect from those costs (e.g. close company books by end of June with tax compliance in place).

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Thank you for all the information provided @immutbl. I’ve read them and took some time to think about this whole situation during the weekend, talking to a few people and sleeping on it for a couple of nights.

I voiced an opinion last week that the community should have waited for your updated budget, because I was under the impression you were working on a commitment towards “consensus building”, some type of middleground that would appraise to veBAL holders while fulfilling our obligations.

However, I don’t see it moving towards the center. IIUC, you just requested the full amount that was already budgeted for the remaining teams, listing all your obligations and to-do’s for the remainder of Year 1. This “priority list” doesn’t seem to be prioritizing anything at all (aside from @rabmarut RFC here, where you can make some sense of what’s being made an actual priority)

It was also my expectation you would voice legal concerns and implications regarding the operating structure of the DAO, and potential regulatory risks we would have by sunsetting Orb as a US-based company. It was my understanding that there were some benefits at the time of its creation in the original GRC strategy. It would be preferable if those considerations were made, and how is the regulatory landscape today to address those concerns. Without any info in this regard, governance can take this decision solely from the business perspective without any acknowledgement of legal implications.

Finally, I acknowledge the stressful situation and my post here is not intended to cause unnecessary commotion.

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@Xeonus, I’ll work with our team leads this week to add more of the details you’ve asked for.

Getting the full scope of the wind down process is a work in progress and involves decisions made both within Orb and outside of Orb, as I mentioned in the post. While there isn’t a full plan ready to share yet, I can share that we are already engaged with ecosystem leadership and outside advisors to A) get a clear understanding of the implications and risks to consider and B) get towards a consensus plan.

We are currently advising the Ecosystem Council on the risks of Orb’s wind down & this proposal process. In order for Balancer to show it is legally decentralized, as part of the D&D project, Orb was created to serve an important role. A decentralized protocol must show it is not centrally controlled by large token holders or others. With the wind down of Orb, those risks, as well as the risk that BAL will be seen as more than a governance token, will need to be reconsidered. The confidential effort is to assess the risks and advise the Foundation/OpCo and the Ecosystem Council about how to stay aligned with decentralization.

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We understand the concern about liability on the centralization matter for Balancer.

What is currently happening tho is the following:

  1. an entity that, from a business point of view, has mostly failed is scope, is been sunset;
  2. the previous entity was mostly lacking clarity (ie: financial report, as highlighted in the discussion of the last 2 weeks, payroll of single members, decision process) and could be easily not seen as a decentralized entity itself;
  3. in the meantime, a new entity, Beets, has been onboarded to fullfill some of the duty of the previous SP (marketing);
  4. there is a discussion for a potential merge of the integration team either into an existing SP or into a totally new one.

In our view, the on-going process moves the Balancer ecosystem more toward decentralization than it was when Orb was managing marketing, GCR, integration and others.

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