KIP-15: KeeperDAO Labs Budget March-June 2022

KIPs Final
1

KIP-15: KeeperDAO Labs Budget March-June 2022

kip: 15
title: KeeperDAO Labs Budget March-June 2022
author: whatsthedeetz <kd@keeperdao.com>
status: reconciliation
created: 2022-02-23

Proposal

Allocate ROOK, USDC, and ETH for KeeperDAO Labs for March through June 2022.

Background

This budget outlines current and forecasted needs for various areas of KeeperDAO Labs operations over the stated budget period.

This budget, if approved, will be transferred from the KeeperDAO Treasury (0x9a67F1940164d0318612b497E8e6038f902a00a4) to the KeeperDAO Labs multisig (0xa8b0a855BE21568B93f32805b244158Cc61AD006) which is then used to pay ICs on Mondays (or when an ad hoc project is completed). The current signers of the KeeperDAO Labs multisig are @WhatsTheDeetz, @Pai-Sho, and @JZ.

The breakdown of the ROOK budget is given below, with more detail provided in subsections.

Team Total (ROOK)
Product and Engineering 1040
Growth and Operations 720
People Operations 500
Grants 150
Treasury 180
Studio 120
Marketing and Brand 600
Grand Total 3310

Product and Engineering: 1040 ROOK

We use ROOK grants for all part-time engineering roles. Currently, we have 3 engineering contractors who are paid weekly at 10 ROOK/week. We estimate that we have management capacity for 5 - 8 engineering contractors. This budget allows for the maximum (8).

IC Description Per Week (ROOK) Total (ROOK)
Product engineer 10 120
Product engineer 10 120
Product engineer 10 120
Product engineer 10 120
Product engineer 10 120
UX Designer 10 120
Webflow 10 200
Backend engineer 10 120

Growth and Operations: 720 ROOK

We intend to use ROOK grants for part-time roles in business development, customer service, DAO engagement, and governance. Additionally, we intend to use ROOK grants for those wishing to start on the path to a full-time role.

Description Per Week (ROOK) Total (ROOK)
Business development 20 240
Operations 40 480

People Operations: 500 ROOK

We intend to use ROOK grants for part-time roles including technical recruiters and process coordinators, in addition to bridging part-time contribution to full-time contribution. In addition, we expect this ROOK budget may be required for other recruiting expenses, including placement fees of up to 25% of the first year salary of a new hire (for certain recruiting firms).

Description Per Week (ROOK) Total (ROOK)
Workplace – 500

Community Grants: 150 ROOK

We intend to use ROOK grants to fund small projects that foster community growth, accelerate development, discover and support partners, translations, or other ad hoc projects.

Description Per Week (ROOK) Total (ROOK)
Community grants – 150

Treasury: 180 ROOK

We intend to use ROOK grants for part-time roles or for bridging part-time to full-time work, in support of the treasury functions of the DAO.

Description Per Week (ROOK) Total (ROOK)
Treasury analyst 10 120
Treasury analyst 5 60

Studio: 120 ROOK

We intend to use ROOK grants for part-time roles or for bridging part-time to full-time work, on a studio team that can fuel high-quality, in-house content generation. This content will help to consistently communicate our brand, mission, and values, as well as cementing our partnerships and mythos. We’ll be seeking to onboard for design and production roles to flesh out our creative skillsets, and commission projects in the interim.

Description Per Week (ROOK) Total (ROOK)
Video producer 10 120

Marketing and Branding: 600 ROOK

We intend to use ROOK grants for part-time roles or for briding part-time to full-time work supporting a marketing function. Additional ROOK budget is required for various advertising and sponsorship needs that will ramp up our marketing efforts ahead of the launch of the Coordination Game.

Description Per Week (ROOK) Total (ROOK)
Research – 100
Freelancers, Marketing and Advertising – 500

USDC Needs: 500,000

Over the budget period, we forsee the need to spend USDC on placement fees, contractors and vendors who do not take ROOK, conferences, and advertisements.

Description Total (USDC)
3rd Party Recruiting Commission 462,500.00
Events 5000.00
Conferences 8000.00
Team reimbursements 25,000.00
Total 500,500.00

ETH Needs: 1

We intend to use 1 ETH for network fees incurred during the transfer of grants over the budget period.

Description Total (ETH)
Gas 1

Excess ROOK and USDC Rollover

The budget above represents in all cases an upper bound. It isn’t required that we spend all of it, and we do not seek to. If excess ROOK or USDC exists at the end of the budget period, it will carry over into the subsequent budget period unless superceded by another KIP.

Specification

  1. Transfer 3310 ROOK, 500,500 USDC and 1 ETH (for gas) from the KeeperDAO Treasury (0x9a67F1940164d0318612b497E8e6038f902a00a4) to the KeeperDAO Labs multi-sig (0xa8b0a855BE21568B93f32805b244158Cc61AD006).
  2. As appropriate, provide funding from the KeeperDAO Labs multi-sig (0xa8b0a855BE21568B93f32805b244158Cc61AD006) to meet the needs outlined above during the budget period.
  3. Ensure good recordkeeping to provide for review of any transactions by the DAO.
2 Likes
2

Voting has ended for KIP-15 (Snapshot).

The KIP has now entered reconciliation. Objectors, let us hear from you. What are the problems that you’re seeing? How can this KIP be improved?

If no objectors have begun a dialogue on this thread after 72 hours, the KIP will be considered ratified. This is to prevent “drive-by” objections and obstructionism. Excited to have some dialogue!

3

I see too many problems here.
Designer - UX designer: what is the difference between these two roles?
Video Producer: nice but which video? I cannot remember any video about KeeperDAO
People Operation: 500 ROOK PLUS again Contractors and Recruiting other 500k USDC. Are we exaggerate? The total is 1 mln…
You want to continue to hire people, while your community seems not too happy with the current cost of the DAO. Probably due to the price drop, maybe before continuing to spend money you should think seriously about how to increase the value across token holders and release what you have been saying for months such as Staking, improvement in tokenomics etc.
Just 2 cents…

4

Just want to make a few points here.

We are about run out of our previous labs budget. This was voted unanimously through and was meant to take us through December 2021 - it has actually lasted us 3 months longer. We have proven to be conservative with these funds and will continue to be so. Anything not used by June will roll over to the next period.

Several current contributors, including engineers, are being paid from this budget. While none of these are critical, terminating their contracts would considerably push back launch dates for all the stuff we have in the works. Part time labs contracts are also our most successful avenue for onboarding new full time team members.

2 Likes
5

Thanks for the feedback Joao.

First, the overall budget is for mostly looking ahead, and only a very small amount of it has been “spent” already (that’s the reimbursement section for costs already taken on by contributors that the dao will need to reimburse). Even then, the reimbursements are not fully spoken for as we still don’t have a true USD off ramp to pay for items.

For the designer role, after getting together with the team we found that it was mislabeled and have fixed that above.

The video producer is a role we are currently interviewing for.

People operations is for hiring part time roles around recruiting and HR-style initiatives.

For the USDC, specifically recruiting, that’s for contracted 3rd party recruiting services that are looking to provide us with very high end contibutors. Their fee for finding talent ranges from 25-40% of first year compensation. The amount was projected by taking many of the roles that we are looking to fill first and calculating a 25% fee from the total compensation for those roles.

What i will say that each of these initiatives are geared towards growing our protocol and shipping products quicker. All of which should play a part in increasing value. Actually, holding this up can have a delaying-effect on releasing new products.

As for improved tokenomics, that has already started, with the end of Hiding Game and Hiding Vault emissions. We have drastically reduced the amount of ROOK given out on a daily basis (over 90%).

2 Likes
6

Thanks for this feedback Joao.

1 Like
7

I dont have any qualms with the rook portion of the budget as thats fairly specific about the use of funds. I however would like some clarity on the usdc needs as they are in aggregate a larger commitment of funds than the rook budget and have next to no clarity or specificity, especially regarding team reimbursements. Deetz has addressed the 3rd party recruiting commission a little above, but seeing as this is more than half of the total march-june budget I would also like more details and justification for the use of such 3rd party recruiting services to justify their massive 25-40% commissions.

1 Like
8

Thank you for your comment.

Yes, we are using a few external recruiting agencies in return for a 10-25% fee of the Y1 salary in case of a hire, paid in USDC. So far we’ve only (just) hired a single full-time contributor from the agency that asks for a 25% fee.

We’re very cognizant of these fees as we look to hire more people, likely only relying on external agencies for a select few very hard to find roles. And those contributors would need to be superstars to justify the fee, tbh.

I personally don’t think it’s a good investment to rely on them too much, as it gets expensive for us very quickly. Instead, I am looking to hire a good recruiter and focus more on employer branding, as that would be a much more efficient use of funds.

The truth is also that, especially for engineering roles, we’ve had some great new contributors come in just through our community and through our internal network. Which is the way we want to hire anyway. So we likely won’t even make many hires through the external agencies.

Hope that addresses your issue somewhat.

9

Hello folks, here are some qualms that could have factored into the objection votes. KIP-3 outlined a Rook rollover and no mention of this is in KIP-15, did we use all of the Rook in KIP-3 I don’t know but my guess is no. So maybe have a part that factors in the unused Rook into the budget or simply say, we used all of the funds allocated in KIP-3

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Also, I think after speaking to several community members the pushback on this KIP might be originating from mistrust in the team. I think the community wants,

  1. Better communication, none of these processed cheese answers that goes through 3 filters and 2 buzzwords, just honest clear communication that anyone can follow

  2. Reliable KIP execution, the community doesn’t need to know specifics but if you convey you are going to do something and do the opposite that is not ok. do what you say and say what you do

10

regarding the Marketing and Video, maybe it would be better to see the final product or a sample before we allocate all of the funds to it since there is no precedent to evaluate if the allocation is worthwhile. Also under the marketing section what will be researched how do we know we will get something of value from this research?

1 Like
11

A breakdown of how the amounts for events, conferences, and team reimbursements was determined could help determine if token holders want to reimburse these expenses because currently, we have no clue what they mean. Respectfully I am ok with the treasury paying for the lodging for a conference but not restaurant expenses or food up to a predetermined ceiling like 500$ for 7 days or whatever

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Supporting documents for this proposal:

Labs ROOK and USDC Estimates

Labs Multisig Tracker

Deetz Reimbursements

ETH Denver Event Cost Sharing (paid by Deetz)

2 Likes
13

As I said just a few posts before this one, we’ve been using the rollover from KIP-3 for a full 3 months after its end date. That’s over double the amount of time that budget was intended for. I expect this budget to stretch similarly over its end date, but if it doesn’t that would actually be great news, because it would mean we’ve supercharged the growth of the team.

1 Like
14

Thanks for all the clarification guys.
Being transparent as DAO is one of the most important missions that we all have.
Finally also I see some comments, good job as community.

15

Have we alleviated your concerns?

17

I don’t know, I didn’t vote no on the KIP but I just wanted to put some context on what could of concern, I think with the town hall tomorrow ppl who don’t frequent the forum could voice their concerns

18

thanks for the responses, at least my own concerns are alleviated. Im not sure if Im able to make it to tomorrows townhall as Im not feeling too well, but I would be in support of revoting on the KIP

19

thanks tommy, that makes sense. Glad to hear the team is looking into alternative hiring practices. I know I would be much more in favour of allocating some of that commission budget for a recruiter salary during the next labs budget period, or whenever we find someone suitable.

1 Like