hey all — I was a bit surprised by the amount in the proposal. I may not have been clear, but to clarify my earlier comments: my point was that total cost to the DAO (excluding incentives) should not exceed $500k.
It seems that may have been interpreted differently — as in, the performance bonus could go up to $500k on top of the $300k base fee. If that’s the case, it would mean the DAO could be on the hook for up to $800k before any actual incentives are distributed, which feels like a pretty significant lift for a growth experiment.
I was expecting the bonus to be capped at $200k if the base service fee was $300k.
Thank you for the clarification, Jayson and continuing to engage thoughtfully.
We accept your 20 basis point capped upside and considered this as the starting point of many campaigns to come. We will honor your interpretation and cap the total performance-based bonus at $200K, bringing the maximum non-incentive cost to the DAO to $500K. This helps ensure a maximum financial exposure for the DAO and reflects the our commitment to helping compound grow.
That said, we do want to flag three important considerations for future growth partnerships:
1. Capping Commission Often Signals Misaligned Unit Economics
Commission-based compensation exists to align incentives with outcomes. Not as a fixed overhead or operational costs. Capping it can make sense in one-off experiments, but over time it risks discouraging performance-based models entirely. If delivering a $100M+ TVL outcome is constrained by a $200K upside, it suggests a misalignment between which we should be cautious of replicating in future structures.
2. 20 Basis Points Is Cut-Throat and Optimized for Scale, Not Strategy
A 20 bps commission is extremely aggressive, more typical of passive product management (vault fees, ETF streaming fees) or automated capital deployment, not bespoke service delivery. If the DAO is anchoring future engagements at this level, we should be clear that it assumes a commoditize cost basis and not a strategic partnership built around compounding impact. This works in scale scenarios, but not when tailoring market-specific, partner-specific growth strategy.
3. Rethinking the Model Around Reserve Growth and Long-Term Timelines
Rather than optimizing future proposals around TVL snapshot or short bursts of campaign activity, the next campaign we recommend shifting the focus to 12 month reserve growth and optimizing for utilization and borrows. These are the true levers of DAO revenue and sustainability. A longer runway gives room for market cycles to normalize and for infrastructure partners to compound their contributions.
We’re excited to deliver on this proposal, and we’re committed to working within the $500K total cap as clarified. Looking ahead, we believe Compound and Unichain will benefit from this partnership. We would also welcome the opportunity to co-design that framework with governance stakeholders for longer-term programs.
On the whole we are supportive of this initiative as reflected by our early vote - but we are coming back to this now to get some clarity on what we’re actually voting on as some things appear to have changed:
Payment is now all upfront rather than most of it streamed?
What is the final measurement window for the performance bonus? As we all know, capital is mercenary so ideally we have a window that allows for “sticky” measurement
60 days shorter timeframes we advised that they can be gamed. Longer timeframes start to trend toward macro alignment vs campaign impact. 60 days after Arbitrum LTIP was also the peak TVL to lowest TVL on arbitrum LTIP.