Another part of the proposal where the community had strong differing opinions was on team compensation. Proposed compensation of $100K per 2 quarters in the initial proposal, was pointed out as very low, by a lot of community members. Hence presenting the updated compensation options below. I request you to kindly vote on the option below as per your judgment.
Initial Proposal: $100K for 6 months (24 weeks).
Domain Allocator (DA) : 500 x 24 = 12000 [$10/hr , Max $500 per week]
Therefore 5 DAs = 5 x 12000 = 60000 ($60K)
Grant Manager (GM): 800 x 24 = 19200 ($19.2K) [$15/hr, Max $800 per week]
Compound Labs Member (CL): CL: 500 x 24 = 12000 ($12K) [$10/hr, Max $500 per week]
Miscillineous: $10K
$100K for 6 months (24 weeks) - Intial proposed Amount
$150K for 6 months (24 weeks): 1.5 x (Intially proposed Amount)
$200K for 6 months (24 weeks): 2 x (Intially proposed Amount)
$250K for 6 months (24 weeks): 2.5 x (Intially proposed Amount)
The amounts proposed seem rather low based on the research I have done for similar programs.
I would recommend a model that compensates more in line with the rates from other programs. I can provide examples of these rates but, at a high level, this is in line with what other programs like Aave/Uniswap pay (some of these programs also offer a flat rate for certain roles and hourly for others)
Domain Allocator (DA) : $75/hr
Grant Manager (GM): $125/hr
Compound Labs Member (CL): $100hr
One callout - I am not sure how the hours estimates that are provided here compare to other programs so there may be some differences that way in what is proposed here versus the programs I am comparing to.
This is the new proposed compensation for the grant committee based on the community voting & the research on Uniswap and AAVE grant programs. - h/t: @Sov , @harshapakshi thanks for the inputs!
Lead: $150 an hour with a 30 hour/week cap Review committee: $150 an hour with a 10 hour/week cap Designer: one-off based on specific design engagements Operations lead: $3.5k/month Community manager: $6k/month
These are the compensation rates for Aave team.
comparatively, the newly proposed compensation is pretty good. great job @harsha
Hi Harsha. The Compound Labs team discussed our participation in the grants program internally. Each and every one of us is excited and supportive of a reignition of the program!
I think this is exactly what the ecosystem needs in the long term. Seeing the community decide that this is a priority in a grass-roots manner is awesome. We are flattered that you envision that members of our team are a good fit for the domain allocator roles.
When we created the system for community ownership back in 2020, we thought about decentralization and resilience. We asked ourselves: how do we make it so that if the Compound Labs team disappeared tomorrow, the protocol could still operate and be upgraded in perpetuity? We decided to take a step back and enable the community to take charge.
With this in mind, we have decided that members of Compound Labs can individually participate, so long as they are a minority of the allocators, and that participation is done on a voluntarily / pro bono basis.
That being said, I will respectfully pass on the proposed role of domain allocator. I am happy to provide feedback and guidance when needed with regards to the grants program.
I think for a test these proposed amounts make a lot of sense. We want highly motivated individuals to apply - not those looking for purely salaries. Of course compensation can be raised later on.
Thank you so much for this note @adam and your kind words. Excited to know the support from the Compound Labs team! I have taken these policies into consideration to come up with the iteration of the proposal and structuring. Will be sharing the final draft once the domain allocators are finalized. Thank you!
Absolutely, that’s where the current efforts are going into. Finding the right domain allocators. Please do suggest a few names with whom we should speak to. That’d be really helpful!
I would make an open form that community members can share, that also includes a referral section. This is what I have seen work in previous similar instances.
Hi everyone! We are currently hunting for domain allocators for this program. If you think you would be the right person for any of the domains, please fill up the form, and we’ll connect with you. Feel free to refer someone from the community too, if you think they might be a good fit. Thank you for the support!
I’m not sure if the window for the applications for the current cycle is still open, however, a couple of questions that might be relevant for future cycles too:
1/ Domain Allocator weekly effort estimate and time commitments:
What is the basis for the estimate of 15 hours / week? Is it based on the expected volume of grant applications? Is it capped to 15 hours / week?
What happens if the volume of applications is much higher than expected, and the Domain Allocator can’t commit more hours?
Does the grant team collaborate entirely online, or will there be routine meetings when team members are expected to participate live? This will be a big hurdle for people with other commitments.
2/ Scope of the “Risk Parameters update research” Domain:
The name of the Domain sounds a bit narrow if it’s limited to researching the Risk Parameters. Also, Gauntlet is already deeply involved in that arena, so I’m not sure there’s much to be gained by limiting to Risk Parameters. There would be more value if this domain includes market risk management too. For example, products based on volatility recommend actions after big price movements. However, many quant firms are known to predict volatility upfront (using Machine Learning and technical / trend analysis) and take proactive actions before a volatility spike. Such a product can potentially help Compound carryout on-chain risk mitigation (without a governance vote for parameter changes in a limited range), or put out notifications alerting the community of liquidation risk levels (without necessarily adjusting risk parameters).
So, is the scope of this domain fixed (to Risk Parameters research), or is it more flexible? Expanding the scope would be a lot more interesting and valuable. I would like to know community’s thoughts too on this.
Hey - I’m @harsha 's cofounder at Questbook. Wanted to give an update - below is a blurb from Harsha :
I have undergone surgery last week, and am away from the desk for a couple of weeks.
We are almost done with the interviews for the Domain Allocators. 2 more to go. We will be going for the voting on this as a proposal next week. The proposal will be open for voting for a week. Sorry about the delay here.
1/ Domain Allocator weekly effort estimate and time commitments:
The roles and responsibilities of the domain allocators are similar to CGP 1.0 and incorporated the learnings from the learnings posted by the CGP 1.0 team.
If the volume of applications is much higher than expected, it is the grant manager’s duty to ensure that the workload is distributed. He/she might either distribute it to the existing domain allocators based on their expertise or add an additional domain allocator from the community to capture the overflow of the applications.
The teams collaborate online only, but on a regular basis. There would be a fixed schedule decided as per the convenience of all the team members, to discuss the progress and alterations to the process.
2/ Scope of the “Risk Parameters update research” Domain:
I have an update here, I have discussed this domain with @pauljlei - Protocol Program Manager at Gauntlet as part of Domain Allocator interviews, and we have decided to not have “Risk parameter update research” as one of the domains, since the team is already serving the DAO, conducting research on Risk Parameters and managing market risk for Compound,
Hope this answers your questions. Sorry for the delay in the response.
I’ve had a chance to talk with the Questbook team surrounding their grants program, and I look forward to seeing it implemented within Compound. I am currently an active delegate on behalf of StableNode within Optimism in which token holders vote to provide grants to protocols and have seen many issues in transparency and efficiency.
Grant delegation and transparency are two key issues that need improvement, and hopefully, Questbook will provide those solutions.
Hi everyone, here are the final updates on this proposal, before we go for the voting!
Firstly, apologies for the delay, as I was away from work for a couple of weeks due to my medical treatment and it took some time to schedule all the calls with the domain allocator applicants.
Please find the updates as below:
Domain Allocators
Thanks to the tweet from @rleshner we had 20+ applications for the domain allocator roles. Post a thorough evaluation, the following domain allocators have been chosen as below.
Domain: New protocol ideas and dapps, Miscellaneous
P.S: Madhavan is operating as an interim Domain Allocator for “Developer Tooling” since we did not find any qualified applicant yet. This role is still open for applications.
The finalized domains for the grants program are as follows, as per the voting results:
New protocol ideas and dapps
Security Analysis Tools & Security Bounties
Developer Tooling
Multichain Strategy
Though “Risk Parameters Updates Research” has been one of the top-5 voted domains from the community, we will not have it as one of the domains. Post the conversation with @pauljlei, Protocol Program Manager at Gauntlet as part of Domain Allocator interviews, we have decided not to have “Risk parameter update research” as one of the domains, since the team is already serving the DAO, conducting research on Risk Parameters and managing market risk for Compound.
Changes in the Committee Org Structure:
As mentioned by @adamhere and as per the guidelines of the compound labs team, the organization structure of the grants program had to be changed. The onus is now on the program manager to communicate regarding the approved projects to the community and the lab’s team through bi-weekly community developer calls and regular communication over discord.
So there will be a Grants SAFE, with 3/5 multi-sig, between the program manager and the 4 domain allocators. We will then have 4 SAFEs for each of the domains with a 2/2 between the program manager and the specific domain allocator.
Grants SAFE is where all the initial funds flow from the treasury for the grants program. This SAFE holds funds related to operational costs, committee compensation, and the grants budget initially. The domain level SAFEs will have funds only for the disbursal to the approved applications
There are a couple of updates from the previously discussed compensation here:
The number of domains and domain allocators is reduced to 4 from the initially proposed 5.
Compound Labs cannot take up a paid role.
Therefore the updated grant budget is $1.2M with $300K for each domain.
The updated committee compensation is $200K for 4 Domain Allocators and one Program manager.
P.S: Madhavan from Questbook will be operating on a pro-bono basis as an interim domain allocator for “Developer Tooling”, till we find another qualified domain allocator.
We’re working with BLG - Blockchain Lawyers Group for the CGP 2.0 legal compliances. Among the founding members of this group are:
eaglelex: Law Professor and EU licensed Attorney, Polygon Technology Advisor, Legal advisor for the Polygon Grants Program.
MDLawyer: Corporate and Venture Capital Lawyer in London
ByianMienert: Crypto Lawyer, first-ever Ph.D. written on DAO law
LarryFlorio: GC Delphia; Corporate Lawyer with Securities expertise
The BLG independent Legal Advisors will support CGP 2.0 for the contractual drafting, the application of KYC standards, and every legal issue that may arise during the grant disbursement phase. They will also be available for early-stage legal support to the selected projects.
Accepted grant applicants of CGP 2.0 will sign a contract (sample) post the KYC to ensure that the grant fund isn’t misused. BLG will receive a contribution of $3K USD for the above-mentioned tasks, payment will be made from the operation fund budget received as part of this program. We are working with Synaps for the KYC/KYB of the grant applicants.
Talked with the team at Questbook and we’re excited to see this come to a vote! We missed the CGP 1.0 but are excited to see this newer revamped program come live!
