BIP-39: Beanstalk Farms 2024 Development Budget

"People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years." - J. C. R. Licklider, 1965

Proposer

Beanstalk Farms

Proposer Wallet: 0xc5581f1ae61e34391824779d505ca127a4566737

Summary

• Mint 550,000 Beans to fund Beanstalk Farms to retain, grow and support a group of contributors to Beanstalk through the end of H1 2024;
• Mint 600,000 Beans to fund Beanstalk Farms through the end of H2 2024;
• Mint 450,000 Beans to the Security Fund (f.k.a. Audit Fund); and
• Maintain the DAO's ability to withhold Beanstalk Farms' H2 funding after the end of H1 with an appropriate governance structure.

Links

• BIP-39 GitHub PR
• Safe Transaction

Introduction

Beanstalk Farms is an independent decentralized development organization of contributors working on Beanstalk. Beanstalk Farms has historically been funded by the Beanstalk DAO and proposed budget BIPs that mint Beans to cover operating expenses and compensate contributors.

The most recent Beanstalk Farms budget BIP was BIP-33. Although this budget was originally only intended to cover operations through H1 2023, Beanstalk Farms has been operating on these funds through January 2024 (7 additional months).

Beanstalk Farms has demonstrated an ability to execute with limited resources. However, Beanstalk Farms will be unable to continue development of Beanstalk beyond February 2024 without additional funding. There are a number of open RFCs that various Farmers have indicated a willingness to work on should a new budget be approved by the DAO.

Beanstalk Farms designed the 2024 budget to cover operations through the end of the year to enable contributors to work towards the following goals:

• Decentralized development: continue to develop a diverse organization without any single points of failure or dependence.
• Focus and flexibility: deliver high quality output in a timely fashion, while maintaining the flexibility to fund and support a wide variety of unique opportunities related to Beanstalk.
• Attracting high quality talent: continue to attract and retain high quality talent, which is critical to the success of Beanstalk.

2023 Spending and Output

Before the BIP-33 budget was minted on February 9, 2023, the Beanstalk Farms Multisig (BFM) held 186,694 Beans and 139,012 USDC.

The H1 2023 Beanstalk Farms budget of 1,350,000 additional Beans and Audit Fund of 500,000 Beans was approved by the DAO to fund protocol development, audits and related initiatives.

As of January 16, 2024, the remaining Beanstalk Farms budget consists of 56,236 Beans and 30,820 USDC, with 146,537 additional Beans in the Security Fund (f.k.a. Audit Fund).

Beanstalk Farms monthly operations reports:

• September 2023
• October 2023
• November 2023
• December 2023

The output of Beanstalk Farms since the most recent budget was minted in February 2023 includes (but is not limited to):

See the full Arweave upload of BIP-39 to read the list of Beanstalk Farms' output since February 2023.

Anticipated Use of Funds

Security

• Continue coordinating with Immunefi whitehats, the BIC, the BCM and Cyfrin to respond to issues surfaced in bug reports;
• Retain and propose to integrate Hypernative;
• Design, implement and coordinate an audit of Secure Beanstalk;
• Set up an audit competition for Beanstalk via Code4rena; and
• Continue coordinating with Cyfrin on BIP audits.

On-chain Development

See the RFCs on GitHub for a detailed on-chain roadmap:

• Seed Gauge System;
• Whitelist BEANwstETH and Migrate to urBEANwstETH;
• BDV Decrease;
• On-Chain Fert Metadata;
• Generalized Convert;
• Tractor;
• Secure Beanstalk;
• Soil Issuance Update;
• Blacklist Mitigation; and
• Generalized Flood.

Middleware

See the full Arweave upload of BIP-39 to read the Middleware section for Anticipated Use of Funds.

Frontend + Design

See the full Arweave upload of BIP-39 to read the Frontend + Design section for Anticipated Use of Funds.

Hiring and Retainment

See the full Arweave upload of BIP-39 to read the Hiring and Retainment section for Anticipated Use of Funds.

Budget

H1 2024

We propose a total of 550,000 Beans are minted to fund Beanstalk Farms through the end of H1 2024. Combined with funds unspent at the time of budget proposal, this results in a total available H1 2024 budget of 606,236 Beans and 30,820 USDC.

H2 2024

We also propose a total of 600,000 Beans are minted to fund Beanstalk Farms through the end of H2 2024.

Minting the H2 budget in advance reduces the friction involved in funding Beanstalk Farms and better allow Beanstalk Farms to attract top quality talent. A suitable governance structure will still allow the DAO the opportunity to withhold H2 funding at its discretion—see Governance.

Projected Spending

The chart above illustrates the proposed use of the H1 and H2 budget. Beanstalk Farms anticipates spending approximately 100,000 Beans per month.

Security Fund

We propose a total of 450,000 Beans are minted to fund the Security Fund. Combined with funds unspent at the time of budget proposal, this results in a total Security Fund of 596,537 Beans.

The Security Fund will be solely dedicated to funding audits and other security initiatives in the Beanstalk ecosystem. The Security Fund is expected to be used to cover future Cyfrin audits, a Code4rena audit competition for Beanstalk, and a retainer for Hypernative.

The Security Fund will be custodied by the BFM. All spending over 25,000 Beans from the Security Fund will require approval through a Beanstalk Farms Budget Proposal (BFBP), and the balance of the Security Fund will be reported in the Beanstalk Farms Operations Reports.

Custody

The funds for the Beanstalk Farms 2024 budget and the Security Fund will be custodied by the BFM wallet with keys held by various community members. We propose the following signers and backup signers for the BFM:

BFM Signers (all current signers)

• aloceros
• Brean
• Cujo
• guy
• Michael Montoya
• mod323
• sweetredbeans

The following serve as backup signers for the BFM, in no particular order:

• CanadianBennett
• MrMochi
• pizzaman1337

Governance

Beanstalk Farms will continue to utilize the processes for Beanstalk Farms Committee Proposals (BFCPs) per the processes outlined in BFP-81 and amended in BIP-25 and BIP-35 (the latest DAO approved processes are documented here).

We propose that the any Farmer can propose a BOP (i.e., a Farmer with at least 0.1% Stalk at the time of proposal) before June 30, 2024 to disallow Beanstalk Farms from using the 600,000 Beans minted for use in H2. This preserves the DAO's ability to withhold funding on a regular cadence, but reduces the friction involved in funding Beanstalk Farms by minting the H2 budget upfront. If such a BOP were proposed and approved by the DAO, Beanstalk Farms will burn the 600,000 Beans minted for H2.

Responsibilities

See the full Arweave upload of BIP-39 to read the Responsibilities section.

Contract Changes

None.

Beans Minted

The init function on the InitMint contract at 0x077495925c17230E5e8951443d547ECdbB4925Bb is called.

We propose a total of 1,600,000 Beans are minted for the budget and the Security Fund to the BFM address (0x21DE18B6A8f78eDe6D16C50A167f6B222DC08DF7) upon the execution of BIP-33.

Effective

Immediately upon commitment.