[BIP:77] Contributor Funding Q2 2024

Total Cost: $177,050 per month

(+$39,550 from last proposal)

This budget requests approval for future contributor funding covering work scheduled for the months of May to July 2024. This covers the last two months of financial quarter Q2, and the first of Q3. This budget is phrased as the “Q2” budget, as it has been prepared in response to performance in Q1 2024 and in the early days of Q2.

Changes from Previous Proposal

1. Increases

Beefy adopted quarterly contributor funding at the beginning of 2022, and provided the last round of inflationary increases in Q2 2022. All such increases were promptly reversed by a 20% across-the-board sustainability cut in July 2022. A year later, in Q2 2023, the contributor funding reduction was lifted, returning funding to earlier levels. As it’s been a year since the sustainability cut was reversed, and two years since the last round of real increases, the core team is now requesting additional funding to bring salaries in line with ever-increasing market rates as well as 2 years of significant inflation across the globe.

2. Expansion

Since last quarter, the core team has expanded to add two additional contributors - Armads and GPMS - for funding in Q2. Both are well-known and respected moderators in the community, who have since taken up additional responsibilities on the core contributor team covering a mix of business development, intelligence, community management and marketing/events.

In the last few years, Beefy has responded to bearish market conditions by driving down spending and applying caution in hiring and expansion. The team is proud of how Beefy has navigated these conditions, but the return of bullish sentiment and higher revenues make clear that now is the right time to reverse that caution and seize new opportunities.

3. Departmental Budgets

Active holders will note that this quarter marks a shift to a new format for contributor funding requests, now in the form of 5 departmental budgets, rather than specific approval for individual contributors.

Though transparency is extremely important in achieving decentralization, security is our upmost consideration in operating the project. Unfortunately, radical transparency can give rise to unpleasant and even threatening behavior against individual contributors, leaving those individuals concerned about their own personal security. In such circumstances, the contributor team agrees that steps should be taken to ensure that no contributors are put at risk by the broader transparency of the DAO. Change is needed to strike the right balance.

Moving forwards, the quarterly funding budgets will be issued as a total budget, split by department into several smaller budget figures. In practice, many contributors operate across different functions, so the budgeting exercise is aimed primarily at efficient cost allocation, rather than detailed representations. Beefy’s core team will engage with all separate queries and requests for information about budgeting, but on the proviso that no individual contributor’s remuneration will be exposed moving forwards.

4. Jack => Staworth

To facilitate building his legal practice in Web 3.0, Jack has incorporated a company - Staworth - through which he intends to provide legal, financial reporting and communications services. Following discussions with the core team, it is now proposed that Beefy should begin a new engagement with Staworth (rather than Jack in his personal capacity) for legal, financial reporting and communications services, with nothing carried over from Jack’s previous work.

Departmental Breakdown

Software Development - $96,950

Operations - $27,200

Marketing & Design - $23,300

Business Development - $14,600

Moderators - $15,000

TOTAL BUDGET - $177,050 per month