MIP-31: Mantle Budget (Second Year)

This proposal is authored by the Mantle Core Contributor team.

Background

The current Mantle budget authorization was submitted for forum discussion on Jan. 31st, 2023, and approved through BIP-19 on Feb. 20th, 2023. Given that the budget was to cover the testnet phase and first year of Mantle Network Mainnet, the latter of which was launched in July 2023, it has run its course as of June 2024.

While spending has been within the scope of BIP-19, two key factors have impacted the budget assumptions, namely: the merger of BitDAO/governance components (BIP-21), and the development and launch of Mantle LSP.

The monthly expenses have been regularly published through Treasury Monitor.

This proposal is to update the budget for the second budget cycle (12 months from Jul 2024 to Jun 2025).

Format and Interpretation

Proposal

By voting “Yes”, you endorse the following terms:

1. Limits — The authorized limits for the second budget cycle (a 12-month period from July 2024 to June 2025) shall be set at:

a. Total USDx limit: 52M Units b. Total MNT limit: 200M Units

Higher limits are proposed to provide flexibility for business expansion, while maintaining an oversight checkpoint from Mantle Governance. Any actual or forecasted spending above the limits requires a subsequent discussion and vote.

2. Exclusions — The following items shall not be part of the Budget scope and limits:

a. Financing Activities (e.g., node delegation, working capital loans if any): Loan receivables will be returned or settled, and are not considered expenses. b. Bridge Liquidity: This BIP-19 item shall be removed from the Budget, and instead be handled by EC Proposal MIP-28. c. Gas Costs: Gas costs related to Protocols (e.g., L1 commitment gas costs, LSP node gas transactions, and ad hoc deployment expenses) shall not be part of the budget limits, as these costs are unavoidable, and will be tracked on Treasury Monitor. d. Other Non USDx/MNT Spending: ETH/mETH or other ecosystem partner tokens may be used for various ecosystem incentives. Such programs, if any, are public and are subject to community oversight.

3. Budget Cycle

a. All annual budgets and limits shall be extended pro-rata for up to 3 months of the following budget cycle to allow for subsequent budget to be proposed, discussed, and approved.

Provisional Budget Limit for Second Budget Cycle (July 2024 - June 2025)

Higher limits are proposed to provide flexibility for business expansion while maintaining an oversight checkpoint from Mantle Governance. Actual spend will likely be well below limits.

Review & Budget by Category

Category: Workforce

• Mantle’s core team has grown from 50 to 83 full time contributors from January 2023 to June 2024. The Growth & Marketing team grew from 25 to 45 full time contributors, while the R&D team grew from 25 to 38 full time contributors. Mantle continued to engage more than 20 professionals in HR, legal, and finance functions as part-time contributors.

• For the second budget cycle, the plan is to further expand the team as Mantle has introduced expanded product lines. The target number of full time contributors is around 100 to 120.

• $MNT allocation was not specified under BIP-19 due to no clearly defined rewards designated for team incentives in the early days. However, token incentives for the core team are critical for any token governed business. Around 21 million $MNT was awarded to Mantle workforce in the first budget cycle.

• The provisional budget to Mantle core contributors is 15 million $USDx and 50 million $MNT in the second budget cycle. The $MNT allocation represents around 1.5% of $MNT circulating supply, which is lower than industry standard.

Category: General and Administrative

• Mantle used various professional service providers for recruitment services, legal advisory, and system support. These services account for 60% of expenses. Other G&A expenses include rent, travel, and miscellaneous costs.

• The provisional budget for G&A is 5 million in $USDx.

Category: Marketing

• Mantle has collaborated with various marketing agencies, marketing partners, and research entities to enhance its visibility across the broader crypto community. Reputable media and research institutions including Bankless, Unchained Podcast, Delphi Digital, Messari, etc., and influential thought-leaders have covered Mantle.

• Mantle has amassed more than 700,000 followers on Twitter, and the community on Telegram and Discord remains active with more than 300,000 members participating in discussions, AMA sessions, and project updates. More than 120 AMAs have been conducted across official social media channels and ecosystem channels, featuring thought leaders and project team members. This includes series like Mantle Ecowaves, Mantle Showcase Radio, Ecosystem-Community Deep Dives, and DeFi Uncovered, which have been instrumental in driving user engagement and adoption. Mantle continues to be involved in global events, with more than 50 and counting.

• The actual marketing spend in the first budget cycle in dollar terms is within budget, while some payments were settled in $MNT.

• We’d expect increasing marketing activities in the next budget cycle as Mantle has expanded product lines and established a broader ecosystem. The provisional marketing budget has increased to 12 million $USDx and 20 million $MNT for potential significant activations.

Category: Ecosystem and Builder Programs

• Ecosystem and Builder Programs are incentives for applications and users. During the first budget cycle, we allocated a meaningful amount of ecosystem incentives to promising teams and projects, including: IntentX, MetaCene, INIT Capital, Merchant Moe, Catizen, among others.

• Throughout the past 18 months, Mantle has offered extensive support to its ecosystem partners through grants and investments. To date, Mantle Ecosystem has awarded grants to 112 ecosystem projects spanning various verticals. Noteworthy projects include INIT Capital, Merchant Moe, Vertex, Catizen, MetaCene, Chronicle, and Chat3, etc. Additionally, selected projects have also received backing from the Mantle EcoFund, such as MetaCene, Merchant Moe, and Catizen.

• From August 2023 to January 2024, Mantle introduced “Mantle Journey (MJ) Season Alpha”, a five month ecosystem wide campaign with a total commitment of $25 million prize pools. This included six consecutive initiatives aimed at fostering user engagement with Mantle Ecosystem through various on-and off-chain activities, offering MJ rewards for participation. Mantle Journey successfully attracted more than 140k users across diverse channels and geographic regions. More than 50 ecosystem dApps actively participated in the campaign, achieving an average improvement of 50% to 65% in their operational metrics such as Daily Active Wallet (DAW) and transaction volume.

• As for developer activities, Mantle has sponsored and hosted 26 hackathons worldwide, along with numerous tech workshops and online AMA sessions. There were more than 900 hackathon project submissions.

• Mantle has also organized six exclusive Sozu Haus activations (a mini-accelerator and hacker house program by Mantle), alongside major global crypto events to attract top-tier founders and developers.

• Mantle LSP mETH was launched in November 2023 and reached 530k ETH TVL (around $2B in value) in March 2024. “Double-Dose Drive” contributed greatly to the rapid growth, and incurred a cost of 3,800 ETH as community subsidy.

• The majority of MNT incentives and all the ETH incentives were distributed to users through dapp campaigns.

• We’d expect increasing ecosystem activities in the next budget cycle. The provisional budget has increased to 12 million $USDx and 120 million $MNT.

Category: Infrastructure & Security Services

• Cloud service (including RPC node hosting), security audits and blockchain infrastructure providers (explorers, oracles, third party RPC, indexer, etc.) are major expense categories.

• Security audit and monitoring expenses will likely further increase as products are continuously upgraded, and new product lines and programs are introduced. We have two major upgrades for Mantle Network planned for the rest of 2024, and one major planned development and upgrade of Mantle LSP.

• The provisional budget is 8 million $USDx and 10 million $MNT in the second budget cycle.

Category: Protocol Expense

• Protocol Expense was mainly the gas fee for Mantle Network to roll up on Ethereum. Thanks to Mantle DA, an alternative data availability solution powered by EigenDA technology, gas expense was significantly lower than originally expected. 3,765 ETH was spent in the first budget cycle.

• Gas costs related to protocols (e.g., L1 commitment gas costs, LSP node gas transactions, and adhoc deployment expenses) will not be part of the budget limits in the second budget cycle as these costs are unavoidable. The protocol expense will still be tracked on Treasury Monitor ongoing.

Read the full proposal here.