[GIP-14] Contributor Onboarding & Compensation

The forum post of this proposal + discussion is here

The DAO now has funds, the DAO can work even more efficiently now, and everyone working is excited to bring the vision of Gearbox to life. This proposal aims to harmonize the numbers, update the list of contributors, and set up some rules for contributor compensation. The initial discussions on this topic can be found here.

There are a few parts to this proposal:

1. voting on contributor brackets (with info on who & what currently does)
2. establish code of conduct and DAO reporting rules, to avoid "treasury spoofing while doing nothing"
3. compensate the work of the past few weeks (whatever is left not covered by ex-core)

Contributor Brackets & Code of Conduct

HR is a super complex process, let alone doing it in the “open”. Circumstances and personal situations are harder to reflect on in a context of a diverse DAO. As such, it’s likely easiest to have approximate brackets - and then allow some ad-hoc stuff on the margins by allowing for some small degree of subjectivity given a contributor’s background. This should later on be decided by an actual HR committee as Gearbox DAO grows. For now, the brackets reflect general market demand & complexity for each role (while being an oversimplification, of course) and make it more transparent between the DAO members and contributors on who gets what.

Keeping full flexibility for everyone involved

The above results in compensations that match similar roles outside of the crypto world, whereas here there is also extra GEAR vested to create an extra incentive for a contributor to work more and stay aligned with the success of the protocol. Contributors are not required to be online 24/7 and can pursue their other hobbies or projects. As such, there is no need for hard control of KPIs and such - which is practically impossible in the context of a DAO anyway. While those would be great to do, for non-dev roles it's extremely subjective and unclear. Dev capacity in most cases is expected to be at 100% minus the normal days off or force majeure sickness / drinking due to CPI prints. (This is rational behavior and not just cope, because if you drink your money away now, what you spent on drinks can't be inflated away by the gubmint)

For example, lack of motivation or lack of available work from a contributor will make it seamless for them to rotate out and not feel stressed. Meanwhile, strong motivation will result in full USDC compensation as well as extra GEAR tokens vested for the same $ value as the work dedicated to Gearbox Protocol that given month.

Self-reporting and max hourly compensations

It should be noted that one can’t practically self-report a 100 hour week (despite devs doing that and beyond) simply because the discussions on “why X task took you so much time” would become very problematic as the DAO scales. It would be too subjective. As such, the maximum of a salary as per the sheet screenshot - is really the maximum unless some extraordinary circumstances with multiple all-nighters took place.

At the end of the month, every contributor can quote how much they have been busy with certain tasks. Because most of the roles have concrete output (not BD or sales) it would be fairly easy to understand how much time one or the other task could have taken. But just to be sure, a few Discord messages and a couple of tweets can't justify even a 25% capacity. Common sense should be exercised.

• devs: in general 100% unless they took an extra long vacation (blz work sers, nono!)
• marketing roles are closer to 75-100% during product launches, and lower during dev-only times
• risk and analytics work usually can't realistically be above 75%, and is likely closer to 50%
• other DAO work and designer stuff really depends on marketing activities & governance activity

Why not KPI-based sub-DAO structure?

If you are familiar with subDAOs (otherwise check the link) - you might agree that it is a bit too early for Gearbox DAO. There are some core tasks which are operational: doing some queries for protocol partners and risk scores (analytics & math), web and contracts (developing), marketing of core products - those are all very core. I didn’t find a way to turn those into subDAOs. Those are all inherent to the underlying protocol. As such, the core contributors need to scale first to a number which can then manage subDAOs without much operational overhead. As such, the current group together with ex-core become more on the operational side, whereas they can spin off into subDAOs later on (like, if they decide to lead a product suite themselves) or help manage subDAOs that grow out of the core protocol. That is for the next hiring wave.

Transparent work process & reporting

The DAO contributors have so far committed to monthly reports (June was mumbled into the spring update as most of the June was just waiting for devs to work, while other parts of the DAO were not very active). The reports shall be shared monthly or bi-monthly (in case activity is lower) and will be on this page:

https://gearboxprotocol.notion.site/Monthly-Reports-6849871a9bae44dfb903531c0a997e8f

How is the GEAR bonus priced and distributed

• The amount of tokens is set based on the price used for DAO round DAO Funding Proposal, which is 150M FDV and $0.015 per GEAR token. This pricing for the token portion of contributor compensation is set for one year. After one year, the amount of tokens will be determined by a 2-weeks TWAP prior to the distribution of the monthly comp. Note: According to this proposal, if FDV falls below 150m, contributor token comp will still happen at the 150m FDV price. If you are a current contributor and you disagree with this, please speak up and suggest an alternative method. Personally I am OK with this since we are getting the same price as investooors.
• At the moment of the distribution, that monthly installment goes into a vesting contract and is then cliffed at 3 months after distribution + vested linearly over the next 9 months after that. The vesting for every portion begins 3 months after distribution and then takes 9 months to fully unlock. Basically, it takes a 12 month cycle for one month compensation in GEAR to be fully liquid.
• We considered using options but decided that it is unnecessarily confusing.
• These tokens will be coming out of the DAO treasury, as well as the USDC.

Concrete packages and contributors in Gearbox DAO

The names you likely recognize from multiple Discord discussions already. The last 2 columns refer to approximate monthly dedication of each contributor (due to what their role entails) in normal circumstances. That helps estimate the approximate budget for contributor compensations in USD. Otherwise, the picture is self-explanatory.

Retroactive Compensation for Spring + June

The proposal has been in the air since mid April, whereas many have worked before that already and continued to work through spring + June. In some cases, priorities shifted, and some members left - while some others joined. The majority of dev expenses were covered by ex-core personal funding from the previous days. As for the other non-dev DAO-native work, contributors worked without a concrete guarantee of being paid and did not rush this proposal. Retroactively, they should be compensated as follows (which is in line with self-reporting of May / June & latest work).

Ex-core members (0xmikko, apeir99n, ivangbi, and jared) so far do not need any DAO compensations. As they do not directly operate and have remaining non-DAO related funds to work with.