Proposal: Reserve $1.55M From POL for Sept. 2024 - Sept. 2025 Development & Marketing Budget

Background

In August 2023, the MUX community approved the POL to allocate a $1.9M annual budget for September 2023 - September 2024, which was used to fund MUX development and marketing activities.

Between Sept. 2023 and Aug. 2024, MUX witnessed $32.67B trading volume and distributed $19.37M protocol income to MUXLP stakers, veMUX holders and POL. On the development side, MUX contributors released dozens of major feature updates, including the Degen Trading Protocol, MUXLP Tranches, Aggregated Position, STIP Trading Fee Rebate Setup, GMX V2 Leverage Boosting & Liquidation Price Optimization and more. Meanwhile, the MUX V3 development is in progress. In terms of marketing, aside from continuous CT activities and marketing campaigns, MUX contributors also secured a 7.9M $ARB STIP grant from the Arbitrum DAO and used it for trading fee rebates to boost protocol adoption.

So far, $913,380 from the $1.3M development budget and $563,030 from the $600K marketing budget have been utilized. $386,620 development budget and $36,970 marketing budget remain at the moment.

As September 2024 approaches, MUX contributors would like to post the following proposal for the new annual budget.

Proposal

MUX contributors propose to reserve a $950K development budget and a $600K marketing budget from POL to fund development and marketing activities between September 2024 and September 2025. The budget is proposed based on the previous annual spending and the planned scope of work for the coming year.

Since funds from the previous annual budget still remain, new POL withdrawals will only occur once the remaining funds are fully utilized. In addition, unlike the last withdrawal budget, the latest annual budget withdrawal will occur incrementally instead of all at once. The "$950K" and "$600K" will be budget caps.

Scope of the $950K Development Budget:

• Development Contributor Wages
• Frontend Development
• Backend Development
• Contract Development
• Quality Assurance
• Operational Cost
• Product, UI, UX Design
• Project Management
• Maintenance
• Protocol Service, Infrastructure, Software and Hardware Spending
• Audits for New Contracts
• Bug Bounties
• Product-Issue-Related User Compensation

Scope of the $600K Marketing Budget:

• Monthly KOL & Partner Incentives
• User Acquisition Campaigns
• Marketing Contributor Wages
• Main and Intern Twitter Account Operations
• Marketing Content Creation Spending
• Partnership Building & Event Budget

Marketing budget disclaimer: If crucial opportunities for marketing exposure and user acquisition appear along the way, MUX contributors may seek to apply for additional special marketing budgets if needed.