[PIP-39] Payments in Peril! Pickle Partisan Proposes Panel to Prevent Protocol Paralysis

author: @bwar

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Abstract

Three team members contracts will expire imminently. Other reviews required in the coming months. A committee needs to be appointed to review and extend their contracts. The committee may also standardize compensation packages.

About myself

I’m a Dill member, have an interest in DeFi, and aped my money into this protocol and don’t want it to die.

Background

It’s my understanding that several paid team members have their contracts expiring in less than a week (4 days?). These members include LeeKuanJew, Chimaera, and 0xAnon. In addition to these three, I believe Brine-Master Larry’s PICKLE grants, which vested over a six month period and were expected to be reviewed six months later, will expire next month as well.

The DAO has not approved, nor even been requested to look at, a proposal for budget to extend these contracts. The team seems to be super busy developing new jars, expanding partnerships, and continuing the business of Pickle.

Perhaps more importantly, there’s a clear conflict of interests in the Dev team proposing their own salaries in a PIP for the DAO to rubber-stamp. Our DAO has an absurdly high acceptance rate on proposals, at one hundred percent. The Devs could propose almost any number and surely find the votes somewhere to approve the salaries.

Previous salary negotiations were run by committees of protocol-friendly actors, which is a good thing in general. However, many of those members of previous committees have not remained active in the protocol. Even worse, several of those committee members are the very people up for review and cannot realistically vote on the salary or compensation of their team members or their boss.

Previous committee members

PIP-31 (Larry’s compensation) was “put together with the help of the Pickle team and the assistance of multi-sig member Mah_Dills”

PIP-34 (Expand Core Team Budget) was run by: “A hiring committee consisting of the Pickle core team (Larry_Cucumber, 0xkoffee, unlocker, purplezky, leekuanjew, chimaera, anoniminis), independent multi-sig members (jintao, Mah_Dills), and Brinery members (Rooster_Cogburn77, sifu, yyctrader)”

Proposal

I hereby propose a “Select Committee on Continuing Operations and Compensation” be appointed in the following manner:

• (1) Larry the Cucumber, as grand maestro of this operation with an undeniable track record, shall be a member. He shall also be the presiding officer unless the Committee decides otherwise.
• (2) Jintao, a past committee member and multi-sig signer who is on retainer for our critical infrastructure but is not a salaried worker, shall be a member for his experience with both development and compensation in DeFi
• (3, 4) Two members to be appointed by Larry the Cucumber, so long as they are not a subject of the current review, at least one of which must have experience with hiring and compensation in DeFi
• (5, 6, 7) Three DillDao members to be be selected by a Discord vote of the DillDao, which shall last at least 30 hours for the nominating process and 30 additional hours for voting. The beginning and ends of both the nominating process and the election shall be posted in #Announcements and #DillDao to allow for the broadest possible participation.

The Mandate of the Committee shall be first and foremost to guarantee, to the best of the committee’s ability, the continuing operations of the protocol by quickly and efficiently analyzing the current contracts and all other submitted information, and then proposing a compensation plan specific to those requiring extensions to their contracts.

The Secondary Mandate of the Committee, once the first Mandate has been accomplished, will be to standardize the compensation plans for our protocol more generally, to better ensure tiers, titles, and salary bands, and hiring and firing processes, that are appropriate for the industry and our protocol more specifically.

Conditions

• Larry the Cucumber may not vote on any salary, bonus, or other compensation to be paid to Larry the Cucumber.

I further propose we immediately extend, for one month, the contracts of LeeKuanJew, Chimaera, and 0xAnon, in order to allow for continuity while the committee does its work.