Summary

VitaDAO has been providing compensation to contributors based around VDP-3, VDP-26.1 and using soft governance within VitaCore.

While this has worked to this point, a more formal, transparent compensation policy is required to give certainty to contributors and the community on how VitaDAO is facilitating the activities and projects it undertakes.

This proposal seeks to ratify the Compensation Policy described below.

UPDATE: Please see revised version of document here: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmdnQpm8dqetyGZApV8eXG3JaSWLZKuR7Hc9j1cQbZHH2P?filename=VitaDAO%20Compensation%20Policy%20v2%20(2).pdf

Motivation

VitaDAO is a community which is funding early stage research in the longevity and healthspan field with the goal of incubating promising research and translating intellectual property into investable biopharma startups.

Members of the community include mission-aligned enthusiasts, researchers and investors which individually bring a wide cross section of skill sets and experiences to VitaDAO.

At the base, many in the community volunteer for VitaDAO activities based on personal or professional interests. Others contribute financially to provide VitaDAO resources to deploy into research, while our researcher community members review proposed projects and bring forward research ideas which may result in future intellectual property and commercialization opportunities.

While many members contribute a relatively small number of hours to a specific project or interest within VitaDAO, VitaDAO also has a group of highly dedicated and motivated contributors whose involvement are consistent, time intensive, and whose skill sets are valued and needed by VitaDAO to fulfil its operational goals.

$VITA tokens are seen as a way to reward valuable contributions to the community through a greater stake in, and ability to influence, VitaDAO's direction and decision making. However, a number of the tasks within VitaDAO are time consuming, require market-valued skills, and in the cases of specific roles, carries an opportunity cost to members in terms of pursuing other employment or contract opportunities.

In these cases, VitaDAO recognizes the need to compensate those members whose involvement and effort bring value to VitaDAO but also limits their ability to work on other projects or opportunities.

To date the plan, as described below, has been the basis of compensation since July (1 year anniversary) as a soft governance within VitaCore on a probationary basis, and it is the intention of this proposal to ratify the Compensation Policy for DAO-wide use.

Specification

As the length of the document precludes inclusion inline in Discourse, please visit the following for information regarding the Long-term Incentive Plan (L-TIP) and Tokenomics proposed:

Compensation Policy Appendix E: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmP6rdhJySzzBY2smMTCTQYiJbofLt8qp4HhY8pFRfd8Zg?filename=Incentives%20Worksheet_L1D_proposal%20(1).xlsx

Implementation

Upon successful passing of this proposal, the Coordination Working Group will apply this policy to all current and future contributors and squad/working group positions.

Additional role descriptions will be developed to facilitate other functions within VitaDAO and added to this document subject to the approval of the compensation framework described herein.

Budget

The short-term and long-term incentive plan in this proposal anticipates an additional minting of up to approximately 12.6m $VITA (19.6% of Total Token Supply), as needed, between now and the end of 2026 to provide governance allocations to contributors across the DAO.

All allocations are subject to a lock-up and vesting schedule similar to that contemplated in VDP-67. The allocations in VDP-67 are already included as part of this proposal.