Incentives for Yak Core Contributors

Background:

Yield Yak has historically had two methods of incentivising and rewarding Contributors.

1. 15% of monthly fees on Avalanche

These are distributed at the end of the month based on the prior months contributions, with a priority given to Community Contributors > Core Contributors. This proposal doesn’t seek to change this.

2. YAK 2-year linear vesting to Core Contributors

The last vote for Core Contributors was two years ago with incentives for active contributors ending this month.

The purpose of this past initiative was to align Contributors incentives by awarding them vested $YAK linearly over a longer time-frame versus the more volatile ‘mercenary-style’ approach of rewarding monthly contributions retroactively. Should the Contributor decide to move-on for any reason, the vesting was halted.

This program has had positive results overall, as evidenced by Yield Yak’s retention of Contributors during a prolonged bear market when 15% of fees was far too low to pay Contributors a meaningful reward for their efforts. However, a main learning has been that the unpredictability of market conditions (and $YAK price) made it extremely difficult to fairly project and reward YAK from the Treasury’s perspective.

The below proposal aims to improve this by implementing shorter allocation & vesting periods with more frequent reviews.

It also aims to grow the base of Core Contributors to better position Yield Yak for growth.

Proposal

This proposes 5 Core Contributors to be selected to receive YAK allocations linearly vested over the next 6 months.

Eric Sulli (Treasury): 5 YAK

Eric has been a member of the Treasury Committee since the early days, and provides timely Treasury reporting and updates on Treasury performance, as well as recommendations for the committee to consider. He has done so mostly without compensation for 2 years now. The Treasury has been successful in extending the runway of the project in the bear market, and currently sits in a healthy position thanks to his efforts.

Harry.avax (Content): 25 YAK

Harry has been delivering some of the highest quality DeFi content on Avalanche for some time now, a significant portion of it dedicated to Yield Yak.

With this proposal to bring him on as a Yield Yak Core Contributor, Harry will increase his focus on Communicating about Yield Yak on both Avalanche and Arbitrum, and with the Marketing Lead will be tasked with exploring new content channels to grow Yield Yak’s reach.

Harry also has a career background in development, and will be looking to contribute in other ways beyond Content to support YY’s growth.

Ravageur (Marketing): 50 YAK

Ravageur has led the marketing efforts for the past two years and this would extend his existing responsibilities, which include:

• Communications
• Marketing Operations (anything brand-related)
• Partnerships
• Operations (Contributor Payments, DAO-related items)

Angus (Analytics): 50 YAK

Angus is responsible for creating and maintaining Yield Yak’s analytics platform: https://www.yieldyak-analytics.com/

He’s also responsible for anything Data-related; recent examples include handling the refunds for Platypus depositors and old Trader Joe pools. A future use case for his responsibilities would be should Yield Yak receive a grant that requires reporting on its performance, Angus would be responsible.

Angus is also building tools to better optimise Performance Fees which will suggest the optimal balance between performance fees vs reinvest rewards

Simon (Developer): 50 YAK

Simon has been a longstanding Yak Core Contributor. He is an experienced Solidity developer and is the strategist behind most strategies which Yield Yak have deployed in the past 2 years across Avalanche and Arbitrum. He also contributes to Yak Swap, and has been responsible for a significant number of its recent integrations.