It’s 3 days before the vote closes, and I see less than 33% turnout (vs a typical 55-60% range).
We’ve read doubts about allegations towards ICF with @Ash_Han’s Letter to ICF and @jacobgadikian’s holler on security issues on Twitter and on this forum. Those should be addressed, with the security issue discussed independently. Love that passion, btw, hope we can channel it into a new thread.
We’d like us to all stay focused here on the improvements on Cosmos Hub and the proposal here is about the costs, hence we’re staying focused on the discussion here on the deliverables and the budget.
We’re highly concerned that the USD$5.7M costs for 2024, equating to USD$225K per headcount as being a reasonable rate. Crypto has brought people together from all over the world. Standards of living varies drastically across the world. Not everyone is paid at Silicon Valley mid-level FAANG software engineer rates. For example, if I live in a developing nation and getting USD$60K per year as a BD or project manager, I’ll be highly content. This is an unfair reality.
Also, we understand this is a contractual rate, and not a full time employment (which is base + 30% or more). In recent crypto winter (hopefully thawing by now) many organizations have faced cuts, either in salary, headcount or both. If @lexa can address whether similar prudent steps have been taken by both organizations, it will give the community confidence that this is the right level of compensation to go with.
The 100K ATOM bonus, in our opinion, is also a tough sell. Prudent times call for prudent spending habits. We would like to propose nixing that. Also how driven will the committee be evaluating things? They could be passionate about quality, are they also compensated for their time? (which we think they should, just enough to stay focused)
On the flip side, what we didn’t see are other operational costs, which was glossed over as “legal, HR, finance and other support”. What about cloud operations, security audit, marketing for GTM for Mesh Security, IBC, wargaming sessions, etc.? Also profit margin was mentioned, what’s this currently at? Running a profitable business is sensible, but if one is already getting paid for it and that the profit margin is there, doesn’t that count as the “bonus”?
We’re leaning slightly towards a NO at this point. We can really see the benefit of continued research and development, and GTM for Mesh Security, IBC routing, etc. but the costs seems quite high