It should not pass in its current form.
And I would think Informal, of all teams would agree.
Didn’t Informal eventually reason to vote NO on 818 because the proposal was submitted with an incorrect parameter? Isn’t 839 also “technically” incorrect if the amount requested from the hub is not $5.7m? If the funding request is $2.2m, proposal should reflect this on-chain.
Fwiw, there’s an unspoken premium in continuity of service. It’s a good team.
If the ICF wants to progressively transfer its service agreements to the hub, the community requires some reporting from the foundation.
In the absence of historic payments made, for what deliverables, and how much for each – it creates an imbalanced burden on the team to rationalize the ask without any context. Painful.
I really appreciate Ethan’s response above. I’m fully in agreement with what he is writing.
To clarify two things: Jacob questions whether Informal would still be beholden to the ICF. That would really not be the case here, certainly not for anything Cosmos Hub related. It would become the responsibility of the Cosmos Hub governance to effectively deploy that.
With regards to the question: What comes after 2024? I would be in favor of the ICF continuing to fund Cosmos Hub development and do it via the community pool. At least if the results are positive for the 2024 year. Of course, amounts would depend on the overall budget and treasury situation.
I would also be in favor of exploring using on-chain governance controlled mechanism to control and deploy more types of funding in the future. That would be great.
Hi @crainbf – I definely think the joint funding is the right way to move forward. Would the Foundation Council be able to make this decision together in time for this proposal? It would be a big boost in confidence, and derisk the community burden.
Brian, informal refuses even to discuss security with our team, citing ICF policy.
Since I believe that Informal will continue to receive funding, I believe nothing will change, because the bug is in comet. Thus, an informal based hub team, would also have to follow the rules of the ICF. This whole move only changes the optics of the situation, but what is needed is substantial change.
Why wasn’t this mentioned when the proposal was made?
Will informal systems still only be able to discuss security matters via the non-responsive Amulet?
The only area where it could be a threat is commoditization of security, and I agree with @jtremback here – security is going to eventually be commoditized.
Informal’s contributions to Cosmos Hub have been so significant that they hardly need verbal recognition. We also acknowledge that they are one of the very few teams we can trust going forward.
However, there are a few unanswered questions:
The development of Cosmos Hub was initially funded through ICF’s fundraising (donations) during the ICO a long time ago. Moreover, ICF’s current financial state seems to be sufficient to support this. In other words, the development of the Hub should be solely funded by ICF. We want to emphasize this point.
While the above reflects my opinion, additional remarks may not be necessary. ICF has announced its intention to donate 3.5 million to the Hub pool, but this has not been executed yet. I am uncertain whether it is appropriate for the Hub’s community pool to advance the funds that ICF has not yet paid. If, due to any circumstances, ICF cannot fulfill its commitment, the entire burden would then fall on the Hub.
Is there anything I might have misunderstood? If so, please let me know.
Can you deploy funds directly to the Hub?
Has this passed analysis from the foundation’s legal team? Sending ICF $ATOM to Hub pool makes you an “Active Participant,” does it not?
ICF would just be funding core development as it already has been. If it passes, it should be fine to deploy it to the community pool.
The important thing that we need is visibility where the funds go and some assurance that they are used well and accountability for it.
To me, every funding request on the hub should be read as a contract. It’s a contract between the proposer and the community that authorizes it.
To me, because proposals require a period of deliberation (at times negotiation) on Forum, there’s an implied “integration clause” to every funding request slammed on chain.
This means the language in the proposal, in contract, supersedes all other agreements – and this is necessary to prevent parties from claiming later there are other agreements or understandings outside of the provided contract.
#839 is precedent setting with the wrong precedent. You are authorizing the pertinence of off-chain understandings, and subjectively interpreting the proposal to mean what you want it to mean. This is wrong.
Voting YES means you’re still authorizing a $5.7m budget with $4m liquidation of $ATOM.
To avoid any potential disputes, Informal should resubmit an accurate proposal asking for authorization of $2.2m with $1.5m liquidation of ATOM.
To be clear, you think it is fine?
Or are you saying you have already checked with your legal team and they’re ok with the foundation directly sending funds to the hub?
cc: @mpg
It would be nice if the voting starts and debates take place, and after the voting concludes, the discussion points can be separately included in the ‘on-chain’.
I believe that if the proposal is modified and reintroduced, it could gain more support, but it might take some time.
It’s worth considering such an approach.
I believe that the collective intelligence arising from such discussions or debates will guide the hub in the right direction.
They have no incentive to do this if the hub authorizes 839. I’ve asked the proposers multiple times to resubmit with updated numbers to simply keep the on-chain record accurate with their ask, they refused.
Here are my more detailed comments on this proposal:
I am absolutely against funding Mesh Security. This item needs to be dropped. I don’t see how it generates value for ATOM.
$325K per developer is extremely generous. Goldman doesn’t pay salaries like this.
On this 17 developer team, you should have about 3 tech leads that can command $300K per year, the rest should be coming in at about $200K max. The testing team should be in $100-120K range.
So I assume:
4 testers at $120K = 480K
3 tech leads at 300K = 900K
11 devs at 200K = 2.2M
Total opex: 3.6 million
If I add 20% profit margin (ie 20% for the Big Guy, Ethan) = 720K
Total = 4.3M
I need you to cut $1.5 million from this proposal to be acceptable.
I am also against bonus pool because my ATOM investment is in the negative this year. Bonuses are paid only when the company (in other words me) is doing well. I am not doing well this year, so no bonus pool.
Prepared for what? For the commoditization of security? It sounds to me we want to LEAD the commoditization of security. I don’t see why we need to do that as an ATOM tokenholder and one of ATOM’s major products being providing security.
At present, security is not a commodity and I don’t see why we need to FUND this development. We can postpone this. I am generally against it all together but at minimum this item should be postponed till next year and reviewed then. I don’t see the urgency of funding this particular research.
This year the focus should be on CONSOLIDATING what was accomplished in 2023 and that is - interchain security. Fixing all the bugs and bringing it to market and having this product generate value for token holders. I am all for the partial set security and other refinements of ICS, but I am very adamantly against Mesh.
Folks at Goldman and upper echelons of IB do get paid though – depending on your group, even a first year analyst’s total comp >$325k. Finance operates from a different compensation scheme. Their base salaries are artificially low so it’s not the best reference.
For fair comparables, we should look at similarly situated software companies in web3. I’ve had a selective view of top dev salaries in Cosmos, Polkadot, and Solana. I rarely hear of anyone breaking the 300k ceiling in blockchain. The few who do are CTOs.
