Nominations for DAO Committee to Oversee Reward Distribution

[zaatar]

PIP-39, the proposal to install DAO Oversight of Rewards for Shannon Rollout and Price Milestones, passed yesterday.

The proposal calls for creating a DAO committee of up to three members to oversee the disbursement of rewards for Shannon rollout completion and price target achievement.

If you wish to serve on the committee, please post a short note below. You should introduce yourself, say why you want to sit on the committee, and set out briefly what qualifies you to assess the propriety and reasonableness of the Foundation’s decisions on how to allocate the rewards.

Recusal for votes on your own rewards

You may serve on the committee even if you are a prospective reward recipient. But you’ll need to recuse yourself from votes on your own rewards.

To understand the committee’s role, you’ll need to review PIP-39.

Anticipated workload per reward event: 30 hours or, if there are three members, approximately 10 hours per committee member. Pay rate: $100 per hour.

Self-nomination Deadline: February 18

Deadline for self-nominations is end of the day Tuesday, February 18. A DAO vote will launch the following day (Wednesday) shortly after the weekly Ecosystem call.

Voting Method: Approval Voting

The DAO vote to select committee members will run for seven days at snapshot.box and use “Approval Voting,” that is, voters will be asked to approve up to four nominees from the list. For example, if there are eight nominees, voters can approve up to four.

The three nominees with the most approvals will be chosen to sit on the committee.

First Runner-up To Act as a Substitute

The first runner-up, that is, the nominee who gets the fourth most approvals, will act as a substitute in cases where one of the three committee members has to recuse due to a conflict of interest. This will prevent deadlocks by preserving the committee’s ability to make majority decisions. In addition, should one of the top three choices at any time and for any reason step aside, either temporarily or permanently, the substitute will take their place - thereby eliminating the need for a (tiresome) DAO vote for a replacement, temporary or permanent, as the case may be.

As the selection of a 4th nominee to act as a sub as noted above was not specified as part of PIP-39 (turns out I didn’t anticipate every possible scenario ), by approving four nominees, you are agreeing to this use of a substitute.

[mike (Mzynga)]

@zaatar

If you wish to serve on the committee, please post a short note below. You should introduce yourself, say why you want to sit on the committee, and set out briefly what qualifies you to assess the propriety and reasonableness of the Foundation’s decisions on how to allocate the rewards.

My name is Michael I am a builder @ https://x.com/MzyngaTech,currently leveraging Pocket network to build an on ramp service.
I have been interested in POKT since ‘phase one’ this is the ‘second phase’ since I started contributing and I believe I have the bandwidth to contribute on this.

[RawthiL (Ramiro | POKTscan)]

My name is Ramiro, I’ve been working on POKT since 2022.
I know the Morse and Shannon protocol and I’ve been following its development closely.
I can provide some insights on some parts of the protocol and clients design and execution.

[TimRiggins]

My name is John, I go by Tim Riggins. I have been an active community member and done some lift with community communications. I believe from a non-technical perspective, I would be a reasonable consideration to contribute.

[Breezytm (BreezyTM | Stakenodes)]

Hey, breezytm here! I’ve been around Pocket since 2021—guess that makes me a bit of a dinosaur . I’m a node hosting provider, running infrastructure to support the network, and I’ve also been involved in supporting Morse, as well as contributing to some Shannon components development and beta testing.

Would love to pitch in and help however I can!

[Ale_dVG]

Hi guys, I’m Ale! I’ve been in Pocket since '22, participated in the community in both English and Español, created mkt materials, and worked on graphic design for different projects in the ecosystem. I believe decentralised oversight is key to keeping things fair and transparent. Happy to keep contributing and support the ecosystem and community’s best interest.

[adam]

Happy to throw my hat in the ring. Although I can claim very little credit for any of the work that @zaatar did here, I’ve been providing my thoughts to zaatar and am equipped to contribute on the committee.

My Pocket History:

• I’ve been involved since 2019 and was on the core team for almost 3 years. I authored several key proposals and have been a DAO voter for the entire length of the DAO.

Why Me?

• A long history of involvement in Pocket.
• I’m an experienced web3 operator and contributor with a history of involvement in key aspects such as finance and operations.
• I do my best to stay neutral in the politics of Pocket and try to use first-principles thinking to make decisions.

Considerations

• I’m non-technical, and I believe at least one representative of this committee should be technical and well-versed in tech compensation. While I’m familiar with various compensation schemes for developers, a technical voice on the committee would be valued. There’s room for several non-technical members and I believe I am capable of serving effectively as one of those non-technical members, but not at the exclusion of this skillset.

[zaatar]

I’m adding my name to the list of nominees.

Until recently and for many years, I worked as a criminal defense attorney. I co-own a company that has been operating Pocket nodes since 2021.

A Lawyer’s Input Is Useful

Eager for Pocket’s success, I recognize the importance of a healthy and well-run DAO. That’s why I authored the DAO Oversight Committee proposal. Given that a big part of the committee’s job will be to prevent monkey business and guard against arbitrary allocation decisions, a lawyer’s eyes and experience will be useful.

[TracieCMyers (Tracie Myers)]

Hey everyone,

My name is Tracie and I’d like to put my name forward for the DAO Oversight Committee. I believe my experience and deep understanding of this ecosystem make me an ideal candidate to align with our long-term goals.

I’ve been part of this project since the early days on the original core team in 2018, helping write the original white paper and laying the foundation for our tokenomics. For the past three years, I’ve also operated the largest staking pool in the ecosystem, giving me hands-on experience with the ecosystem from all perspectives.

Serving on this committee isn’t just about oversight it’s about ensuring trust in the process. I’ve spent years working at the intersection of strategy and execution within this ecosystem, and I know how to evaluate whether reward allocations are reasonable and in the best interest of the DAO. My approach is always data-driven, fair, and aligned with what will keep our network thriving.

My goal here is simple: to contribute my expertise in a way that benefits the DAO and ensures rewards are distributed as intended.

I’d love the opportunity to serve in this role, and I appreciate your consideration. Looking forward to keeping our ecosystem strong.

[zaatar]

Voting on nominees for the committee has begun. Please register your votes at snapshot.box. Voting ends at midnight next Wednesday (Eastern time).

Please select FOUR nominees ONLY.

[zaatar]

DAO Oversight Committee Chosen

The votes are in; 19 people voted. The successful nominees are zaatar (12 votes), Ramiro (11), and Breezy TM (11). Tracie Myers (10 votes) is the stand-in.

[zaatar]

Shannon Reward Allocations

The DAO Oversight Committee carefully reviewed and considered the allocations proposed by PNF for work on Shannon. The committee comprises Ramiro, Breezy and me; Tracie was tapped to vote on allocations involving actual or perceived conflicts of interest where Ramiro and Breezy recused themselves.

Here is the table showing the allocations as approved by the committee. Of the 48m POKT tokens available for rewards, 47.1m are being allocated.

Name	Allocation	Contributions
Jorge	6,500,000	Shannon analysis, UAT, debugging, testing, reporting, migration support, security auditing, tooling oversight, testnet support
Breezy	6,500,000	Shannon analysis, UAT, debugging, testing, reporting, migration support, security auditing, tooling support, testnet support
Ramiro	3,000,000	Parameter analysis, tokenomics research and definition, relayminer debugging, PGAT support, reporting
Nodefleet (pool)	3,000,000	Shannon analysis and support, migration tooling, migration support, testnet support
Alex	1,250,000	Shannon testing, migration support, testnet support, debugging and UAT
Ajes	1,250,000	Shannon testing, testnet support
Weaver (pool)	2,000,000	Shannon testing, testnet support since June 2024. Carlos and Jonatan
Grove (pool)	16,000,000	Overtime bug fixes, endless debugging, noderunner coordination and support, exchange support, protocol documentation
Art (standalone)	1,500,000	White glove support for all exchanges, single handedly managed active recovery process and DAO/PNF/wPOKT treasury migrations
Alan	750,000	Soothe Wallet migration work
Julio	750,000	Soothe Wallet migration work
Anaski	1,000,000	Shannon testing, testnet support, debugging & reporting, extensive team interaction in Discord
RaidGuild (pool)	500,000	Out of scope work for wPOKT migration
QSpider	750,000	Shannon testing, testnet support, debugging & reporting
eddyzags	1,000,000	Relayminer ping utility, Relayminer forwarding utility, Relayminer and Fullnode Helm chart for K8s, PATH contributions.
Shane Burgett*	500,000	Entity and logic design (TLM, Source, Gateway), economics analysis and proposal, builder/ecosystem support
Ryan Burgett*	250,000	Variable compute unit logic here: https://github.com/pokt-network/poktroll/commit/1268edb63ce5ffa9d5297ec0a2d4227b4f432362
Tim Riggins	100,000	Noderunner support and coordination, created and maintained the readiness status spreadsheet
Jerry	250,000	Overtime support for end user migration
Bruce	250,000	Overtime support for end user migration

*Previous compensation here: Shane & Ryan Paymetn History - Google Sheets

All committee votes were unanimous.

Reward token disposition

Custody of the reward tokens is governed by PIP-39 which provides that the rewards will sit in the DAO treasury pending distribution. PNF will hold a multikey to control access.

@PIP-39

Payment in satisfaction of this incentive will come from the DAO Treasury, be held separately in a multi-signatory wallet controlled by the Foundation, and be distributed by the Foundation directly to the individual developers in accordance with the decision of the Committee.

The funds will be locked then released as per the eight-year vesting schedule with a four-year cliff established by PIP-39:

@PIP-39

Except as may otherwise be determined by the PNF, subject to approval by the Committee, and if necessary, upon the advice of counsel, any POKT earned pursuant to this incentive package will be locked for four years from the date of receipt (that is, delivery to the recipient’s digital asset wallet address), with 25% unlocking on the anniversary of that date each year thereafter, that is, over four years, commencing on the 5th anniversary of the receipt date.

Pushback on vesting schedule

PNF now suggests that the funds be distributed starting now over four years at the rate of 25% annually. PNF says that given the amount of work done by the contributors, “waiting for ages before getting anything feels like a slap in the face.”

It is important to note that in the lead up to voting on PIP-39 not a single complaint was raised in regards to the 8-year vesting schedule. This schedule is the same as the one originally proposed by Michael O’Rourke as part of PIP-38 (see below). No one beefed about it then either.

PIP-38 Shannon allocations vesting schedule

“Except as otherwise determined by the Foundation, upon advice of counsel, any POKT earned pursuant to this incentive package will be locked for four years from the date of receipt, with 25% unlocking each year thereafter, where receipt means delivery of earned POKT to the recipient’s digital asset wallet address.”

At this juncture, with Shannon just getting started and the future of the protocol hanging in the balance, the committee opposes early release of the POKT rewards as their sale could hurt the token price & the POKT project.

That said, a year from now, the committee will discuss possibly shortening the vesting schedule.

Community ideas on token use welcome

In the meantime, the committee would be interested in hearing community members’ ideas on how to use these tokens prior to distribution (other than keeping them locked up) to generate benefits for the project.

Ancillary matters on the still-to-do-list addressed by PIP-39:

@PIP-39

• All reward recipients must be KYC’d before receiving any funds.

• Grove shall provide the Committee the names and POKT account addresses of the prospective allocation recipients.

Elimination of Price-Target Reward Packages

The DAO Oversight Committee, under the authority conferred by PIP-39 (see excerpt below), by unanimous vote, and with the full agreement of PNF, has eliminated all of the price-target reward packages (by reducing them to zero).

@PIP-39

For each of the first two price milestones, a total of up to 48m. POKT will be awarded, and for each of the last two, a total of up to 98m POKT. The Committee, following consultation with PNF, can reduce these amounts.

Committee reasons for eliminating these incentives:

• They were part of a plan that is no longer relevant as our current approach to tokenomics is very different, with PNF casting off all speculative tokenomics.
• Having massive payouts on the horizon will deter investors evaluating the long-term prospects of the token and therefore also harm the Pocket project.
• Providing massive rewards for reaching what are essentially arbitrary price targets will have the reverse effect of undermining the sustainability of the targets.
• These rewards would be a poor use of DAO funds.
• The extreme difficulty in correlating would-be recipients’ contributions to token price rise given the multitude of variables behind market value.

[mike (Mzynga)]

Thank you for putting this together and everyone on this list deserves the rewards.
I have a few comments to make.

@zaatar

PNF now suggests that the funds be distributed starting now over four years at the rate of 25% annually. PNF says that given the amount of work done by the contributors, “waiting for ages before getting anything feels like a slap in the face.”

Assuming 50% of the rewards will end up in the market this will be approx 6,000,000 tokens,that’s a large amount to hit the market at this stage.

@zaatar

“waiting for ages before getting anything feels like a slap in the face.”

Fair enough there’s something to consider on this, maybe we can lower the percentages from 25% to say 10% or 5%,while we are at it we ought to consider that most of the rewards recipients have the first mover advantage.

@zaatar

In the meantime, the committee would be interested in hearing community members’ ideas on how to use these tokens prior to distribution (other than keeping them locked up) to generate benefits for the project.

What about staking validators on the network ?

@zaatar

It is important to note that in the lead up to voting on PIP-39 not a single complaint was raised in regards to the 8-year vesting schedule. This schedule is the same as the one originally proposed by Michael O’Rourke as part of PIP-38 (see below). No one beefed about it then either.

Assuming there’ll be an initial release of say 5%,to make it fairer the rewards can be distributed to the recipients up to 20% of the total rewards (47.1M) within a period of 4 yrs during which the rewards are locked up,no POKT tokens that are not from the rewards or more than the rewards should be released.

[zaatar]

Here are the hours being submitted to PNF for work by the DAO Oversight Committee on the Shannon allocations: zaatar 10 hours, Ramiro and Breezy, 5 each, and Tracie 2. (Under PIP-39, it was estimated that 30 hours would be required in total & pay was set at $100/ hr.)

[PocketFoundation (Pocket Network Foundation)]

Thank you, Zaatar!

We’ll be reaching out to each member individually to process their payment and will confirm once all payments have been completed for full transparency.

[PocketFoundation (Pocket Network Foundation)]

Payment Confirmation
All member payments have been successfully completed.

Thank you all for your continued contributions!