PEP-62: Msa Reimbursement Request

UPDATE 6/1/23: Budget has been reduced to $13k USD equivalent of POKT, down from the original ask of $23k and down from the approximate $19k reimbursement that would have resulted in implementing a cap against the original $23k ask.

Attributes

  • Author(s): @msa6867

  • Recipient(s): @msa6867

  • Category: Reimbursement

  • Asking Amount: The equivalent to US $13,000 (using a 30-day trailing average of $POKT/USD price at time of funding)

Summary

The goal of this proposal is to fairly compensate @msa6867 for contributions to the $POKT ecosystem (research and development, analysis, technical writing, etc) through March 2023, exclusive of the PIP-22/PUP-21 R&D work already compensated via PEP-44.

Abstract

Apart from PIP-22/PUP-21 development, @msa6867 has contributed to the POKT ecosystem in numerous ways during the last 7 or so months.

Much of the contribution has led to DAO/PNF actionable results as shown in Table 1, including three approved DAO proposals (PUP-22,29,30) and refinements to methodology for setting the DAO-controlled parameter SSWM.

Other contributions provide more intangible value as shown in Table 2 (e.g., PUP-25 independent analysis, PIP-22 fairness analysis/community education and focused, value-add community engagement both in group and one-on-one settings).

Last, additional research and development threads beyond those shown in Table 1 or 2 either remain open or have been trimmed without action as shown in Table 3. For these threads, no specific value proposition is made, but exploration of such topics is nonetheless an important component to R&D-type engagement.

Taken as a whole, and considering the technical skill required for most of the work contributed, the $13,000 ask (updated due to budget reduction) for this proposal for ~ 7 months of contribution is considered to be reasonable and reflects a much smaller ask, when considered on a per-hour basis, compared to the previous PIP-22/PUP-21 R&D reimbursement approved by the DAO.

Motivation

The motivation is to apply my systems architecture/engineering background and skill set to add value to the POKT protocol and ecosystem. The contributions made are as an independent party, with no attachment or income source within the Pocket Network ecosystem apart from DAO reimbursements for value-add work. This is an important consideration, in that most of the current contributors to systems-level discussions and governance actions do so as part of their employment with a node provider or other company operating within the ecosystem.

Task-specific details for value-add contributions are highlighted in the Contribution Details and Deliverables section below.

Budget

The equivalent to US $13,000, using a 30-day trailing average of $POKT/USD price at time of funding.

Rationale

There is no single valuation model that is best suited to evaluate the budget. Therefore, an attempt is made to approach valuation rationale from several different angles.

Using Shane’s Proposed Value Model:
The budget represents 56 hours (updated due to budget reduction) of design and development work, using @shane’s proposed value model:

By comparison, the total hours spent contributing to the POKT ecosystem in engagements that led to the actionable results listed in Table 1 numbered several times this value. This does not even count the time spent in the activities listed in Tables 2 and 3.

Table 1 gives estimates of hours spent on each task area. While hours were not meticulously logged as they would be in a hours-based contract, the actual hours spent per task have a 95% confidence of falling within the hour range specified for each task.

Since only a small fraction of total hours invested in POKT research and development over the covered period are requested for reimbursement under @shane’s model, any number of tasks could be eliminated from consideration for reimbursement while still justifying the budget presented.

Using a GRIP-equivalent $100/hour model:
It is a reasonable expectation that if the DAO is willing to compensate the editing of DAO proposals at $100/hour it would likewise be willing to compensate the authors at similar rate for the time it took to write the proposal and conduct the necessary analysis, discussions, consensus-building etc. to drive it to a final successful vote. Using this equivalence method, the budget represents 130 hours of contribution (updated due to budget reduction) . Table-1 hours exceed this value, without even appealing yet to hours contained in Table 2 and 3.

Using PNF impact scorecard for DAO grant proposals:
The budget is consistent with PNF remuneration guidelines contained in the PNF impact scorecard. An assessed score of 20 falls squarely in the range of 10-30 for which grants up to a max of 1% of DAO treasury/$50k is recommended. The $13k ask (updated due to budget reduction) is well within that range.

Using an hourly contract model:
An hourly reimbursement model is a percentage play. All hours are included, even though all hours do not add value equally to the project. Using baseball as an analogy, not every hour spent is a homerun. There are singles, doubles and strikeouts along the way. In @shane’s value model, ideally only “high-value” hours are considered, but those hours are compensated at premium prices. In the “GRIP-equivalent” model, only hours contributing to definitive DAO action are considered. In contrast, an hourly reimbursement model considers all hours, but the rate per hour is discounted from premium levels to reflect the percentage play.

Tables 1 through 3 represent approximately 600 hours of R&D contribution over a 7-month (30 week) period, committing approximately 20 hours per week to the project. This does not include time spent in telegram/discord community engagement. The budget represents a reimbursement rate of ~$22/hour ($13k/600hours) . If table 3 was eliminated from consideration, the hours would still be close to 500 hours, representing a reimbursement rate of ~$26/hour (updated due to budget reduction). For the experience and skill set I bring to the project, this is an extremely fair ask.

Using a flow rate Reasonableness Test:
In the discussion section of several receive reimbursement proposals I have advocated applying a flow rate test to the funding request. The DAO treasury should be managed as one might conduct water management for a river. In the long term, inflow and outflow should be in balance; while the reservoir serves as a buffer to accommodate short and intermediate-term fluctuations. Applying a flow-rate test to all projects helps ensure that the DAO does not become over-extended in commitments.

In the case of this proposal, the budget represents between 5 and 6 days of inflow to the DAO treasury at current emission rates and $POKT/USD price points. This is deemed to be a reasonable and sustainable level of remuneration.

Contribution Details and Deliverables for Table 1

FREN/SER:
Motivation:
The goal was to foster a collaborative effort to rein in POKT emissions, so as to bring POKT emissions into a range typical for major, legitimate crypto projects and take back control of the POKT emissions narrative from those who continue to decry POKT as “hyperinflationary”. The idea was to move the needle of emissions in the right direction as suggested by the mismatch between the current number of chain and pocket nodes and the minimum number needed to maintain current QoS. It is not the demand-centric approach that Vitaly et al advocated, nor the cut-to-bare-bones approach that Art et all advocated, but rather one that allows for a progressive evolution of supply-side efficiencies. It recognizes the tremendous amount of IP generated by node providers that is subsidized via emissions rewards, and seeks to foster the continuation of such IP generation, rather than decimate it, as would likely happen under more drastic emissions-reduction actions. At the same time, through these measures, inflation will be reduced to single digits within the next 6 months, bringing emissions to a level where token investors can feel comfortable holding unstaked tokens for capital gains without undue concern over how much emissions will cause token devaluation over the coming years. This effort was not meant to curtail the R&D that @Art et al are pursuing but rather to ensure that a minimal program of emissions reduction is in place no matter the outcome of that research . A significant amount of thought and analysis went into shaping these proposals.

FREN collaborators: @cryptocorn, @pikpokt

FREN: msa hours: mid=60 hours; range = 40-80 hours

FREN: msa-specific contributions
• Spearheaded the August Emissions Reduction debate.
• Participated in FREN debate
• Entered into a post-debate collaboration with @cryptocorn and @pikpokt to develop a collaborative emission reduction plan
• Provided the technical analysis needed for the collaborative effort
• Corrected outdated inflation calculation methodology that led to a marketplace perception that POKT inflation was more than 40% higher than actual values
• Technical lead in shaping the final emission reduction plan including:
• Larger initial reduction followed by delay til next reduction to allow time to absorb impact of LP/PIP22
• Alignment of reductions to calendar month for ease of planning
• Switch to simplified “target daily emission” vs old WAGMI “target inflation” to avoid ambiguity in token supply baseline
• Final numbers for reduction sequence ~12% monthly reduction with double reduction first month
• Provided all technical writing for collaborative FREN proposal
FREN: evidence of msa contribution

FREN: deliverables:

SER collaborators: @cryptocorn, @caesar

SER: msa hours: mid=90 hours; range = 60-120 hours (including investigation and consideration of emission reductions alternatives)

SER: msa-specific contributions
• Sole author of SER pre-proposal
• Historic analysis of POKT emissions/inflation since genesis
• Comparative analysis to test and compare various go-forward emissions strategies (including under various system conditions including app burn and overmint)
• Extensive pre-proposal discussion/debate involving @cryptocorn, @caesar and @RawthiL
• MaxSupply R&D for possible future use
• Demand-Centric Emissions R&D for v1 emissions definition.
• Reached collaborative consensus w/ above-named individuals for final SER approach
• Provided all technical writing for collaborative SER proposal
SER: evidence of msa contribution

SER: deliverables:

ACCURATE/PNF setting of SSWM:
Motivation:
The goal was to reduce the gap between target and actual daily emissions. This is important to allow node runners and others to correctly predict emissions and avoid negative publicity in the marketplace in later months if actual supply is found to be much greater than promised levels. Through the above measures, 3 of 4 sources of overmint have been eliminated, reducing average slip from mid-teen percentage levels last fall to less than 2%, on average, today.

ACCURATE collaborators: @cryptocorn

ACCURATE: msa hours: mid=37.5 hours; range = 25-50 hours

ACCURATE: msa-specific contributions
• Sole author of the “Change from Trailing 30-day Average to Trailing 7-day Average for calculating RTTM” pre-proposal
• Provided all the technical analysis for both the above pre-proposal and @cryptocorn’s cadence pre-proposal (which were combined to form the final ACCURATE proposal)
• Provided the technical writing for collaborative ACCURATE proposal

ACCURATE: evidence of msa contribution

ACCURATE: deliverables:

PNF setting SSWM: msa hours: mid=60 hours; range = 40-80 hours (this hour range includes the monitoring, investigating and modeling of contributions to overmint that would require DAO action prior to PNF changing methodology to set SSWM)

PNF setting SSWM: msa-specific contributions
• Monitor overmint evolution over several months
• Root cause analysis to break down POKT overmint into constituent pieces:
• Triage overmint contributors into, DAO action needed, PNF-direct action needed and monitor only
• DAO action needed: addressed in ACCURATE above
• PNF-direct action:
• substitute estimator in case Andy script frozen
• subtracting out the saw-tooth bias during long-term direction change of SSWM
• subtracting out non-responsive nodes

PNF setting SSWM: evidence of msa contribution

PNF setting SSWM: deliverables:
n/a

Contribution Details for Table 2

PIP-25 Analysis:
Motivation:
The goal was to ignore all the swirl of negative sentiment and evaluate the proposed Ferrum bridge architecture purely on its technical merits. This work was curtailed when it became apparent that the community would not continue with Ferrum no matter what. The technical feedback provided, however, is applicable to future endeavors.

PIP-25 Analysis: msa hours: mid=7.5 hours; range = 5-10 hours

PIP-25 Analysis: msa-specific contributions
The main red-flag that emerged was the proposal to pay validators a cut of the fees collected from each bridge transaction, as this could lead to a conflict of interests for validators. This concern is applicable not just to Ferrum, but also to any future bridge endeavor that POKT undertakes.

PIP-25 Analysis: evidence of msa contribution

PUP-25 Analysis:
Motivation:
The goal was to provide independent corroboration or refutation/alternate explanation to the claims made by PoktScan in framing PUP-25. Many in the community pointed to the need for such independent verification such as seen in these comments:

Outside PoktScan, few in the community are up to the challenge of providing the type of analysis needed. PoktScan graciously released to me the block data and cherry-picker data from the portal in order to perform this independent review. Doing the necessary analysis was a very large undertaking, stretching over two months of near-constant focus and attention. Results of this analysis can be found in Poktscan’s PUP-25 github folder, as well as embedded in the comments section of PUP-25.

PUP-25 Analysis: msa hours: mid=195 hours; range = 130-260 hours

PUP-25 Analysis: msa-specific contributions
• Independent analysis of all block and CP data used in PUP-25 (raw data provided by PoktScan)
• Analysis of repercussions of PUP-25 proposed parameter change
• Analysis of per-region, per-chain QoS evolution over Summer 2022
• Preliminary analysis and analysis methodology guidance for independent third-party experiment to test reward equality across bins
• Line-by-line markup of PUP-25 whitepaper and summaries of analyses in several whitepaper appendices

PUP-25 Analysis: evidence of msa contribution

Other Community Engagement (Telegram/Discord):
Motivation:
The goal is to provide focused, educational, value-add content to various social media channels within the Pocket Ecosystem, including answering technical questions (such as settling debates on how the validator ticket system works), bringing clarity to complex topics (e.g., why v1 is important to POKT price stabilization), brainstorming ideas that later become fodder for working group discussions (e.g., early transition to app burn), etc. Interactions are positive, honoring, encourage contrary viewpoints to be developed, and when critical of past mistakes, remain solutions focused rather than problem focused. In the background I carry on several dm interactions to try to draw out those on the edge of the community into more active involvement and contribution.

Community Engagement: msa hours: untracked

Community Engagement: evidence of msa contribution

For public discourse, please reference primarily the following TG channels: The Poktopus Den”, PoktoPrice, Thunderhead Pocket Network Discussions

For evidence of private discourse leading to encouraging greater community involvement, and/or the fleshing out contrary PoVs, etc., please dm your request, as I do not wish to disclose private discussions in a public forum.

Research Thread Details for Table 3

[Note: the following tasks are either still open or have been trimmed without DAO action. The project descriptions and links are provided for the sake of completeness.]

Stake Weighted Servicer Selection Architecture:
Both PIP22 and LeanPocket were community-driven responses to the lack of a true stake-weighted servicer-selection mechanism. Efforts toward the latter stalled due to developer hesitancy to modify the cherry-picker and servicer-selection portions of the code. I explored a stake-weighted selection architecture that satisfies the condition of not touching either the cherry-picker or servicer-selection algos and socialized this architecture to several people. However, the timing did not match community priorities as we were too far down the rabbit-hole of LP and PIP-22 to gather sufficient community interest to warrant pursuing further, and the project was dropped. The architecture drawing can be found at the following link:

Cherry Picker code fix:
The goal is to ensure fairness of selection probability weighting, i.e., make sure that low-latency nodes receive the intended probability advantage over higher-latency counterparts. This is compromised by a pair of code errors that I identified during a review of the cherry picker code and fixed in PR-901. This PR has not yet been merged.

Partial Unstake Pre-Proposal
The goal was to introduce a companion proposal to PoktBlade’s TransferStake proposal to allow partial unstaking of nodes. The goal was to help small node runners compete with large node runners for validator slots if they lacked the deep pockets to meaningfully take advantage of Transfer Stake. This was socialized privately with several in the community, but since the decision was made to place Transfer Stake on hold, Partial Unstake was likewise placed on hold. While The cost-reward balance favors pursuing Partial Unstake if done in conjunction with Transfer Stake, it does not warrant independent pursuit in v0. It remains a useful change and is not beset by the same potential attack vectors that sidelined Transfer Stake. It will be revisited after release of v1.0 and/or will be pursued as an RFP on github for inclusion in v1.0. The pre-proposal can be found at the following link:

Increase MaxValidators Proposal
The goal is to increase network security via allowing 2000 validators. This is well short of the 5000 proposed by @addision last year and should not be subject to the same technical concerns that sidelined that previous proposal. The proposal has been put on the back burner for now due to lack of sufficient interest in the topic.

Raise PIP-22 Ceiling Proposal
The goal is to allow an incremental reduction in overall network cost via an incremental increase In stake-weight ceiling from 60k POKT to 75k POKT. The proposal has been put on the back burner for now due to lack of sufficient interest in the topic.

Dissenting Opinions

“xyz task [fill in the blank] should not qualify for reimbursement for xyz [fill in the blank] reason.”

This is a “taken as a whole” reimbursement request that is not tied to any specific task being reimbursed, especially as relates to Tables 2 or 3. An important question to start with is, “would dropping xyz task from consideration drop the hours and value of the remaining contributions sufficiently to warrant a reduction in the budget?” If not, objection to the specific task can be voiced, but should not affect the outcome of the proposal.

”xyz person/team [fill in the blank] only requested and received xyz level of compensation; your budget should not exceed this value.”

Each situation should be evaluated on its own merits, as many different factors play into the equation. The closest other proposal that exists for the purpose of making apples-to-apples comparison is PEP-44 since I was the author and recipient of that funding as well. This proposal represents a much lower request on an hourly basis as that contained in PEP-44.

”FREN/ACCURATE/SER were collaborative efforts. Reimbursement for these efforts should be made jointly.”

I concur that joint reimbursement is best-practice for single-task reimbursement proposals. It is not as practical to apply this ideal to proposals such as this and PEP-51, where remuneration is for a body of work that covers many different subtasks. Further, the ship has already started to sail, insomuch as @cryptocorn has already requested and received reimbursement for his efforts on FREN and ACCURATE.

GRIP Acknowledgement:

GRIP assistance was secured to review and shape this proposal via the GaG discord channel prior to posting on the Forum.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

3 Likes

Historically, bear markets have always been best times where wise capital allocation was almost a guarantee for investors to make life changing money. Pocket Network caught my attention as a project that dipped way more than the market average past 365 days even though a network seems to be working fine with a growing tendency.

I was very close to allocate a significant percentage of my stash to Pocket Network, which would allow me to acquire enough POKT nodes to be considered a mega-whale not only at this price point relatively to the total amount of POKT in circulation, but also a significant whale in crypto space at the all time high price. Seeing such proposals popping out like mushrooms recently is precisely a reason why I’ll be permanently staying away from POKT. Pocket DAO is actively being exploited to a well known DAO vulnerability. People seems to be voluntarily doing a job no one asked them to and ultimately asking for a reimbursement payment around the all time low price range.

My last hope for POKT was the recent new policy introduction that was supposed to enforce proposal owners to request an approval for their work through pre-proposal section, but this proposal is another proof of endless ongoing DAO exploit happening in front of DAO eyes.

Good luck to the Pocket Network!

7 Likes

I will share the same feedback I provided @msa6867 during the GRIP review :point_down:

The Proposal Value Model was never designed for non-development based proposals. It was designed for products specifically that the ecosystem can use. It was designed to estimate the value of a single project (all the wording is focused around a single project). I do not believe it is accurate for assessing the value of general work.

While you are free to use it as you desire, I do not believe it should be used in this manner, as it was never meant for this kind of proposal.

Has PNF assisted with filling out of this value model? To me it’s not clear how this model is supposed to be used in the general community. Perhaps they could provide guidance.

I’m having a hard time justifying the work for something that never moved forward. PUP-25 was generally rejected prior to your additional 195 hours (5 weeks) worth of research. Your research did not have any direct applicability.

I personally believe that research work like this should be approved by the DAO prior to starting work. PUP-25 is very controversial because of the amount of work and changes it would require of all POKT products and services… so it should get approved prior to the work itself being done. I do not believe the DAO should pay for this work since it wasn’t done with pre-approval.

A few community members might have suggested there should be a 3rd party review, but I don’t believe that their suggestion constitutes the DAO paying for it without a vote and established guidelines.

In my GRIP feedback I stated the following as a person opinion for the FREN section, which has been added to the dissenting opinions section :point_down:

If multiple folks work on a proposal and want reimbursement for their work, then I feel they all should submit together. This concept was brought up when POKTFund submitted their Lean pre-proposal, which did not include Thunderhead, who stated they were going to do their own proposal later. That structure was not well received and they worked together to make the work into a single proposal which passed. There was also pushback at the time when Liquify and you had separate proposals for the same project.

I personally feel proposals should be specific, project oriented, where if multiple contributors work together on a project, then they put forward a joint proposal if they want reimbursement. If folks can work together on a project, I believe they should be able to work together on a proposal that is specific to that project as well.

The PR is dormant and hasn’t been touched since last summer. It is currently blocked from merge. I don’t see it’s relevancy.

Now that PNF is established and working on community engagement programs, I believe this should be covered under something they oversee.

A Few Additions :point_down:

GRIP is not asking for the kind of premiums you are asking for, so GRIP’s payment model is fundamentally different. Your proposal is for significantly more than $100 an hour.

GRIP is also per-approved by the DAO with specific guidelines, which do no apply to this proposal.

@Cryptocorn’s proposal covered 12 months and was 1/3 the ask of this proposal, so I do not believe the evaluations compare. He was the original author, and you later joined on as a co-author, yet your SER compensation would be significantly more than his.

MY GRIP FEEDBACK TLDR

I’m not sure how to approach this proposal, because:

  1. Most of this work the DAO did not sanction
  2. The evaluation is not in line with other contributors (like cryptocorn or GRIP)
  3. I don’t believe the Proposal Value Model should be used (and I don’t believe it should be renamed in this case to “Contributor Value Model”).

I personally feel that I could support a proposal for the SER work, with a structure the emulates GRIP. Being the author of SER, which passed, I could see that being reimbursed.

However, I feel that moving forward all community and R&D work should go through PNF with established guidelines and accountability. Some work could be per-approved by the DAO with established guidelines (like GRIP), but it would take a per-approval vote.

7 Likes

This is a ridiculous post to say the least. Can’t believe y’all showed love to this - @crabman @beezy @steve @aos_bs

A year ago the talk in the chats was that we needed an inflation expert, thankfully, MSA came in a few months later and started doing work.

Inflation should have been monitored and cut wayyy before MSA showed up. The fact that we have to pay him out at these prices now is no ones fault but the project founders - PNI.

If we don’t want to pay out $Pokt at low prices, then we need to start executing better. Right now, we don’t. So we’ll have to pay out at these prices if we want competent people to continue to be involved.

As the saying goes - it is what it is.

You say this proposal is proof of “another” DAO exploit. Can you point out the other ones you are referring to?

7 Likes

Definitely agree with the previous statement! I’m quite surprised by Shane’s stance, especially since no one requested the “CC” solution for the altruist issue. Personally, I find MSA’s contributions and efforts more valuable than those of GRIP’s. I am in complete support of this proposal

3 Likes

Hi Steve, welcome to the POKT community. I think the flurry of recently proposals is rather an anomaly completely unrelated to market conditions and not likely to be repeated or continued any time soon. This proposal is, to my knowledge, the last of ones the community has been expecting for some time. I hope you can see past this and decide to stay involved with this project.

Let me address a couple specific points you bring up.

Some historical context is helpful. Last September, feedback provided to me by the DAO was that the model they preferred for my involvement was for me to complete work first and then submit for reimbursement. This proposal is a reflection of that, and the proposal has been expected by many if not most in the community.

First, it would not be fair to myself to be told last September to do the work first and then submit for reimbursement, only to be told when seeking reimbursement that none will be given because it was not pre-authorized.

Second, it is absolutely not my intention to time the market to try to take advantage of some ATL. I am sure the same hold for other recent proposal authors. I would be glad to put a cap in the budget so that if 30-day trailing price drops below, say 0.05, that higher number, rather than actual will be used for conversion. The timing is more a reflection of (1) it is more efficient to bundle several things together in a proposal than seek a constant stream of on-off reimbursements as it takes a tremendous amount of non-compensated time and energy to write/rewrite/debate a reimbursement proposal and (2) its a natural time to wrap up the body of work I’ve done over the last months as this was all v0-related work and I am now transitioning my energies toward v1.

Again, a bit of historical context is in order. The DAO had a chance to fund lean pocket development a year ago for a fifth of the amount of tokens it recently paid out for this development, but declined to do so. Is it the fault of PoktFund and TH that by the time the DAO was willing tot fund their efforts the token was at ATL? Also a proposal on treasury management to convert a portion of treasury holdings to stables to head off contingencies of price drop was debated a year and a half ago and the DAO declined to take action. Should proposal authors be blamed for this lack of foresight on the part of the DAO?

Just to add some clarity, as this conflates a couple separate things. Correct, PNF is in the process of enacting policy changes that will cause contributors of high-value public goods (think geomesh, LeanPocket) to pre-coordinate with PNF. This policy is not designed for the much lower dollar amounts or nature of work being considered in this reimbursement request. They do have a program they are working to set up to fund various monthly contributors at levels similar to this requested budget, but that program did not exist last year and is not set up to be retroactive.

Separately, there is a “pre-proposal” category on the Forum that can be used by potential authors to get their proposal ready for placing in the final PIP/PEP/PUP folder via GRIP assistance etc. This category is not set up to be a gated process but more of a convenience for proposal authors. In my case I sought GRIP assistance to get my draft “proposal-ready” via engaging the GRIP team on their Discord channel rather than utilizing the pre-proposal folder.

2 Likes

all for rewarding MSA and other contributors, but I am just bummed out in general. I personally would have waited to ask when things are not this gloomy.

1 Like

Thanks Shane for your feedback. I appreciate that the nature of your feedback is to debate the budget amount, and not concentrated on arguing against any reimbursement.

I will address specific points below.

First off, I think it would be much preferable for you to clean up your post to remove all these reference to GRIP. This creates an unfair bias by which (1) it makes it seem your personal feedback should carry extra weight because it comes from a GRIP member and (2) gives the “impression” that I ignored/did not heed the feedback provided by GRIP. This simply is not true. I made every change suggested by GRIP, including spending several days tracking down every bit of documentation for the various tasks, something that was never asked of from @cryptocorn or any other contributor on previous proposals. All the following points were given as your personal feedback (excepting the reference to the cp code fix, which I promptly corrected in the proposal text, as you can see.). For such personal feedback, I appreciate that in the second quote above you call out this is your personal opinion; however I think it preferable to eliminate the appeal to GRIP altogether.

I agree, which is why I approach the budget rationale from many different angles and head the rationale section by acknowledging there is no perfect methodology to evaluate the budget. Eliminating that methodology would not affect the outcome of the budget.

Think of it as simply a putting things into perspective. It is more the following type of statement: “If Shane’s model were used, the budget represents about 100 hours of reimbursement. Is this reasonable, given the hours contributed?”

On the other hand, while I appreciate that the work I provide may fall outside the scope of your original intended use of the methodology, it is not far fetched to use in this context, seeing that in most organization, sw engineering and systems engineering are compensated at comparable rates.

I think you have completely missed the point. This is a completely separate evaluation methodology . In essence throw the previous (Shane valuation) methodology out the window and use this methodology instead. In other words, think of it as putting the budget into a slightly different perspective than the previous section. It is more the following type of statement: “If a “GRIP-equivalent” model of $100/hr were used, the budget represents about 230 hours of reimbursement. Is this reasonable, given the hours contributed?” Go back and reread this section. It is premised on using $100/hr exactly, not on including some kind of overhead and premiums as in your model.

I have gone over both my proposal in general and the PNF valuation scorecard specifically with PNF prior to submitting this proposal. Agree that it will be good to hear directly from PNF. In the meantime, I will share the feedback I received from PNF:

  • the overall budget of this proposal seems reasonable
  • the use the scorecard stretches the original-envisioned use case of the scorecard which is geared more for evaluating “public goods” so some creative interpretation of certain boxes may be needed to make it fit a case such as this
  • the scorecard is a work in progress, so use by myself, poktfund and others recently helps give them the feedback they need to improve it.
  • as to specific scores, feedback centered on two boxes, one in which they thought I had originally scored it too high and one in which I had originally scored it too low, in a way that exactly balances each other out. See cells C16 and C19 which I have reset to middle of the road values to reflect competing interpretations.

Again, there is no one perfect evaluation methodology, hence the multiple approaches.

This is both unfair and anachronistic. Just now, the PNF is starting to develop guidelines regarding pre-authorizing work. This simply did not exist last year, Indeed, it does not even exist quite yet as the process and policy is still being developed. Last fall when this work was done, the ONLY model available to contributors was to do the work first and then “hope for the best” that the DAO will be willing to reimburse. That is the who point of the risk premium in your valuation model is it not - risk that work competed won’t get reimbursed - as compared to, say, GRIP, where no such premium is relevant, since reimbursement is guaranteed.

Furthermore, appealing back to historical context, the DAO had just told me two weeks prior to my starting the PUP-25 analysis that the model it wanted me to work under was to complete work first and then submit for reimbursement. It would feel like something of a rug pull for the DAO to then come back and say that funding would not be provided simply because it was not pre-authorized.

Last, I do not think you are really thinking this through completely. Imagine how this would have looked from PoktScan perspective had the DAO voted to fund an independent analysis. In a case such as PUP-25, asking the DAO to pre-authorize and fund an independent analysis is fraught with danger as it could lead to bias in the minds of voters to presume that the independent analysis authorized by the DAO is superior to or more trustworthy than the analysis provided by the proposal authors. This would be unfair to proposal authors. It is better for independent analysis to be provided first to avoid this possible source of bias and then be considered for reimbursement on the merits of the work provided.

Bottom line, the merits of reimbursement for this analysis can be debated , such as you get into on your other points, but it being excluded simply on the grounds of it not being pre-authorized makes no sense.

This is precisely why it was vital for an independent analysis to be done! The claims the authors of that proposal made were very serious and they certainly felt the claim justified the impact of the change being suggested. Sure, if someone without a proven track record throws out a high-impact proposal, it can perhaps be ignored without due diligence. But this is PoktScan we are talking about. They have a proven track record of high-value contribution to the ecosystem. The claims they made deserved to be looked at adequately.

This was a very high-stakes proposal involving a highly complex technical subject. Thus a high number of hours compared to other tasks is reasonable

Guidance I have received from PNF has been that analysis that leads to the DAO not taking a certain governance action is equally valuable as analysis that leads to the DAO taking a certain governance action.

This is to put the cart before the horse. The reason PUP-25 did not enjoy greater community support than it did was for lack of independent analysis to back up the claims. Had independent investigation backed up the claims and the proposed action, it would have gained traction and support, even if begrudgingly given. I certainly hope that you are not suggesting that the best approach to take when a serious charge of unfairness or other brokenness is levied by a major contributor in the ecosystem, is to bury our collective head in the sand and not do the necessary due diligence to per-review the claims.

I understand the general principle and explain in the dissention section why it is difficult to apply in this case.

I corrected this in pre-proposal phase and moved this section to Table 3 listing R&D that either hit dead-ends or remain open. Is there a reason to repeat this here?

I understand the idea for going forward; the idea can’t really be applied retroactively. There was no such community engagement program in the past

I’ll leve it to @Cryptocorn to weigh in as to whether he thinks the overall ask amount is reasonable, as he has seen my work first hand in much of it. Yes cryptocorn was the original author of the July FREN proposal, but what emerged from the debate was essentially a brand new proposal that was reformulated and rewritten from the ground up. Per your GRIP request I have meticulously documented the breakdown of my contribution to FREN. I feel fairly certain that I put in the majority of hours that went into that task.

I believe this has been adequately addressed above

I fail understand this. Regarding GRIP, I think it falls completely in line with GRIP. If we compensate the editing and feedback done by GRIP at $100 is it not reasonable to compensate proposal authors at similar rate for the time they put into passing proposals?

Regarding @cryptocorn, it is hard to make apples-applies comparison. For one, it should be remembered that he is employed within the ecosystem and a fair amount of his presence felt over that last year was funded out of that, not out of DAO; I would venture to say that his total POKT-related compensation over the time period exceeds what I am requesting. Second, supposing that he voluntarily requested significantly less reimbursement than perhaps was due, that should not be used as precedence for everyone who follows. He himself indicated that his request amounts to less than minimum wage… are you suggesting that the DAO can retain top contributors by offering sub-minimum wage for contributors. Third, there is a lot of analysis that went on behind the scenes in all the proposals in question that laid the groundwork for the final product. That ought to be taken into consideration. As I mentioned in the dissention section, the best prior to use for precedence is PEP44, and this ask is much smaller in dollar amount and for a much longer stretch of contribution than that previous reimbursement.

Is there a reason you feel my work on SER should be compensated but not my work on ACCURATE and FREN, both of which also passed? Or the work behind the scenes to aid PNF in setting SSWM?

Many ideas can be discussed about the best way for the DAO to move forward, but this is a reimbursement request for prior work, and the only effective funding route open to me in the time period covered by this proposal was to do the work first and then submit for reimbursement.

it is possible that as programs like GROW roll out, a reimbursement request like this won’t even be needed in the future as lower-friction lower-pain possibilities to fund work like what I provide open up. But that simply was not a possibility in the time frame covered by this proposal.

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Thanks @crabman . As to current market conditions, I have gone ahead and updated the budget to cap the funding in case the price stays below $0.05. As indicated above , there was absolutely no intention on my part to try to “time the market”. As to waiting to ask when things are not this gloomy… I suppose that’s a matter of perspective. Other than depressed price, I think a lot is currently going right for this project.

As I said above, I’m at a natural transition point between focusing on v0 and v1 so it made sense to close out the previous chapter now.

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Thanks for the response. Happy to better communicate with the following:

No intention to create an unfair bias. I would encourage anyone to look at the feedback I provided on the GRIP Discord. I basically copy and pasted the relevant parts from the convo over here.

You did indeed make a lot of changes, especially with added references to each of your claims. I greatly appreciated that as it makes looking back at this work much more straightforward. Folks are welcome to review the GRIP Discord for feedback, and they will see you did make many worthy changes to the format and sources.

Thank-you for that :+1:

My opinion may differ here from yours… but if someone is proposing that the DAO invest into significant code changes to the protocol, then I think it’s fair that the DAO put resources into vetting it. Personally, that sounds like a good process to me.

My research was the catalyst to GOOD VIBES not going through… and I would have been happy to see the DAO first sanction the research as a matter of a due diligence process, instead of just on my own dime at the last minute :sweat_smile: So may just be a difference of opinion here.

SER was your eco proposal that passed, so that make sense for it to be a reimbursement. ACCURATE and FREN were @Cryptocorn, so if there is to be evaluation for your contributions, then it should be in respect to the evaluation of the the original author IMO. That’s why I think a single proposal is better, so the evaluation of value is the same :sweat_smile:

Regarding the work you did for PNF, that could be reimbursed by the DAO or PNF could compensate. Not sure… but my point was that SER has strong standing for sure.

Personally, it gets too confusing if I need to consider someone else’s salary or theoretic holdings to evaluate another’s proposal. I also believe your salary outside of POKT should not be a factor in the evaluation of your work. That is just my opinion.

Overall, thanks for response and providing your perspective on my comments :+1:

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Do you plan to charge the DAO for this v1 research you are starting? If so I would suggest putting up a per-approval proposal that has specific guidelines and deliverables. Or something like an RFP.

I don’t believe the reimbursement proposal structure for R&D work should be continued in the future IMO.

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As I mention above, I plan to request a POP from the PNF under the new GROW initiative once that gets rolled out in a few weeks as that bypasses a lot of the funding friction for cases such as mine. If that goes through, then I do not foresee any new funding request directly to the DAO You will note that the budget of this proposal for the 7-8 months of contribution are fairly in line with the POP monthly budgets Perhaps I should have used that as an evaluation methodology. eg “what compensation would have been provided had this been funded via a POP” That initiative is just rolling out and did not exist in the past for me to utilize.

I can consider an RFP as well, and there is a specific DNA point this can be pursued under. However, it should be noted that just as with the scorecard, the RFP is designed more for “public goods” not so much for straight-up R&D - e.g., if I collab with PoktScan to build a radCAD sim model for POKT, that would likely be pursued via an RFP as that is more of a “public good”.

If neither of these routes prove to be viable I would plan to seek funding directly from the DAO, in which case, I am happy to go through a pre-approval process for anticipated v1 work such as you suggest.

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I totally get the ideal of separate proposal for each of these actions. Just seems impractical to accomplish in this case. Let’s wait and see what the other feedback is like. If there seems to be solid consensus that a merged funding request is preferable, then I can consult with @cryptocorm and @caesar (who provided the comparison analysis for SER) to see how to merge their contributions (that have not already been compensated via PEP51 in to this proposal.

[Also, to be fair, ACCURATE was two separate proposals that got merged, mine and cryptocorn. I did the merging, final writing and the analysis to justify both parts; just a matter of deference on my part to list cruptocorn first; order should not really matter for the purpose of this discussion]

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Thanks msa.

All-

Good for now, I value my time a bit differently and fortunately I don’t need a consensus there. Have given a significant amount of my personal time to Pocket (excluding public TG channels), that only a few are aware of. But that was my choice and will continue to be so (whenever/if ever).

Thanks again.

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I want to add some more insight and my view:

  • Firstly, it’s a shame that people are attacking someone requesting payment for putting in hundreds of hours of work. You can question how many of the hours should be paid, and at what value, but there seems to be a correlation between people who’ve never helped the Ecosystem and just complain, usually without really understanding Pocket or people’s contributions, and people not wanting contributors who do the hard work they can’t be arsed to, getting paid.

  • I’ve worked with MSA on several of the above proposals, and found his work helpful and insightful.

  • In reference to my PEP asking to be compensated, in hindsight I asked for too little (some negative advice I took). While I don’t mind being paid less than minimum wage for some of my work - we shouldn’t expect all contributors to expect pennies.

  • MSA did the bulk of the work on the eventual FREN, SER and ACCURATE. He should definitely be paid for this time and effort, which led to major inflation reduction that seems to be the hot topic de jour.

  • In hindsight, MSA and I (+ Caeser) should have made a joint proposal for the multiple inflation reduction proposals. I agree that moving forward joint proposals covering the whole compensation request should be standard.

  • How exactly to measure the ROI/Impact and pay, other hours requested, I don’t know. MSA should be paid for the proposals at the very least, and for some of his other efforts to do the hard work in our ecosystem. I’d like to see MSA work through a socket going forward so we don’t have these acrimonious debates going forward.

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Let’s be sure to question/debate the proposal/model at hand, and expand upon your views of his models, not the person.

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I’m not against rewarding work done, but I think that the requested amount is too high. The requested amount for 7 months of work is far higher than the amount requested by @Cryptocorn for 12 months of work.
I feel that the argumentation around the “technical skill” is not solid, as I stated before in the CARE thread the compensation should be to the perceived value of the contribution not making distinction on whether it was technical or not. Also, and since GRIP was mentioned in the initial post, there is no difference in paid amounts to different GRIP members. Regardless of their skills or certifications, everyone is paid the same as they are perceived to be apt by the community.

Regarding the worked ours, I feel that the proposer is claiming too many worked hours. There are a total of 586 claimed hours, that means that in the last 7 months the proposer worked more than 20 hours a week, that’s quite a lot and even more when considering periods like Sep-Nov.
I certainly find it difficult to believe that in the 2 months that the PUP-25 was active the proposer spent 1.25 months of full dedication to it (calculating 195 hours at 40 hours per week). This is in fact more than what I (the author of the proposal) dedicated to it. Finally, and just to leave a note on the value that the proposer claim to have provided to PUP-25, I don’t believe that it was an accurate analysis (refer to this post for more information).

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Thanks @RawthiL for your input. A couple considerations

If you see @Cryptocorn 's post just prior to yours he indicates his ask may have been too little and should not be used as precedence for future proposals.

Understood. Everyone in GRIP gets paid $100. That’s all I’m asking for in this proposal. $100/hr, or even slightly less, for the work shown in Table 1 only that led to direct DAO action. Nothing in addition to that for anything in Table 2 and Table 3, which are shown for supplemental purposes and only factor into the fourth evaluation methodology labeled " Using an hourly contract model"

Isn’t this exactly in line with the valuation method PoktScan used for the geomesh proposal, where DAO reimbursed PoktScan for everyone from development to documentation and support at $100. Isn’t that more recent precedence than CARE. I didn’t see PoktScan slash their budget to 1/8th its original ask because CARE set precedence that “equal pay” dictates that everyone in the ecosystem get paid at $12/hr.

If one uses the idea that only contributions that lead directly to DAO/PNF action should be compensated, then I think that my budget and the CARE budget are more in line that you think. If one takes the $7k budget of CARE and scale it up by the ratio of hours I put into FREN/ACCURATE/SER to his, I think you would get very close to my ask amount.

Pretty close. A bit under 20hr/wk actually (closer to 8 months than 7 is covered), but correct, pokt has been a rather major focus of my attention.

yeah, I pretty much shut down everything else going on in my life during that month or so to concentrate on this issue.

This is rather to be expected. It is much more difficult to try to reverse engineer, reproduce and troubleshoot an analysis than it is to do the original. Plus I acknowledged that the hours shown include some ancillary work such as providing analysis for the third-party bin-equivalence experiment that was being conducted concurrently and being discussed in the comments thread of the proposal.

Yes. Duly noted. I’d be happy to debate if ever needed in the future, but once PoktScan signaled their intention to discontinue pursuing the proposal (which did not occur until after the time period in which I provided my independent analysis) I stopped all further work on the subject.

All that being said, let’s not loose focus that this PUP25 analysis is not part of my Table 1 contributions that form the primary basis for my reimbursement request; it only factors in as supplemental consideration.

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Adding some comments as a PNF person:

  • The impact scorecard is a tool to support sensemaking about specific parts of the proposal and the impact they created, and to highlight where people might have differing opinions. It was not designed with this specific use case in mind but I think it illuminates some areas which seem to be lost from this discussion, notably that there was “some” impact from effort expended by MSA (and others)

  • Retroactive requests will always be subjective which is why we are implementing new mechanisms that will for the most part avoid this or create more incentive for reaching agreement before work starts. PNF will make a forum post soon with some further principles re funding and pricing which we can all debate and discuss. So let’s keep the focus here on a question of was there impact and what is the right reward for effort expended

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Adding some comments as an everyday POKT person and observer:

I would say 90% of DAO participants and voters have not (will never) read this thread start to finish. Look at how long it is. Let’s be pragmatic and just summarise the current state of this debate:

  • Mostly agreed on some impact from MSA work
  • Not much agreement on the right size/price

A simple way forward is to just do a signalling or strawpoll vote of different pricing sizes so MSA has some clarity on the tradeoffs of moving forward in current form or whether to adjust. This could probably achieve more in 2 days than the collective effort of more weeks of reading, replying, debating.

In my opinion we really need a better logic around how these discussions roll out. Here’s my mental model for gating each step towards supporting something. It’s maddening to me that we are aligned on 80% of something and get ourselves in a total mess over the 20% where we aren’t.

My mental gating:
Is this a need? Go to next step:
Is it a need now?
Is this the right solution?
Is this the right person?
Is this the right size?

Using this proposal as an example:
Is this a need? Yes, work was done that had some impact.
Is it a need now? Yes, stop kicking the can down the road with these things.
Is this the solution? There was no other mechanism at the time so suck it up and deal with it
Is this the right person? He did the work, maybe could have been combined with others but too late.
Is this the right size? No idea, let’s figure this bit out by seeing what people would say yes to as quick as humanly possible and get it done.

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