PEP-60: Enabling Responsible Allocation of Budget (ERA Budget)

TLDR:

This proposal requests funds as outlined in the Era post. This is made up of a Era Budget of $1,443,000 towards transformational keystone projects, led by PNF, and 80% of the incoming DAO allocation each cycle towards community contributions. These two mechanisms span the life of the era leading up to V1 Launch


Authors & Recipients:

PNF, on behalf of Pocket Network community


Motivation & Rationale

Pocket Network is in a critical phase leading up to v1 launch. PNF believes success will come when the whole community is productively aligned behind and contributing to our stated ambitions. We need to prioritise resource allocation towards these priorities.

Our incredible community is one of our competitive advantages and we need to unlock all of our talent by prioritising resource allocation to ambitions, creating certainty of funds available for contributions (and funds remaining in the broader treasury), and remove some of the frictions and distractions of smaller proposals and debates so that energy and attention is focused where it’s most needed: execution.


Mechanism design & implementation

The ERA budget proposal defines two financial mechanisms for the life of this era leading up to v1 launch:

1. The Era budget

The Era budget defines approved spend in $USD equivalent towards “keystone” projects. These high leverage projects are an important step change in the nature of Pocket Network and outline major milestones, outside of protocol development, leading up to v1 launch.

The Era budget is defined so that each keystone project is a budgeted line item against which the project needs to be delivered. PNF and/or the keystone project manager will be responsible for delivering the project within budget. Eras have bi-monthly “cycles” and PNF will report on use of the Era budget and the prevailing burn rate each cycle. The budget and burn rate will be continuously visible and transparent to the DAO at all times through a provided wallet address.

Upon passing of the proposal the funds for the Era budget will be moved to a separate Pocket wallet so the DAO can easily discern the Era budget as distinct from the remaining DAO treasury. Given that PNF will look to protect this value against changes in the price of POKT, we will also provide a gnosis safe address for stablecoin conversions that are visible to the DAO.

2. The Era allocation

The Era allocation defines the % of DAO allocation of block rewards that will be provided for contributors to support our ambitions. The DAO allocation is currently 10% of all block rewards and we propose that the Era allocation is 80% of this 10% (i.e. 8% of all block rewards).

This mechanism is proposed so that there is certainty for contributors that any work that is aligned with our core ambitions will be supported and prioritised, while allowing the DAO to scale up and down contributions based on the prevailing Pocket price. It also creates clarity that even though significant funds are being allocated towards our ambitions, the DAO treasury will continue to grow in the background the whole time (with 2% of all block rewards accumulating to the main treasury).

The mechanism will work by retroactively reviewing the DAO take each cycle and withdrawing the funds to a separate Era Allocation wallet that will be used to make payments to contributors over the coming cycle. This amount will be visible to all and provide certainty to contributors of the contribution pool that can be accessed within the upcoming cycle.

The other mechanisms to be operated during eras will enable new contribution types through Sockets and POPs which were outlined in the GROW program . These will be expanded upon in a separate forum post about the DAO OS shortly.


Deliverables

Ambition: v1 is the most successful new protocol launch ever

v1 protocol development and launch (new hires, advisers, support)
Protocol team and v1 launch need support from the DAO. Support for acquisition costs of new hires (i.e. agency or scouting fees), advisors (marketing, launch) and contingency support (hard to predict)

v1 economics and governance R&D (part-time contributors plus third party experts)
v1 economics and governance are critical aspects of v1 launch, as seen in the debates about v0 inflation and tokenomics. This budget is to support two major workstreams of community contributions and some of the most reputable system designers/advisors in crypto who can co-lead this work with PNF.

Ambition: Pocket has $1B of annual protocol revenue

Activate 1+ new Gateways (legal, documentation, support)
The community is already aware that we are working with a new gateway provider and this is a funding bucket for supporting their launch regarding legal, docs or any other small support needs they may have to go live.

Ambition: Pocket has the healthiest culture and governance of any DAO

Activate and embed Pocket DNA
Pocket DNA is the core of our culture and will become a more prevalent part of onboarding contributions. This is a small request to support design, marketing and rewards as we activate.

Automated governance CREDs
CREDs is the next iteration of Pocket Governance that will both automate the trophy system, and also make governance more granular which will enable a larger group of DAO voters. This ask is for the technology support needed to automate our existing system, as well as for a POP for a contributor to project manage the rollout of creds under the guidance of PNF.

IDEAS
Continuation of the existing IDEAS program, but expanded further to help improve the product and service quality.

Sockets
Sockets are the main mechanism for rapid community experiment and new contributions. PNF has incubated this program with sockets for development of IBC integration for v1 launch, a Design Socket that has delivered the updated forum and numerous community graphics, as well as the transition of Testnet infrastructure to Nodefleet. This allocation guarantees space for new and continuing Sockets and signals that anyone within the community has agency to experiment with new products, services or initiatives that support the Ambitions.

Ambition: Pocket has the institutional financial rails of a blue-chip token

wPOKT (front-end, back-end, research, project planning, design, audits, custody, infra, legal, analytics)
PNF is leading the development of wPOKT and this items covers the costs of design and development of the technical solution, as well as audits, legal and telemetry for a safe and successful rollout.

wPOKT min liquidity
Minimum amount to support the launch of wPOKT on Ethereum mainnet with liquidity.

Tier 1 Exchange listing
Expected costs to launch of POKT on a tier 1 exchange. Conversations have been underway for some time and having funds available will allow us to move quickly at the right time.


Budget

1. Era Budget: $1,443,000 USD equivalent at the trailing 30 day average POKT price at time of passing

Ambition (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) Keystone Projects Budget $,000K
v1 is the most successful new protocol launch ever v1 protocol development and launch (new hires, advisers, support) 100
v1 economics and governance R&D (part-time contributors plus third party experts) 250
Budget ($) 350
Pocket has $1B of annual protocol revenue Activate 1+ new Gateways (Support Nodies + legal, documentation and other support) 330
Budget ($) 330
Pocket has the most trusted infrastructure brand in crypto Establish a PNF Marketing function, including a PR firm (PNF expense) 0
Hire a HoM (PNF Expense) 0
Budget ($) 0
Pocket has the healthiest culture and governance of any DAO DNA 20
Retroactive Public Goods grants (PNF Expense) 0
CREDS 50
Sockets (3 contributors per month on average per year) 108
IDEAS 10
Budget ($) 188
Pocket has the institutional financial rails expected of a blue-chip token wPOKT (front-end, back-end, research, project planning, design, audits, custody, infra, legal, analytics) 150
Tier 1 Exchange listing 350
wPOKT min liquidity 75
Budget ($) 575
Total Era Budget ($) 1,443,000

2. Era Allocation: 80% of the retroactive DAO allocation for each new cycle towards community contributions

Example:

  • Each Cycle is 2 months.
  • The DAO income in the last 30 days was 1,989,400.93 POKT
  • 80% of this amount is 1,591,520 POKT.
  • The Era allocation to community contributions would be 3,183,040 POKT (indicative example only) across the two months of the cycle. The remaining 795,760 of new POKT from the DAO allocation will remain in the DAO treasury

For clarity, any excess or unutilized funds from the Era Budget will be returned to the DAO Treasury at the end of the Era or at the close of the keystone project (whichever comes first), and any remaining funds from the Era allocation will be returned to the DAO treasury at the end of each cycle.

We welcome questions, feedback and discussion on the proposal from the whole community. Thankyou

PNF

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

7 Likes

Thanks for giving us an overview of how the ERA Budget was worked out and some ballpark figures to digest.

This is the biggest ask the DAO has ever had, and while I personally support the long term funding of several very important projects that are key to Pocket’s success, it seems the DAO is giving up a lot of oversight to PNF, and while this has many advantages, I don’t think it should be done lightly.

To better understand the request:

  1. Can you give some more understanding on the V1 protocol development and launch $100k? I appreciate a marketing campaign, cointelegraph articles etc needs a budget and should have one allocated. Can you break down the ‘protocol development’ part? Are we giving money to PNI for something?

  2. v1 economics and governance: $250k. Can you break this down further? My understanding was that rewards economics was largely run by the Fishermen/Watchers and inflation will be at 8% for v1 Launch.
    There’s a lot of discussion about inflation, falling into 3 main camps:
    a) inflation is too high, it should be cut to 4% or mint: burn immediately.
    b) inflation is too low, it should be increased to 20 - 50% APY for stakers.
    c) it doesn’t really matter what you do to inflation, it’s immaterial until demand increases.
    (*I use the word ‘inflation’ liberally, will leave the etymology for another time)

For the economics at least - I’d feel giving Ramiro and MSA POPs/Sockets to do some work as already knowledgeable in Pocket would give by far a cheaper but effective option that spending 6 figures to find out the above 3 options. IMO, one could spend a lot of money to find a tokenomics expert to agree with any of the 3, I’d rather spend the money on token buybacks or QoS improvements.

  1. Are we confident that $350k will be enough for a tier-1 token listing? $1M has been mentioned before, although I appreciate that a) it’s not 2021 anymore, b) one can negotiate these things c) integrating an erc-20 is cheaper/easier. A quick response that these are the figures that are being negotiated/have been presented to PNF would be helpful to make sure this has been suitably budgeted.

  2. There doesn’t seem to be any mention of Dev Rel. It may be a secondary activity - PNF is here to help educate developers on Pocket, PNI/Nodies DLA is there to sell relays, and this could be included in POPs/Sockets or Gateway expenses, but I’d like to see some more focus on using funds to facilitate the sale of product - subsidising sales, grants etc.

  3. There seems to be a low focus on improving v0 QoS. It seems that this is one of the most important things we can do to improve our product offering and gain more sales. Again - thoughts on subsidies to watchers, education programs to under performing nodes, building tools to help check and alert, bonus reward programs to better performing nodes if we can’t properly slash low performant ones etc.

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First of all, PNF has its own funds. Why not use them first?

From my understanding, you are asking the entire POKT community (DAO) to unconditionally trust you that you will do the things listed in there?

“v1 protocol development and launch (new hires, advisers, support)” - isn’t v1 protocol development entirely on PNI? Core developers are being paid by PNI. Why is PNF asking for funds now?

“v1 economics and governance R&D (part-time contributors plus third party experts)” - are third-party experts people such as those that already worked on SER proposal which is going to be replaced by a new one very soon, making all the previous money spent on SER worthless? There is zero clarification on this, which is ridiculous for such high ask. $250k are being spend on what exactly?

“Activate 1+ new Gateways (legal, documentation, support)” - what are the details? Who will be working on it? What are their skills?

“DNA” - what is that exactly? Aren’t PNF employees already receiving a salary? Why asking for an extra $20k to work on this?

“CREDS” - zero details on this.

“Sockets (3 contributors per month on average per year)” - zero details on this for a $108k ask.

“wPOKT (front-end, back-end, research, project planning, design, audits, custody, infra, legal, analytics)” - who will be working on this? Zero details again.

“Tier 1 Exchange listing” - is it Binance? How can we trust that PNF will make a right decision to spend $350k on a single exchange listing? What if it will be an exchange with fake trading volume?

Tons of questions here and it’s quite concerning that such high ask is even being made, especially since new policy aims towards not paying out more than few % of the entire DAO treasury. This centralizes things a lot and puts accountability at risk. DAO would have zero impact on activities after this proposal passes. Quite concerning.

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Thanks @Cryptocorn & @SteveO for the questions and giving us a chance to expand on individual items (we were actually a bit worried how quiet it was until now!)

First, we take on the feedback that we could have done a better job in outlining and describing the keystone projects and associated work. We have updated the Era Budget proposal above to include more context on each project, and we will continue to iterate on how we communicate and try to make things simple to follow as we embed the new DAO OS.

First, addressing a few things that need to be understood in context:

This is the wrong framing. The ambitions set by PNF as part of the strategic thesis require all of us to push together in the same direction. All funds from the Era budget and the Era allocation go to service providers or community contributors to achieve our shared ambitions, and these mechanisms are introduced to 1) activate everyone towards these common goals and then 2) make funds available rapidly so that we can all focus on delivery and execution rather than a continuous cycle of new proposals and circular debates to get anything done.

Now is not the time for a scarcity mindset. We would ask the DAO to consider this: If we are not willing to commit ~30% of the DAO treasury to all of the major projects and community contributions leading up to our major catalyst moment of launching v1, then what is the DAO treasury for?

The condition placed on PNF is and has always been that the DAO/Community can use their governance power to turf us out if we don’t deliver. The proposal states that we will custody and allocate funds on behalf of the DAO, share wallet addresses for full transparency, report on progress as part of our transparency reports and return any unused funds to the DAO within or at the end of the era. We are open to ideas on what else we can be doing to give everyone comfort if this is not enough.

Now to some of the specific questions:

Money is not being given to PNI for protocol development. V1 is the highest priority for PNF (and hopefully the whole DAO) and a successful launch should not be capacity constrained. For example, we want to ensure the best talent in the entire industry is available to Olshansky and the protocol team and this will require support for scouting or agency fees to find and attract such talent, which can amount to 25% of the new recruit’s first year salary. Consequently, $70k of this budgeted amount is allocated towards paying world class headhunters to find the very best protocol talent for Olshansky’s team. See here for the protocol engineer job spec, for example. Remember that any funds we don’t spend go back to the DAO, so if you can help to reduce these costs, please do!

Our primary objective for the v1 Economics R&D workstream is to conduct a comprehensive review of the entire economic landscape of the Pocket Network protocol design for V1, with the ultimate aim of designing a more sustainable and adaptable economy against the V1 protocol specifications. Both the economics and governance of the protocol are fundamental to how Pocket Network works, as well as to how POKT and the DAO thrive in line with the growth and success of the ecosystem.

This workstream will involve examining the protocol specifications holistically, considering the potential for adding or removing parameters, and investigating ways to optimise the current economic structure.

Secondary objectives for this workstream include to:

  • Identify and evaluate different economic mechanisms, such as staking, slashing, application burning, transaction fees, and inflation, to determine their effectiveness and potential trade-offs.
  • Develop new economic models that incentivise node and portal operators to provide high-quality services, support decentralisation, and encourage adoption of the protocol.
  • Create a framework for measuring and analysing the economic health of the network, including metrics such as staking participation, transaction volume, and fee revenue.
  • Foster a community-driven approach to designing, testing, and iterating on the economic model of Pocket Network Protocol V1.
  • Educate the broader community on the economic design of Pocket Network Protocol V1, its benefits, and how to participate in the network’s growth and success.
  • Quantify the value of using Pocket Network over alternatives per each point of the RPC Trilemma

The various parameters under consideration are categorised under the relevant “protocol” to which they immediately relate, such as the Session, Servicer, State Change, Application, Fisherman, Portal, Validator, and Governance protocol. However, they could also be categorised under the headings of Tokenomics, QoS, Risk Management, and Administrative Functions. Another alternative to a “protocol/focus” research structure would be to conduct research on each “feature path” as every protocol/actor covers a lot of different features.

Ultimately, there is a lot of research to carry out and then to opine on, and we want to ensure we adequately incentivise third party experts (e.g. Blockscience), as well as our existing community members, to set ourselves up for success.

The current (and perhaps you could say perpetual) conversations about inflation do a good job of illustrating the importance of v1 economics and governance. Scale and QoS themselves are not enough to guarantee a resilient and unstoppable project.

Further context on this can now be found in the budget proposal above.

@nelson is out this week and will comment more but he calibrated this budget based on previous conversations with Tier-1 exchanges.

We agree that DevRel is an important activity for Pocket Network. The first part of the budget was carved out for Must have (Keystone projects), while the 80% of future DAO earnings will go towards Should/Could Have projects. Devrel is a high priority to us but was not included as a must-have project to be delivered by PNF for a few reasons: 1) our focus at PNF is on establishing a marketing foundation for the DAO, which will be necessary before PNF can personally build a DevRel function, 2) there is uncertainty around the need of a DevRel role in the areas that PNF is responsible for (protocol and open-source tooling), 3) the gateways are naturally positioned to do DevRel for the users of their service (the developers I assume you’re referencing) and PNI are already ramping up their DevRel efforts. Once 1 and 2 are settled, a PNF/DAO-led DevRel function can be activated by POPs/sockets that are funded from the 80% of future DAO revenue. To elaborate on 3, it should be emphasised that regarding sale of the RPC service, this is the primary responsibility of gateway/portal providers. PNF and the DAO should be willing to support them with reasonable requests but not to parent them on their specific strategy and implementation. We are impressed by the early work of Nodies DLB and seeing the recent developer community events via PNI that are moving more in this direction.

This is fertile ground for the gateways and community to coordinate on. Remember, the Era budget is specifically for keystone (must have) projects as set out in the ecosystem thesis AND to create a prioritisation of funds towards community contributions which support our ambitions. PNF is utilising its time and resources towards these keystone projects but QoS is an important part of achieving the ambition of $1B revenue and having the most trusted infrastructure brand, so we encourage community members to propose sockets or coordinate towards POPs that pursue these goals. Such proposals being aligned with the core ecosystem ambitions would be natural candidates for being funded by the 80% of future DAO revenue that would be carved out for them.

Thanks again for the questions and feedback. We encourage everyone to continue to share on points that are not clear or to provide feedback on how we can better communicate on the ways the era budget and allocation aims to activate community contributions towards these shared goals.

6 Likes

This is a big spend - at a critical juncture. Community input in this thread has been quiet. A town hall, or similar event on Discord or Zoom, where this proposal can be publicized and fleshed out and questions asked would be helpful. All PNF directors should be there.

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Hello Zaatar,

Topic item can be requested as an agenda on our Community Call for which we (PNF) facilitate and has been present to help curate as well as to answer questions. You can submit your suggestion at the Call-Topic-Suggestion channel on our official Discord server.

If needed, we can also create a stand alone event as well, such as what you’re suggesting if more beneficial to serve the deeper discussion.

So how about for next week, instead of having our usual Community Call, I can go ahead and set up the call as a PNF Town Hall with PEP60 as the main and only topic of focus. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the prompt @zaatar and agree with @Ming that it can’t hurt to have another call dedicated to this and make sure everyone is aligned.

I also just want to make clear that we have been building up to this proposal with forum posts that have over 3000 views and that we have held community calls specifically discussing our DNA, Thesis and Eras (where we introduced the budget mechanism) and that the only new development here is the actual allocation of funds.

See you all on a call next week to answer any outstanding questions!

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@Cryptocorn following up on your question regarding exchange listings. Yes, we do feel confident $350k budget will be enough for a Tier A listing. It’s worth adding there are also many tier-A exchanges that don’t charge a listing fee or instead require a deposit which is returned after 12 months. There are only a few exchanges we feel would be worth paying this much for. With that said, a listing won’t happen overnight, but it is a major priority for us

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We’ve reached a crucial juncture in pokt’s journey where proactivity is of utmost importance. The foundation (elected by the DAO for those that have forgotten) devised a strategy and roadmap, which includes all the projects necessary for pokt to succeed. However, the DAO treasury sits idle.

My frustration stems from the sluggish nature and inactivity that characterizes DAOs, which is gradually stifling this project. I fail to grasp the reasoning behind any opposition to this proposal. It’s clear as day - the protocol dev team needs substantial support for V1, pokt requires a robust marketing strategy, and we need wpokt as well as top-tier listings.

To provide some perspective, LeanPOKT received nearly half of the funds requested in this proposal for keystone projects. Are we suggesting that all the objectives articulated in this proposal are worth only one LeanPOKT more? It’s high time we stopped dithering

Perhaps the comms regarding this proposal could have been better. But if you’re deeply invested in pokt, you would have scrutinized this proposal repeatedly and acknowledged its indispensability. The treasury is not meant to be amassed; we should invest it before its value dwindles to nothing.

I support this prop

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Thank you for the detailed response @b3n ! The extra information brings clarity and clears up most of my questions and concerns. Much appreciated.

Thank you also to @nelson for answering the exchange listing question. I assume we won’t see a Tier-1 until wPOKT launches end of August? So likely a q4 time frame if one had to predict.

While I understand the argument that PNF is not tasked directly with sales and as an extension Dev Rel, i’d definitely push for some thinking and budgeting now about how to incentivise PNI/Nodies and any other potential Gateway operator to go all out for Dev Rel. Employee subsidies, marketing etc anything that helps others in the Pocket Ecosystem sell more relays should be a priority, if not keystone then the first ‘Should have’ and can be done in parallel. Only just behind this (or maybe ahead as sales are dependent on it) is QoS for v0. I’d really like to see PNF go to the community (Right a POP/RFP?) for these two items rather than wait for the community to go to PNF.

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My main question is, why should an exchange listing be a priority?

We have had notable exchanges before (Huobi) but were de-listed due to lack of volume (if I remember correctly). So what is preventing that same thing from happening again… where in a year we are delisted? Is the goal to also put resources toward market makers to keep the exchanges happy?

I honestly don’t think that is a winning strategy at this point in the game. I feel V1 (when there is momentum) is the time to focus on exchange listing. Wouldn’t it be better to focus on DeFi and wPOKT with $350k? I think $350k invested in making wPOKT exciting in the DeFi space would go much farther in creating liquidity and interest than an exchange listing in down times. wPOKT is a new utility to the POKT token (which is greatly needed) so to me it would make sense to focus on that.

Just my thoughts :slightly_smiling_face:

6 Likes

Regarding your questions @Cryptocorn we don’t want to commit to specific timing on an exchange listing, but we do see it as a priority to our liquidity goals in the lead-up to v1.

In regards to points @shane, we see a tier 1 exchange as an important part of improving our liquidity in the lead-up to v1. Huobi, at the time of our listing, it was largely considered one of the top exchanges in the space, however after a change in management it was no longer the same venue it once was. This could be seen within our community in terms of organic demand there which largely shifted to other venues. So while the delisting was unfortunate there were concerns around the safety of funds there at the time. Our goal is to look at exchanges which will remain top listings over time, however, there are considerable shifts happening in the exchange space due to the regulatory environment.

Volumes across the whole space is certainly down a lot at the moment, so it’s something we are mindful of. We have a market maker which we are working with at the moment and have also launched liquidity incentives on Hummingbot as a way to leverage community liquidity incentives as well to help support liquidity, but I do agree wPOKT is also a key priority for us as well. With that said, I agree it makes sense to wait until we have some wind behind our sales before pulling the trigger on a new listing, so that is something we are keeping in mind as well.

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Thanks for your patience Corn. A more detailed post about how we plan to support the proliferation of gateways is included in this post:

This increased support has been added to the Era budget. As there are no other changes in relation to the budget or allocation mechanism I recommend further discussion or questions on gateway support are directed to that thread.

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This proposal is now up for voting. Snapshot

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30 minutes ago the Era Budget was approved by DAO voters. It’s not lost on PNF what a major investment this is in us, and that we have been extended a lot of trust to produce a ROI from these funds. We’re excited to repay your faith and plan to meet that challenge by focusing on what matters - execution.

We are in the process of activating the Era operations and will provide a further update soon that covers:

  • Transparency on the Era wallets, so you can track the use of the budgeted funds
  • Transparency into Keystone project owners including access to all relevant documentation and plans, so you can give feedback or get involved
  • The $/POKT value of the Era allocation for community contributions for the first Cycle (next 2 months), so you can see funding for upcoming POPs and begin to spin up new Sockets
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:clap: :clap:

Looking forward to wPOKT, Gateways and a Tier-1 listing!

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