Discussion: Partial refund request on bounties I fund

Greetings DAOernauts,

Recently we completed the FOXy Bounty:

BOUNTY: $120,000 + 300,000 FOX for FOXy (aka sFOX) by Mar 22nd - #24 by Beorn - Engineering - ShapeShift DAO

  1. This was funded with my own money, as have been several other bounties.

    I do this both to be a benevolent participant, but also because I have a strong interest in ShapeShift and FOX’s long term success.

    I’d like to keep doing this, and I’d like it to be sustainable.

    To this end, after a bounty is complete, I plan to sometimes ask the DAO for a partial refund of what I spent on it. This helps me in two ways:

    It makes the initiatives more sustainable since the DAO is covering part of the cost. Thus, I’ll do more of them.

It gives me some honest community feedback. If my requests for reimbursement are voted down, then likely the DAO didn’t love the initiative I bountied, or how it was executed, or just thought it was a bad use of resources. I want

  1. this feedback.

By putting up the money first, and then getting a feature built and launched, it gives me the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is and actually deliver

  1. before asking the DAO to pay a penny.

    Stated differently, it lets me stake my own capital on an idea, and then the DAO has the opportunity to subsidize it (or not) only after delivery. I like this model.

    So, this FOXy bounty is my initial attempt to ask the DAO for a partial refund/subsidy of the costs. Here, I’m going to ask for 50% of the cost to be reimbursed to me.

    Amount I spent on this bounty: $150k USDC + 300,000 FOX

    My ask of the DAO: $75k USDC + 150,000 FOX

    Three important points:

    It is perfectly acceptable for the DAO to vote no on this. I will take that feedback, and it will change how and to what extent I self-fund bounties in the future.

  2. I will always abstain from voting on whether to repay myself, for obvious reasons.

Whenever I’m repaid in this manner, the funds will always

  1. go into future bounties for the DAO. I’ll always keep this capital rolling forward into new initiatives.

So, before this goes to formal vote, I wanted to post here on the forum and just get feedback/comments from the community.

Does this model make sense? Do you like the incentives or not?

Thanks for your thoughts!

I personally think this is a great methodology and I would support your request for the FOXy bounty as well as support this moving forward for other bounties the community deems worthwhile.

It’s great and appreciated that you would roll this into future bounties and I think this is also a stellar way to send the right message to the community about others using their own funds to put up bounties the community deems worthwhile.

First off, thank you for all of the bounties you’ve offered thus far 1f64f Each has been generous, thoughtfully defined, and overall very successful (despite the fact that we’ve been figuring out these bounty processes as we go). As a bounty offerer, you’ve always been open-minded and supportive, and your bounties have helped push us to define and improve our own processes. I hope you’ll continue offering these bounties and that we as a DAO will continue fulfilling them and getting better each time.

Overall I like the reimbursement concept. I think it’s in the DAO’s best interest for you to continue offering strategic bounties and that this reimbursement concept is a great way to encourage this. Ultimately each reimbursement request will be up to the community; I for one would vote yay a proposal to the DAO to reimburse you with 50% of the cost of the FOXy bounty, $75k USDC and 150k FOX.

My only q:

When you do plan on requesting reimbursement for future bounties, will you disclose this in the bounty offer?

I know these are q’s for beorn but figured I’d chime in cause I have some thoughts:

Is there any way that we could audit the effect of the added support by workstream leaders for this in terms of cost?

To make sure I understand, are you asking whether we could quantify the value added to FOXy by workstream leaders? If that’s what you’re asking, we could certainly try and estimate this, but I know we’ve got a lot to work on. I’m not opposed, but curious to hear what you think the benefits will be.

In general, I think workstreams should focus on utilizing the resources allocated to them by the community toward whichever efforts they believe will best support their goals. Often this will include supporting the integration and launch of features that resulted from bounties, and for this reason we are learning that it’s best for workstreams to weigh in on bounties when they are offered, especially if the bounty is timeline-dependent and requires bandwidth from the workstream. This also helps mitigate the issues we’ve seen from bounties where the bounty hunter is expected to divvy up the proceeds between both themselves and workstream contributors that help. IMO, the community is already funding workstreams and entrusting them to prioritize the best initiatives for the DAO; if workstreams agree that supporting a bounty is the best use of their resources, they should already be incentivized to do so.

I can see it getting complicated if one workstream thinks that supporting a bounty is the best use of their resources, but they are dependent on another workstream that feels differently. This is a real challenge, and I think the best thing we can do is have those conversations up front when a bounty is first offered and workstreams like product, engineering, ops, and security agree to supporting it.

All of the above should also help with the issue you mentioned of workstream contributors feeling pressured to work overtime to hit bounty deadlines. Workstreams can either push back on bounty requirements at the beginning, or they can hire more contributors to meet the demand (if they think that 's the right move). Regardless, if a workstream contributor goes above and beyond, they can (and should!) be rewarded by the workstream (rather than depending on bounty hunters to reward all workstream contributors equitably).

This possibility hadn’t occurred to me before, and I’m cool with it. I like it. For this particular project and this particular proposal, I would vote to extend the partial “refund”. There must be a more accurate description than “refund”… :slightly_smiling_face:

I can’t say I’d vote for these every time, and I totally get that is not your intention. I’ll also offer up that this will change how I think about future self-paid bounties. I’ll always wonder “will this person ask for the DAO to send some of this bounty to the poster when complete?” I don’t think that’s a bad thing, mind you. Just being transparent with my process.

I appreciate your bounty contributions to the DAO, .

Thanks for sharing your thoughts - I hope the message from the FOXy retro that if your workstream does not have a deliverable in the bounty, it is up to the workstream what you do with the result of the bounty, was helpful.

And if a bounty hunter that has accepted a bounty does not communicate with you about what they need from your workstream in order to meet the bounty requirements, that is on them.

Last, I think it’s wise for all workstream leaders to be aware of bounties being offered and to proactively communicate if there is something they think is unreasonable, or if their workstream is not able to support a deliverable that their efforts would be needed for.

As the first non-centralized FOX workstream leader with the passing of SCP-5 almost 8 months ago (holy shit time is flying), I was very reluctant to ask for a big salary right off the bat, especially as a newcomer to the FOX family, which I will be forever grateful for the early opportunity and the trust the community has placed in me. A lot of the early work I put in was for the most part behind the scenes, much of my time spent as a solo dev which can get extremely stressful and difficult, and I do admit I can get distracted with ideas and side projects; but the common denominator in all those “extra” efforts to “gain respect” within the DAO was legitimately because I wanted to see ShapeShift make a legendary comeback and I wanted to be able to say that I was part of it. If I was in it for the short term gains I would have stepped down from Globalization and pursue a much higher paying job in the DAO.

But I can’t and I won’t, because my views since SCP-5 has not changed one bit. We need to keep pushing for more globalization, information, and education. Still, it’s a bit of a punch in the gut when you see the disparities in pay within the DAO. Maybe I have been too passive, maybe I could have been more vocal about some of my (still ongoing) projects for the DAO. The timezone difference definitely doesn’t help much, so I may seem MIA a lot of the times, but I know the work I’m putting in to see ShapeShift succeed, even if it may be just a small drop in a large bucket. I literally spent my entire weekend working finishing up a tool to help our comrades in content / marketing, simply because I promised to a few months back. With no pay or bounty whatsoever expected.

Recently, though, I realized that whatever extra value I bring to the DAO, I should not be shy to ask for compensation if whatever I’m spending my all nighters on will bring measurable ROI in the short or long term. With that being said, it is very awkward to work on a non-commissioned project for the DAO and be asking for a bounty payment for something that the DAO never even requested. Now as I slowly prepare to announce that new tool which was painstakingly started from scratch 3 times because I wanted to make it as easy as possible to use for the marketing squad, I’m scratching my head whether I should request another bounty, as this tool would save significant time and resources for the workstream. but not necessarily a revenue increasing tool unlike the Cosmos AutoCompounding tool.

Ultimately, I think the DAO can and should improve its ability to encourage more crazy people like that have endless ideas and desire to create value. I’m a bit surprised that the Special Projects category has yet to establish as an official workstream, just tinkering with ideas and creating tools of value for the DAO. R&D, incubation, and experimentation in traditional companies are proven to be one of the most effective investment tools; I’d imagine in DAO land the potentials could be multitude times greater. Of course, ShapeShift is first and foremost an exchange that has was once king of assets swaps from 2014 to 2018, but as I have mentioned many times before (seriously, look at my post history 1f602), I don’t see a reason why ShapeShift wouldn’t be able to explore different areas of this giant crazy industry even further (FOXChain and vFOX ftw, tho).

I sincerely thank you for all that you’ve done for the industry as a whole. This might sound creepy, but I probably wouldn’t have began the DAO journey with ShapeShift if it wasn’t for my respect for you and your willingness to fight for the industry.

Now getting back on topic, I think a partial refund would be great – but only if you re-invest in more bounties 1f609 Because in all honesty, you are probably one of the largest FOX holders, so in a way your initial bounties would ultimately benefit you proportionally by a long shot compared to the average FOX holder. Especially with the current market sentiment, I’m thinking maybe right now is not the best time.

Anyways, sorry again for the obnoxiously long post. Long Live FOX.

edit: Just got to around listening to the All FOX. ShapeShift Labs 2764

discourse-post-upload20231125-65354-5clgm0.png LPX:

I think a partial refund would be great – but only if you re-invest in more bounties 1f609

This is exactly the plan.

Thanks for the comments, and expressing the anxiety you’ve felt. I want this DAO to be an environment where anyone/everyone can ask anything (for more funding, for a cool idea to happen, etc), but also for anyone/everyone to feel comfortable saying (or voting) no if they don’t perceive the value. Through this tension, we build a healthy environment.

I appreciate the comments from others above. The sentiment seems to be that a partial refund in this case is “mostly cool”, so I will push this forward to a formal vote. If ANYONE thinks it’s not a good idea, I encourage you to vote it down (or you can always reach out and discuss it directly with me).

Closing the loop on this… I’ve decided not to put this to formal vote. Bear market has arrived, and it feels less appropriate to seek reimbursement for this.