[SCP-178] Renew MKBD Workstream August 1 - February 1 2025

Proposal Discussion
1

Abstract/Summary

This proposal seeks to renew and expand the ShapeShift DAO’s MKBD Workstream for the next six months, starting August 1, 2024 and ending February 1.

The ShapeShift DAO relies on the MKBD workstream to:

  • Finalize and assist with product copywriting
  • Lead and foster partnerships and co-marketing opportunities
  • ABM (account-based marketing)
  • Develop onchain + offchain user profiles and audience segments
  • Global translations in-app and on marketing pages
  • Own shapeshift.com, optimize inbound traffic and discovery of app’s products
  • Spearhead community development
  • GTM strategy and execution as it pertains to the DAO and its products holistically
  • Asset creation, maintenance, and ownership of the ShapeShift Brand
  • IRL event planning + management
  • Grants (as needed, scoped, and resourced additionally by the DAO)

This proposal adopts SCP-92 Definition of Workstream Leader.

Motivation

To continue to provide the DAO the needed marketing resourcing and support for growing adoption and awareness of the current and future product offering while owning the tasks listed above.

  • MKBD secured a grant from Optimism generating 59,627.57 OP tokens (obo $106,733 at time of writing) that were sent directly to the DAO’s treasury. Grants will be put on the back burner unless greenlit by product and engineering or otherwise noted.
  • MKBD secured $18k of RUNE (at ~$6) which was has been agreed to but not yet sent to the DAO’s RUNE address in exchange for OOH spots at Rare Evo.
  • We additionally secured $3500 from Gitcoin Grants,

Specification

Team

Hpayne 一 Full Time 一 Workstream Lead

Twells 一 Full Time 一 Marketing Communications Manager

TheSmith 一 Full Time 一 Webmaster and Marketing Manager

Atlan 一 Full Time 一 Lead designer

Firebomb 一 Part Time 一 International UX & Translations lead

NFThinker 一 Part Time 一 X Spaces and Partner Management

Sapote 一 Part Time 一 Independent Data Analyst contractor

Hoff 一 Part Time 一 Web Designer

Mandate

The MKBD Workstream is the sole maintainer of ShapeShift.com, X, and any other official marketing accounts pertaining to the DAO or its activities. The .com account shall be controlled by the Fox Foundation until it is handed off to the DAO.

This is to ensure the DAO maintains a high standard and consistent perception of branding, messaging, and the products holistically.

The MKBD Workstream will spearhead partner engagement and collaboration in addition to acting as stewards for the ShapeShift FOX communities to usher product usage, awareness, and adoption.

Budget spreadsheet
The details below expand upon the budget spreadsheet:

TLDR:

  • 6-month total ask: $246,000
  • Returning 297,000 FOX to the DAO treasury (value at the time of posting: obo $16,000)
  • Absorbing $2500/mo contributor expense from Product (Hoff) (6-month total: $15,000)
  • Total additional ask from the treasury compared to last 6-month term (increase ask ($24,750) - returned FOX - absorbed product contributor): -$6,250 ($1,041 less spent per month over six months)

For reference, here is the previous workstream renewal budget:

Total requested over 6-months: $246,000 + $46,200 FOX

The amount of additional FOX requested will be locked on August 7, 2024 by using a 7-day daily-VWAP calculated by taking the daily mid-price (Low + High / 2), multiplied by that day’s volume averaged over 7 days using data from CoinMarketCap.

Shapeshift FOX Token price today, FOX to USD live price, marketcap and chart | CoinMarketCap. The intended use of this FOX is discussed below.

A separate governance proposal shall be raised if the MKBD Workstream requires more funding.

The increase in spend aside from moving Hoff from Product to Marketing covers the increased scope of running and managing X spaces, increasing onchain <> offchain ABM activities, financially incentivizing top talent to stay, and managing the webflow instance of ShapeShift.

Recurring costs

Labor

The marketing workstream lead (Hpayne) fully adopts SCP-92 in this proposal.

The budget currently retains the four existing full-time marketers and three part-time contributors from the previous workstream, plus one additional part-time contractor (Sapote) who will assist with Data Management.

Any unused funds from any budget category will be kept in the workstream Colony and rolled over into the following proposal.

Fox Compensation

If the MKBD team meets specific KPIs surrounding community growth, marketing campaign execution, and partner activations, all full-time and part-time contributors (and part-time contractors) explicitly stated in the budget spreadsheet above who maintained or increased their level of engagement in the the workstream for the duration of the budget cycle (6 months) will receive a 20% bonus in FOX that will be paid out evenly over the following 6 months starting February 1, 2025. Any member of the team who leaves or is terminated before January 31, 2025, will not be eligible for this incentive.

The price of FOX used for this calculation will be the reference price mentioned above.

MKBD team members may opt for any additional amount of their stable compensation as FOX.

KPIs for the team to qualify:

  • Drive $50,000 of partner sponsorship co-marketing or grant funding (to be sent to the DAO)
    • Last term: $128,000 obo

Reporting

The workstream will host bi-weekly office hours for the community and post slides and recordings to the forum biweekly. If the community has additional reporting requests, the workstream is happy to consider them and ensure visibility and transparency.

Drawbacks

USDC and FOX spend.

Benefits

This proposal ensures continuity of the existing MKBD team with retention incentives to ensure our team continues to perform and expand responsibilities. The MKBD effort markets, grows, and sells the ShapeShift product while retaining, strengthening, and enhancing the voice and brand image and driving value through the product. We exist to scale and proliferate the ShapeShift product while creating pockets of power users and community members.

Vote

For - Formalizes the community is “for” the details outlined in this proposal

For (with changes) - Formalizes the community is “for” the details outlined in the proposal with SPECIFIC changes outlined below

Against - Formalizes the community is “against” the proposal

5 Likes
2

I dont like the addition of fox bonus, stating the total bonus fund, and then calculated based on that months payout sheet, would be …more acceptable. (maybe this is what you meant? as you just said referenced above, but i didnt see it.) anyhow, price should be at that time, not set now.

(overall i dont like the fox bonus this way.)

but if the price is set at the current time, wouldnt vote against. (well, depending on other arguments based on kpi etc) :wink:

3

so total ask is 246k for marketing. ok … but then lower its:
otal requested over 6-months: $258,500 + $46,200 FOX
which means $304700 total.
$50783.333 / month
im assuming this is the correct number.

4

I think he’s following what the Engineering workstream is doing with their compensation plan, and it doesn’t seem to have raised such concern, why is it a problem here?

I’m in favor of this, but currently unable to vote with my FOX as it has been moved to Arbitrum, and the strategies for the “ideation.shapeshiftdao.eth” SnapShot space have not been updated yet. I really hope this will be fixed before the end of the voting period here.

5

the numbers dont match in the post. so is confusing.

(personaly dont like the fox bonus thing, cuz the price is set now, but the payout would be later. so could be paying out $200k for that same $46k value now. Should be tied to the fox price in the monthly payout setup. ( price set on the 8th at midnight edt/est)

6

Arb fox /rfox count in the main space. I have in request to update the ideation space. but its a hard process (which is why i was added into the main space in the first place)

7

I understand that we cannot give an exact number since it’s dependent on FOX’s value at the time, my question is why wasn’t it a concern for the other Workstream? It is the same principle, applied to other contributors.

Back then I think I remember being the only one who asked a question about the motivation for the bonus and 0xean’s answer convinced me (retaining talent, incentivizing FOX for compensation over USDC). But nobody seemed to be concerned with what you’re saying now, and it was already known that FOX is not a stable asset. And the amount of FOX will be way more substantial in absolute amount of FOX on the larger compensations for Engineering than they would for the MKBD workstream too.

In all cases, it’s part of accepting a share of your compensation in FOX, you can have an upside as much as you can have a downside for it. The opposite of your example is the DAO paying what will be worth for example 10k for the 46k value we’d expect right now. Not a situation I wish to happen, but a risk contributors are also taking by accepting this.

For the voting power, I’m just stating publicly the reason why I haven’t voted/can’t vote yet. Glad the update is in progress as we discussed, but if it really can’t be expected to work by the end of this Ideation, maybe moving this proposal to the main space until it’s fixed would be more fair (voters can’t move funds back to supported networks to fix it on their own, as the transaction would happen after the snapshot for this vote).

8

I am requesting $258,500 for the 6-months of labor and tooling. The $46,200 is contingent on meeting KPIS outined in the proposal. This is how engineering outlined their proposal and I heard crickets when they did this exact same thing.

9

(thats assuming you fixed the post to resemble that) heh.
i questioned it then in the various conversations. the fox was taken then, as a x number of units. then distributed. so if thats the intent, thats ok. just means whatever value at the date of the proposal passing = x fox. thats the bonus. / month etc ? i still am not a fan of this (nor was then) —
again it still has more than one ask:

that is the main part i want fixed. so its easily understood. no confusion.

10

also in various conversations was mentioned that noone else should use the same method and expect to get it passed but engineering.

11

Thanks for the fix! much more clear now

1 Like
12

I have not been part of these conversations, did they happen anywhere in public? Do you have any link to them? They really should be public if that’s a new standard for a proposal to pass.

To my recollection the discussion about the motivation was during a Governance call, based on my question to 0xean, nobody else questioned anything about this renewal. And there’s no problem with this, as I said their answer was very appropriate, I support incentivizing FOX compensation, and I support the Engineering WS.

In the forum there was just one discussion about the effective FOX price used for that compensation. I do not see any criticism and even less anyone claiming only Engineering can do this. The formulation is the same for this proposal’s calculation.

I don’t see any reason to skip on an occasion to incentivize FOX compensation instead of increasing USDC spend. The alternative would eventually be to increase USDC spend, is this preferable for you? The DAO cannot expect to retain talent with stagnating wages in the face of 3-8% annual price inflation (to take the US as an example, it can be worse in other places). If we do not adapt, we’re basically demanding to these contributors to reduce their compensation by about this much too… and since in the past two years that’s what happened they’ve already done a lot of efforts in this department. So I see that “bonus” as totally justifiable and necessary. I’d love to hear other solutions to this though.

13

has nothing to do with usdc vs fox. just the bonus structure i dont like.
wages arent stagnating, they went up. this is an odd discussion tho, the fox bonus was just a side item saying i dont like that. the focus of my conversation was about the disrepancy of the numbers, which were fixed.

the conversations were in voice chats or threads. maybe it was just me. Both you and hpayne saying you brought it up, but noone else did. but each of you did, and i know i did. I didnt like it then either.

didnt stop it from passing either lol

14

Could you elaborate on what makes you not like it and suggest something better in its place?

I don’t keep a detailed inventory of every single contributor’s wage history, just basing myself on the previous budgets I’ve voted on, the overall monthly spend decreasing significantly over the last two years, and contributors being let go to do so. All of this without significant increases for individual wages (except when more responsibilities were taken due to letting talent go). So I’m not sure if you’re referring to outside of the DAO when you say wages are not stagnating, but I haven’t seen them keep up with the percentages I’ve mentioned over the last couple of years. A lot of rebalancing/restructuring happened for sure though. The only notable wage increase in recent memory is this FOX only bonus.

I don’t see how it’s odd to talk about this though, you’ve brought up your dislike for this way of increasing compensation, so it’s better to talk about it and find solutions rather than ignore it and leave this an unsatisfactory state. Clearly what’s mentioned as a bonus here and in the last Engineering proposal are ways to compensate contributors, in FOX, if they stay with the DAO to provide services it needs. If we don’t talk about this at the time of renewals, when are these discussions supposed to happen?

I don’t think it should stop this one either, unless you have better solutions to deal with the problem outlined above. Engineering dealt with this in a clever manner, hopefully voters see it this way too, and apply the same standards for other workstreams.

I would remember this honestly, so it must have been mostly in Leadership/non-public channels. My only contention was to get a justification for this increase. And I think I did mention that I’d hope the same standard would apply for other contributors of the DAO too.

15

Marketing increase up monthly ($10k more) (i took the total give and divided by 6) the number i used might have been the one that was deleted however.

feels like your targeting me about my opinion of not liking something. Nothing else but me saying i dont like how the bonus is laid out/used. I think its better to put it into the salary and give choice of fox or not. fox bonus feels like a hidden way to get more funding. then we could look at how the kpi’s could be written for that bonus to only goto xyz. (not saying it is, but easily could be)

16

redid the math. $16825 more / month.

17

It’s a discussion, obviously I’m basing my answer/questions on what you dislike and implicitly would like to see changed. There’s nothing personal here on my side, I’m trying to understand how you would solve this. Sorry if it came off an other way :grimacing:

Fair enough. The main issue with this is that the incentive to retain contributors is diluted over the months, they get the “reward” prorata anyways, even if they leave… But I agree that it is more straight forward to read in the spreadsheet the way you’re describing it. Athough the summary with the bonus (after the correction, thanks for noticing the error and thanks hpayne for correcting it) does outline the correct cost in my opinion, voters should be able to make their mind without feeling cheated.

Then the bonus is based on the additional/increased KPIs, and not their willingness to remain with the DAO or their willingness to accept FOX (a volatile asset) for compensation. We might as well increase the USDC spend for this in my opinion then.

That that’s the total, not taking into account the changes in composition of the WS. I’m talking about individual wages. You’ll get a better idea of how stagnant they are if you look at the individual wages history of the 3 previous terms for example: Feb 1 - Sept 1 2024 MKBD Budget (DRAFT) - Google Sheets (previous terms in the tabs). It was not very different before Global/Marketing became MKBD, actually it was slightly lowered for Global contributors when they’ve joined.

And yes, the total of this new proposal is higher: there’s a new contributor previously in Product, and new part time contributors. But to my point, about individual wages stagnating you can look no further than your own Workstream, or Ops’ new term that has just been posted. I think that we are not being honest if we’re not admitting that we are demanding to contributors to do the same (or sometimes more) for the same individual compensation, term after term and due to economical conditions they are getting paid less and less.
In my opinion it is not a viable strategy to retain them in the long term, eventually they will find opportunities with wages that match their economy. So to me incentivizing them in FOX seem like the best solution to prevent this, and doing it the way it’s described does provide this retaining power/incentive.

18

Stagnation. ah ok. i look at the overall. not each one. so got ya there now.

but the big problem is, we arent close to … (word?) parity? ( income vs expense)
so really hard to go up. moar rev :wink:

19

@hpayne_shapeshiftdem ( after ideation, you would/could use this same post, just edit the title and remove the ‘ideation’ part totally)
(just make a new post with the latest Proposal)

1 Like
20

We were even further from a balanced budget than we are currently when a similar incentive program passed for Engineering contributors, so I don’t see why it should be out of question for other contributors/workstreams.

But we apparently disagree on this. I’m just glad we could disuses this and hopefully voters are in exchange more aware of the potential consequences of freezing/decreasing budgets. We’ll either start losing more contributors than we already have to compensate existing contributors appropriately, or the quality of contributors (and/or the quantity of work produced) will drop in order to pay them less. I don’t think either of these options is conductive to better results for the DAO long term. So spending this FOX is not without purpose. And now that the amounts are corrected I hope voters can decide with full knowledge.

1 Like