[SCP 191] Product Workstream Renewal March 2025-Feb 2026

[0xFBL]

Mission:

Curate and propose a product roadmap based on research, user feedback/behavior, market research for future market opportunities, collaboration with marquee communities, and an informed vision. Align with the mission and goals of the ShapeShift DAO and other workstreams for efficient execution. Pair with engineering on technical due diligence and pragmatic portfolio of bets.

TL;DR

PTT is getting a new title/ role refresh : Product Operations Specialist . Specifically he is the product owner for onramping.

We’re modestly increasing the teams budget by 13 % but will continue some portion in FOX. We’re considering a token grant like engineering covering the next year 6 month cliff 6 month vest. We will discuss on the forum, listen to the communities feedback, and then adjust after ideation.

We now have a vision in progress for the next year. Let’s be bold and win. This is a work in progress, so a vote for the product workstream is a plus one for us building something meaningful.

Shapeshift into the Agentic Future

Mission: The world’s borderless financial system shall stand on open, uncensorable, decentralized protocols. We shall be the pathway into this borderless financial system. One year Vision: By 2026 The DAO evolves from Layer-1 swaps aggregation to supporting AI-native wealth creation - where your assets work for you through an intelligent agent swarm, without the friction of wallets, powered by collective intelligence. A stretch goal would be contributing to or shipping a real-time adjusting m…

Abstract -

As a product-centric DAO, the Product Workstream is accountable for a number of activities: cross workstream alignment on execution, retaining/acquiring users, growing the FOX ecosystem, speccing/launching new product lines, and achieving Shapeshift’s mission.

Just like last renewal, A YES vote verifies the budget and team continuing, and also support for product’s execution strategies.

• Supporting for the strategy for 2024 “the themening” The themening A POB Sequel applying a portfolio of bets every quarter.
  • Q1 & Q2’s theme is “polish, hustle, have fun, and pivot.”
• Soft support or consensus on the vision that is coming together

Specification -

We track our goals at every office hours improving our documentation, rigor, and velocity. We produce artifacts every time, giving a snapshot of performance and a high level overview of what’s going on. You can find the archive here.

Working with operations we publish a release thread almost every week Operations - ShapeShift

Look to the discord for the tl;dr of these starting soon ™️

Goals:

For the first time in the DAO’s history we have the talent and capability of one year planning. As such a slight goals revision with more to come:

• Goal 1: Align teams around an ambitious one year vision and ship it
• Goal 2: Iterate & execute on a series of bets each quarter to support the vision.
• Goal 3: Talk to Our Users & Deepen Ecosystem Partnerships
  • (FBL will grind for one DM a day and try to assemble a list of 25 users for research)
• Goal 4: Refine Retention and Build Towards the North Star
  • (north star is : 200 MM month-on-month volume )
• Goal 5: Conduct Scoped Beneficial Experiments, Kill Under-performant ones, and remove app bloat.

Responsibilities

• Prioritize and adjust the roadmap with cross workstream alignment.
• Analyzing and surfacing new revenue streams that are not listed yet in the roadmap, but reporting back to the community with more details.
• Coordinating research and resourcing in partnership with the FOX foundation.
• Organizing and managing the roadmap, coordinating with engineering on timelines.
• Removing blockers, assisting with product related decisions and keep things moving through the feature development process and Product/Engineering status updates throughout the week.
• Product representation at the Weekly Ops Sprint.
• Weekly release thread with operations.
• Conducting user tests and mentoring other product team members to manage them on their own.
• Facilitate bi-weekly office hours to provide updates on progress, report on KPIs for all initiatives, and offer space to the community to ask questions, give feedback, and pitch ideas.
• Draft product specs, reviewing designs, work with ENG workstream to evaluate engineering resources, and iterate the feature development process.
• Hosting and Leading Spec kickoffs/spikes/breakdowns between Product and Engineering.
• Spinning up regular retros (at either phase completion or large feature completeness)
• Leading and continuing all scheduled team syncs and 1-on-1s.
• Managing Budget and workstream contributor payments made through Colony.
• Coordinating strategy sessions, touchpoint, and retros for launches. Facilitating where necessary.

Budget and team

The Product workstream will consist of 3 members all full-time.

All of last year the team took more FOX than USDC to help the treasury. Instead of blowing things out and raining money, we evaluated the percentages we collectively took over 6 months. From there I took an average and I chose that average as a raise for each contributor (slightly less for myself). We’re too small for nitpicking but we aren’t in the stage of being overly generous either.

Budget Breakdown of March 25- Feb 26

Spreadsheet here

Monthly:

$45617 Budget

$5406 FOX

$40,210.30 TOTAL

Yearly

$64,880 FOX ( no more user testing funds, we have enough of those and might start returning to the DAO)

$493,283 USDC

$558,163.00 TOTAL budget including contingencies.

This is the previous total budget for a 6 month term, annualized that is 497,628.

Discretionary:

• SaaS
  • Figma [$69 a mo]
• current USDC: [$2454] —> continue holding funds in colony.
• Contingency, upskilling, and travel: 10,000
  • We will earmark 10k for travel to one conference if possible and a reforge membership for PTT. His plan is to pay upfront and then have the team reimburse on completion.

Benefits -

• Unlocks new features, continues alignment with a strategic lens, and continues execution of the product team’s goals.
• Unblocks engineering and ships the roadmap,
• Gets the roadmap going in iterative loops, with extra hand holding by FBL
• Executes quarterly with full transparency for goverance.
• Unleashes animalistic energy on making the current product as good as we can

Drawbacks -

• We’re moving with more rigor so we aren’t shipping as many shiny features.
• Our team is lean so there is only so many resources to cross allocate

[0xFBL]

Snapshot is being spicy so will have to start countdown whenever someone with mod access is around.

Anyways,
For what it’s worth, I’m completely open to criticisms of this, as it feels like it needs fine tuning and community feedback. On the other hand, we have to keep up with inflation and with the additional breathing room in the runway, revenues going up, renewed momentum, and an exciting vision… we hope that governance will align with the value.

• The team is open to doing 6 months term instead, it’s just a headache for me to file it.
• Contributors are also down for smaller raise and a token grant with 6 month cliff 6 month vest.

My personal take is that engineers also deserve a boost and we hope to find a happy medium; even thought hat happy medium stresses out @ProfMcC

[Giantkin]

Trial one: Ideation Snapshot

[Giantkin]

i prefer the propsal for renewals be seperate from the ‘plans going forward’ stuff.
if i agree with the renew, but not the plan, my only choice is no? ( if i do yes, but change…am i saying its ok … but if its not changed im still stuck…right? )

(i havent read yet. just saying)

[Fireb0mb1]

Thanks for presenting this renewal proposal! I’m very satisfied with our Product WS during their current term and I support renewing it as described here. I’m in favor of the 12 months terms for all Workstreams to keep WS Leaders focused on execution and bring more visibility for career planning to all contributors (even if nothing is ever guaranteed of course).

Regarding compensation, the proposed budget matches the global inflationary situation and I see the non-inflation related part of the raises as a way to keep the valuable talents in the Workstream compensated appropriately. I hope that it translates into increased revenues as it has been the case in this ending term.

Lastly, I agree with GK that having a separate vote for the Roadmap was a better solution for governance. Getting FOX holders to vouch for a specific plan that multiple Workstreams will execute on (even if it is formalized by the Product WS) means that all the WS (not just Product) must do their best to execute on these goals. They also have this opportunity to voice any disagreements or suggest improvements they want, without threatening the Product WS’s renewal. Additionally, it gives a signal to FOX holders that they have the ability to make more proposals along the way to change this Roadmap without necessarily having to change the Workstreams’ composition.

[Giantkin]

not sure about wordage.

only part that bugs me ( ok besides combining the ws part with the plan hehe)

is the raises.

and i have both minds so this isnt a… foot stomp(?)

one hand. raises of 13% suck. we gained roughly 20% in revs. but if eveyrone goes up 13% … we gain 7% overhead?
(or worse, higher % ?)

other hand. the retention is important. ie keeping up with the market as best we can.

so to me. we aren’t in the perfect position either way.

[0xFBL]

@Fireb0mb1

separate vote for the Roadmap

Roadmaps can and will change based on market opportunities. I understand where you’re both coming from but separate proposals are unnecessary governance fatigue and a repetition of content for… what benefit?

Also, the past two product renewals specifically nested execution of the roadmap in them and governance approved both.

@0xFBL

On product’s approval last year, governance approved the portfolio of bets and adaptive roadmapping. Though it wasn’t required we did a goals performance breakdown at the end of the year Product Goals Review Dec 1 and again this summer Goals 1 H 2024 Check in.

Just like last renewal, A YES vote verifies the budget and team continuing, and also support for product’s execution strategy namely:

• Supporting for the strategy for 2024 “the themening” The themening A POB Sequel applying a portfolio of bets every quarter.
• Approval of the 2nd half of the year’s goals Goals 1 half 2024 - #2 by 0xFBL and their metrics/KPIs. These goals continue with slight tactics tweaks and refreshed northstars.
• An acknowledgement that all of this is flexible by design so we can capture market opportunities without putting granular items to vote or grand roadmap proposals.

With this specific callout:

@0xFBL

It’s become obvious that ratifying the strategy, it’s bullet points, and the living documents therein every 6 months creates governance fatigue instead of alignment. It creates an unnecessary amount of work compared to the agility the DAO needs.

[0xFBL]

@Giantkin

if i agree with the renew, but not the plan, my only choice is no? ( if i do yes, but change…am i saying its ok … but if its not changed im still stuck…right? )

What it seems you’re saying is: “if i don’t like a part of the proposal what do I do?” I guess vote “yes with changes,” we have a discussion, hopefully recognize that making product write the same thing twice is a bit silly and then we’re over it?

We’ve been DM-ing now and it sounds like thinking out loud instead of specific changes.

[Giantkin]

exactly. nothing changeable. just … be aware (?)

[0xFBL]

Absolutely! If we need changes it will be transparent.

[Fireb0mb1]

@0xFBL

Roadmaps can and will change based on market opportunities.

The intent was more a form of validation of the current broad goals by FOX holders, independent of the WS executing on them. I did not mean it as a cage and the text of that vote can be clear about this, for example: leave Product make changes without governance if they need to be done quickly (less than the 12 days governance requires) to preserve flexibility in case of urgency.

I don’t think we’re anywhere close to hitting Governance fatigue with about 3 votes a month on average (including all the Ideation votes) over the last two years… on the contrary we don’t ask much to FOX holders besides WS renewals lately And for now Product hasn’t had to make huge paradigm shifts from their posted plans, no?

But if I’m the only one with this opinion and voters are fine with packaging/making it dependent on the Product WS like last times, I’ll be fine with it too, GK’s comment made me rethink this and I think it’s worth a discussion. In all cases FOX holders should know that they can start proposals to change the focus of the DAO even at the product’s level, as they have done in the past (e.g. RFOX).

[Giantkin]

Well, lets give it a go.

(ie: hesitant yes)

[0xFBL]

OK! If we start to feel that unbundling is the way or the community calls for a more consensus roadmap, i think that more proposals will make sense. The triggers there should be technical contention or a hard business fork in the road (agreeing with Firebomb here).

The team will be diligent on that.

[0xFBL]

This line should have been removed, sorry to anyone who got confused! Happy to repost if we feel it’s necessary. There is only the budgeted comp, no token grant.

@0xFBL

We’re considering a token grant like engineering covering the next year 6 month cliff 6 month vest. We will discuss on the forum, listen to the communities feedback, and then adjust after ideation.