SCP-194 Engineering Workstream Renewal: April 2025 - September 30 2025

Proposal Discussion
1

Abstract / Overview

This proposal is to continue to fund the Engineering Workstream’s budget for 6 months, from April 1, 2025, through September 30, 2025.

0xean’s support as interim Workstream Leader will conclude, with Apotheosis moving into the role.

The ShapeShift DAO relies on the Engineering Workstream to maintain the code base, undertake core engineering work to enable new features and provide architectural oversight and technical leadership as we continue to execute the road map as defined by the community and Product Workstream.

Motivation

To continue to provide the DAO with the needed engineering resources to maintain the existing product offering and implement new functionality.

Specification

Team

Apotheosis - Workstream Leader & Senior Engineer

gomes - Senior Engineer

kaladinlight - Senior Engineer

neomaking - Senior Engineer

Mandate

No changes to the previous mandate, restated below:

This proposal seeks to have the Engineering Workstream be the sole maintainer with discretion over CODEOWNERS, permissions and administrative rights of the ShapeShift GitHub namespace. The billing account shall be controlled by the Fox Foundation.

This is to ensure the DAO maintains a high standard of code quality, velocity, reduced regressions, and has a single core team acting as maintainers responsible for the codebase.

The Engineering Workstream will work with external contributors to ensure contributions can be made expeditiously while not compromising quality, patterns or stability.

Budget

The details below expand upon the budget spreadsheet.

  • Total amount committed over 6 months (that is, excluding potential hires and discretionary items): $392,500 + $78,500 in FOX.
  • Total amount requested over 6 months: $547,250 + $97,500.00 USD in FOX.

0xean’s departure has a salient impact on USDC spend as the Engineering Workstream is now funding the Workstream Leader role. This is a change from the previous 2 renewals (1, 2) where this role was funded by the Fox Foundation.

The amount of FOX requested will be locked in on October 7, 2025, 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. The intended use of this FOX is discussed below.

Recurring costs

Labor

The budget retains the 4 existing engineers from the previous Engineering Workstream, with Apotheosis’s role changing from Senior Engineer to Workstream Leader. A pay increase for both gomes and neomaking is included in this renewal in recognition of performance, skill and responsibility increases since initial hire.

The previous budget spreadsheet is available here for reference.

The budget also allows for the hire of 1 additional engineer to account for the recent departure of Senior Engineer woodenfurniture, and to backfill Apotheosis’s previous role.

The fulfilment of this role is optional and will be based on factors including Engineering’s capacity to execute on the Product roadmap and product-market fit. The current disposition is to maintain the team size as-is.

Infrastructure

These costs are currently being paid by the Foundation and are not included in the Workstream’s budget but are managed by the Workstream.

Non-recurring costs

Miscellaneous

The budget contains a line item for $10,000 USDC of discretionary funds which may be used for travel, conferences, retreats etc, at Engineering’s discretion.

The line item above is provisional, and any unspent funds will be returned to the DAO.

Contingency

Unforeseen costs may arise and 10% of the USDC subtotal is requested accordingly.

The budget seeks approval for $49,750 for contingency to be spent judiciously at the workstream’s discretion, should it be required.

Variance

Unused funds from any budget category will be returned to the DAO at the end of the budget cycle.

If the Engineering Workstream requires more funds, a separate governance proposal shall be raised.

FOX compensation

All engineers who remain engaged full-time with 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 October 1, 2025. Any engineer who leaves or is terminated before September 30, 2025, will not be eligible for this incentive. For any newly hired engineer, the Workstream Leader will decide how to fairly prorate this.

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

Engineers may opt for any additional amount of their stable compensation as FOX.

Changes from previous renewal

Reporting

The Workstream will continue to post monthly updates (e.g. January 2025, December 2024, November 2024, October 2024) to the community published to the forum and provide visibility into its work on GitHub (project boards, issues, and pull requests). If the community has additional requests for reporting, the Workstream is happy to consider them and ensure visibility and transparency.

Benefits

  • Ensures continuity of the existing engineering team with retention incentives

Drawbacks

  • USDC and FOX expenditure
6 Likes
2

Ideation post on snapshot.

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In full support of this proposal.

Thanks a lof for the continuous amazing work in engineering and stepping up as workstream leader @Apotheosis.
As we’ve previously discussed on calls and IRL, the best course of action for the engineering workstream is for someone who is already in the workstream to take over 0xean’s position, as they’ll have knowledge of all the ins and out of the workstream and the DAO, and this ensures the right fit.

I know you will do great in this position and personally vouching for it, not only are you a great engineer, but able to deal with the organisational side of things also as proven over the last years, as well as comfortable with the more political bits this entails.

Big FOX props to @0xean for the not-so-interim ws leader position. It’s been an absolute blast and your work as ws lead has been nothing but excellent, we will miss having you on the daily.

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Hey,

Thanks @Apotheosis for this renewal proposal! I’m happy that you’re stepping up to this new role in the DAO. Based on this proposal and our past interactions, I completely support this renewal. Also, I’m glad to see @gomes is still part of this team; I thought he was moving to another project, so we’re lucky to keep his talent :fire:

A big thank you to @0xean for the long-term interim leadership you’ve provided to the DAO. We would definitely have had big issues if you hadn’t taken on this role and filled the big shoes that come with it perfectly.

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Thanks @0xean for everything! You are a killer, we will miss you so much!

No doubt that @Apotheosis is the best fit for the engineering leader role, happy to be a part of this wonderful team, can’t wait to see what we will be building in the next few months, great times ahead! :fire:

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Thank you @Apotheosis for picking up the torch here. It has been a pleasure to see you grow with the team and this feels like a very opportune next step for the future of the Engineering team. I could not think of a person more well-suited and prepared to take on the intricacies of the position and am in full support of this proposal moving forward.

I also strongly support the salary increases for the team members presented in this proposal and think they are equally deserving for the work already performed and work expected in the next cycle. Great job French Fam @gomes and @Neomaking we are very lucky to retain such talent.

Are there any active plans, candidates, or a timeline considered to fill the open role(s) left by @woodenfurniture’s departure and your promotion? I do not think the roles need to be filled right away, but it would be nice to hear where your thoughts are on that aspect.

Also big thanks and recognition to @0xean for keeping the DAO afloat, the workstream performant and remaining sane with Leadership and the engineering team while the WSL role was vacant. Your efforts and presence will be missed, you are an excellent and pragmatic leader.

I am very excited to see the future of the team and look forward to working more closely with you to assure Operations and Engineering collaborations continue to improve and optimize our relationship and product suite.

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Appreciate the thoughts, ser.

There are no active plans to hire another engineer, though I’m cognisant that we have lost two engineers since the last renewal. Some of this will be mitigated as I intend to continue to be active in the codebase for reviews, releases, and architecture.

We’ll monitor our ability to execute against the product roadmap with the current team and seek additional resources if necessary. The default position, however, is not to hire—I’d rather be slightly under-resourced than overresourced and burn unnecessary capital.

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Ideation has concluded, and the proposal (unchanged from ideation) is posted here.

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Thanks, @Giantkin for finding a typo below, where the month the FOX is locked does not match the beginning of the workstream term:

The FOX price should be locked on April 7, 2025, at the beginning of the proposal, to then allow for the FOX streams to start on October 1, 2025:

This is in line with the previous 2 engineering workstream proposals where the price of FOX was locked at the beginning of the workstream term.

Pragmatically, I’d prefer to proceed with the intent of locking the FOX price at the beginning of the proposal without restarting the governance process to correct the typo.

However, if anyone feels that their vote is contingent on this detail, we can instead calculate the FOX price in October 2025 as initially stated and delay the FOX streams from October 1, 2025, to October 8 2025.

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This works for me. Doesn’t change my vote. Thanks for the clarification, @Apotheosis!

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(i think its better at the start? ) up to you whichever.

I think it can slide?

(waiting for any objections)

1 Like