Hop Protocol

This proposal will provide retroactive compensation to Rxpwnz and the rest of the moderator team who have all provided essential support for the past year and a half. It will also establish a Lead Community Moderator role and sets up an ongoing moderator compensation program to continue rewarding these contributors.

Background Since Hop’s inception over a year ago, the role of Community Moderator has been entirely voluntary. This arrangement served the DAO well and attracted moderators driven by genuine enthusiasm for the protocol rather than financial incentives. However, it is now crucial to establish a structured framework for rewarding, managing, and training these contributors.

The Hop Community Moderators watch the Hop Discord and forum 24/7 to mitigate spam, scammers, technical difficulties, and much more. This includes manually banned approximately 5,000 Discord scammer or spam profiles, fielding an endless stream of questions from the community, and keeping appropriate stakeholders informed to ensure technical issues are resolved quickly. They’ve played an essential role in building Hop into the trusted platform it is today.

Rxpwnz has taken on a leadership role on the moderator team and regularly goes above and beyond basic moderator responsibilities. He regularly delves into technical and operational security topics including assisting with stuck transactions and reporting phishing websites to Metamask, Google and DNS providers leading to their rapid deactivation. He continually contributes ideas to enhance various aspects of Discord operations. This includes integrating Discord bots and streamlining channels to ensure they remain clean and topic-related. During Arbitrum Bridge Week, he even provided users with his own personal funds to help cover gas fees when needed.

Retrospective Rewards for Dedicated Moderators Our community moderators have been actively contributing for over 18 months, and it’s time to recognize and reward their invaluable efforts in driving Hop’s growth.

Rxpwnz has been consistently engaged in a wide range of responsibilities, which include Discord and Forum moderation, managing Hop Guild, enhancing operational security (OpSec) by identifying and taking down over 150 phishing sites impersonating Hop, contributing to business development discussions regarding potential partnerships, engaging with developers interested in collaborating with Hop, and offering troubleshooting and improvement assistance. We propose a compensation rate of $3,000/month, both for his active contributions and in retrospective recognition starting June 9th, 2022. This compensation will be divided in a 50:50 ratio between $USDC and $HOP, with the latter being linearly vested over a 1-year period.

Our other moderators, while relatively less active, have been instrumental in moderation tasks and effectively conveying information about issues to key stakeholders. To acknowledge their important contributions, we propose one-time bonuses as follows:

Nauzystan: $4,000 Cai: $2,000 Hossein: $1,000 Abruzy: $1,000

Compensation for these bonuses will also be distributed in a 50:50 ratio between $USDC and $HOP, with the latter subject to linear vesting over 1 year.

The amount of $HOP distributed for retroactive payments should be calculated using the time-weighted average price from the launch of Hop DAO to the date of this proposal passing. Partial months should be prorated appropriately.

Establishing a Lead Community Moderator Role This proposal establishes a Lead Community Moderator role initially filled by Rxpwnz. A new Lead Community Moderator can be appointed via subsequent governance proposal or by election should there be multiple interested individuals.

Compensation system In addition to the ongoing compensation for the Lead Community Moderator mentioned above, this proposal establishes a discretionary budget to be used by the lead moderator to reward volunteer moderators from the community. Each month, approximately $2,000 worth of $HOP tokens will be made available to the Lead Community Moderator to distribute to the moderator team when appropriate. The lead moderator will conduct monthly assessments, guided by considerations of individual involvement and performance (activity and delivered Key Performance Indicators) to determine compensation. Any amounts distributed and their justification will be reported by the Lead Community Moderator to the Hop community in either written form or on the regular community calls. In months where the lead chooses to distribute only part or none of the budget, the $HOP will remain in the Hop Community Multisig and does not accrue toward future months.