ShapeShift

Abstract / Overview

This proposal is to continue to fund the Engineering Workstream’s budget for 6 months: October 1, 2025 through to March 31, 2026.

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

One notable change from the previous budget is the inclusion of node infrastructure costs, which were previously paid by the Foundation. To continue the path of decentralization and improve transparency of costs, the Engineering Workstream will now include this amount in it’s budget.

Motivation

To continue to provide the DAO the needed engineering resources and infrastructure to maintain the existing product offering and develop new products and features.

Specification

Team

Apotheosis - Workstream Leader & Senior Engineer

gomes - Senior Engineer

kaladinlight - Senior Engineer

neomaking - Senior Engineer

jibles - Senior Engineer

Mandate

This proposal seeks to have the Engineering Workstream be the sole maintainers with discretion over CODEOWNERS, permissions and administrative rights of the ShapeShift GitHub namespace.

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 (excluding discretionary items): $602,500 + $96,500.00 USD in FOX.
• Total amount requested over 6 months: $673,750 + $96,500.00 USD in FOX.

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 5 existing engineers from the previous Engineering Workstream, which includes jibles as a new hire during the previous term.

The previous budget spreadsheet is available here for reference.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure costs, historically paid for by the Foundation, will now be included in the Engineering Workstream’s budget To improve transparency and reduce the DAO’s dependance on the Foundation.

Our biggest infrastructure costs are node/blockbook services, which is currently estimated to be $15-18,000/month from Liquify. Provisional pricing is available here for reference.

This proposal includes a line item for up to $20,000 USDC per month to cover this ongoing cost. All unspent funds from this line item will be returned to the DAO.

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 $61,250 for contingency to be spent judiciously at the workstream’s discretion, shall it be required.

Variance

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

In the event that 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 April 1, 2026. Any engineer who leaves or is terminated before March 31 2026 will not be eligible for this incentive. For any newly hired engineer, the discretion of how to fairly prorate this is left to the discretion of the Workstream Leader.

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

1. The previous renewal had an open role for a Senior Engineer. This role has since been filled by jibles.

2. The previous renewal deferred to the Foundation for all infrastructure costs. This proposal includes them within the Engineering Workstream’s budget.

Benefits

• Ensures continuity of the existing engineering team
• Enables the product vision to become a reality
• Supports maintenance of the existing product suite and revenue stream
• Funds the infrastructure required to keep ShapeShift’s product suite functional

Drawbacks

• USDC and FOX expenditure

Ideation link

https://snapshot.box/#/s:ideation.shapeshiftdao.eth/proposal/0xd0141dc6c29599f036a53be040f8dfd64aa3356153cc800dd6b7430b2d578d2a