Proposal to fund the Engineering Workstream, September 2022 - January 2023

Abstract / Overview

The ShapeShift DAO relies on the Engineering Workstream to maintain the open source code base, undertake core engineering work to enable new features, support bounties from the broader community, and to provide architectural oversight and technical leadership as we continue to execute the DAO’s vision.

This proposal is to fund the Engineering Workstream’s budget from September 1st, 2022 through January 31st, 2023 inclusive.

This proposal adopts SCP-92 Definition of Workstream Leader.

Motivation

Previous proposal

The Engineering workstream came in under budget of the previously approved proposal

• Total labor, infrastructure, and audit spend [~$1,113,000] against an approved $1,235,000
• Approximately ~$55,000 worth of FOX spent on bounties against an approved $175,000.

and delivered additional features not listed in the proposal, including

• EVM abstraction and Avalanche implementation
• Demo, XDEFI, Tally Ho, Keplr wallets
• Multi currency support for 20 currencies
• FOX opportunities page
• CoWSwap
• Banxa, Gem, and JunoPay fiat ramps
• FOX-ETH LP and Farming

Team

• 0xdef1cafe - Workstream Leader & Senior Engineer
• 0xApotheosis - Senior Engineer
• gomes - Senior Engineer
• kaladinlight - 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 repository. 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 spreadsheet

The details below expand upon the budget spreadsheet.

Recurring costs

Labor

• 0xdef1cafe salary reduced $27,000 annually due to market conditions.
• 0xApotheosis and gomes salary increased by $7,000 and $20,000 respectively to a base of $175,000 to recognize their outstanding commitments and productivity.
• The cumulative salaries for the team in this proposal is equal to the cumulative salaries in the previous proposal.
• Any contributor reserves the right to take any portion of salary in FOX and locked varieties thereof.

Please see below for how $100,000 worth of FOX will be used in a flexible and efficient way via the bounty and trusted community contributor program.

Infrastructure

In the spirit of progressive decentralization, the Engineering Workstream pays a managed-services provider, TaxiStake, for infrastructure that powers the entire backend of the open source platform, that will be shared with the upcoming new mobile app.

The most recently monthly cost was ~$4,800 for all nodes, compute, storage and data transfer.

We have conservatively provisioned a 100% increase in costs due to additional chain support, largely associated with EVM-based chains, and load increases due to migration of users as legacy products are sunset.

This budget requests $38,400 USDC for infrastructure costs.

Non-recurring costs

Bounties & Trusted Community Contributors

The bounty program will continue as outlined in the previous Engineering Workstream proposal, and continue to evolve to match engineering and other workstream’s needs.

The development of the Trusted Community Contributors initiative under the bounty budget in the current budget cycle has been a resounding success and will continue. Trusted community contributors established their reputations by outstanding contributions to standard, internally engineering sponsored bounties. They provide estimates for work scoped by product and/or engineering prior to commencing work, seek approval for estimates, record hours against PRs in timesheets, and are paid $80/hour worth of FOX in arrears upon completion of work. This has allowed for tremendous flexibility, velocity, and value for money in developing features.

Approximately ~$55,000 worth of FOX was spent in the previous budget cycle towards bounties and community contributors, equivalent to a single junior engineer on an annualized basis.

Some notable contributions include demo wallet, multi-currency support, additional fiat ramps and abstraction, the FOX Opportunities page, and CoWSwap.

I’d like to personally thank stackedQ, neomaking, and chxash for their brilliant contributions, and look forward to working with them more in the future.

$100,000 worth of FOX is requested to continue to fund and expand the Bounties & Trusted Community Contributors, at the FOX spot price when paid.

Audits & miscellaneous

The budget also contains two line items for

• Two contract audits at a cost of $70,000 each based on previous Code4rena audits. It is anticipated audits may be required for Yieldy’s as they are developed.
• $10k discretionary funds which may be used for travel, conferences, retreats etc, at engineering’s discretion.

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

This budget seeks approval for the commitment of $150,000 USDC and $100,000 worth of FOX for non-recurring costs.

Contingency

Unforeseen costs will arise, and 10% of the USDC subtotal is requested accordingly. The budget seeks approval for $45,140 for contingency to be spent judiciously at the workstreams 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 unlikely event that the Engineering Workstream requires more funds, a separate governance proposal shall be raised.

Deliverables

Goals

The Engineering Workstream continues on in spirit from the previously approved proposal.

The budget spreadsheet contains a list of goals and deliverables the workstream intends to complete during this budget. Detailed breakdowns of each item are available upon request.

The DAO recognizes that the crypto ecosystem is rapidly evolving and liable to change quickly. The Engineering Workstream reserves the right to add, remove, or reprioritize goals from this list, with the intent to deliver the most valuable and relevant items expediently to the market.

The product roadmap, externally posted bounties, emerging partnerships, and changes in resourcing are all factors liable to change the scope or prioritization of listed goals, however, broadly speaking, we intend to complete the strategic goals that are currently defined.

Reporting

The Engineering Workstream will report progress against these goals via the following methods

• daily public standups
• availability via Discord, now covering most timezones
• weekly ops sprint public meetings
• weekly governance calls
• the GitHub Dashboard
• on demand for any specific deliverable

Previous attempts to report via engineering demos, or transparency and accountability meetings were poorly attended and deemed to be not a valuable use of engineering time.

Should the community request other reasonable forms of reporting they will be considered on their merits.

Benefits

Fundamentally, the DAO delivers a product to increase ease of use of the multi-chain multi-wallet multi-protocol universe that we find ourselves in. It is the Engineering effort that builds our product. We need Engineering in order to thrive. The goals listed above will be delivered.

Drawbacks

Engineering labor is the most expensive component of the DAO’s budget. Any aspect that does not seem appropriate to serve the greater needs of the DAO should be criticized.

Disclosure

The author of this proposal, 0xdef1cafe, stands to benefit from it, and is long FOX.

Vote

FOR: Fund the Engineering Workstream from September 1 2022 to January 31st 2023 for $496,540 USDC and $100,000 worth of FOX, with 0xdef1cafe as the Workstream Leader.

AGAINST: Do not fund the Engineering Workstream beyond August 31st 2022.