**[Proposal]** Developer Incentives

As I understand the voting process at the time, first a signaling poll was required to gauge sentiment. If there was enough interest then one could create a YIP with a binding vote.

When we started using snapshot that added some confusion since we were using it for both signaling polls (in place of the built in forum poll which is vulnerable to sybil attacks) and for binding votes.

As Andre’s proposal to burn the keys was the first post and vote on that topic, I believe that was a signaling vote and non-binding.

So technically, we could mint more YFI. I’m really not sure that’s a good idea though, but I do agree with the sentiment of this thread: that we need a bigger warchest.

We have other options that we should discuss. We’ve been working on a new version of @RyanWatkins proposal to use staking rewards for YFI buybacks. Similar to what @gilfroy has suggested above. That would accomplish a similar goal to minting. We were going to publish that here today.

I am open to this discussion and very curious what the community thinks.

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Our core team is incredibly important and we need to ensure they are well incentivised to continue delivering value.

That said, minting more $YFI would be a huge transgression of the existing social contract. Whether or not the 30k hardcap is binding or not doesn’t matter, the community has strong expectations of maintaining the hardcap, and Andre himself has publicly stated that there should only be 30k tokens.

The scarcity meme is strong too and debasing $YFI would cause huge damage to the credibility of Yearn.

I do not support this proposal. Instead, we should ship V2, which many of us within the community know to be a very strong release (market leading, no other project has comparable capabilities in this product vertical). This in turn should drive massive AUM growth and strong revenues. These revenues are what should be deployed for developer incentives.

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The commun regular practice/rate/standart in this space are :

  • The Dev Wallet receives more or less 1.5% - 3% of every minted token on the backend of the harvest.

  • 2% is used for maintenance and gas costs.

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I tend to agree and have voted against this proposal.

But I’m curious about how important the 30k truly is. For instance, if we minted 1k and then burned the keys in the same proposal, would that really do significant damage?

I’d love to hear more arguments from people who feel strongly against that.

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Sound like a interesting plan.

We just posted our related proposal here: Buyback and Build

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I remain open to ideas here, but my inclination now is to pass the buyback proposal and see how that goes. If that provides the revenue needed then no reason to mint more YFI.

Ideally we burn the YFI minting keys, have the funds to properly grow yearn and reward contributors, AND give solid dividends. I think we can get there.

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Another yearn system linked token where the team does have a decent stake would probably be a better idea than expanding YFI itself.

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I think I prefer to use the funds from the Buyback and Build to allocate a % of the YFI being rebought through that proposal to the Core Devs.

I think minting more YFI (Through a fork or Otherwise) is less desirable than an ongoing salary fund.

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I disagree with the social contract of 30k hardcap.

Bitcoin has the same mindset, and they’re getting blown out of the water by Etehreum because of it. 3% ownership to devs is more important than that social contract. Our job should be to have minimal viable issuance, just like Ethereum, in my opinion.

What’s the logic here? Let’s not be Bitcoin. This idea of hard caps for start-ups is very romantic but not necessarily the best execution path for maximal value. I’d rather have a smaller piece of a bigger pie, so long as my piece is bigger than the altnerative.

Love the proposal you & co put up–thank you. I agree–we should strive for minimal viable issuance, and be extremely hesitant about the minting of any additional coin.

If the community is willing to give up all revenue to our developers for the foreseeable future, that may solve the problem. I am not sure if it will though–it’s been three months since Watkin’s proposal and nothing has happened.

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Completely agree. Minimal viable issuance is a must–and we want to make sure any additional issuance is conducted extremely wisely. I just hate the Bitcoin idea of a hard cap–they’re going to lose to Ethereum because of their ossification. It’s an idea worthy of pursuit, but I’ve never seen a successful startup not conduct additional equity issuance along the way.

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I am in FULL support of giving YFI to Core Dev’s. I have a tremendous amount of respect and gratitude for each and every one of them. Moreover, I hold all Designers, Researchers and Content creators in the same light.

However, I do not agree with minting more YFI.
I have just read and voted ‘FOR’ a proposal that outlines all YFI rewards be redirected to buying back YFI. I would amend the above proposal to allow this market bought YFI to be redistributed to the Core team.

I simply feel that allowing minting of any kind sets president that opens the doors to future abuse.
I am still a proponent of burning the keys.

With the buy back policy, I believe there will be more than enough YFI to be redistributed.
Price fixes any supply concerns and this approach aligns incentives on all sides.

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Revenue will fix itself when v2 launches.
The lacklustre in rewards imo has simply been people withdrawing to purse yield elsewhere.
Opacity around v2 capability with respect to yield (while understandable) is also not helping.
So to reiterate. v2 launch = clarity on capability = more excitement = more participation = more revenue for yearn = more YFI bought = YFI price up = more value for Core team AND holders.

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I agree
We moving in the right direction:

  • Refocus revenue to buy back YFI,
  • Redistribute YFI to Core team,
  • Grow ecosystem,
  • Restart dividends when revenue allocation behaviour/efficiencies dictate its time.
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Agree completely. Thank you for your comments

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For me, this proposal is marred by two flaws:

  • the use of wholly inappropriate phrases like “indentured servitude” to describe something completely diffetent, and
  • name dropping Andre without evidence he would participate in the incentive / bonus pool / whatever the minted YFI would become.

Andre has rejected previous attempts by the community to gift or compensate him for his efforts. Absent a statement from him, it seems reasonable to expect the same outcome would happen again.

Moreover, there is a question of how incentives are structured for fair long term compensation. Would JPM hire the current dev team and compensate them handsomely? Maybe. Would they let the team define their own incentive structure? Obviously not. They would be vested over time and based on milestones or similar objective criteria. Some here dislike that idea, but a carte blanche approach has a high risk in case a team member pulls a Gi***r.

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Let’s see how the buyback plan goes first. But I just want to highlight few points about this:

The proposal is actually not a bad idea. If no other plan can fairly compensate the core devs, then we need to look into this option.

@undefinedza comment here is very true and challenging one. But maybe we could workaround that by communicating it properly:

  1. Yearn community is a progressive and pragmatic one. Decisions change as needed to fit the dynamic challenges.
  2. The counter meme that we are the Ethereum of Defi not Bitcoin (as @yfi_lit mentioned)

There is another point which I don’t know if it’s possible: Is it doable to mint 1k YFI then introduce some mechanism in the future to burn up to 1k YFI? In this way the 30K cap will hold true most of the time, with some capital reallocation mechanism, if needed.

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I really like the idea if giving more to the team. But minting tokens is going to be seen very poorly in the general ecosystem.

Some amount of people, I don’t know how many, are most certainly going to take on the opinion that, “the core team minted themselves tokens, and they did it once, so they can do it again”…

I see minting new tokens as a bad publicity move, but rewarding the devs as essential.

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