**[Proposal]** Developer Incentives

If an agreement can’t be made YFI will change when enough people sell or enough developers leave. I agree the proposal written by multiple yearn names I trust carries weight in general and it should, it shouldn’t stop anyone from asking questions or stating opposition but governance is a thorny issue. I don’t want to own a ghost token with outdated protocols that everyone else games because collectively the community ignored the verbal/written grievances of the core team.

Lol is this you uncle J. Powell? Minting 30Mio for something like this is ridiculous. The only case where I’d support something like this is maybe to save grace after Yearn loses some user funds…

We already had a vote not to mint more YFI in the beginning and even one to burn the minting keys. If we start ignoring passed votes, we should just close this portal and let Andre or Banteg run the show without this charade.

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I agree with this. I honestly think waiting till the treasury was low to refill it was a bad move, it should have constantly been kept at 500k or even better 1m before fees went to gov stakers, maybe something we can fix in the future. I am against any extra minting and think we should see how fees playout for v2 before doing other things.

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We should redo the poll. I voted against this proposal because I don’t like the mint 1k YFI immediately.

I’m open to voting for rewarding Devs with YFI but a schedule or milestone needs to be set.

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This seems to be a rushed proposal, no details provided, 30m+ is a large sum, how will it be distributed to the devs, for how long, will the increase in supply occur again (every 3 months)? whether there is another better way to reward devs, etc? how to explain to the community that the key burn proposal was voted in, but not executed, and now propose to revoke it against the community vote?

We need more clarity and certainty as to how inflation will work, and how governance will work with more certainty, not this kind of back and forth. Devs incentives need to be well thought out, fair and more than sufficient! Once for all. Then, that’s it, no more changes, uncertainties or debates. Then the focus should be on growth and innovation, no more ill feelings about rewards…

A one time bonus is not the right incentive, devs can just take the bonus and leave in the near future. It needs to be a continuous reward framework, otherwise, devs will be disgruntled again in the future and leave again, then we will be facing another unpleasant uncertainty event.

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  • If the core devs left Yearn, will the community be able to replace them? I don’t think so.

  • Can the core devs fork Yearn and start over again with much better incentives and larger team? Yes, they can.

  • Will they get community support? Yes, many are in favor to greatly re-incentivize our devs. And they will follow, wherever they go. Whoever were against it will eventually join to follow the new alpha.

I’m not saying they will. But they could and it’s a fair move.

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I think you can click “show vote” under the results, then change your vote, and show results again.

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I dont understand this very well. Please somebody provide more info. Are the developers not getting paid? What is the purposse of the treasury? You talk about mercenaries: Paid in Dai they can buy YFI and not be ‘mercenaries’ and paid in YFI they can sell it and ‘be mercenaries’. Its ultimately their choice, I dont see how we can force the ‘mercenary thing’, maybe only making YFI non-transferable.

I though our early fee structure vote was ment to compensate devs and strategists. TLV is not growing due to structural changes and base layer changes that take time. I can see how treasury might not be sufficient but inflation might be easy answer. One time mint can be ok, or a donation from the community. but continuous inflation is complacency

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This is not necessarily at odds with the proposal. Using the current YFI market cap of ~$1B a 3.3% dilution would be ~$33M that goes to the dev fund. It’s important to note that while it sits in a multisig it’s effectively non-dilutive.

I don’t see an estimate here for what the estimated dev fund spend would be but I think 20% per year is reasonable estimate or $6.6M, that is the effective annual dilution then.

I would say the hurdle rate for that capital is 30%, so for every $1 spent, at least $1.30 is created in value or for the $6.6M spent ~$8.5M in value should be created.

Given the nearly $1B in value created in less than a year I think this is a hurdle the team can hit.

Given the weekly fees, it should also be possible to partition off a part of it to meet that dev fund requirement as an alternative to dilution.

When there is lots of opportunity that capital should not be returned to holders as it would be better invested in the project itself where it can earn a much higher ROI.

Capital allocators that demand constant return of capital when there is potential are net destroyers of capital.

Imagine if Amazon decided to return it’s profits to shareholders instead of creating AWS or Apple did the same instead of launching the iPhone. On the flipside G.E. returned much more capital to investors over the past 20 years than Amazon and they not only did worst than them, they underperformed just holding cash with double digit negative returns.

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I may be alone here but I’m struggling to make a balanced decision with the information I have. If I understand correctly, another approved vote means that devs will get now circa $3m-$4m a year from fees. This seems like the perfect alignment of incentives for devs and community. If devs are saying that that is not enough, could you provide information about the burn rate and level of cost needed to achieve the ambitious goals of YFI? It would really help understand the situation.

At the moment the debate seems to be very binary - $30 million or not $30 million - I’m struggling to see how anyone can make anything other than a philosophical decision on that basis.

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You can stop further debate, the devs already decided to ignore governance. Make an onchain vote, this also won’t matter because banteg & co. are in charge of this project.

I’m still against this proposal as it stands. This proposal needs to change before I can vote for for.

We should have 3 options:
For
Against
For in principal but needs to change emission model.

This will gauge the reaction of the community more accurately.

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In the early days of Yearn, governance voted to mint more YFI. Then every specific proposal for emission was voted down, resulting in the 30k meme. The option “for in principle but need to work on details” would win by a large majority, but we’d be no nearer to finding an actionable plan that people agree on.

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  1. @tracheopteryx has created a working group to flesh out a better proposal based on this on. Ask him for an invite if you have thoughts to share.

  2. I’ve implemented the pact proposal I posted above, feel free to use it however you like.
    GitHub - banteg/yfi-pact

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Yes! whole-heartedly support @banteg
To all the ‘there was a vote we can’t change our minds’ cohort -> stop being stingy parasites, let builders BUILD

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While more elaborate solutions could be better, ultimately they would need to be fleshed out and built which takes focus away from other core development.

“YFI Pact” plays into more memes and is simple. KISS.

Rushed, but urgent.
Stop bleeding. Devs are leaving to Hegic, Idle, Sushi…
We are a great, agile, flexible DAO, not a weak hung paliament.
Compensate our talents to keep us competitive as quick as possible, please.

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I voted against this proposal because operations receives a significant portion of protocol revenue, from which they can conduct buybacks, reward devs, and just about anything else they need. If we believe that YFI v2 will be much bigger, operations will soon have more funds than they know what to do with.

Let’s grow underlying protocol revenue instead of taking short cuts like minting more YFI.

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Has there been a single vote that hasn’t gone in favour of the devs getting more funding? AFAIK we had salaries vote, a vote to increase Banteg and Artem salaries and then a vote to use Operations Fund/Treasury to accumulate YFI for devs. All passed with a very large majority in favour.

Could someone from the dev side explain why they feel like they haven’t been adequately supported? I had a look over and couldn’t see a single proposal that was ruled against. I know personally, I want the devlopers to own significant parts of the token in question, but I’m not sure why 50-100% of the revenue doesn’t align incentives better. Just use the revenue to buy the token if you want the speculative upside?

I don’t think any holder has expressed an unwillingness to support the dev team, clearly, it is in everyone’s interests. However, I think many people are concerned about this game where the goalposts are continuously moved. I would really like to know what the devs truly want, so I can make a decision regarding it. At the moment it feels like I keep saying “yes” and then as soon as I turn around there is another question waiting to be asked.

Without being especially well-informed I felt like the salaries being offered were quite low. However, I am not really in a position to contend with this, and they seem to have been accepted, implying at the time the developers in question were happy with the figures(?). Is it possible to ascertain an idea about this? I.E if every salary was doubled, or matched with the equivalent in YFI tokens vested over 1-3 years?

I am unwilling to give the multisig or treasury carte blanche to mint tokens and spend them how they wish due to the management being terrible (imo). To point towards some examples, Blue Kirby got 25 YFI and we pay CL207 $300 a month for waifu pics. Just like after the discussion in October, if a clear and transparent plan is presented, I am sure it will be voted in favour of.

I also find it a bit sickly to continuously be dunked on as a holder who has contributed his own personal capital. I haven’t opposed the team on a single vote, and to be treated like I’m a greedy bastard because the devs can’t be bothered to write up a clear proposal feels very shitty. Write a long term proposal with adequate vesting and treasury management, clear targets to unlock tokens.

I didn’t see the team oppose the vote to burn the minting keys at the time even though it was blatantly short-term signalling for a price boost. This largely symbolic act not being implemented is deeply concerning, even though as others have highlighted, it’s symbolic and easy enough to migrate.

P.S I do understand sometimes I reference the “team” above and its not strictly fair, I know you are individuals with different views and sometimes actions were taken prior by individuals.

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:postal_horn: public service announcement :postal_horn:

There was never a binding vote to burn the YFI minting keys

There is a formal process for passing YIPs:

  1. discussion & non-binding signaling poll
  2. if enough support, then one may make a YIP with a binding vote

The most recent update to this process is here YIP-55: Formalize the YIP Introduction & Voting Process.

The proposal in quesiton, Burn YFI minting ability permanently, was at the first stage: signaling. That vote was for with 93%. But no one took the next step and made it a YIP. There was no binding vote.

I understand why this was confusing. At this time we had recently moved to snapshot for both signaling and binding votes, so people were confused about which was which. Previously we would do a forum poll and then an on-chain vote which made it more clear.

I don’t know why Andre didn’t take the next step, nor why no one else did. It is not automatic or required, but discretionary. Since that didn’t happen, it was never a YIP, and there was no binding vote, so yes we still have the minting keys and governance can still legitimately vote to mint more YFI.

The other case I see mentioned around how we don’t honor votes (this is provably false) is the SNX vault proposal YIP 34: Add Synthetix (SNX) to yVaults. This was a formal YIP and it did pass. So why don’t we have a SNX vault? It’s because no strategist has found an effective way to make one. Simple as that. We could vote to make a DAI vault with 1,000,000% APY but until a developer can figure out how to do that, we cannot implement it. We do not vet proposals for feasibility before they are posted, our system is permissionless. Once someone is able to write a good SNX strategy, we’ll be able to implement that YIP.

cc @silent_avenger1 @Kapemal @urizenus @captainobvious @Squid @gspoosi @Avie @pat

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