Q1 & Q2 2023 | DAO Teams Budget Request Proposal

[BraveNewDeFi]

Title: Q1, Q2 2023 | DAO team funding proposal
Six-month funding request: $344 500
Funding period: 1 February to 30 July 2023
Review period: 16–26 January

Overview

In the last two quarters, the existing DAO teams–Communication, Marketing, and Investment–have worked on behalf of members and focused on the priorities outlined in the Nexus Hubs: Proposed Teams, Priorities, and 6-month Budget Breakdown forum post.

Now that the six-month funding period is coming to an end, we, the DAO team leads, have outlined the proposed teams, their current priorities, and each team’s six-month budget breakdown in the Q1 & Q2 2023 | Proposed Teams, Priorities, and 6-month Budget Breakdown post, which accompanies this proposal.

The DAO team leads are also proposing the creation of two new DAO teams and splitting an existing DAO team into separate teams. In addition, we propose a change to how the teams manage funding and payments, which includes adding additional multisig signers.

Mission

Our mission is to build an ecosystem in which anyone can protect anyone else by sharing risk. We often refer to this as the global risk marketplace.

Values

Nexus Mutual members value:

• Trust–our commitment to transparency and our track record for paying claims should speak for itself, as we know we earn trust through our actions.

• Egalitarian–we are building for an open protocol and DAO, so that protection is accessible by anyone.

• Integrity–we engage honestly with one another, keep our word, and always choose the right decision even when it’s difficult.

Proposed DAO teams for Q1 & Q2 2023

Operations team

Purpose

Provide support to other DAO teams, manage projects between DAO teams to improve communication and efficiency, help coordinate online and in-person events, and improve internal operations within the DAO.

How team aligns with DAO values, mission

The Operations team will strive to bring DAO community ownership to coordination of funds, projects, and events.

Through increased transparency, communication/coordination among DAO members and teams, and accountability around funding/performance, this team will help further decentralize the mutual and scale the DAO.

This team aligns with Nexus Mutual’s three core values.

Team

The proposed Head of Operation (i.e., team lead) is Kayleigh, who has provided community, communications, and marketing support for the mutual since 2018 within the Foundation.

R&D team

Purpose

Overcome hard problems faced by the protocol and ecosystem. Decentralize the problem-solving function, increase transparency, and attract skilled members who want to solve difficult problems.

How team aligns with DAO values, mission

The R&D team strives to overcome hard issues the right way, retaining focus on our mission and values, instead of taking shortcuts that may undermine them.

With a dedicated R&D team, members can effectively work together to face difficult problems and we will aim to attract skilled, active members to discuss, challenge and work together toward solutions.

This team aligns with Nexus Mutual’s three core values.

Team

The proposed Head of R&D (i.e., team lead) is Rei, who has served as a founding member of the Nexus Mutual protocol and made a variety of contributions since 2018. Most recently, Rei has led the tokenomics working group, which would now be managed by this team.

Community team (formerly, Communications)

Previously, this team handled both communications and marketing. Over the last six-month period, BraveNewDeFi and Claudio realized two things:

1. The function of these two teams were similar but distinct. After discussing between each other, the two decided it would be best to split into two separate teams with a clear, defined focus.

2. The Communications team is responsible for keeping existing members informed and engaged, with the aim to maintain high retention rates within the mutual’s membership.

3. The Marketing team is responsible for attracting prospective, new members through defined marketing, content strategy and increased brand awareness, with the aim of driving membership growth and furthering brand awareness.

4. The Communications team is responsible for content creation, management of social channels, and member engagement. However, the primary goal is to drive existing member engagement and maintain high retention rates. For this reason, BraveNewDeFi decided to rename the team from “Communications” to “Community.”

Purpose

Provide tools to and educational content for members, staking pool managers, DAOs and our wider community in order to expand coverage. Design communication channels to drive community engagement, member retention.

How team aligns with DAO values, mission

The Community team provides key support to members in a variety of ways, whether it’s day-to-day questions or direct assistance during claim events. Through consistent support, communication, and engagement, this team strives to improve the member experience and improve access to resources.

This team aligns with Nexus Mutual’s three core values.

Team

The proposed Head of Community (i.e., team lead) is BraveNewDeFi, who has worked for the DAO since 2021. In that time, he has updated and maintained the V1 documentation, developed the mutual’s DAO working group model, launched the first DAO team, and standardized the claims process to reduce friction for those submitting claims.

Sem has served as Community Manager since February 2022, when she joined the team and began providing support to members on Discord and LinkedIn. In that time, Sem has conducted research for the Discord reorganization, potential moderation tools, risk, and governance models. Sem writes a majority of the weekly newsletter and puts together the weekly cover sales, active coverage data.

Marketing team

Purpose

Expand Nexus Mutual’s brand awareness, engagement with target audiences and drive growth in new membership. Create and execute marketing campaigns; develop and distribute content; and manage Nexus Mutual’s marketing channels.

How team aligns with DAO values, mission

The Marketing team creates awareness about the risk marketplace and reaches prospective members around the world. With a defined content strategy and data-driven metrics to demonstrate their impact, the Marketing team can grow brand awareness and membership within the mutual, while providing DAO members with a measure of their success.

This team aligns with Nexus Mutual’s three core values.

Team

The proposed Head of Marketing (i.e., team lead) is Claudio, who has worked for the DAO since May 2022 and brings with him 10 years’ experience in digital marketing. As a strategic marketer, Claudio is data-driven, customer-centric, and passionate about online branding and visibility with a specialized focus in online advertising.

Investment team

Purpose

Invest Nexus Mutual’s assets in a way that maximizes the return without negatively impacting the mutual’s ability to pay claims on a timely basis.

How team aligns with DAO values, mission

The Investment team reviews investment opportunities, writes detailed investment strategy proposals for the governance forum, where they provide members with the potential benefits, risks, and considerations necessary to make an informed decision ahead of on-chain governance votes.

This team aligns with Nexus Mutual’s three core values.

Team

The proposed Head of Investment (i.e., team lead) is Dopeee, who has been working for the Foundation since 2021 and is an inaugural member of the Investment team, where he has served as the team lead since July 2022.

Custodying, managing DAO team funds and payments

To date, our existing DAO teams have held their budgets within different multisig Safes, which both have a 2/3 signer threshold. As the DAO scales, it is important to monitor spending and ensure any funds requested are used to fulfill each team’s purpose, meet their goals, and further the Nexus Mutual mission.

Going forward, we propose that the Community team’s multisig is repurposed as the DAO team multisig, which would take custody of funds approved by the DAO for teams. If budgets are held within one multisig with a larger signer threshold (3/5 signers), team leads can hold each other accountable for expenses and can maintain timely payments for full-time, part-time contributors and contractors.

Multisig signers

Currently, the Community multisig has three signers:

• Head of Community | BraveNewDeFi
• (Proposed) Head of Operations | Kayleigh
• Head of Investment | Dopeee

We propose increasing the DAO team multisig signers to include:

• Head of Community | BraveNewDeFi
• (Proposed) Head of Operations | Kayleigh
• Head of Investment | Dopeee
• (Proposed) Head of Marketing | Claudio
• (Proposed) Head of R&D | Rei

Each signer is required to secure their address with a hardware wallet and make themselves available to sign several transactions a month.

The DAO teams use Utopia, which is built on top of Safe, to manage standard payroll.

Team expense requests, payment process

During the six-month funded period, each team lead can make an expense request on Utopia to fund things such as software, tooling, travel expenses, content creation, etc. These expense requests would be reviewed by the other team leads, who will assess the ROI, our wider goals and overall budget status and then approve, amend, or deny each request. Full-time and part-time salaries will be distributed monthly, as outlined in this funding proposal.

Any team lead that wants to hire a contractor will be required to submit a request, where they provide the contractor’s qualifications, potential contributions to a project, pay rate, and max budget request. In addition, team leads will verify that a contract agreement is drafted to ensure both the team and contractor have clear, defined deadlines, deliverables, expectations, and payment schedules and details.

This approach would streamline payments and align teams, so each project and funding request goes through a review process. DAO team leads can ensure:

• Miscellaneous projects are monitored and evaluated in line with team standards
• Payments for all contributors are timely and reliable
• Team leads can collectively assess budget status, drive decisions to maximize our allocated funding, and reduce expenses wherever possible
• Contractor agreements require multiple sign offs, approvals rather than one person making decisions with limited oversight
• Team leads can evaluate each expense, allow leads to consider other options such as monetising services

Total DAO team funding requests

Team	Requested funding for six-month period
Operations	$63 000
R&D	$57 000
Marketing	$77 000
Community	$90 000
Investment	$37 500
Discretionary budget (shared by teams)	$20 000
Total	$344 500

See the Q1 & Q2 2023 | Proposed Teams, Priorities, and 6-month Budget Breakdown post for a detailed breakdown of costs.

Review period

The following two forum posts make up the DAO team funding requests for Q1 & Q2 2023.

1. Q1 & Q2 2023 | DAO Teams Budget Request Proposal
2. Q1 & Q2 2023 | Proposed Teams, Priorities, and 6-month Budget Breakdown
   • Review of DAO team purpose, priorities, ongoing responsibilities, team members, and budget request
   • Existing teams also include Q3 & Q4 2022 performance reviews

These posts will be open for review and comment from 16–26 January.

If no substantial comments are received, this funding proposal will transition to a Snapshot vote, which will open on 27 January and will close on 3 February.

We look forward to the community’s review and comments!

Proposal Status

Snapshot vote closed as of 2 Feb 2023 at 9am EST: Snapshot

Voting period: 2pm UTC on 27 January until 2pm UTC on 3 February.

Voting choices

• Option A: Approve proposed teams and aggregate funding request of $344,500
• Option B: Reject proposed teams and aggregate funding request of $344,500
• Option C: Abstain

Vote Outcome

Members voted with 205k NXM to approve Option A, which approved the proposed teams and the aggregate funding request for Q1 & Q2 2023.

[target]

Well written and complete proposal. First thing i notice is the absolute moon salaries for a team that could work from e.g. Bali. These results from past months do not reflect a typical 10.000 usd salary.

Make the salaries 1/3th and I would vote yes. Other budgets can remain.

[0xSpicySoup]

Thanks for writing up @BraveNewDeFi

Are the funds that would be allocated towards these budgets currently held in ETH and/or stablecoins, or in NXM/wNXM?

[Hugh]

Wanted to indicate my support for this proposal.

I think one of the wider challenges with DAO team funding is providing transparency and justification for activities conducted, especially on short funding cycles. In particular, I see a lot of work going on behind the scenes that may not be immediately apparent to the wider membership base.

In particular:

• claims coordination and user support
• deep research work on tokenomics (to be shared shortly)
• review of many investment opportunities and close management of the Maple situation
• full rewrite of the documentation for V2 (to be released)
• rebrand, new website (to be released)

There are several quite large pieces of work here that are on the verge of delivery that I think justify the value we’re getting from the DAO teams.

I’d also note that some of the other large spending grants, such as dedaub and immunefi bounty matching have been reduced.

[Gauthier]

this is from the Community fund ( =/= capital pool). Here is the address : https://etherscan.io/address/0x586b9b2f8010b284a0197f392156f1a7eb5e86e9#tokentxns

So bottom line, funds currently held in wNXM/NXM

[Dopeee]

You could make the same argument for any company where remote work is possible. Expecting competent individuals who can find work elsewhere to move to a country with a cheaper cost of living, to then pay them a relative salary, is not realistic.

Even with the bear market and layoffs across big tech, the job market for truly talented people is still extremely competitive.

Note: I’m not paid by the DAO, so this doesn’t impact me.

[target]

Second argument I had on this was the work for high US director / executive level salaries. Is there any data to show how a typical work load has been?

These jobs only seem to be an average of 10 hours per week, yes we are in a bear market but surely it has never been equivalent to the value of a full time job.

[Dopeee]

I’m not sure if you’re talking solely about the DAO salaries above, or the Nexus Mutual team that’s paid by the foundation, so I’ll just comment on both.

The core team paid by the foundation works 35+ hours per week. Anecdotally, I would guess that the average is closer to 45-50. In the last 3-months I don’t think I’ve worked less than 40-hours in any single week and my average is probably somewhere around 55-hours.

The investment hub is not compensated by salary, but by an hourly rate which is set to $100/hour by book value, meaning $25/hour at market rate. This incentivizes participation that drives the wNXM price towards book value. The investment hub members contribute highly variable hours, but the average is about 5 hours per month (off the top of my head, I’m not going to look up the numbers on a Sunday).

The other DAO teams which are paid via salary are expected to work 35+ hours per week, the same as the core team. The average that they do is in-line with the core foundation team, meaning 45-50 hours per week, with some individuals doing far more.

I find it very bizarre that you would think that these roles have contributed only 10-hours per week. I don’t think you have a good sense of how much time it takes to manage community questions and handle claims, let alone to work on large projects like a complete re-brand and release of a new protocol version which massively changes the way the protocol works.

[BraveNewDeFi]

I’m not sure where you’re getting 10hrs per week from. On average, I work somewhere between 60-70 hours per week.

In the last six months, I have:

• Manage comms across two product releases and worked with various teams to market their cover purchases
  • StakeWise ETH Staking Cover co-marketing campaign
  • Sherlock Excess Cover co-marketing announcement
  • Everstake ETH Staking Cover co-marketing announcement
  • Liquid Collective co-marketing campaign
• Coordinated, provided regular updates on 13 governance proposals, discussions
  • Transitioned DAO proposals to Snapshot votes
  • Provided updates on vote outcomes, review of process
• Managed comms, coordinated announcements across six listings in Q3, Q4.
  • Worked with Euler, Gearbox, and Nested
    • Planned, participated in Euler Twitter Spaces while on vacation
    • Worked with Nested on regular updates for their repeat cover buys, given they cover their entire TVL with Nested Protocol Cover
• Managed comms, helped members prepare for, and provided support across three claim evens
  • Provided comms on Celsius claims, though no legitimate claims were filed
  • Provided extensive comms on Hodlnaut claims, shared individual updates on claim submissions, votes, and outcomes. Handled proof of loss questions, followed up with members who didn’t provide proof of loss initially, etc.
  • Shared Hodlnaut claim outcomes, updated claims history section in docs.
  • Provided extensive support for FTX cover holders planning to file claims in February
  • Provided regular updates on cover liabilities, eligible covers for filing for FTX, BlockFi, Gemini Earn after repeat questions from members; added this update to newsletter and community call
• Attended ETH Berlin, made valuable contacts, represented Nexus Mutual.
• Worked with engineers and Safe team to get Nexus Mutual listed in the Safe app, so multisigs users could access the Nexus Mutual user interface right from the Safe UI.
• Regularly reviewed listed protocols, provided chain deployment updates to frontend engineering team, and ensured all listings were up-to-date on which chains they were deployed on and what Protocol Cover protects against (i.e., which EVM-compatibile chains).
• Coordinated comms on Proposal 172: Capital Pool Investment into Maple Finance via Enzyme
  • Worked with Chainlink, Enzyme, Maple Finance, M11 Credit on co-marketing announcement, campaign
  • Updated Nexus Financials section of documentation to provide members with the resources to review, audit the wETH pool investment
  • Managed updates, comms on Auros, Orthogonal loans
  • Worked with Investment team to share timely updates, as they become available
• Regularly updated the Nexus Mutual V1 documentation
• Rewrote the Nexus Mutual V2 documentation, moving all content to open-source Docusaurus platform
  • Worked with engineering team to write user documentation
  • Managed technical documentation project
  • Wrote V2 resources for existing distributors
• Contributed to, edited 22 issues of the newsletter with Sem, Community Manager, contributing as well
• Hosted 15 Nexus Mutual community calls, which the Community team started in September 2021
• Overhauled, and in process of, overhauling the Nexus Mutual Discord server

I’ve heavility contributed to the Nexus Mutual website project; I was a stakeholder in the brand update project; I’ve worked with the engineering team to write the copy in the Nexus Mutual V2 UI; I’ve standardized terminology, so it’s consistent across the mutual; I’ve created a usage guide, glossary for V2; I’ve created a contributors’ guide for those who want to make contributions to the open-source V2 documentation in the future.

Within the DAO, I serve as a resource across teams, and I keep in regular contact with the Foundation teams to coordinate comms, provide support on various projects, and I essentially own the claims process when loss events happen. Since I started working for the DAO, I have defined the comms strategy for claim events, and I am heavily involved from when a loss occurs until the final claim is filed.

I’m dedicated to my role, and I make myself available to other teams, to Foundation teams, and to members who ask for help on Discord, Twitter, and beyond. My Community Manager, Sem, has helped me with regular reporting, answering questions in Discord, writing a portion of the newsletter each week, contributing research to the projects I work on, and more.

All of the proposed teams have their roles defined, with individual contributors denoted with (FT) for full-time, (PT) for part-time, and Contractor for those who are contributing on a short-term basis. You can see a breakdown of all the teams in the Q1 & Q2 2023 | Proposed Teams, Priorities, and 6-month Budget Breakdown post.

Working across teams within a DAO requires regular meettings, consistent communication, and collaborative work. I regularly work with all of these teams, and they put in a significant amount of work.

[target]

This is a solid response, thank you for elaborating and taking the time to explain and justify in detail.

This is something I can support better now for your role, you are definitely one of the more visibly active ones and you’ve just demonstrated that again. The other roles, definitely still sceptical…

[Dopeee]

Appreciate your reply here, glad we were able to add necessary detail.

Remaining salaried members of the DAO are Kayleigh, Rei and Claudio.

Rei just posted a thread on tokenomics, where you can easily verify how much work he’s done over the past few months, and will continue to do.

Claudio has been with the team since summer and is working with @BraveNewDeFi on the V2 re-brand, and I can personally attest to how much work has gone into it. He does all the marketing material, much of which you don’t see, because it’s used in BD efforts and will go directly to institutions.

Kayleigh is more behind the scenes, but I can assure you that none of the above gets done without her. She takes care of project management for all DAO projects you’ve read above, ensuring that we can all focus on what we’re good at. Every physical meetup the team has, whether to work on large projects like V2 or for the BD team to run a full week of events at a conference, she has organized. Going forward I understand she will also be responsible for hiring and grants on the DAO side, which will be a fairly large commitment given the way V2 allows for syndicates to build their own businesses on top of Nexus Mutual.

[BraveNewDeFi]

I completely agree with @Dopeee’s points, as well.

Both @Claudio and @Kayleigh-NexusMutual have been incredibly active and helpful. While I supported the brand update and website overhaul projects, Claudio has taken ownership of the project and put in significant time and effort there. He also did a comprehensive channel audit in the last six-months, which provided significant insight on where we need to focus going forward and how we develop a comprehensive strategy once V2 launches. In addition, he’s been supporting @Rei on the Dune Analytics project, as well as worked with designers to prepare marketing materials to support the V2 launch.

With Claudio handling the broader marketing tasks, I’ve been able to focus on the community side and put significant effort into the V2 docs and my over myriad projects, duties, and responsibilities.

@Kayleigh-NexusMutual has helped coordinate comms internally, so the DAO teams have an open line of communication with the Foundation. This has helped us be more effective in the last funding period. She’s served as a PM across multiple projects, has organized several in-person events through the last two quarters, and has kept existing DAO teams on track. Her move over to a DAO team will be hugely beneficial for the existing teams.

And @Rei has lead the tokenomics revamp project, which has been a massive undertaking. He’s managed comments across quite a few DAO members and other stakeholders. In addition, he has been contributing to the Dune Dashboard project.

If there was anyone within the proposal that wasn’t carrying their weight, I wouldn’t be shy about saying so. Compared to other DAOs of comparable size, our DAOs are lean and effective. As I shared before, many of our deliverables are tied to the V2 launch. We’ll have a lot to share in the coming weeks.

[0xSpicySoup]

Thanks @Gauthier

It has been suggested by some team members during the tokenomics discussions that we should “slow-walk” the steps that we’d undertake to close the gap between market price and book value. Arguments being 1) to capture more NXM at discount and 2) to allow more time for growth. (Not advocating either, just listing them!).

But worth highlighting here that the DAO is currently selling wNXM/NXM at a huge discount to book value to fund it’s operating budget. Surely this is another argument in favour of “pulling the finger out” and addressing the situation so we aren’t needlessly reducing our runway?

On a side note: I just want to echo as someone following the DAO very closely, that there is clearly a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes on DAO operations and I think it’s pretty clear no one full time is doing 10 hr weeks.

[Kayleigh-NexusMutual]

Firstly thank you to everyone who has commented - it’s really important and I’m grateful for this engagement in the future of our DAO.

I’ve been working at Nexus since 2018, before we even launched on main net. Back in the early days it was just me and Hugh scrambling to fight each fire and make it to the next week; during that time I was much more visible building our community home in Discord, writing blogs and creating a social media presence all while learning with, and for the greater benefit of, our community. When the explosion of DeFi summer came about, our growth was incredibly fast (and chaotic) which was an important pivotal moment for the mutual. But it also brought directly to me a barrage of online abuse. So that made it an easy decision to become an avatar and focus more on operational work, behind the scenes, when we were graced with the wonderful Brave New DeFi who took on the front-of-house comms work.

Our ‘Core Team’ funded by the foundation aren’t as publicly visible for two reasons. Firstly, they are extremely busy doing their jobs and not writing about it on online forums and social media. Secondly, we don’t want to unfairly skew influence on governance because we truly believe in community ownership, and this is a critical part of that process.

As I have seen and supported our growth from 2 to 14 (plus a host of distributed contributors) during several bear markets and a global pandemic, I’ve been consistently in awe of how much we’ve achieved with our small, remote team. It’s because they are each dedicated and bring a unique set of skills that, when combined, is greater than the sum of its parts. It is inevitable that there will always be so much more work going on behind the scenes and if we had taken the time to report and share everything, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve anywhere near what we have. Especially given our size.

That said, I understand the value of transparency. One of my endless curiosities is the human coordination of a DAO, the psycho-social components of building a cross-cultural, cross-timezone team and how we best combine our skills and expertise to maximise our growth for the benefit of our whole community. I believe being transparent is a part of that. One of the first projects I’ve proposed for the Operations Team is to build a community-facing website to provide members with easy access to track DAO team priorities, goals, deliverables (and their status) plus spending and grants. I hope this will go some way to enable our community members to review and contribute to our work.