VDP-136 Proposal: Compensation Policy Squad Update to VDP-72

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Summary

This proposal concludes the annual review of compensation and governance allocations as required in VDP-108, and seeks to report back to the community with proposed adjustments to VDP-72 25 for community vote.

Specification

The Compensation Policy Squad reviewed historical compensation for the six month period of January 2023 to August 2023, in conjunction with the resources linked in the References section. When examining compensation policy and principles we primarily focused our analysis on asking the following questions:

  1. Do VitaDAO’s Compensation Principles make sense broadly speaking?
  2. Are VitaDAO’s Compensation Principles being adhered to in practice?
  3. Are there any organizational changes which would improve VitaDAO’s operations and compensation transparency?
  4. Are there any tokenomics changes which would improve VitaDAO’s operations and compensation transparency?
  5. Before finalizing our report with a series of basic recommendations for VitaDAO to implement in order to streamline and optimize its compensation schema moving forward.

This report summarizes the findings of the Compensation Policy Squad, and our recommendations for VitaDAO’s Compensation Policy in 2024.

Please visit the following link to access the entire report: Compensation Policy Squad Vita DAO Compensation Report

Implementation

Upon successful passing of this proposal, the Coordination Working Group will update VDP-72 to reflect the changes suggested and provide an updated Compensation Policy document to the community.

Suggested changes will be applied to all current and future contributors and squad/working group positions immediately upon approval.

EDIT: As requested I am putting here in plain language a simple explanation of changes to Stewards compensation.

$VITA compensation per Stewards is reduced by ~59% from VDP-72, from 25k $VITA monthly to 10,047 $VITA monthly.
$USDC compensation limits for Stewards are increased by ~36% from 8.8K $USDC monthly to 12k $USDC monthly.
Please note that Stewards are under both 4y vesting schedules and previously signed contracts which prevent them from selling significant amounts of $VITA before 2026. Please also note the $USDC raise was for the limit of Stewards compensation, not actual Stewards compensation which should be set by a separate governance vote.

  • Agree
  • Revisions Requested (Details in Comments)
  • Disagree
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TLDR;

  • Steward Compensation: Reduced to 10,047 $VITA per month, totaling 120,560 $VITA annually.
  • Increase in $USDC Compensation: For Stewards, it’s suggested to increase to 12,000 $USDC per month.
  • Other Contributors: Adjustments in their compensation are proposed to ensure regularity and alignment with market standards.

good job

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Can someone clarify: is it 10,000 vita per month so at the current rate (~$3) it’s actually $30,000 USD therefore $360,000 USD per year for all stewards?

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I am struggling to find where this value is determined in Compensation Policy Squad Vita DAO Compensation Report - Google Docs or Proof of Steve VITA LTIP Oct 29.xlsx - Google Sheets ?

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Thank you. I will also point out that one of the recommendations the Squad is making which I personally believe to be one of the most important is on pages 9 & 10 of the report.

As such the Compensation Policy Squad recommends the following:

  1. Create a standardized reporting form for milestones and bounties which includes the following information:
  • Job specification: What is the contributor being hired to do, and why?
  • Contributor Identifier: Who is doing this work and why them? (Including Usernames for Anons)
  • KPIs or Success Metrics: How will the success of a contributor be measured?
  • Record of Job Performance: Were the KPIs or success metrics achieved, to what degree, and when?

Require that any milestone or bounty based compensation submit one of these forms before the job is started, and update it once the job is finished and before compensation is paid.

  1. Aggregate all historical compensation data for contributors and external service providers, both $VITA and $USDC, into a single easy to read and easily accessible online source. This can be done through a Dune Analytics page, or simple services such as Looker Studio via Google Drive. This should be updated monthly, and be kept current. This online source should preserve the privacy of contributors, displaying anonymized information only.
  1. Keep all relevant and public compensation data in a single easily accessible data room, including but not limited to the forms from point 1 and the spreadsheets from point 2.
  1. Have a contributor review and aggregate all compensation data and forms, and make sure this information is kept current and accurate and publicly accessible, on an at least monthly basis.
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The proposal needs to spell out any changes in pay right in the main text, not hide them behind a link. I get that it’s a lot of info, but keeping it hidden just doesn’t sit right and feels like something the government would do.

It should clearly state how much money stewards and core contributors will make after this proposal kicks in.

Paying $12,000 is significantly above what seems to be the norm for other DAOs, which typically offer around $5,000 - $8,000.

A compensation strategy that significantly exceeds the industry standard could impact the DAO’s burn rate, potentially affecting its long-term viability and ability to fund projects.

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It’s insane. Considering many haven’t even been paid who do all the work! Many of these people getting paid this just post on discord and nothing else.

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It might be useful to do an audit to see who has gotten what over the years (stewards, core, WG, etc) and who is actively receiving comp. I suspect there are asymmetries. Could we do a proposal to see if the community agrees this is a good idea?

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Who hasn’t been paid?

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I’ve been wanting this for months and months. Totally need an audit.

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Thank you, these all seem like reasonable proposals.

Please could you elaborate on how the 10,047 $VITA was determined, why was it not 6,000 or 12,000 $VITA for example?

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I’m slightly uncomfortable with the lack of transparency of this proposal, which has been pointed out by others. Can we please spell out precisely what the new compensation level would be in the proposal + what that equals at current market price?

If its 10k VITA/month + $12 USDC/month, are we offering total comp packages for stewards at $360k/year + $144k/year, thus $504k in total comp? That feels outlandishly high.

I would be much more comfortable with this if it was tied to concrete milestones or something measurable. My main concern is folks taking home very large comp packages basically have no accountability for metrics, treasury management, growth, etc., and we lack the processes needed to carry out performance reviews, etc.

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Tyler I think it is either 10K Vita / month or $12 USDC / month , not cumulative

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Who is on this Compensation Policy Squad - I was not even aware of the existence of this

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The point below is what worries me the most. I do not understand why Stewards can be paid immediately in VITAs while Contributors and Senior Reviewers need to wait 1 year… plus at a time when other cryptocurrencies are fighting the SEC in order to be NOT regulated as securities this is the best way of being regulated as such, as we are treating VITAs as stock options.
On top, I am not sure it is sensible policy as USDC runs down our treasury while VITA does not.
Happy to discuss and find alternative solutions

Currently many contributors are compensated immediately upon the completion of their work, and paid solely or partially in $VITA. The Compensation Policy Squad believes that using vesting smart contracts, which pays out according to a vesting schedule, would more properly align incentives among stakeholders in the DAO and support the enforcement of any relevant vesting schedule.

As such we are recommending that the Technical Working Group spin up token vesting contracts , for each relevant payout that carries a vesting component, and that moving forward contributor compensation be paid out through these smart contracts . The exact amounts and proportions can be decided on a per-person basis. There already exist off-the-shelf solutions that can be used for this purpose such as Sablier. The Compensation Policy Squad suggests using such solutions instead of having the Tech team deploying new contracts.

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Usually in reports there are the authors’ names. I assume that’s an oversight.

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i would like the aggregate historical compensation to be to show names at least to recurrent contributors that signed NDAs

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Perhaps some context would be helpful here (information only, I have an obvious conflict of interest as a Steward and can’t debate or vote on this proposal, only observe):

VDP-72 as written in December 2022 allocated up to 25k VITA per month for each steward, with the view that it would result in a budget of 0.47%/yr or 1.88% of the Total Token Supply over a 4 year period. Stewards and VitaCore have restrictions on their ability to liquidate any of their granted VITA until 2026 at the earliest, and it vests over 4 years from date of receipt.

The math was that, the Stewards, of which their were 4 at the time, would equal around 7.5% of Total Token Supply. Note that this was a budget for the Steward positions, there was no guarantee that any individual would stay in that position for the entirety of the 4+ years such that they would receive the whole 1.88%. This also applies to VitaCore and to Squad Leads.

Similarly, budgets were set aside for VitaCore, and squad leads in all the working groups. VitaCore / Squad Leads would get an allocation that would result in 0.1%/year or 0.4% after 4 years (again vested for 4 years, locked until 2026). Each Working Group was given a budget for each year to reward top contributors and these were allocated (for 2023) in VDP-67 (Longevity Dealflow) and VDP-97 (Community and Awareness), Coordination made no L-TIP allocations . The breakdown was 1 million VITA/year for Longevity Dealflow contributors, 600k/year for Community and Awareness Contributors, and 200k/year for Coordination.

In total the original plan would have seen up to an additional 25% of Total Token Supply issued by 2026 to DAO contributors, with 15% going to working group contributors, 7.5% going to Stewards, and 2.5% to VitaCore and Squad Leads. I strongly suggest everyone review what the current approved governance is in VDP-72.

It should be noted that VDP-72 is independent of VDP-3 which covered the Genesis Auction and for which the founding team received allocations. Only one member of that founding team remains as a steward or squad lead in VitaDAO today.

The New Proposal

Comparing the two “Appendix E” spreadsheets - one from the approved VDP-72, and the other one proposed in the report, my understanding of the new proposal is that:

  1. Overall VITA compensation will drop from 25% of Total Token Supply to 8% across all stakeholder groups reflecting the 300% change in secondary market pricing of VITA.

  2. Steward specific compensation over 4 years drops from 7.5% of TTS, to 3.04% TTS.

  3. VitaCore specific compensation over 4 years drops from 2.5% of TTS, to 0.56% TTS.

  4. Working Group compensation over 4 years drops from: 4 million to 2.3m (Longevity Dealflow, 80% of budget), 2.4m to 432k (Awareness WG, 15% of budget), and 800k to 144k (Coordination WG, 5% of budget).

Other information that maybe useful:

  1. All VITA allocations under VDP-72 stopped in July of last year pending this review, per VDP-108.

  2. Nobody currently compensated by the DAO under VDP-72 participated in the Squad. For clarity, being the Coordination Steward, my role was only to provide information as requested, and provide historical context.

  3. The remit of the Compensation Policy Squad was to compare current compensation to what exists in the web3 world, and biotech world, for positions of similar complexity, skillsets, and demands with the view to make sure that the compensation policy would be attractive to the best talent from outside the DAO, not to cater to the incumbents.

  4. Their remit also included the ability to identify areas where improvements could be made to make the DAO more attractive to contributors.

Hope this helps the conversation, @mykalt45 @Ben @tylergolato @aschwartzphd @alexdobrin

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Thank you @Taliskermalt it would be great to know who was on this squad and whom they interviewed etc.
Basically the methodology for this report and the sources (both primary and secondary)

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@proofofsteve can probably discuss how the process was undertaken, and I believe he provides the source materials that was relied upon.

I was not part of that process other than as a source of information as requested so I can’t provide much insight.

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