VDP-72 Proposal to Approve the Compensation Policy for 2023

Proposals Passed Proposals
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Summary

VitaDAO has been providing compensation to contributors based around VDP-3, VDP-26.1 and using soft governance within VitaCore.

While this has worked to this point, a more formal, transparent compensation policy is required to give certainty to contributors and the community on how VitaDAO is facilitating the activities and projects it undertakes.

This proposal seeks to ratify the Compensation Policy described below.

UPDATE: Please see revised version of document here: VDP-72 Proposal to Approve the Compensation Policy for 2023 - #12 by Taliskermalt

Motivation

VitaDAO is a community which is funding early stage research in the longevity and healthspan field with the goal of incubating promising research and translating intellectual property into investable biopharma startups.

Members of the community include mission-aligned enthusiasts, researchers and investors which individually bring a wide cross section of skill sets and experiences to VitaDAO.

At the base, many in the community volunteer for VitaDAO activities based on personal or professional interests. Others contribute financially to provide VitaDAO resources to deploy into research, while our researcher community members review proposed projects and bring forward research ideas which may result in future intellectual property and commercialization opportunities.

While many members contribute a relatively small number of hours to a specific project or interest within VitaDAO, VitaDAO also has a group of highly dedicated and motivated contributors whose involvement are consistent, time intensive, and whose skill sets are valued and needed by VitaDAO to fulfil its operational goals.

$VITA tokens are seen as a way to reward valuable contributions to the community through a greater stake in, and ability to influence, VitaDAOā€™s direction and decision making. However, a number of the tasks within VitaDAO are time consuming, require market-valued skills, and in the cases of specific roles, carries an opportunity cost to members in terms of pursuing other employment or contract opportunities.

In these cases, VitaDAO recognizes the need to compensate those members whose involvement and effort bring value to VitaDAO but also limits their ability to work on other projects or opportunities.

To date the plan, as described below, has been the basis of compensation since July (1 year anniversary) as a soft governance within VitaCore on a probationary basis, and it is the intention of this proposal to ratify the Compensation Policy for DAO-wide use.

Specification

As the length of the document precludes inclusion inline in Discourse, please visit the following:

Original Version (see Summary for Revised Version) - VitaDAO Compensation Policy (Draft).pdf

Implementation

Upon successful passing of this proposal, the Coordination Working Group will apply this policy to all current and future contributors and squad/working group positions.

Additional role descriptions will be developed to facilitate other functions within VitaDAO and added to this document subject to the approval of the compensation framework described herein.

Budget

The short-term and long-term incentive plan in this proposal anticipates an additional minting of up to approximately 12.6m $VITA (19.6% of Total Token Supply), as needed, between now and the end of 2026 to provide governance allocations to contributors across the DAO.

All allocations are subject to a lock-up and vesting schedule similar to that contemplated in VDP-67. The allocations in VDP-67 are already included as part of this proposal.

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Thanks for the in-depth work, Todd! Massively appreciated

Directionally think its the right approach, but didnt had the time to read fully through it yet, but looks good on first-glance. Think it will be similar for many others in the DAO that they wonā€™t see this proposal and read through the whole policy, which is why i think generally we should try to summarize the core points, range of comp (depending on professions) and s-/t-tip etc.

ultimately think its key that we make the framework extremely easy to understand for everyone, and also ensure that we are competitive especially on the highest impact contributors like experienced longevity researchers.

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Unfortunately there are just too many permutations to make it simple but I would recommend that if you want to get to the core of it the TL;DR is here:

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and read the Appendices. That pretty much shows were we are going with this, but if you want to understand some of the nuances you pretty much have to dig in. Also, be sure to look at VDP-67 and VDP-26.1 for specifics about Longevity Dealflow compensation.

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Thanks Todd! A great read, this is a meticulously detailed and transparent document. My concern with this, is the actionable missing where there needs to be a complete overhaul of minute admin considerations like Discord roles, access to docs etc to current contributors.

Also, Iā€™m also a little confused as to where someone like myself would end up in terms of compensation. Iā€™ve been involved in co-organising/hosting a DeSci Singapore event for the DAO, ops task management, governance/policy contribution and now a project management lead. Itā€™s a little unclear which bracket (or can it be multiple?) I would end up in from the appendices. Would someone like myself be a squad lead?

With the introduction of Harvest, will I only be able to declare the hours for projects I am assigned to? In my example above, Iā€™m only allowed to track hours on Harvest for my project lead assignment but am using Google Sheets for the rest. Also, will payouts still be distributed on the 1st & 15th of every month?

Personally, Iā€™ve had the time to commit full/part-time to VitaDAO but have always held back my declared hours due to the guilty sentiment of leaving enough resources to fund early-stage longevity research. This proposal definitely lifts that lid, motivates, and incentivises me further to put in more time while still upholding my passion for VitaDAOā€™s vision/mission.

Iā€™m excited to continue helping you as a vital part of the Coordination WG to implement and iron these out for the betterment of VitaDAO :yellow_heart:.

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@consigli3re to your point, there are a number of actionable items that will flow from this proposal and other proposals that are now being presented. Discord/Discourse restructuring, and document management are definitely amongst them.

As a working group member in one or more working groups, you are entitled to compensation/rewards based on all of those efforts, provided they are in-line with the working groups goals. A Core Contributor is typically someone who is putting in consistent time into VitaDAO based on their skill set, and Squad Leads tend to be Core Contributors working on one area or set of projects. In your case, you are definitely falling into the Core Contributor category under governance.

With reference to Harvest (our time and expense tracking system) - I can work with you offline to make sure you have access to other common tasks that you need to track against. But as a general observation, all of your time should be allocated to a specific strategic project(s) you are contributing to, or to one of the select number of general tasks (Governance development for example) that you are part of as part of a squad.

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Does anyone still need revisions? Please comment below

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@consigli3re, received some comments from @Alex and @longevion which are being integrated into a next draft version to provide some clarifications. Hope to have the updates early next week.

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Thanks for the proposal @Taliskermalt

Are contributors mining the token for governance only or is it also a source of income? Do we know the distribution between these two groups?

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Might be good to have a clause in there to adapt the hourly rates to yearly inflation or such in the compensation policy.

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Based on feedback from members the following represents revised text for the compensation policy (Version 2):

Please note this also incorporates a revised L-TIP model (Appendix E). Many thanks to @Alex for working through this with me to bring in L1Dā€™s perspective from their experience with other projects.

@Max_Unfried On your comment about a clause for inflation: it is not included in this version but we can either add it, or put a statement that the rates will be subject to an annual review which I think will be probably a more likely scenario. Thoughts?

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agree on annual reviewā€¦ some tasks and compensations might also outpace inflation (such as smart contract review) while others might lag behind and become cheaper with automation etc

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Ideally, we have a diff/redline too, so people donā€™t have to carefully read the entire document again :slight_smile:

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Sure, here we go:

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Great, thanks!

On the policy doc, I see there werenā€™t changes since our last workshop, only noticed that appendixes still say ā€œcore contributorā€ (we had changed to ā€œtop contributorā€ to avoid confusion with VitaCORE).

On the L-TIP appendix, Iā€™ve added some suggestions regarding the tokenomics review, for ramping up top contributor numbers and % FTE over 4 years instead of assuming we ramp instantly year 1 and keep linear over 4 years, and for budgeting L-TIP for more contributors. See comments and suggestions here:

Lastly, I think in the end we should upload to IPFS before onchain vote, so itā€™s immutable and preserved

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I second this! Should be the case for any files or images in the future too

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I appreciate the use of web3 tech, but wouldnā€™t github or gitbook work better for this?

With IPFS, I think it is possible to cease storing the content, you just canā€™t replace it with the same CID. I think Arweave is the ā€˜pay for 200 years of storageā€™.

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Before the on-chain vote, or after? Seems like we should immortalize the final chosen Appendix and Document on IPFS, no?

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Iā€™d suggest we have an additional Appendix for hourly rates for Longevity WG roles too. Seems odd to have hourly rates for all other positions from other WGs but leave Longevity WG without it or is there a specific reason for this?

1 Like