**[Proposal]** Developer Incentives

Proposals Protocol and Governance
#1

Summary

Our core developers are creating immense value for us (YFI holders). It’s incredibly extractive and naive to expect indentured servitude for any longer. The launch of YFI was the most selfless launch since Bitcoin–even more so because Andre couldn’t mine the coins solo for a prolonged period of time. Rewarding our core devs with YFI tokens does not go back on this selflessness. Rather, it shows that we too can be selfless as YFI holders.

Background

I am proposing that we mint 1k YFI to a multi-sig controlled by our core developer team (identical to the current multisig). This would be one-time, unless in a few years we determined we had not done enough. 1k is a 3% supply increase, less so than Ethereum’s this year, which is already significantly less than any other DeFi project.

Motivation

Capital allocators–those who store money in smart contracts–are mercenaries. They go where the highest yield is. This was the core insight that led to Yearn’s growth. However, our developers are not mercenaries. They are being treated as servants. But they don’t have to be here. These people could get jobs anywhere. If JP Morgan were smart, they would offer our developers a large chunk of JPM equity to build the future of yield under their umbrella. Thankfully, the traditional system is full of managerial greed. The longer we abuse our privilege, the more likely we are to lose our edge: our developers. Don’t be fooled. We are not what’s special. Our developers are.

Specification

This YIP is a small issuance for the YFI ecosystem, but will have a large impact on our developers’ lives. It’s as simple as that. Don’t get greedy over principles like immutability–look at Bitcoin versus Ethereum itself. Ethereum now generates over 2.5x more transaction fees than Bitcoin. In the long-run, this will cause Ethereum to trump Bitcoin. Let us not be the Bitcoin of Ethereum banking. Let us be the market winner.

For: A one-time issuance of 1k YFI for our core developers to distribute amongst themselves.

Against: YFI supply is meant to be immutable forever–like all successful startups (kidding–no successful startups are like this)

Poll:

  • For
  • Against

0 voters

7 Likes
Keeping Yearn Great - Funds, Incentives & Rewards
#3

We have already voted to burn the minting keys and it was very much in favor of yes, so I doubt anyone will vote to mint more YFI at this point. Also, we have already voted and approved that the treasury can buyback yfi from fees. Not fully sure if the multisig plans to pay devs and contributors in yfi or just hold it but that might be a better avenue to look into.

32 Likes
#4

We can fork the token with the mint. Technically would be easy to execute. The question is whether we’re willing to be selfless or not.

Decisions made in the past by a startup aren’t meant to be permanent.

2 Likes
#5

I urge everyone to imagine what would happen to our rocket ship if this passed. Developers would have faith in our community like no other.

4 Likes
#6

We don’t need to fork, theres other ways to incentivize devs than minting new tokens. They should be rewarded don’t get me wrong. Should be out of the treasury or income in some way though. Best if its aligned in an incentivization system rather than all in a lump sum, though I’m not against a lump sum of some sort to start as thanks for past work. But yeah I don’t think minting tokens is the way to go about this.

6 Likes
#7

What about removing staking rewards and distributing the $1.5m 75% / 25% to andre / banteg in the form of a grant?

8 Likes
#8

Great idea. The yield currently going to YFI holders could be diverted to our devs for a year, and it would only help the long-term price.

7 Likes
#9

What do you think of gilfroy’s idea below? Totally hear your concerns.

1 Like
#10

I like the idea of incentives but like Darky said, no more minting keys, there will be a buyback and burn.

Perhaps another method will be suited.

2 Likes
#11

Voted against. This appears to be a reflexive proposal in response to Andre’s rant post.

A proposal to realign incentives and siphon a larger portion of future yield to devs was already passed, we just haven’t seen its effects yet.

If that proposal is implemented and we still observe a risk of incentive misalignment afterwards, then this conversation makes sense to have again.

17 Likes
#12

Would very much appreciate seeing a proposal for your method–would be great to have multiple methods live at the same time, so we can evaluate and decide together as one

#13

I respect your vote good sir. Andre’s post I do not believe is a rant. I believe it is the CEO of a billion dollar business telling his board that he’s frustrated with his compensation package. Given that we are making a lot of money from our developers’ work, living what I believe to be a much more luxurious role–expressing our opinions through this forum and voting instead of dealing with any extremely difficult code–I believe that what Andre wrote makes perfect sense.

I would feel the exact same way. Putting myself in his shoes, if YFI weren’t my baby, I would have left already. He is likely torn because we do not incentivize the team properly, but at the same time this is his baby. We shouldn’t abuse that privilege, in my opinion.

4 Likes
#14

We voted to burn the keys as the first on-chain proposal. So far nobody has developed that and now that Aragon got shaken up, I think it got even lower priority.

4 Likes
#15

We already brought up minting YFI for Andre here and Andre then proposed burning the minting keys shortly after here, just for some context, and links, on what has previously been discussed. You can see the snapshot poll for burning keys here

Yes, this makes sense. I wonder if people still feel the same way, to be fair only about 1.4k yfi voted in that poll.

2 Likes
#17

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.

24 Likes
#18

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.

28 Likes
#19

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.

4 Likes
#20

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.

7 Likes
#21

Sound like a interesting plan.

#22

We just posted our related proposal here: Buyback and Build

11 Likes