Summary
There has been a fair bit of controversy lately, in part triggered by AG’s departure. The team has addressed some of this in the recent AMA, however, I am not convinced this is enough to prevent such doubts from resurfacing. I have been in direct contact with two highly reputable insiders and they both dispute the team’s official interpretation of the events as well as share the view that guardrails need to be put in place in order to prevent abuses of power and to restore the community’s trust that abuses of power cannot happen, even if the intentions are good.
Abstract
I propose the following -
There is a large operations fund atm (separate from the protocol treasury) over which the community has no jurisdiction or transparency. It is alleged that it has been spent inefficiently in the past on excessive hiring expenses, conferences, etc. I propose to limit this fund to hold 250k USD max at any given time and for the team to provide a quarterly breakdown of how it’s being spent. Any spending beyond this needs to be approved by the community.
The team has to submit a detailed report on how all funds have been spent over the last 12 months. This will be audited by an independent third party.
Product roadmap is not transparent enough, deliverables are not being met (what happened to Trident, announced in July?), or the will of the community is not respected (oSushi proposal which got a 99.59% vote and then I believe was semi-silently vetoed by the team). I suggest to introduce quarterly deliverables that the community needs to approve in advance and the team will be accountable for delivering. Further release of funds to the team will be dependant on satisfactory progress against these deliverables.
Motivation
The biggest edge SUSHI has on its competitors is that it’s truly community-run. We understand the need for the product team to have enough day-to-day autonomy to develop and deploy great code. However, we do need to make sure we don’t stray too far away from the community-centric model that’s foundational for us.
This proposal does not seek to penalize the team, only to introduce more transparency, accountability, and a way for the community to definitively have their say in deciding how the money is being spent and whether the team is delivering what they set out to deliver. Based on the information provided, the community can draw their own conclusions.
For
The team becomes more accountable to the community.
Against
The team are free to continue managing things the same way as up until now.
Poll
Yes, I am in favour of implementing this proposal as a way of introducing more accountability
Voted Yes for the Signal - I think the proposal as is addresses a lot of the concerns that have been raised recently.
Would definitely need more discussion and input from the current Ops/dev teams (and community obviously) before voting to make it canon. Flesh out how quarterly deliverables would be handled and all the nitty-gritty like that.
Maybe could be split into two separate proposals?
Points 1 & 3 - creating a new system of quarterly review to use going forward
Point 2 - how to review prior 12 months of expenses and operations
I’m all for more transparency in a community driven project. But I really need to see more input from core team and other contributors before I vote on this. Feel like I’ve been absent for too long to make an informed decision as to how to signal on this issue.
Builders have to build. Shipping often takes longer than expected. I don’t know where to view this operations fun or what is appropriate in an operations fund. Need to know how many core contributors there are?
$250k can be easily be gone in a month just on wages, so I think $250k operations fund requiring votes may be low and cause future problems. Just immediate knee jerk reaction. Really need more info.
@mgoesthedistance - thanks for taking the time to share your concerns in here.
We hear and feel you - it has been a tough time for the community.
Operations unfortunately is a large overhead cost of major DeFi protocols, particularly due to engineering costs. While I believe there is merit to more transparency in the spending process, I think it important to be able to fund ongoing talent needs, marketing expenses, and software development without insolvency.
In terms of judging the protocols progress on Trident delivery - where are you looking to see dates and deadlines? If you implement deadlines, what motivates the team to meet these?
Maybe instead it would better to create a financial bonus as motivation instead of penalizing the team with a restricted budget.
I believe theres a lot of merit to this proposal, DAOs are meant to revolutionize emergence in human coordination and collaboration. Sushi should be willing to embrace its roots and continue using its community at its superpower, not as another entity to report to. But it starts with open communitication and leveraging the wisdom of the crowd.
Not paying team members because milestones aren’t met sounds bumpy in the long term. giving bonuses for deliverables sounds more applicable.
If decentralization is all about minimizing any single point of failiure and radical tranparency… It only helps sushi to be transparent on how funds are spent, that way we know if we have more effecient way of doing things or not.
Also, who hired this Joseph guy and how come i rarely hear him talk? What work has he contributed to sushi?
Joseph hiring was approved by the community with a vote - Snapshot, so you may say that he was hired by the community… in the good old times when transparency was not an issue. As for his contribution to Sushi - it is a mystery for me as well…