Sorry you forgot one:
Pocketsquare - lead fanboi
10 Likes
On a serious note - I would like to see more team involvement on the community calls going forward as part of this proposal. The entire issue has been transparency and thats my only gripe. Often its just Tangle left to figure out something to talk about. Would like to see a bit more structure.
Perhaps dedicate the first 15 minutes of every call to go through a running list of projects and a quick line or two on where they stand / whos working on it / how its going. Something to keep everyone aware that progress is being made. I find, in my own job, that this also keeps you accountable to your timeline. Perhaps it rotates: 1 week we get a treasury update from Jiro. The next call we get a BD update from Ape, then the next call a dev update from Matt, then a marketing update from Bella, and then it goes back to Jiro and so on. But this should be a mandatory part of collecting a salary from SushiSwap DAO.
8 Likes
Couldn’t agree more on these points
Perhaps dedicate the first 15 minutes of every call to go through a running list of projects and a quick line or two on where they stand / whos working on it / how its going. Something to keep everyone aware that progress is being made.
3 Likes
These guys are legit.
List of Team Members Retained:
I’m Software - Engineering Team Lead, Compensation Committee
JiroOno - Software Engineer
Sarang - Software Engineer
Chillichelli - Software Engineer
Ross - Software Engineer
Ilya - Software Engineer
CleanUpGuy - Software Engineer
Tangle - Community Manager, Business Development
0xBella - Marketer
Unagi - Marketer
Cabbage - Designer
Kastrye - Designer
Chester LaCroix - Designer
APE - Business Development
Pegbit - Samurai
RSK - Samurai
Maka - Samurai
Trudahmzik - Samurai
Zapacheenie - Samurai
Salman - Shōyu
Masayoshi - Shōyu
H4v1g - Shōyu
fejk/Ryan - Shōyu
Neil - Compensation Committee
7 Likes
So impressed with the team and all they’ve accomplished during the reorg, not to mention their loyalty and passion towards the protocol. Absolute no brainer! Fully in support of this.
6 Likes
We all know that many of the team members are the people who turned a simple Uniswap fork into a bluechip protocol. Most of them were contributing to Sushiswap even before they were on-boarded, so their dedication to Sushi is undeniable.
Nevertheless, @Graine made some valid points and I think the community will appreciate if there are a bit more details and clarity just to be sure that we will avoid the problems like “Lack of transparency, backroom deals, etc” which caused much of the drama lately.
It would nice to have more info the Teams budgets quoted in the " Sushi 2.0: A Restructure For The Road Ahead". Are these budgets for salaries only or they include and other expenses, which are needed for the each team operations? Can we have something similar to “Samurais V2 proposal” for each team? Probably not so detailed, but at least stating how much of the budget is for salaries, how much for hiring more people (if there is a need), how much for operations expenses (and what type of expenses these are)?
Also would be nice to know if all team members will have a full time positions. And if one holds a full time position, can this one work for other protocols?
And last, but not least I would like to hear Team thoughts one some long term plan for Sushi. With the Sushi emissions drying out, in several months (especially if the price of SUSHI stays low) the farm rewards won’t be enough to incentivise liquidity providing. What should we do to keep and increase our TVL? Should we keep the xSUSHI system? Are we going veSUSHI? If so, is the team thinking of a proposal for removing the hard cap and minting more SUSHI? No matter what Team ideas for keeping and increasing liquidity are, should be nice to hear them now, as trying to work something in the last moment has been seen quite often with Sushiswap, but it is definitely not a good practice.
P.S. The Compensation Committee members should not be part of this proposal. Each member should be approved by a community vote. These members should not be on constant payroll (Team members who will be part of this committee should not not get extra payment ) as if they are, there clearly will be a conflict of interests. Community representatives in the committee should be more than the Team members.
6 Likes
clean proposal, seems the work made in the last months is bearing fruits
there is no better use of treasury than to retain and attract talent, standing by your side
4 Likes
Alright alright - excited to see a proposal come from the team, signaling their views for the future.
It is interesting seeing the list of retained team members - those there, and those missing.
I am more optimistic about a team lead proposal but will mirror other community sentiments for more color.
What milestones are we aiming for? What KPIs do we use to judge success?
Is it possible to breakdown this budget in terms of %:
I am fairly confident this vote will pass. What is next is buy-in from the community and collaboration with current and future partners. We look forward to a world with Sushi 2.0.
6 Likes
Yep that’s definitely an important thing to highlight is that with Kanpai passed, we now have the optionality to adjust the fee capture, through governance, that is directed to the Treasury. We can turn it up higher than the initial 10% if community believes Treasury should be stacking more ETH / stables. It can also be adjusted down if community believes Treasury has enough reserves, and xSushi should be receiving a higher amount of the fee capture.
2 Likes
Have been discussing all of these questions within the team. In regards to better financial transparency / quarterly reports, we do want look to add a financial analyst or someone with skills that really aren’t present on the team currently to help with doing this in a proper way and provide regular updates on financial health of all our products and the Treasury.
We also talked about setting up a Community Oversight Committee, which would be separate from the Compensation Committee. This in my eyes, and I think most of team agrees, would be primarily made up of community members. Not really sure how the process would be to select community member for the oversight committee, but maybe we can look towards something like the SNX council that they do as an example to work from. But yes 100% we should be providing avenues for community to provide the necessary oversight that things are happening with the best interest of the community, and no decisions are being made without the communities input.
4 Likes
Team,
Thanks for releasing this proposal, it’s great to see what you have been working on, and even though it’d have been better to collaborate from day 1, it’s never too late.
Once again, we’d like to make clear that we value your contribution to Sushi and are sorry for the lunacy you had to endure. We stand with you as developers and so does a big part of the remaining community, which has unfortunately shrinked to worrying levels.
Having made clear that we’d like to collaborate with you and at no point want to replace you, this is some constructive feedback our team has put together:
- What’s the plan to achieve sustainability? Even if Kanpai is initialized at 10% as you said and using the trading volume you mentioned, this income is just not enough to sustain the salaries and other costs in the long term.
The treasury situation needs to be fixed as soon as possible so it doesn’t drag any more problems into the future. As we showed in our proposal, the best way to achieve this is by completely deprecating xSUSHI. We received nothing but positive feedback from this particular idea. - What happens in a bear market scenario? This proposal does not consider treasury diversification, apart from the tiny Kanpai revenue. This introduces additional risks for the whole treasury, particularly so if salaries are to be paid in fixed USD amounts.
- Sushi can’t be managed as a laundromat, it needs processes and senior leadership. Sushi manages billions and has to live up to users and investors’ expectations.
Although we appreciate what the tech team has done for Sushi, it’s still a tech team. Sushi needs executive leadership in order to scale, that’s why our proposal not only doubled the current team, but it added much needed executive roles. - Sushi also lacks a clear structure, and there is no mention about this here. Our proposal made a strong emphasis on this particular point, as we consider it crucial for any serious organization.
- Who is Neil? It is not clear from this side of the counter why is an individual with no history in the crypto space being proposed for such a high role in Sushi. It would have been more transparent to discuss his role in a separate proposal.
- We strongly believe that at no point should the compensated party and the compensation committee be composed of the same members, the conflict of interest is obvious. This point should also have been included in a separate proposal.
- We would like further clarifications regarding the financial roadmap and the compensations.
- How much is going towards each team/role and how much to new hires?
- Can all employees take a shortcut from 4 to 2 years in their vesting by defining goals?
- Which employees are full time? Which are exclusive to Sushi?
- Why is the price target at 12?
- We would also like more details on how goals for compensation are going to be measured.
Overall, we’re happy to see a proposal coming from the team, but it’s missing these key points. As we previously said, we are still willing to reopen our communication channel and collaborate with you guys.
We would also love to debate all these topics in an open community call, so that everyone can share their thoughs in a more dynamic way. Can we arrange this @tangle?
We are all looking for the best for Sushi here.
PD: Not directly related to the proposal, but it was not a good gesture to post and pin the proposal from the official twitter account. Official accounts should not be biased, just like in politics, it’s illegal to use a country’s official budget or communication channels for specific party propaganda.
7 Likes
The “who is Neil” comment is particularly funny considering we’ve chatted on the phone & over text 
Happy to share my background here as I’ve shared it in the Sushi discord.
Background of myself:
I run (co-founder/ceo) a venture backed company (Sequoia, Lightspeed, Forum) Bizwise.com
I’ve been doing startups since age 18. Prev founded e-gaming co: https://twitter.com/dreamteamgg?s=21&t=_GOluJjxOxQHi6-F4lcKUA (acquired).
How’d I get on comp committee, I was an independent community member that saw the failed FrogNation merger & decided I’d go help the team recover. Started by solving the Sushi Twitter problem, co-authoring the samurai proposal, solving a bunch of other problems, and then took on collaborating w: the team & building lines of communication with large investors for what is now Sushi 2.0. Ended up having a need for someone to be on the comp committee to get the deal balanced & I was asked to do so since I have startup exp, no competitive conflicts, and had 0 prior affiliation to anyone aside from my nice personal $sushi bag.
I think Sushi 2.0 is a great starting point & from here perhaps opportunities to collaborate exist in the future.
1 Like
There’s a bit more detail in the Roadmap mirror post on allocations of the earmarked Sushi amount by department. Majority of the Sushi that is being allocated to the team members is over 4 years. Budget wise per team, there really isn’t much expenses beside contributor pay. There’s no servers or anything like that running, so costs are generally low / nothing for most months. Some of the biggest hits expense wise will be from audits, but we won’t need as many audits as happened last year since majority of the big pieces of the system have been audited already.
Pasting the additional details on the comp stuff here:
Sushi Org:
- Annual salaried budget for retained contributors + roles we are looking to immediately fill: 5,750,000.00 USDC .
- Compensation tied to 2 year vested sushi: 1m $SUSHI .
- Compensation tied to 4 year vested Sushi: 1.341m $SUSHI
- Compensation tied to 1 time “signing bonus”: 115,000 $SUSHI
- Performance based compensation (roadmap deliverables &/or price strike): 2m $SUSHI
Projected Salary Spend By Department (retained + immediate future hiring needs)
Engineering : 2,468,000 USDC annual
Design : 624,000 USDC annual
Marketing : 288,000 USDC annual
BD : 430,000 USDC annual
Shoyu : 1,032,000 USDC annual
Samurai : 480,000 USDC annual (from Samurai v2 governance mandate)
Product : 200,000 USDC annual
Advisory : Hourly rate < $100/hr, invoiced on a monthly basis until a subsequent proposal with formal KPIs and advisory compensation is approved by the community.
Long term outlook, I think the growth phase is over tbh (for majority of crypto market as well). Team is committed to the build phase now, but we have to do it a smart way that we don’t introduce new vulnerabilities and suffer any large exploits while we get all these systems in place and fully migrated over from the legacy stuff. Personally I don’t think the ve model makes sense for where we are at this current moment in time, but I also don’t think these kind of things are up to us and should be a decision by the community and token holders. Ve models are easy to implement, it’s 300 lines of code, but the hard part is simulating what happens when this type of model is introduced and game planning before implementation on what would need to happen if the ve implementation doesn’t work out and sushi price gets hit even harder. Additionally serious research and consideration into the hard cap needs to happen before the ve could even be considered in my opinion as well.
We are pretty aligned that with Kanpai, we can use the optionality of the % that gets directed to the Treasury to further boost it’s reserves and support additional investments into our product growth. Though personally I think this allocation of Sushi covers majority of the costs over the next few years while we build out more.
2 Likes
Hey Neil,
I, personally, had a 15min call with you when I tried to approach the team to share the Wonderland proposal.
After our 15 min call, I’m still not able to explain to my team how you got a role on the comp committee.
Thanks!
4 Likes
Thanks for responding @Neiltbe.
The community should not sacrifice accountability and transparency for the sake of avoiding process/complexity. We do not think it would be difficult to find willing members and such members do not have to be compensation experts. The Committee just needs to have the resources to engage with compensation experts. All publicly-traded companies have a Compensation Committee that serves the interest of shareholders. It is important to note that (1) management never sits on such committees and (2) board members are not compensation experts - they rely on outside independent advisors (like us) for information and expertise, then make their decisions. We question whether any compensation experts were involved in crafting these packages.
C3 is happy to either sit on the Committee or be engaged directly by the community-elected Committee.
In the past, Sushi has disclosed most if not all of their compensation packages. If scams are of high concern, then perhaps Sushi can publish compensation packages for the roles, and not share information about the individual.
With all that being said, we do think the right path is the formation of a Compensation Committee, but it should be majority community-elected. Leaders can engage with the Comp. Committee, but don’t necessarily need a vote.
We would recommend a separate proposal that outlines a community election process. Then, once formed, the Committee can draft a Charter that outlines its responsibilities, scope, and process. That Charter should be approved by the community.
After a Charter is accepted, the Comp. Committee can work with the community and the contributors to design an effective program for current contributors. Depending on the approved Charter, the compensation plan may need final approval from the community. We like a “belt-and-suspenders” approach to Compensation Governance for protocol leaders where (1) community delegated council/committee drafts initial proposals (ideally with outside experts) and (2) community approves the plan. We also believe, however, that it is important to maintain some flexibility and reduce voter fatigue, so it is reasonable for some responsibilities to be handled solely by the Committee (i.e., no vote necessary). This is why a Charter is important.
We agree that this process may take time. If Sushi needs to reward current contributors sooner rather than later, than it would be reasonable for the community to evaluate the details of the current proposal (like the actual individual pay levels, incentive plan goals, etc.), and then form the community-elected Committee / Charter later.
2 Likes
A portion of the contributors that worked on sushi, when Maki had the authority to oversee the development. The same team ended up grid-locked, when such authority disappeared.
Wee bit low for a team with a proven track record. Could have a courtesy to make the strike price at ATH.
Your sources will dry out faster than morning dew, when markets go turmoil. No amount of diversification within the current paradigm can salvage it.
Community has voted for market wages, once the situation became known. The team was silent about it for quite a while.
It seems your idea of solving current issues is just to throw more money at it for the hope that it will work this time. Or maybe you don’t hope at all. Because your monetary reward is baked in regardless?
No one doubts the need of fair compensation. But so far you advocate to give you more money years in advance with 0 strategy of improvement, all the while threatening that “we will leave if you don’t”.
It is a profound sadness, that the team ended up following in the footsteps of Frog Nation, especially after the miracle that Daniele got ousted.
Honestly, gents. Just propose to spend the whole treasury at once. Tie a ‘performance bonus’ to every dollar sushi price rises from now on. Even if the rise is just an echo from general market.
Throw a good $9k+ dinner for Arca and w/e whale you’ll need to whip the votes from. I’m sure they would oblige.
2 Likes
This, I don’t even question it. 100% no compensation experts were involved in this.
This again, I’ve seen numerous conflicts of interest situations with sushi (Bitdao self bonus comes to mind). Kind of a shame that after all that’s happened sushi team hasn’t yet learned to avoid such scenarios.
2 Likes
Re: the Compensation Committee I put this in the proposal discussion channel on discord but also I think relevant for here:
The first company i worked for had a compensation committee comprised of maybe 5 people. 1 was the CEO (largest shareholder), 3 others were from the company that owned a majority stake. Its not unusual to have insiders be a part of a compensation comittee so long as it doesnt create a conflict of interest which I dont necessarily see here as the compensation committee doesnt control things like xSUSHI profit share etc. However i do think that the treasurer should be on the compensation committee so its odd to me that @JiroOno was not mentioned as someone on there. The treasurer / CFO of an organizations fundamental purpose is the finances of that organization, and the largest expense is payroll
We have established that a compensation comittee is necessary so the next step is to gather indications of interest and then just vote on who should be on it and what the terms are. thats how it should be IMO.
Personally, at a minimum, i think it should be comprised of:
- CFO / Treasurer
- 1-2 external stakeholders (Alameda, Arca, Boring, or some other large stakeholders that are interested) … this acts as a community speedbump to ensure things make sense from an abuse standpoint (can rotate / go thru governance to confirm position)
- 1-2 other senior person(s) with product specific expertise
3 Likes
I agree with the analysis and drawbacks of the ve model described here
2 Likes
It’s been a busy couple of days but it’s great to see many positive comments on this proposal, it’s important though to address the concerns by @Graine.
First of all, I totally understand why there is concern @Graine. I worked with Sushi from 2020 up until Today, consistently, and despite the literal circus which was last year, somehow came out the other side. I’ll be totally frank about the situation though, there was literally zero accountability. Workload was consistently piled on top of those which took their role in Sushi as a serious job, I believe that I’ve always done this, but it became exhausting and to the point where I had planned to leave early this year.I’m glad I changed my mind though, because many left before me, and what was left was a lean team of loyal hardworking contributors to the project. Having said that though, it’s extremely important that this pattern of unaccountability cannot continue in the future, with current & future hires, and especially at this point in time. The accountability meachnism initially may not be perfect, but far better than nothing at all, and I fully expect it to evolve over time with input from people like you and the rest of the community.
Now financials, again we have a similar situation, fiscal responsibility was non-existent. I repeatedly stressed that we bring an accountant on-board, and pay close attention to the finances. At the time I was simply scolded by leadership as a fear monger and that there was nothing to worry about, but I can do math, I knew where we were heading. I believe for the first time in the history of Sushi, we have strong fincial responsibility within the team, and actions taken over the past few months have prevented a catastrophy. There’s another aspect to this too, previously leadership made countless attempts to siphon money from the protocol, I personally stood up against this repeatedly, because it was both wrong, inappropriate, and irresponsible. My only regeret is that I didn’t do more and earlier.
Transparency, or lack of it, is again something that bothered me a huge amount. It something which we immediately began to tackle this year by making public many internal documents, dropping the idea of “Sushi Internal Proposals” which were always a bizzare idea to me, and begining the process of making Sushi transparent AF. It’s easy to say, “it’s all on-chain”, we need to do more, and will do.
A final note, I believe that the Sushi Team is in the best place now than it has been in a very long time, the rotten bad apples have left the orginisation, and despite having to still bear the brunt for their actions, we’re commited to ensuring the Sushi experiment is a sussefull one and doesn’t end on a bad note.
12 Likes