Posting some numbers from some basic digging that I ended up doing:
Steward Salaries (this term)
Category
Lead Steward
Second Steward
Third Steward
Meta-Governance
$4,000
``
$3,000
Ecosystem
$6,500
$5,500
$4,000
Public Goods
$4,500
$4,500
$4,500
Steward Benefits ($ENS)
In EP 4.4.2, Meta-Gov requested 52,300 ENS tokens out of which
40,000 ENS tokens were distributed to the stewards themselves
Each steward except Nick got 5,000 ENS
No other meaningful tokens were distributed to developers or contributors from the Meta-Gov pod (balance roughly 14,000 ENS); Ecosystem WG internally gave some teams 1,000 ENS
This is an increase of over 10x from previous ENS token allocations to stewards
noway, so you are saying that theyâve distributed 40kENS as compensation for the previous term?
I donât know about you folks, but this doesnât read as Steward compensation. Also I read though this thread again, people were questioning very carefully what the compensation would be, for example this here
and suddenly it turns out there is a âsecret bonusâ of 40kENS.
Also I have a question about conflict of interest here, at the time of writing @simona_pop@Coltron.eth@5pence.eth@slobo.eth are effectively voting in favour of own compensation. So much for COI management, how about best practices and reclusing from COI decision making @nick.eth ?
I know that technically they are voting for metagov compensation, but ârising tideâ raises all boats, arenât they supposed to recognise that there is conflict of interest and recluse themselves from that decision making?
Iâm also going to vote NO on Public good budget, at this stage I donât fully understand what is going on with money part there, maybe there are some hidden compensation there as well.
Thatâs what the blockchain says. Unvested 40,000 ENS tokens totalling $1 million today. If someone wants to go ahead, they can check who sold and who kept the voting power. I will skip that otherwise Iâll be accused of attacking individuals instead of talking on policy.
Thereâs no secret here. The data youâre mentioning is available in previous termâs forum posts, budgets, funding requests, discussed on weekly open Metagov calls, and also clearly mentioned above in this thread. (And, itâs onchain)
This is incorrect. The Term 4 Metagov group undertook a task to make this data consistent, transparent, and trackable. Thatâs why youâre able to find what did. Prior to Term 4, these processes were opaque and difficult to track, so youâre not finding the data.
But I believe this has already been described in the various linked posts from prior Metagov groups.
I understand the analogy, except your posts donât ask questions or seek to understand, they just contain various inaccurate supposition that Iâm forced to correct.
Previous budget clearly indicates that there is Steward + Secretary Compensation and other items, one of which was Governance and included c.52kENS tokens.
The description for Governance Steward + Secretary Compensation reads as follows - Working Group Steward and Secretary compensation totalling $276,000 USDC.
The description for Governance reads as follows - Fee reimbursements and initiatives related to reducing friction in the governance process. This can also include $ENS distributed in order to lower barriers to the governance proposal process.
This was the budget everyone voted for and approved. You canât just take money from one category of spending and throw it into another one, especially into own compensation. Itâs called misappropriation of funds.
By the very least this money should be refunded, because they were never approved by the community.
I object to this arbitrary spending of money and would like to invite all delegates with common sense to reject this budget as well.
Thanks, yes. Weâve been working diligently to do this very thing since the beginning of the term. It was one of the items this termâs Metagov stewards identified as a gap that needed to be a priority initiative.
The draft on it has just about been finalized and you should see it soon. Iâm sorry we werenât able to publish it ahead of this discussion.
I appreciate the participation in this discussion. I know your intentions are to help protect the DAO from abuse or fraud.
If you donât mind Iâll step back from this conversation a bit to avoid it seeming like a debate, but Iâll try diligently to provide any specific data thatâs requested on DAO rules, process, or history.
Please note how nothing in the description of âGovernanceâ suggests the distribution of 40,000 $ENS tokens as part of âSteward + Secretary Compensationâ. âSteward + Secretary Compensationâ is a totally separate category of expenses in this table.
Here we see 40,000 $ENS being distributed to 8 stewards 88 days ago. At current value, thatâs $891,600 of unvested $ENS tokens being shared as compensation to 8 stewards for 6 months of part-time work. This is beyond the $276,000 USDC that was approved by the DAO in the 4.4.2 vote.
Now I see the DAO is being asked to approve another 45,000 $ENS to be distributed to stewards over the next six months of part-time work. This is currently valued at $1,003,050 and goes beyond the $294,000 USDC in âbaseâ compensation to stewards for 6 months of part-time work.
I see this new distribution of $ENS has been suggested by the ENS Metagov working group. However, the DAO is only now being asked to approve this expenditure as part of this 5.4.1. social vote that is currently ongoing.
Hereâs a summary of what stewards are asking for as compensation for their part-time work over a 1 year period:
10.4. The Meta-Governance working group are responsible for defining standards for fair compensation (âCompensation Guidelinesâ).
10.5. The Compensation Guidelines shall be defined prior to the Nomination Window for each term and can only take effect for the following term.
Exactly, the way they were defined in previous budget as follows - Steward + Secretary Compensation reads as follows - Working Group Steward and Secretary compensation totalling $276,000 USDC.
It doesnât say that Stewards will be compensated in ENS token at all, thatâs the budget that was approved at a time.
Even if we stretch this situation and see who sold their tokens to test the assumption that âitâs for voting onlyâ. Iâm not exactly Ethereum forensics specialist, so please correct me if Iâm wrong, and I donât have time to do everyone now, but here is what I found out.
First I want to give major props to @James@5pence.eth@AvsA@accessor.eth@SpikeWatanabe.eth@estmcmxci and @NameSys for actively participating in this discussion. It is REALLY HARD to talk about money things like this in an open forum. Honestly, this is one of the HARDEST parts of DAOing and I want to applaud everyone for keeping a cool head and powering thru.
I only quoted this section of James.ethâs post, but it is absolutely worth reading the whole thing and I wholeheartedly agree.
The proposed ENS rewards for stewards are poorly structured.
Honestly, ~$300k USD a year for this work is a bit high, but not so bad. The DAO has an insane amount of capital and responsibility and it is important that the stewards are focused firmly on ENSâs success and are hard to bribe from outside forces. They should be paid well!
The tough part is that I donât think all the stewards are firmly focused ONLY on ENS, a few have other part time gigs and that makes this payment too high⌠but itâs ok, I wouldnât vote no just on that aspect alone.
Then there is this 5k in ENS, which is another ~$100k USD if priced today and IMO $ENS is going to the moon, so that tips the scale⌠This is just too much to pay part time contributors, even as stewards. The ENS really needs be vested just like it is for the other Contributors and Developers.
I couldnât agree more. Itâs a small, but an important change. If that 5k ENS was locked for a year and then streamed for 3 years, it would be ideal. Giving it as liquid tokens doesnât achieve the stated objectives of giving governance to stewards.
I would love to see stewards have more voting power as a separate proposal, it shouldnât have anything to do with giving stewards ENS as compensation. We have delegation in this DAO; having ENS that is delegated to stewards just makes sense. Maybe 30k ENS per steward?
I would love to see each steward be paid well for their position but $400k (which could easily become 500-800k) for part time work is a hard pill to swallow, especially when the stated purpose of giving 5000 liquid ENS per steward is governance. This is the wrong way to achieve that stated objective and it taints the whole proposal.
I have to vote against this, but would vote yes if the ENS to stewards was simply vested.
Can I ask you to be more specific in your objection?
The structures Avsa put in place are fairly elegant in that these amounts are decided before the term begins, to avoid situations exactly like this.
Is your objection that these values were set last term, or is your objection that the current Metagov group is executing on the guidance set last term? Or is your objection that these were the amounts set and used last term?
I think everyone agrees that there should be vesting, no one has objected to that. All guidance being given for the future includes that.
The current conversation is whether or not the existing Metagov group should execute on the guidance set last term, by the process set in the proposals that defined these things.
I guess I would ask you another question. Say we adopt exactly what you describe. Could that then be re-litigated just like this is in two more months if the token street price changes again one way or another? How many times per term can the guidance be changed? And how does that impact the human beings youâve asked to serve under these terms?
We can always improve and do better. Nothing we decide or implement will be perfect, but shouldnât we be focusing on future policy to build a better stronger system going forward, learning and iterating, as opposed to going backward to change previous decisions?
Doesnât mention the salary or compensation amounts, their distributions or even the link to the recommendation article. The EP 4.4.2 comments clearly have Katherine saying that they wonât disclose the salaries and compensations and all stewards liked it. That says everything about the inclination of stewards to divulge their salaries and compensations. Now that those numbers have been shown, the statement has changed to âthe numbers were always on chainâ. Goal posts have moved a lot and multiple times in this thread alone.
I remember that. And itâs also one of the reasons that I proposed changes to the governance. Remember I wasnât a steward back then.
The current snapshot is about budget only. These funds will not go out until the end of the semester (which was the end of the term before we extended it last year). The second half will only be sent in December. Itâs impossible to know where the price will be then, which is why it doesnât make sense to talk about it like this now.
Again, I want to reiterate: the current metagov stewards agree that in our interpretation of the comp rules mean that we cannot make comp decisions about ourselves and can only follow the decisions made in 2023. This will not change. If you want that to change the proper procedure is not to vote NO on this proposal, but rather to make a separate proposal asking for changes in ENS comp: including vesting. It only takes 10k votes to submit a proposal, which many of you have.
This is also bad and misleading data @Griff. I think you pulled that number from some of the other emotional or misleading posts in this thread.
No steward is being given 300k USD per year. A steward gets 4k USDC per month. Thatâs 48k USDC per year. (youâre conflating totals for the entire steward group)
In addition, they are awarded an $ENS token distribution of 5k tokens per 6 months. Do the math, and itâs actually lower than what you say youâre okay with.
What impact, if I may ask for the second time? Did they consider the impact on others when others would see stewards giving themselves 6-figures while the developer teams are still maxed out at $10-50,000? Do the developers not make a contribution to ENS?; that thought went straight over everyone when money was flying around.
Sidenote: People are doing their research on this. It is better if you donât accuse them of attacking you or getting emotional. Numbers are solid and on chain. You are gaslighting people by telling them that they are misleading others or lying or getting emotional. Stick to policy.
As Iâve been researching potential grant opportunities for my own project, I stumbled upon discussions related to budget allocations such as this one.
I couldnât help but notice that there is an imbalance when it comes to the allocation of resources. From my understanding, the salary of a steward reaches up to a 25k salary per month compared to entire teams that are working within a 10k grant budget.
As someone interested in the communityâs success, I think itâs important to address this imbalance and have a more in-depth discussion about the prioritization of resources to ensure that both stewards are fairly compensated for their contributions and that grants are allocated equitably.
