Encointer Lease2 Treasury Proposal 2/2
This is the second of two planned treasury proposals for the current lease of the Encointer common-good parachain. The first share for Q1 and Q2 2023 had been approved by Kusama OpenGov in Dec 2022.
Since the previous proposal, significant changes have occurred around Kusama's Treasury. The implementation of OpenGov resulted in unsustainable spending levels, leading to a restrictive voter backlash aimed at safeguarding the remaining funds in the KSM Treasury. Considering the remaining funds available, Encointer recognizes the need to adapt its funding strategy. Instead of solely proposing to the KSM Treasury, we will now extend our proposals to the DOT Treasury as well, supported by the assertion that Encointer benefits not only Kusama but the entire Dotsama ecosystem. As DOT treasury proposals experience congestion and OpenGov is soon to be implemented on Polkadot, it is imperative to secure uninterrupted funding for our team and prevent any disruptive downramp-upramp scenarios. Therefore, we propose the following measures:
- This proposal to the KSM treasury shall cover our expenses for July and Aug 2023
- As soon as OpenGov lands on Polkadot, we shall submit a proposal to the
DOT treasury to cover our expenses from Sept onwards
The amount of the proposed spend (1.) is CHF 213’000 ≃ USD 234’000
A growing part of KSM voters is in favor of retroactive funding by the treasury. Encointer claims that enforcing retroactive funding for common goods has significant downsides: Asking teams to front the costs themselves in cases where there is no return on investment will keep those teams small and impacts low. Besides Encointer’s established track record, we’d like to emphasize that the founder of Encointer, Alain Brenzikofer, has worked for Encointer without pay from the beginning, which amounts to well above a person-year by now. So, if you insist on retroactive funding, please consider approving this proposal on the grounds of Alain’s pre-investment.
Comments (15)
Hello, we think the Encointer project is very promising. It's something totally different, than other parachains offers, so we think it's worthy to support your treasury proposal. Actually we even discussed to form a Czech community in some not-so distant future. It might improve social engagement in our local social bubble and motivate people to be part of a community.
@pmensik
Thank you for your supportive comment. Please reach out to us regarding a new community in Czech Republic
Irrespective of how treasury funding has changed, it is useful to hear teams be self-critical - with that in mind it would be useful to hear all of things you don't think are working or are going well - there are many (that's to be expected).
Would you say Encointer's plan for adoption is ahead or behind your anticipated schedule?
Do you think that current approaches to onboarding people / communities is ineffective?
With these issues in mind what help you would like to receive or hope to inspire?
Retroactive is just one model of funding - it has only recently been normalised. There is no reason other structures could not or should not emerge. Are there any that you would consider better suited to common goods?
Further, how do you the encointer team define "common goods" - both within the context of this ecosystem and more broadly? (politically, economically and culturally)
Does Alain take a salary from Integritee and how does the relationship between the two networks relate? It would be useful to outline the structure of the networks with some financial disclosures in the public interest, without it context is missing.
@mrb
There is no single answer here. Details in our reports. But in all brevity:
We believe that we onboarded more active users doing meaningful interactions with our platform and using it in their everyday lives than most other parachains so far. Many of these users had no prior exposure to crypto. Those users, however, are concentrated around Zurich, Switzerland where the Leu community is located. Our success rate in onboarding new communities globally cannot yet satifsfy. We certainly need new strategies to lower the threshold without compromising on quality. We may need to try entirely new ways for global user engagement..
We'd like to encourage people to try it out themselves, wherever they live. For this, we could use help with exposure: Share the word about what we do and why. And we're again reaching out to NGO's to help with field work in the global south.
This is a very interesting question indeed, but it merits its own thread, maybe in the forum?
Alain does take a salary from Integritee, which he co-founded and where he acts as CTO. None of that salary covers any of Alain's part-time work for Encointer. The two networks (Integritee and Encointer) have an overlap in personnel, also with @clangenb and @mosonyi but their budgets are strictly separated. To understand the history of the two projects: Alain designed Encointer in 2018 and included a solution for privacy and scalability. That solution was of more general interest than just Encointer's and became independentl, first as SubstraTEE (by Supercomputing Systems), then Integritee. Luckily, the mentioned devs stayed loyal to both projects and synnergies (especially regarding know-how) can be leveraged.
What financial disclosures would you like to see? Our proposal has all the numbers already about Encointers income, expenses and liquidity. Do you have specific questions about financials?