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 (11)
Requested
Proposal Passed
Dear team,
Unfortunately, I'll have to vote against this proposal on Kusama. My reasons are as follows:
My assessment was made looking at the above points collectively. I wish you all the best with the referendum as my vote is comparatively small.
Regards,
@paradox
Thank you for giving us the chance to reply to your argumentation.
Well, have you thought about how much money goes into Statemint, BridgeHub, Collectives? We claim that we aspire to solve an equally important problem if not more important. But we have a significantly lower budget. So, we think we really don't ask for too much. The question is if you see value in what we aim to deliver
It doesn't come out of nowhere. We built a team and we pay salaries. We can't just postpone salaries and hope for better times. Of course, we can ramp down - and that's what we'll have to do if we cannot secure continuous funding. And this may jeopardize what we have built so far. I think Keynes is still not out of fashion when he stated that public funding should increase in times of depression. That's what the treasury already does in a way. And we believe it is what it should be doing. The treasury can recover by design
Big ambitions usually don't show quick results. Still: Show me any other parachain that has made a higher impact on people's everyday lives: 150-300 people using our system at least once per week to prove their personhood and collect community income or buy local goods in Zurich using that income. This may seem little on a global scale. But our protocol has a local focus and you should measure local penetration. And consider that for some of our users, Encointer makes an impact on their quality of life. Having 44 Leu (!=CHF) more to spend every 10 days makes a difference to some (this value comes from LEU's acceptance point's commitments, not from Encointer's funds). Moreover, most of our users didn't know about Polkadot before.
We're looking forward to seeing Encointer's new proof method that will allow conference, hackathon, etc participants to testify for each others existence. Our hope is that the easier on-boarding will increase turn out in the app which may spawn more regional POP clusters, like the Green Bay Dollar. I'm not sure many voters appreciate the time it takes to develop and test features. It might be good to go on AAG and explain how long it takes to develop features so people understand why it's so expensive and slow.
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