Budget allocation for current operations: May–July 2023 (#2)

Governance
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Abstract

The Onyx DAO proposes to allocate a budget for operational costs and marketing and promotional development.

Discussion

After the failure of budget proposal OIP-12, we gathered feedback and decided to pay more attention to marketing and cover only essential developmental support.

We also will give more details about why the development part is so important and should not be underestimated, though we’ve cut the positions of a Frontend developer and a Smart contract developer to reduce outlay. Positions related to marketing and promotional development moved to the marketing section.

There is an agreement in place with LDA Capital. Any tokens released from tokens to LDA Capital will not go for sale on the free market but rather exchanged via OTC deal with LDA Capital.

Further details as to the agreement in place with LDA can be found here — Onyx DAO Treasury & LDA Funding Details | by Onyx Protocol | Mar, 2023 | OnyxProtocol.

Development and Infrastructure support

To maintain and develop the Onyx Protocol further, it requires a team to do so. If there isn’t a team on hand to do so, then expensive freelance contractors are usually brought into web3 teams. To fix a bug, or change something in the UI, Onyx has to pay contractors—it’s more expensive than having a dedicated team.

Hiring developers is not something that makes new features or app integrations/development happen immediately—it takes time to get familiar with infrastructure and the code base. It still makes sense to continue to use contractors at the start because they are familiar with the program already and can fix a bug in time.

The idea is to prepare and integrate full time developers into Onyx’s development team, and to save on product maintenance, and future development.

Without a development budget, there is a risk of system failure, and curtailing Onyx services.

To reduce costs at the start, we’ll not hire a Frontend developer and a Smart contract developer, and hire System administrator at a part time.

  • Fullstack developer ~6,000 USD/month
  • System administrator and security engineer — part time $3,000 USD/month
  • Contractors ~18,000 USD for 3 month
  • Infrastructure support. Includes servers, IPFS, blockchain nodes ~5,000 USD/month

Total for 3 months: 60,000 USD ~37,500,000 XCN.

It’s significantly lower outlay than in the previous proposal, targeting it will cover Onyx Protocol maintenance for this period as well as development.

Marketing and community

Alex and Sega have already started discussions with potential partners, and soon you’ll see the announcements. To leverage business development and marketing, we are going to hire new team members to aid in the development in an Ambassador programme and concurrent protocol promotional initiatives:

  • Head of BD Assistant, Community Lead ~2,000 USD/month
  • Designer ~3,000 USD/month
  • Community managers 6 x 700 USD/month
  • Ambassadors 6 x 300 USD/month

To further lower outlay, gas refunds for voting will come from the current gas refund programme.

Marketing and Promotional Activity

  • Social promotions and visibility ~3,000/month
  • Publications ~10,000/month
  • Merchandise for partners ~10,000 for 3 months
  • Influencers and external AMAs ~5,000/month

Total for 3 months: 85,000 USD ~ 53,125,000 XCN.

Additionally, we’ll allocate 6,875,000 XCN for initiatives paid in XCN.

Total for marketing and community: 60,000,000 XCN.

Summary

Total is 97,500,000 XCN compared to 115,000,000 XCN in the previous budget. Also, most expenses are going for marketing.

This budget is accounted for 3 months—May, June, July. The team has chosen a short period of planning because of an ever evolving landscape. It will be reviewed quarterly and the next budget would be proposed before the end of July.

We are opening a discussion of the proposal within the community, and expect to deploy it next week for an official vote.

2 Likes
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I strongly disagree with needing to reduce the development budget. I understand that this is a logical adjustment from the last failed proposal but we need to have our priorities set as a community.

Now is the time to be building up the protocol.

This takes developers to do and more than just one. Now that the roadmap has been released everyone can see there is much more work remaining and the faster we get the work done the faster we solidify our place as the premier DeFi ecosystem

If we can be the first to build the features on our roadmap and do it well, we will easily be a top 20 project in the crypto space.

If we choose to sit back and prioritize enticing people with our current product, I honestly think it would be a low value return for the effort. The product as it currently stands has absurd gas fees and very niche appeal. Window shoppers and fair weather speculators will not increase our revenue, we need participants that add value to the network because they are excited about the use cases. Imagine how massive the demand and hype would be if were were one of the first to have legit offerings for real worlds assets (like deeds, vehicle titles, etc…), cross chain capability, and our own layer 2 **let that sink in :slightly_smiling_face:

Back to the topic at hand:

The budget as proposed should go ahead in order to get the baseline of the marketing and business efforts fully functioning. Raising awareness about what we are trying to achieve and building a strong global community around it can only help strengthen our position.

Thank you for taking the time to read this if you made it this far, I will follow up on the development team/efforts I would like to see in another post.

If ever there was a time to spend our DAO reserves to do something for the benefit of the Onyx community, the time is now. We must set the trajectory now if we are to succeed.

2 Likes
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Hi, Thank you for your feedback.

I agree that the development budget allows the platform to keep up with the times. Moreover, there is a delay between hiring developers and providing new features.

Nevertheless, the previous proposal, in which development spending exceeded marketing, failed. The community decides. Among few constructive feedback, I understand members want to cut development costs this time.

Right, we can start from more of a marketing direction and then consider extending the development part.

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Btw who are contractors ? 18k / 3 month

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Well overall it looks good and hopefully passes this time . if protocol will start generating good revenue these cost will be pinch of salt.

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Hopefully this will be approved and team goes to work with full force

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Contractors are people who build the current version of the Onyx Platform.
To fix a bug, or change something in the UI, Onyx has to pay contractors—it’s more expensive than having a dedicated team.

2 Likes
8

Hello.
I am a bit scared to read that we rely on new contractors every time a bug needs to be fixed or so. So a smart contract dev can just come, upgrade the code and add some malicious code, then proceed to rug?

I also don’t understand why our mysterious whales on XCN do not want dev costs added to the platform.
I think you first need to define a roadmap before justifying dev cost :

  • For example, extending ONYX protocol to arbitrum or any new chain (so just forking the whole code, with new initiatives etc). And be careful with forking, contractor devs usually introduce malicious code and rug the platform (cf MerlinDex fork, audited by Certik that missed 2 malicious lines allowing the contractor dev to rug all the TVL)
  • Adding markets or new features etc

Those can justify dev cost. But I don’t see how just maintaining existing smart contract justify a high dev cost.

Also is my understanding right that if this proposal pass, we will likely be using LDA capital to swap?

1 Like
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Hi,

I’m also scared. That’s why I want Onyx to have its own involved developers. It will not happen at once, especially since the previous budget was not approved.

It may not be LDA, but still OTC—it is supposed not to affect XCN price.

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Why won’t be LDA if they have committed 40m? Who gets to decide whether it’s LDA or not?

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Because LDA provides not the best conditions.
I decide, choosing the best option for Onyx.

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Can you clarify what you mean by best conditions?
If we have 40m agreement and are not using it to fund the team, this doesn’t make any sense.

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The best conditions are most USDT for less XCN.
LDA agreement doesn’t make sense in case we have a better offer. If not, LDA agreement makes sense.

This discussion is about allocating XCN, not how to swap XCN to USDT.

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Yes agreed for USDT for XCN.

Yes but team funding should be done in stablecoin, not in XCN.
If we don’t use LDA funds to pay for funding then what will we use them for?

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Hi Alex,

First of all I appreciate the work that’s being done at Onyx and I’m tracking the project since it started operating as separate entity apart from Chain. I believe that development,. operations and marketing should go hand in hand and for the initial phase project like Onyx, the development is super important.

I think the people who can voluntarily contribute to the different parts of Onyx’s functions can help in this time. I’ve recently graduated in Global Business Management studies and hold bachelors degree in ICT. In addition I also have an experience in digital marketing. If you’re interested then I’m willing to provide any kind of help in my capacity in relevant sector without any pay. I’ve always been optimistic about Blockchain space I would consider this as giving respect back to it. Let me know your thoughts.

3 Likes
16

Some Noobs really thinks that project is run on air without budget . ufff

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Hello,

Thank you for supporting Onyx and introducing yourself!

Soon we’ll run an Ambassador programme. To join, email sega@onyx.org — Sega, the Head of Business Development.

1 Like
18

This is too good . More power to you

19

Vote! OIP-14: Budget allocation for current operations Onyx Protocol

1 Like
20

That’s great to know! surely I’ll be onto it!

1 Like