BIP-33: Beanstalk Farms H1 2023 Budget

Proposed: February 1, 2023

Status: Passed

Link: Snapshot


Proposer

Beanstalk Farms

Proposer Wallet: 0x4fe7788deb22c548e57c4e95a365600ed377265b

Summary

Introduction

Beanstalk Farms is an independent decentralized development organization of core contributors working on Beanstalk. Beanstalk Farms has historically been funded by the Beanstalk DAO and proposed quarterly budget BIPs that mint Beans to cover operating expenses and compensate contributors.

In response to the Q1 budget BIP failing to reach quorum, Beanstalk Farms redesigned the budget to cover the first half of 2023 (as opposed to just Q1) to enable core contributors to work towards the following goals:

Q4 2022 Spending and Output

At the beginning of Q4 on October 1, 2022, the Beanstalk Farms Multisig (BFM) held 160,702 Beans and 190,094 USDC.

The Q4 2022 Beanstalk Farms budget of 1,000,000 additional Beans was minted per BIP-25 on October 5, 2022 to fund protocol development and support initiatives.

As of December 31, 2022, the BFM had 419,577 Beans and 139,407 USDC, resulting in a quarterly spend of 741,125 Beans and 50,687 USDC. As of January 31, 2023, the balances in the BFM were 203,194 Beans and 139,012 USDC.

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Beanstalk Farms monthly operations reports:

The output of Beanstalk Farms since the beginning of Q4 2022 includes (but is not limited to):

Security

On-chain Development

Middleware

Frontend + Design

Content, Community and Marketing

Current Organization

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Anticipated H1 2023 Hiring

In order to execute on Beanstalk Farms' ambitious on-chain ecosystem roadmap, there is significant development work to be done at the protocol level and from a tooling perspective, both for developers and for users. In order to get there in H1 2023, Beanstalk Farms intends to additionally hire (at least):

Anticipated H1 2023 Output

Security

On-chain Development

See this page for a detailed on-chain roadmap.

Middleware

Frontend + Design

Content, Community and Marketing

Budget

Q1 2023

We propose a total of 400,000 Beans are minted to fund Beanstalk Farms through the end of Q1 2023. Combined with funds unspent at the end of Q4 2022, this results in a total available Q1 2023 budget of 819,575 Beans and 139,407 USDC.

Beanstalk Farms is spending approximately 260,000 Beans worth of value per month based on a Q4 2022 average. The Q1 budget, as illustrated below, focuses on fulfilling ongoing operational requirements and does not provide a surplus of funds.

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Q2 2023

We also propose a total of 950,000 Beans are minted to fund Beanstalk Farms through the end of Q2 2023, in line with a run rate of 260,000 Beans per month (780,000 Beans per quarter) plus 170,000 Beans primarily intended to enable Beanstalk Farms to hire 3-4 more engineers—see Anticipated H1 2023 Hiring. It is better to have budget Beans that can be rolled over into the following quarter’s budget than to not have enough Beans to fund important initiatives. A larger budget also allows Beanstalk Farms to offer development grants to fund various projects in the ecosystem.

Minting the Q2 budget in advance reduces the friction involved in funding Beanstalk Farms. A suitable governance structure will still allow the DAO the opportunity to withhold Q2 funding at its discretion—see Governance.

Audit Fund

We propose a total of 500,000 Beans are minted to create the Audit Fund. The Audit Fund will be solely dedicated to funding audits of Beanstalk and Beanstalk ecosystem code. The Audit Fund is expected to be used to cover future Halborn audits, a Code4rena audit competition and to potentially engage another smart contract auditing firm.

The Audit Fund will be custodied by the BFM. All spending from the Audit Fund will require approval through a Beanstalk Farms Budget Proposal (BFBP), and the balance of the Audit Fund will be reported in the Beanstalk Farms Operations Reports.

Custody

The funds for Beanstalk Farms budget and the Audit Fund will be custodied by the BFM wallet with keys held by various community members and Publius. We propose the following signers and backup signers for the BFM:

BFM Signers (all current signers)

The following serve as backup signers for the BFM, in no particular order:

Governance

Beanstalk Farms will continue to utilize the processes for Beanstalk Farms Committee Proposals (BFCP) and Beanstalk Farms Budget Proposals (BFBP), per the processes outlined in BFP-81 and amended in BIP-25. The Beanstalk Farms Committee (BFC) is responsible for oversight of other Beanstalk Farms contributors. More information on the BFCP and BFBP process can be found here and here.

We propose that the minimum threshold for which a BFBP-C is required be changed from transactions valued at >10,000 Beans or USDC to transactions valued at >25,000 Beans or USDC.

We propose that the BFM be able to vote on governance proposals using its Stalk at the discretion of the BFC. The BFM will not vote on BFCPs due to the conflict of interest. Note that not all budget Beans are Deposited—see Incentive Alignment.

We propose that the DAO can propose a BOP to disallow Beanstalk Farms from using the 950,000 Beans minted for use in Q2 upon the completion of Q1 (end of March 2023). This preserves the DAO's ability to withhold funding on a quarterly cadence, but reduces the friction involved with funding Beanstalk Farms by minting the Q2 budget upfront. If such a BOP were proposed and approved by the DAO, Beanstalk Farms will burn the 950,000 Beans minted for Q2.

Responsibilities

Beanstalk Farms values all feedback from the DAO. However, due to limited resources, it is not feasible to prioritize every request. Beanstalk Farms prioritizes work that it deems the highest leverage contributions that it can provide to Beanstalk given current bandwidth. If a request is not taken on, Beanstalk Farms may still offer guidance or assistance to help the community address the issue in other ways, such as helping facilitate direct and permissionless contributions through governance or other organizations in the Beanstalk ecosystem.

BFC members will make every effort to attend DAO meetings regularly and address any questions that arise, but otherwise do not have a duty to respond to specific inquiries within a certain time frame. Ultimately, the BFC and contributors are accountable to the DAO through the selection of BFC members by the DAO in governance.

Initial Allocations

Each new Beanstalk Farms contributor must have a new individual Snapshot proposal, either via BFCP-A or BFBP-A, utilizing the above processes. Current contributors will only require a Snapshot proposal if their pay rate has increased or role/commitment has significantly changed since the terms of the proposal in effect.

A budget of 15,000 Beans per month will be allocated to the community grant program to reward creators of new Beanstalk-related content that focuses on Beanstalk and its role in the broader DeFi ecosystem. Unused Beans in a month will not roll over to subsequent months, including the unused Beans rolled over to date. More information here.

Incentive Alignment

In order to best align the incentives of contributors to Beanstalk with its long term success, Beanstalk Farms will continue using the Deposit compensation structure as described in the Incentive Alignment section of BIP-22.

The BFM will execute a plant transaction when Earned Beans increases the amount distributed by greater than 1% or when a contributor has departed from Beanstalk Farms.

Competitive Pay

Beanstalk Farms recognizes that its ability to pay contributors competitive compensation is essential to Beanstalk’s long-term success. This budget proposal ensures that it can meet or exceed market rates.

Contract Changes

None.

Beans Minted

The init function on the InitMint contract at 0x077495925c17230E5e8951443d547ECdbB4925Bb is called.

We propose a total of 1,850,000 Beans are minted for the budget and the Audit Fund to the BFM address (0x21DE18B6A8f78eDe6D16C50A167f6B222DC08DF7) upon the execution of BIP-33.

Effective

Immediately upon commitment.