BIP-25: Beanstalk Farms Q4 2022 Budget

Proposed: September 28, 2022

Status: Passed

Link: Snapshot

• Proposer
• Summary
• Links
• Quorum
• Goals
• Post-Unpause Q3 Output
• Current Organization
• Anticipated Q4 Output
• Amounts
• Custody
• Snapshot Processes
• Initial Allocations
• Incentive Alignment
• Competitive Pay
• Effective

Proposer

Beanstalk Farms

Summary

• Mint 1,000,000 Beans to fund Beanstalk Farms to retain, grow and support a group of core contributors through the end of Q4 2022.

Links

• BIP-25 GitHub PR
• Gnosis Transaction
• InitBip25 (InitMint) Contract
• GitHub Commit Hash

Quorum

Quorum is a majority of the Stalk supply voting For, or about 28,923,598 Stalk voting For based on the time of proposal.

Goals

Beanstalk Farms designed the Q4 2022 budget to enable core contributors to work towards the following goals:

• Decentralized development: continue to develop a diverse organization without any single points of failure or dependence.
• Focus and flexibility: be able to deliver high quality output in a timely fashion, while having the flexibility to fund and support a wide variety of unique opportunities related to Beanstalk.
• Attracting high quality talent: continue to attract and retain high quality talent, which is critical to the success of Beanstalk.

Post-Unpause Q3 Output

Beanstalk was Unpaused on August 6, 2022 and the Q3 2022 budget of 500,000 Beans was minted on August 17, 2022 to fund protocol development.

239,148 Beans have either been spent or allocated in Q3, leaving 260,852 Beans in the Beanstalk Farms Multisig (BFM) at the end of Q3.

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

• Security
  • Retained Halborn to continually audit Beanstalk, the Beanstalk UI, and other Beanstalk related code;
  • Coordinated with Halborn and the BCM on the implementation of EBIP-0, EBIP-1 and EBIP-2;
  • Organized and proposed the Immunefi Bug Bounty program via BIP-26; and
  • Coordinated with Halborn on the forthcoming Seraph BIP.
• On-chain development
  • Submitted code for the Pod Market V2 to Halborn for audit and made progress towards the launch of the following functionality (all of which are targeted for audit by the end of Q4):
    • Beanstalk Wells (zero fee AMM);
    • Dutch auction for Soil;
    • A generalized Permit system within Beanstalk (i.e., Tractor); and
  • Coordinated with Root on the implementation of:
    • lambda to lambda Converts and a Deposit approval system, both included in BIP-24;
    • A Fungible Deposited Bean Denominated Value ERC-20 Token contract, which is targeted for audit by the end of Q4; and
    • A Seaport fork facet which will facilitate more generalized exchange via Beanstalk, including Pods, Deposits, ERC-20, ERC-721 and ERC-1155 Tokens, which is targeted for audit by the end of Q4.
• Middleware
  • Updated the Bean and Beanstalk subgraphs to support vAPY, Fertilizer, Pod Market and individual Farmer data, among other metrics;
  • Updated the Beanstalk Telegram and Discord bots prior to Replant and have continuously updated them since; and
  • Made hires to begin development on a Beanstalk SDK.
• Frontend + Design
  • Submitted the Beanstalk UI code to Halborn for audit, making a significant step towards open sourcing the front end;
  • Continuously pushed updates to the front end, including the:
    • Swap page;
    • Silo page refactor;
    • Governance page;
    • Wells page (not integrated with data yet);
    • Pod Market graph V1;
    • Forecast page redesign;
    • Several analytics graphs; and
  • Coordinated with Root on the integration of BIP-24 into the front end.
• Content, Community and Marketing
  • Continued improvements and additions to the Farmers’ Almanac, in addition to maintenance;
  • Started a community grant program and issued multiple grants;
  • Hosted twice a week calls with the community and Publius to answer questions about Beanstalk, future plans, etc; and
  • Engaged with marketing firms to land news articles about Beanstalk in crypto-native news publications.

Current Organization

Hired via BFCP-A: Beanstalk Farms Committee Members

Hired by the Beanstalk Farms Committee via BFBP-A

Development Grants

Summary of Contributor Expenditures

The table below excludes development grants as grants are one time payments upon successful completion of the scope of work.

Anticipated Q4 Output

The following is a non-exhaustive list of expected output for Q4. Not all of the following may end up being implemented, but is currently expected to be. As always, Beanstalk Farms continues to optimize in real time for the long term success of Beanstalk.

• Security
  • Coordinate with Halborn on the BIP to implement Seraph;
  • Seek to engage at least one more audit firm to continuously audit Beanstalk in addition to Halborn; and
  • Complete any necessary improvements to the UI, subgraph or other infrastructure per Halborn’s recommendation after completion of their frontend audit.
• On-chain development
  • Implement generic pricing curves on the Pod Market;
  • Implement a Dutch auction for Soil at the beginning of each Season;
  • Continue assisting Root and potentially other third parties building on Beanstalk;
  • Deploy at least one Well on the Beanstalk-native zero fee AMM;
  • Explore a suitable on-chain governance structure; and
  • Coordinate, audit and push BIPs for other protocol upgrades implemented by open source contributors (see RFCs).
• Middleware
  • Reach feature parity between the Bean and Beanstalk subgraphs and Beanstalk;
  • Begin development of the Beanstalk TypeScript SDK;
  • Publish an open source Beanstalk analytics tool suite to replace Dune; and
  • Implement a bot to monitor individual wallets.
• Frontend + Design
  • Open source the UI;
  • Reach and maintain feature parity between Beanstalk and Beanstalk UI V2; and
  • Design and implement:
    • Pod Market V2 (generic pricing curves), likely accompanied by a more advanced Pod Market graph;
    • Wells and their associated functionality;
    • A Balances page refactor;
    • A new Dutch auction for Soil at the beginning of each Season; and
    • A Beanstalk-native Fertilizer market.
• Content, Community and Marketing
  • Publish a video series explaining Beanstalk;
  • Launch the Beanstalk AMM via crypto-native news outlets;
  • Hire a marketing manager; and
  • Continue the marketing engagement with TASC.

Amounts

We propose a total of 1,000,000 Beans are minted to fund Beanstalk Farms through the end of Q4 2022. 260,852 Beans remain unspent and unallocated by Beanstalk Farms in Q3 as of September 22, 2022. These Beans will be rolled over into Q4, resulting in a total budget allocation of 1,260,852 Beans.

190,094 USDC also remain in custody of the BFM.

Beanstalk Farms is spending about 220,000 Beans per month, inclusive of expenses paid with USDC and assuming payroll, marketing, and technology expenses remain constant. This is expected to slightly increase as the Beanstalk Farms Committee hires a handful more contributors, particularly in engineering.

The philosophy behind budget BIPs has been to overestimate the number of Beans needed to fund protocol development for the quarter. 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 and pay potential high value contributors interested in working on Beanstalk.

Beanstalk Farms monthly operations reports:

• August 2022
• September 2022 (month-to-date)

Custody

The funds for Beanstalk Farms will continue to be custodied by the BFM wallet with keys held by various community members and Publius. We propose the following signers for the BFM.

BFM Signers

• Publius (current signer)
• Silo Chad (current signer)
• austin (current signer)
• sweetredbeans (current signer)
• mod323 (current signer)
• aloceros (new)
• Cujo (new)

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

• Cool Bean
• CanadianBennett
• MrMochi

Snapshot Processes

Beanstalk Farms will continue to utilize the processes for Beanstalk Farms Committee Proposals (BFCP) and Beanstalk Farms Budget Proposals (BFBP), per BFP-81. More information on the BFCP and BFBP process can be found here and here.

Amendments

• The voting period for BFBPs will be changed from 5 days to 3 days.
• The minimum threshold for which a BFBP-C is required will be changed from transactions valued at >4,000 Beans or USDC to transactions valued at >10,000 Beans or USDC.

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 has changed or their role has significantly changed since Q3.

A budget of 30,000 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. 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 once before each pay period.

Competitive Pay

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

Effective

Immediately upon commitment.