TrueFi & Wallfacer Labs: Chapter 3

[ryan.rodenbaugh]

@BrazilianJiuJitsu

I think we get quote for set of work from outside contractors. see if market price is even close. check if dao treasury beeing taken advantage.

As we have already said:

@ryan.rodenbaugh

If […] other teams would like to expand their scope with TrueFi in the future, we would welcome their proposals.

@ryan.rodenbaugh

but agree that multiple (and in the future, entirely alternative) service providers would be a plus.

Given the timing, I don’t think it would be possible to create a smooth offboarding to one or multiple new teams by the end of this month, but conducting a “call for service providers” is a great potential project for the board to take on over the second half of this year.

@BrazilianJiuJitsu

If 4 million dollars, Wallfacer needs to have hours of worktime and people and sub contractor list in significant detail. This not small money.

This is our third proposal with TrueFi and we have never broken out our work in that way. From our very first proposal:

@WallfacerLabs

While (if approved) we will immediately bring additional engineering headcount directly into Wallfacer, the focus of this proposal is really around what Wallfacer intends to accomplish.

We would love to hear from community members and token holders either now or during the scope of our next engagement if they believe there are higher impact things we could be working on for TrueFi. We often have conversation on pricing, but rarely do we get feedback of alternative things we could be doing for the protocol that would be the highest impact.

@BrazilianJiuJitsu

I think we get quote for set of work from outside contractors. see if market price is even close. check if dao treasury beeing taken advantage.

We regularly look at the market to get a sense of competitive pricing. Some of the most public references we use are

(1) AAVE DAO

1. BGD Labs + Avara (AAVE Labs) are roughly $15mm in total compensation between the two teams.
2. I draw the distinction between BGD and Avara as, BGD is focused on day-to-day engineering work (still difficult) and future-proofing the protocol, while Avara is focused on the future developments (see AAVE 2030)

(2) Compound DAO

1. AlphaGrowth provides BD/marketing services for Compound at a rate of 2.5mm/year (at time of voting)
2. As far as I know, engineering and product work is otherwise done in-house at Compound Labs so we do not know how much that costs.

(3) Maple

1. From their quarterly treasury reports, we can see Maple has has quarterly costs of about US$1.32m. This annualizes at $5.28m/year, but it is unclear to me if this includes token compensation in which it could be significantly higher. They have also recently increased their token supply (diluting holders) so tough to do apples<>apples here.

Ultimately, we believe two things. One, that we are doing multiple roles today that otherwise would require multiple teams. For example, compared to AAVE (which granted is far more mature than TrueFi), we are doing both the day-to-day work of working with users and customers, future proofing the protocol, supporting governance initiatives, and building for the future. We are also doing BD and marketing coordination for the protocol.

While we are, again, supportive of new service providers, I don’t expect the aggregate cost will be less or much less than Wallfacer.