Lefteris has told me privately that full time contributors to Rotki make $30k - $50k per year.
That was supposed to be private!!1oneone. 
(kidding).
So It’s true. We are ready to pay up to $80k for the most senior engineer position but we have not yet found a good match for such a position.
But indeed from these numbers you can see, that a lot is possible with smaller numbers. And it’s not we don’t want to pay more. We just can’t afford it since we are a small self-funded startup with some community support via gitcoin grants.
- If I were to start this project all over again, should I have gone the Giveth/Rotki route?
I would definitely have gone with something leaner. But in retrospect we are all geniuses.
- Is the DAO in for more hard times if it continues Holdings’ compensation patterns?
Absolutely. This is not sustainable.
- Is there a DAO-wide compensation policy in the works? Should this policy be consistent in both times of abundance & scarcity?
That would be nice and would make sense as part of the DAO Ops subgroup.
- Can the DAO sustain these compensation policies if we are no longer the market leader ?
It’s not a question of can (I think it can’t), but if it should. And imo it should not. It should try to become a lean machine that spends only as much as it needs to spend and not a penny more. If there is any income, that income creates a surplus and we got abundance then we can revisit this.
- What is the DAOs compensation model? What are the workstreams compensation models?
So far I see each workgroup doing their own thing and following no rules/framework/patterns. It would be nice to standardize everything as part of the DAOOps workgroup.
- What would have to be true for the DAO to create great software, become a market leader, get to financial sustainability, and pay web2-competitive salaries (the virtuous cycle I personally think the DAO should be aiming)
Here I am gonna say something you may not like to hear. I don’t think DAOs can build good software. A DAO is a very political machine, getting into governance, trying to get everyone heard, doing votes, politics and what not.
Good software is built by 1-2 architects/CTO and a small, lean and effective development team.
I don’t think a DAO can build good software. Perhaps it can hire a team that will be able to and maybe create a very good and clear specification for them to implement.