First of all I would like to recognize that PGF, next to GPC is an important workstream for the future of gitcoin. So I would really like to see it execute on its goals.
But I have to echo what virtually everyone else has noted which is a great concern to me. This year we have had two really serious events, last one of which was just last week, which have impacted the crypto ecosystem severely and thrown us even deeper into a bear market with no end in sight.
All major tech companies are having layoffs in the 20-50% of their entire workforce.
And the PGF workstream is requesting a huge amount of money for this season. An increase in funding from the previous ones! This is absolutely crazy.
I would really like to see a very aggressive attempt in cutting costs as I said last season. And seeing the opposite is dissapointing. More than half a million in $USD for salaries? $126k for a retreat? Does the retreat really need to happen under these marketr conditions? Is there really no way to cut this budget?
I am going to vote abstain until I get a more clear view of a future where I can see that the PGF workstream can rein in on its spending. I really wanted to vote yes, but I can’t do so yet. Please @ceresstation help me here.
I am not convinced with this response sadly. I think this is the most important work stream for Gitcoin’s success. Funding the matching pool is what has given us so much success IMO.
But we need to make cuts and I don’t think any work stream is taking this seriously, so the only way the stewards can signal it is by voting no.
I am voting no on all work streams until we get our spending under control. It is the only thing I can do at this point, and I hope other Stewards will follow suit. We have given strong warnings over the last few seasons and they don’t seem to be enough.
We cannot spend this much money in this market, it is a bad strategy.
I am happy to work with the Gitcoin Hiring team to explain how Giveth finds intrinsically motivated high caliber contributors in lower income countries to keep our budget at 1/10th of the cost.
Hi Griff, quick answers here for the retreat. To note it’s 125K total (not per month).
2a: Sponsorships will go back to the DAO to cover the payment to our workstream.
2b: Each workstream has been working on keeping a percentage of their workstream tokens in stables and are working with the DAO to make sure event funds are paid out in stables. We will also be ticketing for the event and a portion of the ticket price will be in fiat. Ideally we’ll be able to use these fiat funds to go directly to covering expenses. however, we can’t rely on people buying tickets at the perfect time for payments, hence the portion in stables.
Thanks for sharing your honest perspective @griff. @lefterisjp I appreciate your disappointment.
To address the overall sentiment I’m hearing above, which I will summarize as: PGF is not being thoughtful or strategic enough given the market and seemingly requesting way too much for what we’re delivering.
Your concerns are appreciated and are not landing on deaf ears. While our budget has passed, I realize we had the least support of all workstreams and this is good room for reflection.
I am hopeful that our approach as a team in S16 both in what we deliver and in how we spend our budget will help address many of the above concerns and reflect some of the requests expressed.
This snapshot passed with ~57% approval rate. To note, 39% of voters abstained from voting. Some percentage of these “abstain” votes are caused by larger holders who are directly compensated by the PGF workstream and thus abstain from voting to avoid a conflict of interest. Metrics:
785 unique votes
~9.1M GTC tokens cast.
And thank you to all the commenters & voters who took the time to participate in Gitcoin Governance. https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/proposal/0x63e139b75e52843ce6af2e684101025ba2f88edf80775397927a875d9617b789