Alternate L1 Task Force Spending Prop for Q2 2023

[RabbiJebediah]

Written by: Rabbi Jebediah (https://twitter.com/RabbiJebediah )
Co-Author: Mr.Baboon (https://twitter.com/Mr_Bab00n)

SUMMARY
This is a spending proposal for Q2 2023 that would fund an alternate L1 Task Force to work on LUNC and only LUNC, without wasting the community’s money on side-projects that go beyond the scope of our blockchain. This proposal seeks to minimize the amount of “unnecessary fat” by trimming unneeded expenditures (like “team managers”) while also removing dysfunctional elements (like Tobias Andersen) from the L1 development team. It also seeks to distance the L1 team away from Terra Grants Foundation’s umbrella given the latter’s problems like unsanctioned spending and lack of any grants (despite billing itself as a non-profit grants foundation).

MOTIVATION
With the passing of Q1, the amount of actual development work on the LUNC blockchain was done by a small group of hard-working people (Superman/InonMan, Frag, Vinh, Ed Kim), while others took the lion’s share of the money and contributed little to not work (Tobias Andersen, Marco/TGF, LuncBurnArmy). With Q2 staring us in the face we still don’t have parity with Luna 2; the last update that was deployed halted the LUNC chain for hours (forcing validators and Jared from TFL to deal with the issue); the upcoming WASM upgrade is a catastrophe waiting to happen; and a host of chain exploits and risks that were reported by Jacob Gadikian of Notional were either ignored or barely acknowledged then brushed aside. The GitHub itself has become a battleground and testament to the hubris of Tobias Andersen who refuses to collaborate while monopolizing control despite LUNC itself being a decentralized $1,000,000,000 asset.

ADDITIONAL CONCERNS
Then there’s also the problem of “feature creep” which has slowly but surely wormed its way into the L1. The L1 Task Force was assembled to do core L1 work on LUNC, but its mission charter has morphed along the way into anything and everything that Tobias and the TGF want done, ranging form their pet projects like the Senate and legal protection for US citizen-affiliates, to side-chains being developed by Prof. Kim, to pointless wastes of time like the “Coding Dojo” (basically a glorified wiki) and Terra Operator (both being pushed by Tobias himself while he takes LUNC money and does minor programming work on the actual chain that’s paying him to develop it). Neither should USTC repeg initiatives nor L2 work/developers be a part of the core L1 development process, nor should either of those come bundled with L1 spending proposals!

THE CURRENT L1 JTF PROPOSAL (Q2 2023)
Here is a list of expenditures submitted by the Terra Grants Foundation:

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN ALTERNATE L1 TEAM & SPENDING PROPOSAL
The currently proposed budget above for Q2 is simply unacceptable! LUNC’s treasury is impoverished, and we lack funding - as such, any money we have must be conserved and spent only on the most critical of work! There’s no room here for $7k/month “project managers”, $7.5k/month phantom “junior devs” (nice try, Tobias!), or $120,000+ “legal liability funds for US citizens”, etc. Nor should the community reward Mr. Andersen by giving him a raise in Q2 despite his lack of contributions and the reckless way with which he FUDs LUNC on social media while constantly screeching about how underpaid he is and threatening to leave if his demands aren’t met…

Then there’s also the issue of him pushing doxxing to turn LUNC into a tradfi instrument:

Here he is clinging to deprecated code, despite continual warnings from Jacob Gadikian:

Then there’s the conflict of interest - he wants to work on Ed’s new AI chain while being paid LUNC:

He’s also pro-merge with Luna2 and doesn’t care about LUNC’s sovereignty:

And he always acts condescendingly toward the very community that pays his salary:

All in all, this is not the type of person who should be getting over $13k/month from the community! As LUNC investors, let us fund and reward productive developers while trimming the fat and removing unproductive or outright harmful elements! With the recent departure of Ed Kim from the L1 team, all future L1 work needs to be focused exclusively on LUNC - this means no comingling of LUNC community pool funds for other side-projects, or lending out our remaining developers to non-LUNC initiatives!

It is for all these reasons that we propose the following changes…

PROPOSAL
We propose to increase the Q2 compensation for Superman (InonMan), Frag, and Vinh, to reward them for their hard work and keep them with us for the next quarter. Furthermore, to fill the gap left by the departure of Prof. Ed Kim and the removal of Mr. Tobias Andersen, we propose bringing in Bilbo Baggins (senior software engineer/architect) and Jacob Gadikian (senior Cosmos developer and CEO of Notional Labs), both of whom would serve as external collaborators since they already contribute so much, and have helped on multiple occasions already when LUNC needed it most.

Here is the proposed budget for Q2:

$10,000/month for Superman, aka InonMan, x 3 months = $30,000 overall for Q2
$7,500/month for Till, aka Fragwuerdig, x 3 months = $22,500 overall for Q2
$7,500/month for Vinh, x 3 months = $22,500 overall for Q2
$5,000/month Bilbo Baggins x 3 months = $15,000 overall for Q2
$5,000/month Jacob Gadikian x 3 months = $15,000 overall for Q2

Total expenditure for Q2: $105,000 (or 840 million LUNC at a conversion rate of 0.000125)

This money is to be paid out in 2 installments! If this proposal passes, 60% of each developer’s overall Q2 salary would be paid out immediately. Then, after 8 weeks have gone by, the community would once again vote whether to pay the additional 40% depending on how well the L1 team performs! This a much safer and more reliable solution than paying them 100% upfront (and allowing TGF to dictate what’s done with the money via their internal shenanigans)! Partial payment protects community funds, and will also keep the developers motivated to contribute good code and solid work throughout the quarter.

The Q2 roadmap has been outlined here: Joint L1 Task Force Q2
Said roadmap should be pruned of all non-L1 work (Coding Dojo, Community Oversight, etc.)!

If this proposal passes and any of the developers listed above refuse to accept the money or do the work, the funding allocated to them will be split evenly among the remaining developers. If all of them refuse, the money will remain within the community pool.

Vote YES if you agree with the proposed Q2 spending plan for the LUNC L1 team!
Vote NO if you disagree with the proposed Q2 spending plan for the LUNC L1 team!

Thank you for reading, and let us know your thoughts down in the comments below!

Signed by: Rabbi Jebediah, Mr. Baboon
Special thanks: to all our wonderful Frens!

[Tonu_Magi]

Besides inaccuracies in depiction of chains MC and your personal opinions:

Why would money be paid upfront?
Have the supposed members been contacted about it and has been discussed with them?

[SwordDemon]

Yes,although I didn’t like Rabbi before.
But we need options.
The best part of Rabbi’s plan is he did see who are hardworking and he saw problems of previous work,some unprofessional activities and self-idealism test.
But this plan still lack of details,and that details Luncburnarmy doesn’t write in simple English,instead he used complicate technical words.
We need more details of what they should do and why we should do this,and how it benefit our chain.

[RabbiJebediah]

@Tonu_Magi

Besides inaccuracies in depiction of chains MC

LUNC is still worth $1B+, the fact it lost a quarter of its value under the current crop of “leadership” is more damning of an indictment than anything I could personally submit. It just goes to show what the market thinks about the chain’s overall situation.

It’s also pretty funny you latch onto that minor tidbit, out of the entire proposal.

Go away, Don. I don’t have time for your excessive and pointless pedantry.

@SwordDemon

We need more details of what they should do and why we should do this,and how it benefit our chain.

TGF and LuncBurnArmy overcomplicate things on purpose. It’s not complex: pay the good devs, have them work their way through the roadmap. If they do well, pay them again. Rinse, repeat, keep going until LUNC gets to $1 (and beyond). Other chains handle this as just another part of business - only on LUNC do we have a completely dysfunctional process where it’s impossible to get our developers to just shut up and code. The guys who can do that should get paid… and the one who can’t should leave.

Also lmao at paying $7000/month for some dude to “manage” 3 other dudes.

[Tonu_Magi]

Rabbi, while you are senile, the numbers don’t lie.
You can blame your two goats, for what its worth, but current MC is not a billion. It can be again and it can be less.
I “latched” on to it since it’s gospel for you.
For you, that 1 billion is a magical number that you keep throwing about.

And proposal being trife with your personal opinions that have little value on the actual proposal.

Anyway, before this proposal sinks like a lead balloon, I would like to know have you actually contacted any of the supposed members and are they in agreement with this proposal? Asking since you have a past of slapping on names that haven’t been contacted.

And again - why pay money up front while your whole spchiel was that Q1 targets were not met fully?

If you want to reward those you believe are deserving - make a proposal for it. Yet, again, Q1 targets were not met entirely.
True, Jacob did bail out after a month.

You can’t play favourites with a chain that has a market cap of 736 million dollars. Be more sensible.

[LacunaC]

Have you spoken to any of the developers before making such a proposal? Otherwise it seems rather premature.

It may lead to many dysfunctional situations, such as:-

1. Some developers refuse to accept, leading to q2 being unable to be completed by the remaining developers albeit payment will still be split evenly among the remaining developers.

2. The new developers accepting, but all the old ones refusing on grounds that they prefer to work only with their existing team. In this scenario, the payment will again be split evenly among the new developers with no old developers for continuity from q1’s work.

These are just scenarios at the top of my head.

Perhaps it’s better to first communicate with all the developers you just mentioned, and for the spend proposal to be done by them instead.

[faddat]

Because you should never do software development work on credit. You see, software development work tends to be non-linear and stuff can get crazy.

When contracting for companies, it’s quite possible that the company does not actually know the issues that they are facing at the outset of an engagement.

Furthermore, when dealing with chain governance, stuff can get even crazier.

As I have said on numerous occasions I really happy to work on LUNC, the only, sole, singular issue, was is the aspect of dealing with Tobias.

When we decided to leave, what we saw coming was issues occurring and to be a certain thing to throw us under the bus. That’s exactly what happened.

I didn’t figure that he would go to the extent of lying saying that I came to Vietnam to mine bitcoin but that’s the kind of person you’re dealing with with Tobias.

[Thunder1677]

We need to stop funding until we see a proposal that combines L1 and L2 activities…we need to work on both maintenance and price improvement at the same time. We are losing interest fast. We cant blame this all on a bear market. We have lost our position in ranking on CMC from mid-30s to 62.

[Tonu_Magi]

If the team is paid up front - the same situation of not delivering is equally true, is it not?

With monthly installments there is actual fall back net - no honey, no money, so to speak.

*I’m glad you are still fond of this chain

[KKCrypto1]

No with veto anything with Jacob in it. He is a destabilizing force just like you. I think you both need mental help. And look another instance with LUNCDAO a norther twitter troll.

No thanks try again people have the right to defend themselves against constant attacks. A manager is needed to talk to the community and get information from the community. TR Never did this then they charged 150k and delivered nothing after that. The L1 team put out constant information all quarter. I would pay them for next quarter and see where it goes. If we get the wasam upgrade and the daps start coming back like Terraport. I think the funding will come to the community pool.

[Atom1]

Have you spoken to Bilbo/Jacob to establish whether they would be amenable to working on TC?

Have you spoken to the other members and found out if they are happy to work with Jacob and Bilbo?

If so have they agreed to the comp?

Have they agreed/provided timeframes for delivery and update?

Have you found out whether Jacob and Bilbo’s vision for the chain? Repeg being a primary concern.

Genuine questions that’ll help me decide how to vote on this prop.

On a different note I don’t normally agree with you Rabi but appreciate you putting the work in here and agree it’s something that probably needs to be considered. I’m slightly disappointed that the Wasm update wasn’t delivered in Q1, we did pay for that tbf so not sure how LBA can claim timeframes were met and under budget.

[Rex1]

Other than being able to insert his finger into his ring and dissapearing into the aether, on a serious note what demonstrable L1 technical know how, and experience has Bilbo Baggins got? It would be very useful to know.
.
Thank you for the alternate proposal, if it is to be taken seriously just as the L1 teams Q2 proposal i think we need to not make assumptions.
.
Regards the opinions of developers, we are all entitled to our own opinion and freedom of speech. However, when being the voice and or representing an organisation it is critical that communications meet the groups expectations. A classic example being the impact one public sentence can have on the fortunes of an enterprise, e.g. Gerald Ratner.

If we wish to still have a non party line voice and freedom of speech particularly on Twitter alternate accounts or being released from the burden of being bonded to a team are options to maintain that freedom.

Communication skills and teamworking are critical to the perception of Terraclassic, however development skills and ability are obvious prerequisites also.

[LacunaC]

It’s not the developers’ job to work on the price improvement.

The voters are the ones who are responsible for the price action. They look at the proposal, and if they think it is something that would drive the price up, they can choose to vote for it.

So far, Q1 work is a prerequisite for USTC repeg to happen, and voters understand that, therefore they voted for Q1 work to be completed by L1 Task Force.

Before it happens, obviously there’s not going to be a lot of price action, but without Q1 work, repeg cannot happen.

If any investors lose interest along the way, then they are free to sell their bags. No judgment here. The same applies to you where if you don’t think this is a viable project anymore, you can sell yours. Many others have done so, that’s why the price went down. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, emphasis added, it is not the responsibility of the L1 Task force to ensure positive price action. Their job is to only complete the tasks as per their proposal, once it is agreed upon via governance.

[LuncBurnArmy]

The original scope for the original Q1 proposal stated that recommendations would be made for the wasm upgrade – not that the upgrade would be completed. It was supposed to be an investigation. The L1 Task Force is quite far along the work for the cosmwasm upgrade and it will be delivered in early Q2.

[RabbiJebediah]

@LuncBurnArmy

The original scope for the original Q1 proposal stated that recommendations would be made for the wasm upgrade – not that the upgrade would be completed. It was supposed to be an investigation.

You should do your “investigating” for free, not via leeching $7000/month from the community.

@LuncBurnArmy

The L1 Task Force is quite far along the work for the cosmwasm upgrade and it will be delivered in early Q2.

Given Tobias’ careless attitude and complete lack of anything resembling normal debugging/testing safety work, I for one already have my popcorn ready and waiting for the inevitable chain nuke and meltdown y’all are going to cause with it.

[Leandro_Salvador]

You forgot to say what these guys you chose are going to do for that amount, and how long they’re going to work full-time or part-time.

Once again I repeat we should hire work and not proposals.

What work will be done?

[SwordDemon]

@RabbiJebediah

TGF and LuncBurnArmy overcomplicate things on purpose. It’s not complex: pay the good devs, have them work their way through the roadmap. If they do well, pay them again. Rinse, repeat, keep going until LUNC gets to $1 (and beyond). Other chains handle this as just another part of business - only on LUNC do we have a completely dysfunctional process

For this professional business point of view,I support you.
And hope you will fill full details of this plan.

[LuncBurnArmy]

I thought that Agora was for constructive, intellectual discussion?

You allegations against Tobias are false, and suggestion that there will be a chain grinding halt is sensationalism, given we have an expert cosmos developer as a part of our team. It should be noted that Tobias was a gracious and very collaborative team member, collaborated a lot with Superman on all of the development items, provides a lot of coaching and guidance to Vinh, and that all team members have been extremely happy throughout the quarter. We had one minor disagreement on github comments which had more to do with a minor miscommunication than anything else – 99% of the quarter was fun and enjoyable. When I was speaking with Vinh just yesterday, he mentioned how much he loved our team.

With respect to alleging that I am somehow ‘leeching’ $7000 a month from the community: I provide professional project management services at a fee, and the team members are the ones that asked me to put my hourly rate the same as theirs, with a recognition of the value provided. The role of a Project manager is to manage scope, cost, budget, resources, communication, schedule, risk, and align resources on the development of items that need to be completed. Clearly you personally feel that this is ‘leeching from the community’. I will leave this up to governance to decide as the Luna Classic community can decide whether or not they feel it is a service that is of value.

“You should do your “investigating” for free, not via leeching $7000/month from the community.”. The development team did the investigating. Are you asserting that they should not be paid for those efforts even though it was passed through governance that that was what they were going to be paid to do? It should be noted, that once the investigation was completed, options analysis was conducted, and the appropriate upgrade path was chosen. The L1 Team has completed significant work on this item to-date, and will be ready to deploy the cosmwasm upgrade early in Q2.

“Given Tobias’ careless attitude and complete lack of anything resembling normal debugging/testing safety work” Source? How could you possibly have an understanding of Tobias’ testing practices since you are not a member of the team and aware of the individuals that tested the components, how they were tested, and how they were reviewed. This is simply a categorically false accusation.

I wish you the best of luck with your proposal.

[RabbiJebediah]

@LuncBurnArmy

I thought that Agora was for constructive, intellectual discussion?

Dude have you seen the posting quality around here?

@LuncBurnArmy

You allegations against Tobias are false, and suggestion that there will be a chain grinding halt is sensationalism, given we have an expert cosmos developer as a part of our team.

Still didn’t stop y’all from screwing the pooch last time. How long was the chain halted, 8 hours? And Jared/TFL + validators (Bilbo among them) had to bail you out. And that was for a relatively simple update. The WASM upgrade will blow up LUNC. Also, I never said Superman isn’t a good dev, but not even he can go against Tobias’s carelessness and lack of preparation.

@LuncBurnArmy

It should be noted that Tobias was a gracious and very collaborative team member, collaborated a lot with Superman on all of the development items, provides a lot of coaching and guidance to Vinh, and that all team members have been extremely happy throughout the quarter.

Perhaps, but it doesn’t change the fact he’s asking for $13k/month despite chasing every side-project under the moon… including Ed’s new AI chain. Tobias is also a major dick to the community on social media… I’d not care much about that if he only did his job, but he seems to get bailed out by others (including Jacob) quite often. He’s not worth anywhere near the asking price.

@LuncBurnArmy

We had one minor disagreement on github comments which had more to do with a minor miscommunication than anything else – 99% of the quarter was fun and enjoyable.

I’m only looking for results here, I didn’t invest in the chain hoping y’all would have a “fun and enjoyable quarter”. That doesn’t ping my radar. It’s great you can get along with each other, but the amount/quality of work you’ve output so far is sub-par… and that was with Ed at the wheel! Now that he’s gone it’s only gonna get worse.

@LuncBurnArmy

When I was speaking with Vinh just yesterday, he mentioned how much he loved our team.

Dude knows who butters his bread, that’s not surprising.

@LuncBurnArmy

With respect to alleging that I am somehow ‘leeching’ $7000 a month from the community: I provide professional project management services at a fee, and the team members are the ones that asked me to put my hourly rate the same as theirs, with a recognition of the value provided.

You’re a worthless addition to the L1 team. You provide admin “work”, and “coordinate” 3 people. If you truly believed in LUNC (and your bags) you’d work pro bono, instead of fleecing the community to the tune of thousands of dollars a month. You have no argument here, given how impoverished our treasury is.

@LuncBurnArmy

The role of a Project manager is to manage scope, cost, budget, resources, communication, schedule, risk, and align resources on the development of items that need to be completed.

What’s that old quote, all chiefs and no indians? Tangible assets to the chain are programmers like Superman who output quality code and ship updates. Admin workers like yourself are useless weight at this point in time. If we had millions in our treasury then a case could be made to fund your “work”, but as it stands, no such case can or should be considered… yet you’re still being paid a vast sum of money. Tell me, how much actual, tangible value have you contribute to LUNC? You write not code, all you do is “manage” a tiny team. Please cut the bullshit and stop blowing smoke up everyone’s asses.

@LuncBurnArmy

Clearly you personally feel that this is ‘leeching from the community’. I will leave this up to governance to decide as the Luna Classic community can decide whether or not they feel it is a service that is of value.

Validators will decide, as always. And most of them are as corrupt as you are.

@LuncBurnArmy

The development team did the investigating. Are you asserting that they should not be paid for those efforts even though it was passed through governance that that was what they were going to be paid to do?

Given everything that’s gone down, I think I made my case plainly obvious with who to reward and who to let go from the team.

@LuncBurnArmy

It should be noted, that once the investigation was completed, options analysis was conducted, and the appropriate upgrade path was chosen.

You’re grossly behind schedule with your roadmap. That’s a fact.

@LuncBurnArmy

The L1 Team has completed significant work on this item to-date, and will be ready to deploy the cosmwasm upgrade early in Q2.

Looking forward to it, I’ve got my popcorn ready!

@LuncBurnArmy

Source? How could you possibly have an understanding of Tobias’ testing practices since you are not a member of the team and aware of the individuals that tested the components, how they were tested, and how they were reviewed. This is simply a categorically false accusation.

Your previous deployment halted the chain for 8+ hours. Tobias merges his own PRs on GitHub. He also ignores warnings from other devs. I lurk your spaces, my friend, and people send me DMs. I know everything that goes down. Everything. You can lie to the sheep here and pull wool over their eyes, but it’s only a matter of time until Tobias wrecks the chain. It’s an inevitability at this point, since Ed’s leaving and that means one less lever of control left to counterbalance Tobias and his worst excesses.

@LuncBurnArmy

I wish you the best of luck with your proposal.

No you don’t, but I thank you nonetheless for being polite.

Shalom!

[JCP.ESQ]

Thank you for providing the community with an alternative spending proposal that corrects the problems with the original prop. It’s time to cut the fat and refocus on building. The vote is YES!

שׁלום