Core Development and Research November 2023 by reuben

Why?

This is the twelfth request to the CFC as we committed to do month to month requests instead of a lump sum request.

Core team gets about ~16000 FIRO a month from the share of the block reward. At today's prices this is USD28,480.00

Breakdown of Core Team Expenses

Developer Pay (covers 4 developers Peter, Levon, Gevorg, Narek and Sproxet) 30,000 USD/month

Research: 3,500 USD/month We have reduced the number of hours for research as we preserve our runway though research work is still ongoing at a slower pace.

Admin/Support/Management (including Reuben) 9000 USD/month (covers Reuben, Anwar, Ajay)

Hosting Fees: 1,000 USD/month This covers Github, Continuous Integration, Matrix, chat bridges, seed nodes, explorers, light wallet servers, testnet and website hosting fees. The bulk of this is on explorers and the light wallet support which require beefier specs.

Sysadmin: 1,250 USD This is engaged from Cypher Stack and covers the running of all our infrastructure. This is reduced from 2500 USD/month after Cypher Stack kindly agreed to reduce their charge during the bear.

Community Support: 900 USD (Previously 1250 USD which was reduced from 2500 USD) We have engaged Batuhan to assist with community management. We are discontinuing Vietnam and Japan community support due to potential issues with the CM.

Market Making 1200 USD/month

We have ceased the Hummingbot campaign but maintain the market making as a service solution to support Coinstore and Bitmart which requires 3 months upfront payment (3600 USD) which we have paid already.

Total: US46,850

Deficit: USD18,370 without Cointelegraph

Do note that the deficit is only an estimate and is based on the current market price. This figure changes with the ebbs and flows of the market.

Additional expense CoinTelegraph Coverage USD12,000 This is to support our Spark launch in January and features a spotlight article and social media push on their end. This is discounted from their regular rate of USD16,500

How much?

We are requesting USD 25,750 worth of FIRO to cover the shortfall as possible and also help support the Cointelegraph push.

Total requested: ~USD25,750 in FIRO equivalent

Breakdown:

Research: USD3,500

Promising work has been made on improving curve trees to work together with Halo2. Our research team has also been assisting a group of interns under Poramin who have been working on a PoC of Spark Assets.

Development: USD15,000

This covers part of half of our development cost salaries.

Sysadmin: USD1,250

This covers the discounted cost of a sysadmin to monitor and manage our infrastructure.

Cointelegraph Assistance USD 6,000 We are digging into our reserves to pay the entire USD12,000 but would appreciate support to cover half of the expense.

We won't be requesting volatility protection especially this will be on a month to month basis.

We are requesting for this proposal to be reviewed on a month to month basis by the Community Fund Committee so that in the event market conditions improved we can cease this and we can also adjust the amount requested.

The core team as a general principle does not want to make requests from the Community Fund unless absolutely necessary and we appreciate the support.