Market Making, Development and Research May 2023 by reuben

Why?

This is the seventh request to the CFC as we committed to do month to month requests instead of a lump sum request. Markets have taken a tumble in May.

Core team gets about ~16000 FIRO a month or around ~USD28000. USD1.75/FIRO

Breakdown of Core Team Expenses

Core team expenses are slightly higher as we engage Sproxet to help us finish up Spark and other housekeeping tasks.

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

Research: 7,000 USD/month (but min 4,000 USD/month). This is a combination of retainer and per hour basis consultation.

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 2,500 USD This is engaged from Cypher Stack and covers the running of all our infrastructure.

Market Making 3400 USD on DMiner

The 3400 USD is to cover rewards and platform fees for the decentralized exchange liquidity market making on PCS. Previously platform fees were waived but Armada is now charging 1400 USD as platform fees and 2000 USD for rewards which goes to users. We will probably be ceasing this in future.

Total: USD 52,900.00/month

As you can see this excludes any sort of marketing or unexpected costs and we are relatively lean. For core team to break even on this budget, the price of FIRO needs to be at USD3.11.

Deficit: USD24,900 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.

How much?

We are requesting USD25,400 worth of FIRO to cover the entirety of the shortfall. Our reserves are quite depleted so we would appreciate a full coverage for this month. This is slightly more than the deficit to cover any emergency requirements especially as we approach Lelantus Spark launch.

Total requested: ~USD25,400 in FIRO equivalent.

Breakdown:

Dminer (Decentralized liquidity mining) campaign: USD3,400.00 We will discontinue this as soon as we are able.

Research: USD7,000 This covers research by our cryptographer and the hourly rate of Sarang Noether and we are upping the research budget request by 3000 USD to assist with curve tree research with kayabanerve. Note we have negotiated lower rates and these researchers can demand for much more at other companies but continue to work with us because of their belief of the project and the long term relationship we have established.

Development: USD15,000

This covers the cost of one junior developer, one senior developer (on flexible hours) and one senior developer (full time). We are requesting additional assistance due to the low price.

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.