Executive Summary
In order to keep the Dexbot project going, the Cabinet is using the remaining DexBot funds to establish a maintenance fund to keep the DexBot project on life support. We anticipate putting the remaining $35,000 USD into a reserve fund, budgeting $2,000 a month over the next year, with an additional $11,000 emergency bug fix program.
Background
In our original DexBot worker proposal, we had planned to return all unused funds back to the main BitShares pool at the end of the project. However, we consider that imprudent for a number or reasons. We would hate to see the software fail, and benefits all be gone, for the lack of a maintenance budget to fix what could be very minor bugs. First, It should be pointed out, Crypto Markets are in a “winter” with BitCoin down up to 84% and BitShares recently down much as 96% from highs a year ago. We believe this crypto winter will pass, but it may take time. BitShares needs to be ready for when that happens. We also know that there are many unanticipated consequences as various software, system, and hardware upgrades take place. The best to way to anticipate for bugs is to prepare resources to fix them. Much like a car needs oil changes, a house needs repair to a roof or a person needs to periodically go to a hospital, repairs will be needed.
We continue to believe that the new worker proposal will pass. (Please go vote for it!) The follow up worker proposal already has 244M of the 325M votes needed. This shows broad support for continuing the project. We should also note the year end timing of getting a worker proposal passed is less than ideal, the current market conditions are less than ideal, and the bar to getting worker proposals funded was recently raised defunding multiple worker proposals for various complex political reasons.
Managing projects, in such an environment is hard and complex. Software development, people development, and skill development all take time. When the worker proposal was approved, the money requested was given to the Cabinet to create the software, the best way we could. We have been publically transparent, open and have run this project under budget. In our planning, meetings and discussions, we have realized end of life project planning is important and contingency planning is important. We want project funding to continue, believe it will and want to manage this project the best way we can. Whether funding continues or not.
DEXBot WP1 has been managed such that the project has progressed under-budget. This means we have leftover funds. By taking about one months development funding, we believe we can maintain this project for about a year. We believe this is the wise and prudent thing to do given the current situation. We all know budgets in the wind-down situation are difficult to anticipate.
We plan to keep approximately $35k as a reserve budget.
Of this we will use $24k over the next 12 months for project retention.
We are reserving about $11k in an emergency fund for a major bug fix.
We will make sure the DEXBot project is ready to resume at a few days notice. Main programming will stop, but some bug fixes, PR, management, website maintenance and more will continue at minimum levels. We anticipate spending roughly 6% ($2000) of these reserves per month to keep a core DEXBot alive to fix bugs, spread awareness, pay management and other expenses to keep the project going until until the follow-up worker proposal passes.
We the Cabinet have been honored you have allowed us to oversee and supervise this project. And look forward to see crypto turn around and Dexbot WP2 pass.
Thank you and happy Market Making from the cabinet,
-Marko Paasila
-Permie
-Cryptick1
-Taconator
-Crypto Kong
-Gabriel
-Kimchi-King (Kevin Messerly)
Also published on Medium.
