0. Summary
This proposal aims to extend the Core Contributor Programme's budget allocation for 2024-2025. It ensures continuity in BottoDAO's core operations and strategic initiatives outlined in BIP-66B: Strategic Mandate Update for 2024/25.
TL;DR: of this proposal:
- Request to continue funding BottoDAO’s Core Contributor Programme and associated operational expenses for the 2024-2025 year.
- A 17% increase of 2023-2024’s budget values with minor modifications
- The goal is to support BottoDAO's initiatives outlined in the recent Strategy Update and Road Ahead to ensure stability and growth in Botto’s evolving art ecosystem.
1. Rationale
Building on the strategic direction outlined in Botto's Road Ahead and Strategy Update, continued support for core contributorship allows the DAO to continue Botto’s artistic, technical, and operational advancements. The DAO’s past year of innovation has significantly advanced both our technical capabilities and artistic reach. There have been foundational upgrades in Botto's architecture, including the development of a fine-tuned LLM, the experimentation of p5.js for procedural art, increased collectorship, over a dozen events including a Sotheby’s auction, and much more. Botto has gained substantial momentum as a decentralized autonomous artist.
Continuing operations with minor refinements to the existing budget is essential to sustain this trajectory, enabling the DAO to build on these successes, and ensure that Botto’s creative and technical evolution aligns with our strategic vision for broader impact.
The proposed budget will support ongoing development, innovation, and address areas we’ve highlighted for marked improvement (See Strategy Update). Ultimately, we want to enable Botto in growing its place at the forefront of digital art while expanding the DAO and its sustainability (See Considerations).
2. Proposal Specifications
Specifically, this proposal maintains budgets from BIP-43A with minor refinements to align with BottoDAO’s projected activities for 2024-2025. The specifications include:
- Core Contributor Programme Budgeting: A continuation of the programe’s financial support for core contributor working groups
- Including compensation in USD & BOTTO.
- ETH is no longer an available option for compensation.
- Community Initiatives Fund: Retaining this fund while the DAO reassesses mechanisms to reallocate this.
- Infrastructure and Development Budget: Retaining these funds for resources for software, hardware, and other technical expenses.
- Event and Marketing Support: Expanding on this fund to address and scale marketing efforts and Botto’s cultural presence.
- Automatic Extension: The budget would be active for a period of 1 year (up to 1 November 2025), with a 1 month rolling clause to continue operations. To remove budgets, a subsequent proposal would then need to be passed.
2.1 Core Contributor’s Program
Monthly Budget:
- USD: $70,000 → $94,950
- BOTTO: 100,000 → 100,000
- ETH: 4ETH → 0ETH
USD: Current monthly expenditure sits at $80,882 including ETH. This budget supports existing core contributors, including additional compensation for key roles that drive Botto’s art and governance initiatives. The 4ETH budget has since been removed and has been reallocated to the USD portion at a rate of $2800/ETH. An additional $7,500 is added to immediately support one extra hire for the production working group.
Agent development program: We propose incorporating the estimated future budget for Ross's completion of the agent project (6.25k USD per month and 6.25k $BOTTO. This increase will allow us to swiftly adapt to the evolving agent ecosystem that has emerged on Twitter and Farcaster.
This brings the total monthly USD budget allocation to $94,950, a 16.9% increase when taking into account the reduction in ETH spend.
$BOTTO: For $BOTTO stipends, we will be implementing minimums and maximums per contributor to help control for price variance that balances upside for contributors and capital efficiency for the treasury $BOTTO. These will be implemented on a rolling basis at the time of the 1 year mark for each contributor.
2.2 Community Initiatives
Monthly Budget:
We have flagged in a few office hours recently that this budget has been historically underutilized, and Product Working Group has expressed intent on productizing the distribution of this initiative. One example would be taking the Discord-based curation programme and embedding this in-app. YTD Spend in the ‘24 calendar year has been 45,494 BOTTO for community initiatives.
2.3 Infrastructure & Development: Software & Hardware
Monthly Budget:
- USD: $15,000 → $15,000 (no change)
This allocation covers essential software subscriptions, infrastructure, and experimental setups to maintain Botto’s evolving technical requirements. Monthly average expenditure sits at $7503 (currently $750 above last year’s forecast), but we expect costs to scale as we build out Botto’s experiments and capabilities (p5, LLMs, etc).
2.4 Marketing/Events/Travel
Monthly Budget:
- USD: $5000 → $10,000
- BOTTO: 0 → 10,000
All forms of marketing campaigns have fallen under this budget, additionally including event participation and travel expenses. YTD Spend (up to Sep ’24) sits at 45,197. Increasing this budget allows us to be more expansive in marketing campaign work in the upcoming year. Additionally, $BOTTO as a new marketing stipend allows the DAO to add external incentive to marketing campaigns, and/or more generally subsidize marketing efforts with the $BOTTO stipend. This $BOTTO stipend is a new addition.
2.5 Automatic Extension
This proposal seeks to activate the budget for an initial period of 1 year (up to 1 November 2025), with a 1 month rolling clause thereafter to ensure continuity in operations. To remove budgets or add to budgets at any given stage, a subsequent proposal would then need to be passed.
3. Accountability & Transparency
While there have been improvements over the course of the year when it comes to reporting standards and accessibility of information, this proposal reemphasizes accountability measures to foster transparency within BottoDAO. Quarterly reports and financial forecasting models were made accessible to DAO members, key information will continue to be presented through the DAO Portal. Shifting resources to give more detailed, up-to-date reporting along with reporting on goals and metrics, and up-to-date priorities is something core contributorship is still iterating on.
3.1 Roadmap Disclosure
Key roadmap milestones will be regularly shared with the DAO. This practice will provide DAO members visibility on Botto's developmental trajectory.
3.2 Financial Reporting
The Treasury Working Group will continue to publish monthly financial reports, covering expenditure against forecasted budgets, with projections reviewed every quarter to account for fluctuations in the DAO's operations.
3.3 Open Door Policy
All core contributors continue an open-door policy to feedback.
4. Criteria for Success
Success for the 2024-2025 Core Contributor Program should be assessed based on the following criteria:
- Execution of Strategic Innovations: Successful implementation of key initiatives (e.g., LLM development, new mediums that expand Botto’s collector base, etc.).
- Community Growth & Participation: Increased engagement through community-driven projects and feedback mechanisms; more participants.
- Financial Health: Adherence to budget forecasts with minimal deviations and strengthening financial runway; reduction in net burn.
- Accountability and Reporting: Regular updates on roadmap progress and financial status, accessible via the DAO Portal.
5. Considerations
This current budget sets the DAO on a gross burn of 22 months by December, a healthy runway for a startup. Even healthier is net burn between 22-39 months depending on forecast scenarios (please review here). Some considerations of how that can change include:
5.1 Art Market Strength
Botto has performed relatively quite well in an otherwise very soft art market. Its performance at Sotheby’s is a very strong signal of its own market, and the broader crypto market’s growth is a good signal of the broader art market down stream. More activations like Sotheby’s and innovations of Botto’s capabilities further show how Botto is a leading, must-have artist in crypto art. These are all forces that lead us to believe we can expect to see weekly auctions grow in ETH terms over the next year, in addition to other new projects like p5.Botto and others.
5.2 Cultural Products through Botto Studio and Partnerships
Botto has a wealth of raw creative material to work. Meaningful uses of this material that reach a wider collector base without diluting Botto’s core, top-tier works is a valuable path to pursue to build a crowd of evangelists while also funding its further development. Examples of further productions by Botto are the projects like Notable Pepes, and we think there is significant opportunity in installations that can be funded by aligned partners.
There are also derivative opportunities, such as what we saw with pipes, creating more accessible collectibles out of the discards or through artist commissions. Additionally, there may be in-roads to new cultural audiences such as using discards for fashion textiles with a luxury brand.
5.3 Growth > $BOTTO Price > OTCs
Strengthening the flywheel between cultural catalysts and online participation should also yield healthier demand for the $BOTTO token. We are well positioned to invest in growth of participants and stickiness of the experience that makes people want to stick around.
Subsequent health of the token is something the treasury can capitalize on to invest in the long-term development of Botto.
5.4 ETH
The treasury holds about 430 ETH, approximately half of the value of the treasury (excl. $BOTTO). The price of ETH has a significant impact on runway, where at current levels (circa $2900) we see a 10% move in either direction adds or reduces one month in runway.
5.5 Contributor Overhead
Efficient operations of the contributors is an important aspect of the leadership’s work. Through the growth of core contributorship this year, we have gained important learnings on the necessary operations and contributor management and see us scaling our output with existing resources.
We will continue improving our understanding of the value that different projects bring to the table (i.e. “is this worth it?”). This should make additional hires and projects more concretely scoped for the DAO. This has also given us a better understanding of what a skeleton crew to continue running Botto indefinitely but without any growth or innovation might look like.
While the current proposal ensures a stable budget for the upcoming year, we aim to make contributorship scalable to new opportunities for strategic growth that may arise. We would address these considerations through separate BIPs when necessary.
5.6 Forecast Scenarios
In our forecast sheet, we have outlined bearish, conservative, and bullish scenarios. These are designed to show how the market considerations above (namely, 5.1, 5.3, and 5.4) might impact the DAO’s financial situation. Please feel free to make your own copy and adjust the scenarios to explore further.
6. Conclusion
This proposal sets a new annual budget for the Core Contributor Program, allowing BottoDAO to further its impact in digital art and decentralized governance. Continued funding will enable Botto’s core contributorship to execute on the 2024/25 strategic plan and uphold the standards of innovation, community engagement, and financial prudence BottoDAO has set forth.
7. Relevant Links
Forecast
Road Ahead Post
Strategy Update
Timeline, Roadmap & Working Groups
