This proposal is authored by Mantle Core Team.
Background
A discussion has been ongoing since June 2022 for BitDAO to explore the provision of forward-looking infrastructure addressing the wide range of challenges that arise in current L1/L2 implementations.
On January 10, 2023, BitDAO has announced the launch of Mantle Testnet. Mantle is a high-performance Ethereum layer-2 network built with modular architecture. Mantle is BitDAO community-owned and governed. Mantle will further extend the BitDAO ecosystem with a large and diverse family of dApps, tooling and infrastructure, thereby creating strong and consistent value accrual to the $BIT token and community.
Proposal Summary
- Approve the transfer of the following amounts to the Mantle Core Multisig:
- [Testnet Opex] 10M $BIT and 14M $USDC — To cover operations during an up to 6-month long testnet. The length of the testnet is subject to the results of testing and maturity of the new implementations (e.g. proof generation and data availability). A maximum of $7M will be spent on payroll and G&A costs.
- Approve budget allocation for Mantle Mainnet Phase 1 (First Year) as below:
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[Mainnet Opex for First Year] 145M $BIT and 34M $USDC — A maximum of $17m will be spent on payroll and G&A costs.
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[Ethereum L1 Gas Fees] 15,000 $ETH — This will be offset by $BIT transaction fees received on Mantle Network. It will be up to a subsequent BitDAO proposal to rebalance $BIT into $ETH.
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[Loan] 30M $BIT and $60M equivalent in major assets — For the purposes of funding canonical bridge and node delegation. These assets belong to BitDAO and will be trackable on-chain.
- Approve the disbursement of funds for Mantle Mainnet Phase 1 based on the policies below:
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The approved budget will be held in BitDAO Treasury until called for by the Mantle Core Team. Disbursement of funds shall be from BitDAO Treasury to the Mantle Core Multisig. The target working capital buffer for Mantle shall be 3 months.
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Expenditures that fall within 115% (projected annual) of the Mantle Mainnet Phase 1 budget shall not require a subsequent BitDAO proposal. Expansions or major modifications shall require an updated BitDAO proposal.
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Mantle Core Team shall provide a regular report of budget spending and outcomes for the purpose of performance review. To preserve privacy and commercial partner relationships, individual salaries and individual service provider commercial terms will not be revealed.
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All disbursed but unused funds by Mantle Core shall remain the property of BitDAO. By default, all unused funds for Phase 1 will be rolled into subsequent Phases.
- BitDAO may modify the above terms at any time pending a subsequent proposal and vote.
Proposal Details
This post presents to the BitDAO community a budget request to fund Mantle operations during a six-month testnet phase (subject to testing results and market conditions) and the first year of mainnet.
I. Testnet Phase
The provisional budget for Mantle testnet is 10M $BIT and 14M $USDC. The budget request covers funding across 3 key pillars: Ecosystem Incentives, Bug Bounty, and Operations Expenditure.
1. Ecosystem Incentives
Funding will be used for builder and user onboarding and engagement.
- Developer Relations Events
- To create robust developer activation, we aim to run 20+ online and offline hackathons and hacker house events, to partner with developer communities in different geographic locations, and to co-host office hours, AMAs, mixers, streams, etc.
- Grants for Builders and Users
- To conduct thorough testing of node operations, features and functions of Mantle testnet, we will offer grants and airdrops to builders and users who make contributions to Mantle’s ecosystem growth and governance.
2. Bug Bounty & Security Audit
At Mantle, we are committed to bringing the most innovative technology to market. Through bug bounties, we encourage developers and researchers to help us build a strong and stable codebase.
3. Operations Expenditure
- Workforce Compensation
- Mantle currently has a team of 50 full-time contributors, including 27 people in R&D (engineering and product), and 23 people in growth functions (marketing, business development, developer relations, design, analytics, etc.). Both the R&D and growth teams are still expanding. Please check out our Career Page for the latest openings. Mantle also has more than 20 part-time contributors in supporting functions such as legal, finance, HR, and system support.
- General & Administrative Cost
- G&A cost includes rent, travel, recruitment and other miscellaneous costs.
- Marketing Cost
- Marketing cost includes marketing agencies, community management, analytics subscription, networking events, video production, etc.
II. Mainnet Phase 1 (First Year）
The provisional budget for the first year of Mantle mainnet is 145M $BIT tokens, 34M $USDC and 15,000 $ETH. The budget request covers funding across 6 key pillars: Ecosystem Incentives, Builder Programs, Infrastructure & Audit, Operations Expenditure, Ethereum Layer 1 Gas Fee, and Staking Incentives.
1. Ecosystem Incentives
Funding will be used to support the deployment and growth of new and existing dApps, and help onboard large enterprises and Web2 partners to the Web3 arena, and to facilitate mass user adoption.
We aim to launch various programs to bolster the Mantle ecosystem with grants and incentives disbursed in phases. A phased approach allows for recalibration of programs and funding to achieve the best outcomes for Mantle Network.
For builders, Mantle grants seek to identify the “next million user” projects. Recipients of each grant must demonstrate clear product-market fit and user utility. Mantle will help scale these thriving dApps on our mainnet.
For users, Mantle will provide transaction fee subsidy, liquidity mining, in-game incentives, and various types of events to accelerate user growth.
2. Builder Programs
- Developer Relations Events & Programs
- A vibrant developer community is key to sustained success of blockchain protocol. We will engage top platform partners across the globe to maximize our reach. Funding will be used to provide community & entrepreneurship support for hackathons, hacker houses, workshops, bootcamps, educational series and also accelerator programs.
- Bug Bounty
- The bug bounty program will continue through the mainnet phase.
3. Infrastructure
Funding will be used to build a sound and robust infrastructure to support Mantle operations. This will include server, and critical Web3 services such as RPC, explorer, indexer, oracles, indexing, developer tools, etc.
4. Operations Expenditure
- Workforce Compensation
- As introduced earlier, Mantle currently has 50 full-time contributors and more than 20 part-time contributors. We plan to further expand the engineering, blockchain research, business development, developer relations and marketing functions as Mantle grows. Please check out our Career Page for the latest openings.
- General & Administrative Cost
- G&A cost includes rent, travel, recruitment and other miscellaneous costs.
- Marketing Cost
- Marketing cost includes marketing agencies, community management, analytics subscription, networking events, video production, etc.
5. Staking Incentives
To ensure the robustness and security of the network, Mantle will provide $BIT staking incentives to three types of node operators in Mantle Network, sequencers, multi-party computation nodes and DA nodes. Details of each node can be found here.
6. Ethereum Layer 1 Gas Fees
Mantle uses $BIT as the gas token. As Mantle is a rollup built on Ethereum, Mantle has to pay a gas fee to Ethereum in $ETH. Mantle will collect gas fees in $BIT and pay an equivalent amount in $ETH to Ethereum Layer 1.
Estimation of Ethereum Layer 1 gas fee is around 30 $ETH a day, 10,950 $ETH a year. To bootstrap the network, we’d like to reserve 15,000 $ETH as a safe buffer.
III. Node Delegation & Bridge Assets
To bootstrap the liquidity and node operations of Mantle on mainnet, we’d like to propose a loan from BitDAO Treasury to Mantle of 30M $BIT tokens and $60M worth of major assets.
1. Node Delegation
$BIT will be delegated to selected sequencers and multi-party computation node operators for the smooth setup of the network.
2. Canonical Bridge Assets
We’d like to bridge major assets including $BIT, $ETH, $USDT, $USDC from Ethereum to Mantle via the canonical bridge to bootstrap the liquidity on Mantle in the early days upon Mainnet launch.
As Mantle grows and community delegations of $BIT start to take effect along with the buildup of liquidity on the Mantle chain, we will remit this amount back to the DAO.
What Is Mantle?
Mantle is a high-performance Ethereum layer-2 network built with modular architecture. We combine roll-up technology with a decentralized data availability layer, allowing Mantle to inherit security from Ethereum and offer lower fees.
Mantle’s mission is to solve current challenges facing L2 solutions and truly enable a future-ready web3 ecosystem that will power a diverse set of projects and use cases.
We aim to turn the $BIT community into the largest and most impactful web3 community. As a community-owned and community-governed chain, Mantle will involve the $BIT community in critical decisions that will shape the future of Mantle. Through more community participation, we can build a more robust and engaged community that will in turn lead to more value for the $BIT holders.
