Milestones & Metrics Council Operating Budget Seasons 8 and 9

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M&M Council Operating Budget — Seasons 8 & 9

Proposed Lead: @Juanbug_PGov

Proposed Operating Budget: 492,350 OP/Season (984,700 OP total)

  • In depth breakdown worksheet here.
  • +320,000 OP relative to previous season. Same base stipend per reviewer in ETH terms as average from last two seasons, repriced to current ETH/OP rates (similar to approved Budget Board budget’s logic)
    • New Bridge Period Stipend, as reflection period funding shifting from Foundation budget to governance request (more details below)
    • New Data Analytics Budget with updated S8/S9 mandates (more details below)

Contact Info: PGovTeam@gmail.com

Council Charter: S8 M&M Council Charter

Breakdown of Council Operating Budget (Per Season):

Roles and breakdowns for each part with calculations are in the worksheet here.

  • Milestones and Metrics Reviewers (3): 60,900 OP each (Unlocked)

    • A governance vote will decide these 3 reviewers
    • OP amounts were calculated based on the ETH/OP rate when prior seasons’ budgets were passed. More specific calculations in the worksheet.
      • This ETH/OP rate logic is similar to the budget board’s revisions passed here. Using the average ETH rate stipend for S6/S7 (13.30 ETH) and the current ETH/OP is how the above values are derived.

  • Milestones and Metrics Lead (1): 85,200 OP (Unlocked)

    • Same logic as above with the ETH/OP rate. Kept the same Lead stipend to Reviewer stipend ratio, which has been 1.4, from all prior seasons S5/S6/S7.

  • Bridge Stipend: 49,700 OP total (Unlocked)

    • Uniquely, the entire M&M Council stays fully operational during the reflection periods between seasons. In prior seasons, the Foundation compensated the team with “bridge funding.” Going forward, they asked us to approach governance for this bridge.
    • For the two seasons between now and S9, there are 91 days of uncompensated reflection days and 294 days of compensated season days (~31%). If the team were to be compensated at the same seasonal rate during these bridge periods, pro rata’d, it would equal 84800 OP. To this, we have applied a discount factor of 60% to reach the above amount, in line with reviewer expectations and performance. Note that during these reflection periods, all 4 team members are to be operating as normal in full capacity.
    • Budget will be used to compensate the S7-S8 reflection period, and S8-S9 reflection period. Stipend will be split using the same 1:1.4 (Reviewer:Lead) logic used above.

  • Multisig Management Stipend: 97,100 OP total (for 7 signers, Unlocked)

    • Following S7’s experiment to house the grant multisig and distribution function under the M&M council, S8 will operate in line with the full OP collective Multisig policy. Signers will be tasked with controlling the S8/S9 funds, as well as prior S7 distributions.
    • Similar to the Budget Board’s and prior sections’ logic, this budget was derived from last season’s approved budget in ETH terms. (~21.2 ETH, at today’s rate). This is the total budget for 7 members, which would put the multisig stipend on par with market averages.
    • The Multisig threshold will be 5/7. We will continue to work with the Foundation on adjusting and updating as needed. Similar to last season, the Foundation plans to add 3 Additional Signers to the multisig from the Developer Advisory Board (1) and the Grants Council (2). These Additional Signers will be tasked with double checking the transactions submitted by the M&M Reviewers, and we expect ~6000 OP allocated to each Additional Signer, in line with the repricing from last season.
      • 7 total: 3 M&M Reviewers, 1 M&M Lead, 2 GC Reviewers, 1 DAB Member
    • Note: Stipends will be used to cover all related multisig expenses that arise, including purchasing hardware wallets as needed.

  • Data Analytics & Operational Budget: 57,650 OP total (Locked, decreased from 60,000 OP)

    • Reserve is for grants specifically designed to enhance Council operations (e.g., knowledge management platform, front-end, developer contributions, etc)
    • New mandate this season to a host place for a data dashboard & track grantee analytics. We will work with the Foundation to source candidates and input.
    • Expected costs include: splitting costs for a grants management platform with the Grants Council (and hosting DAB audit page), hosting a grants claiming tool, funding a live data analytics platform for rewarded grantees, etc.
    • Funds locked for 1 year starting upon the approval of this governance vote

  • Retroactive Funding Bonus: 20,000 OP total (Locked)

    • Similar to last season, the Milestones and Metrics Council will not participate in future Retro Funding
    • These funds will be locked for 1 year. The total budget here will NOT be repriced to ETH as this is intended to be a bonus for 1 year out. The bonus distribution algorithm will be designed and approved by the elected Milestones and Metrics Council members later in the season, ensuring fair and transparent distribution based on measurable contributions.
    • Funds locked for 1 year starting upon the approval of this governance vote

Seasonal Breakdown:

  • Milestones and Metrics Reviewers (3): 182,700 OP (Unlocked)
  • Milestones and Metrics Lead (1): 85,200 OP (Unlocked)
  • Bridge Stipend (Total): 49,700 OP (Unlocked)
  • Multisig Management Stipend (for 7): 97,100 OP (Unlocked)
  • Data Analytics & Operational Budget (Total): 57,650 OP (Locked)
  • Retroactive Funding Reserve (Total): 20,000 OP (Locked)
  • Total: 492,350 OP
Inside is an breakdown of the total expected stipend per Reviewer & Lead

This table represents an expected total amount of OP expected for Reviewers and the Lead for S8, including the S8/S9 Reflection Period.

Reviewer Lead Notes
Base Stipend 60900 85200
Reflection Period Bridge Stipend 11295 15815 49700 Total OP (1:1.4 Ratio)
Total 72195 101015

Additionally, each season, the Reviewers and Lead will split the Retro Funding Reserve Budget, and the Reviewers, Lead, and GC & DAB Additional Signers will split the Multisig Management Stipend. These budgets and allocations will be internally decided by the Lead and M&M Reviewers post election, similar to S7, dependent upon performance and real bandwidth required.

How should governance participants assess impact?

User Experience KPIs:

  • <5% of quality applicant drop off due to milestones issues
  • <5% of approved applicants failure to meet milestones due to communication and operational issues
  • <1 week turnaround from grant completion to grants delivery
  • Continuous decreased reliance on Foundation’s growth team for information on milestones and tracking and disbursements, subject to feedback from the Foundation.

Performance KPIs:

  • Helping aid increase of Interop on Superchain in line with this Season’s goals, as well as prior and future seasons. Metrics considered will: Interoperable Stage 1 chains’ cross-chain asset transfers, Total TVL, Stablecoin TVL, Wrapped Asset TVL, and Bridged Asset TVL, future Intents
  • Projects to be clawed back due to misunderstood timelines <5%
  • Reviewing >95% of projects that have completed all milestones within 5 work days.

Justification for Budget

We urge everyone to please take a look at our breakdown of the budget request here. Each item is explained in detail including justifications on how the numbers were derived.

The overall summary of changes for this season are:

  • Same base stipend per reviewer in ETH terms as average from last few seasons, repriced to current ETH/OP rates (similar to approved Budget Board’s proposed budget’s logic)
  • New Bridge Period Stipend, as reflection period funding is shifting from Foundation budget to governance request
  • New Data Analytics Budget with updated S8/S9 mandate
  • Reference:
    • S7 M&M Council Budget: 16% of total approved council budgets (GC, SC, DAB, M&M)
    • Proposed S8/S9 M&M Council Budget: 22% of total budget from Budget Board (increased % to accommodate new data analytics mandate, bridge stipend funding shift, and formalized Multisig operations)

NOTE: We will work closely with the Foundation and the Budget Board between seasons if a repricing is needed, heeding to their recommendations when applicable.

EDIT (7/31/2025): With the successful passing of all four budgets, we are slightly over the total cap. In line with Foundation set pro-rata decreases, the M&M budget will decrease by 4700 OP. We have decided to decrease our Data Analytics budget by 2350 OP/Season, to account for this 4700 OP total budget decrease.

5 Likes
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We are an Optimism Delegate with sufficient voting power, and we believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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On behalf of the Budget Board, thanks for sharing the M&M Council budget proposal for Seasons 8 and 9. Before the vote, I’d appreciate clarification on a few points to help the community evaluate this request:

  • The proposed budget appears somewhat higher than what would result from an ETH/OP repricing alone. Could you clarify what is driving that increase, and also elaborate on your expanded responsibilities?

  • Does it make sense for the M&M Council budget to be more in line with the DAB proposal?

  • How will the M&M Council report progress against the stated KPIs, and when can the community expect to see those updates?

A concise response would be much appreciated and will help delegates and community members cast informed votes. Thanks again for all the work on this.

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Hey @mariap! Thanks for the comment and time digging through our proposal.

  • In addition to the ETH/OP repricing, the two new sections compared to S7 that you see are the Data Analytics Ops budget and Bridge Stipend Budget. We tried to highlight these new changes and justification specifically in the text above; apologies if they weren’t clear enough. Each of these two budgets is explained in detail above, and the expanded responsibilities are derived from them (new mandate to track live time data analytics for new grantees, and the Foundation no longer funding the council for inter-season reflection period work).
  • We coordinated with both the DAB and GC when drafting this budget. In fact the other two council leads ended up using the same framework and OP budget repricing template that we made. We would say therefore that our proposal is already quite in line with the DAB proposal (same framework, similar total budget request, similar OP/ETH repricing method). Also, it’s important to note that we do not interacted with the DAB much in day to day operations; it makes more sense to be in line with the Grants Council for us as we interact with them daily. To this, again, we have coordinated and are in line with their budget as well.
  • For User Experience KPIs, these focus more on season end results looking back cumulatively at applicants for each season. We will have an update at the end of S8 and S9, in line with prior seasons and councils. For the Performance KPIs, they will largely follow the same timeline and analysis. With this season and our new Data mandate, we will be tracking TVL and Volume metrics in real time, and are planning on presenting this info publicly anytime anyone wants to know how a grant is doing.

Thanks again for the thoughtful questions and hope these responses are helpful!

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Something else to note is that some found the multisig management component of this budget confusing, particularly as it covers each member of the milestone and metrics council and non-council members. Might it be better to consolidate the rewards for the lead / members of the council and expect other council leads to account for the duties of their members through their own budgets? Some comment may be helpful for the Collective.

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The Multisig Component of this budget is for managing and operating the Multisig that holds S7 grants as well as the future S8 & S9 grants budgets. The Multisig will be operated by 7 total signers this season, and will include 4 from M&M council, 2 from GC, and one from DAB.

We were asked by the Foundation to keep everyone’s budget for this in our own in S7 when this was first established and will continue this S8 & S9. We believe the main reason this request was made was that the roles of these extra additional signers will not be GC/DAB related tasks, but M&M operational tasks dealing with executing initial and milestone payments. This is something that is under the M&M mandate, and we agree with the Foundation in that it makes the most sense to house it all in one place under this budget.

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I am one of the Synthetix Ambassadors, and I am an Optimism Top 100 delegate [Delegate Commitments - #65 by mastermojo ] with sufficient voting power, and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote

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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power. I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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Please see the included thread and consider commenting here for the Milestone and Metrics Council.

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Thank you for the breakdown.

Responses to main points as requested:

  • Worked with GC & DAB to have the same OP/ETH repricing mechanism as described above
  • OP stipend/member higher than other councils due to ~30% more duration active with this budget (whole Council stays active during the reflection period → ~30% more time)
  • Multisig component follows similar OP/ETH repricing and puts at par compensation to similar roles across the space.

Additionally, always happy to chat more about this. Thanks for the time!

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Thank you @PGov for putting forward this budget proposal.

Taking into account the ETH/OP repricing logic used across other councils (1 ETH = 1886 OP for Season 7 and 1 ETH = 4580 OP for Season 8), the M&M Council’s budget increases from approximately 90 ETH to 108 ETH. This represents a moderate adjustment and we find it to be consistent with previous season 7.

Reviewer stipends increase from 25000 OP in season 7 to 60900 OP in season 8/9, and the lead role moves from 35000 OP (around 18.5 ETH in season 7) to 85200 OP (around 18.6 ETH in season 8/9). This maintains a perfect parity in ETH terms. We believe the structure is sound, and we particularly welcome the new allocations for analytics, tooling, and reporting.

For these reasons:

The SEEDGov delegation, as we have communicated here, being an Optimism delegation with sufficient voting power, we believe this proposal is ready to move towards a vote.

2 Likes
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We are an Optimism Delegate & Top 100 Delegate with sufficient voting power, and we believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

1 Like
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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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I am an Optimism Delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

1 Like
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Since there is a matter of relative allocation to consider, can you comment on the higher base relative to the Security Council and Developer Advisory Board? The base appears to be ~25% higher than the proposed budget for the SC and ~27% higher than the DAB on a per member basis prior to consideration of the multisig, bridge and / or retro components.

This may relate purely to an adjustment of the prior base, but as the councils mature, the community should consider relative value and input apart from the simple adjustment for the ETH-OP.

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As a follow up, it is worth noting that the number of members in the M&M council is proposed to be 4. Distribution of workload is something that was referred to for the Grants Council, which has proposed reducing its headcount. This may be pertinent to the above as well, and may be helpful for consideration.

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As you mentioned, our base budget is higher than that of SC & DAB. This is in line with prior seasons.

S7 Base Average % Relative to M&M S8/S9 Proposed Base Average % Relative to M&M
M&M 27500 - 66975 -
DAB 17500 ~57% 52750 ~27%
SC 20357 ~35% 53730 ~25%
GC 28750 (~4%) 75000 (~11%)

Looking back at S7 for example, our base stipend average was ~57% more than DAB, ~35% more than SC, and ~4% less than GC. For S8/S9, as shown above, the proposed base stipend average is actually less relative to prior seasons.

To your second point about considering workload, we appreciate the comments and it is certainly something we have debated on extensively. Our mandate and day to day has increased significantly over the past few seasons. New mandates since our start include managing and distributing grants via the Grants Multisig, creating and maintaining live data analytics, and continuing to work during the reflection period. With these increased responsibilities and workload, we had to choose between more members with less pay, or less/same members with more pay, ultimately deciding on the latter, hence why you see a higher total S8/S9 & Reflection Period budgets. Going forward, the goal will be to automate some of these functions and are certainly not ruling out possibly decreasing scope and reviewers come S9/future.

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With the successful passing of all four budgets, all 4 budgets combined are slightly over the total cap.

In line with Foundation set pro-rata decreases, the M&M budget will decrease by 4700 OP. We have decided to decrease our Data Analytics budget by 2350 OP/Season, to account for this 4700 OP total budget decrease. This adjusts the Data Analytics budget from 60,000 OP/season to 57,650 OP/season.

This has been updated above in the operating budget (now confirmed).

2 Likes