BitShares Core Team Budget Worker Proposal - 2018
- Author: Ryan R. Fox (
"fox") - 国语翻译 Mandarin Translation: 招木 (
"Zhaomu")
Intent
- Establish a budget to sustain the development efforts of the BitShares Core Team
- Define a framework for the Core Team to collaborate within
- Provide transparent delivery of BitShares development efforts to the community
Background
BitShares Core software is currently maintained by individuals either volunteering their time or
receiving funding through distinct short-term worker proposals. The BitShares Community has
recognized the need for organized development efforts to increase the utility of our platform.
There is a large backlog of ideas and requirements lacking prioritization, including feature
enhancements, bug fixes, and BSIPs. Therefore, proposed is the establishment of a long-term,
professional, global team dedicated to cohesive and comprehensive development efforts delivered
transparently.
Worker
This is a Budget Worker Proposal which provides partial funding through calendar year 2018 for:
- BitShares Core Team Roles
- Collaboration Tools
- Development Initiatives
This Worker funds an initial Core Team at reduced hours to mitigate draw on the reserve pool
and support bootstrapping efforts. Subsequent Worker(s) will be offered to fund the team as it
scales up. This Worker intends to work in concert with the existing development resources including
Abit, Alfredo Garcia, and the UI Team, led by Bill Butler.
BTS are collected into the "workers.bitshares.foundation" account which is a multi-sig account
controlled by "BitShares Blockchain Foundation" and owned by "committee-account" using the
Budget Worker Model [5]:
- Transparent accounting provided by the BitShares Blockchain Foundation [6]
- Submitted invoices reviewed, approved and remitted within 5 business days
- Compensation paid in bitUSD (according to the rules set forth in [5])
- All unused accumulated BTS returned to the Reserve Pool at the conclusion of the Worker [5]
Initial BitShares Core Team
The initial Core Team is comprised of community members who have demonstrated their ability to work
with Graphene-based code, contribute to this community with thoughtful leadership and share a
dedication to the BitShares ethos. Initially, the team is a skeleton, with many contributing to
multiple roles and at reduced weekly hours as represented in Table 1 Each team member is focused
on returning more value to the BitShares platform than is drawn from the reserve pool.
The initial team is estimating 54 hours of weekly effort. This Worker proposes to budget $15,000
for a team delivering approximately 100 hours weekly to support conservative growth. Demonstrated
results will warrant subsequent Worker(s) to budget for additional team members and weekly hours.
Table 1. Initial BitShares Core Team
| Roles (described below) | Rate Range (Hourly USD) | Team Members | Estimated Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core Developer | $150 | Peter Conrad | 10 hours weekly |
| Core Developer | $150 | Abit | 5 hours weekly* |
| Core Developer | $150 | Alfredo Garcia | 2 hours weekly* |
| Junior Core Developer, BA | $125 | Taconator | 10 hours weekly |
| Business Analyst, Coordinator, QA | $125 | Ryan R. Fox | 15 hours weekly |
| Lead Documentation Specialist, QA | $ 90 | Tamami Sugimoto | 10 hours weekly |
| UI/UX Liaison | $125 | Bill Butler | 2 hours weekly |
| Core Developers | $125 - $200 | -open- | - |
| Business Analysts | $ 75 - $125 | -open- | - |
| Documentation Specialists | $ 60 - $ 90 | -open- | - |
| QA/Testers | $ 75 - $125 | -open- | - |
| TOTALS INITIAL CORE TEAM | $ 90 - $150 | -all- | 54 hours weekly** |
| $6,825 WEEKLY (EST.) | |||
| - | |||
| BUDGET FOR THIS WORKER | |||
| $15,000 | ≈100 hours weekly |
*Abit and Alfredo intend to complete their existing Workers. Their contributions as part of the
Core Team will initially be at the reduced hours above, then expected to increase similar to their
existing Worker.
**Additional hours for all roles remain available at this time. Please contact
fox@bitshares.boston for additional information.
BitShares Core Team
The BitShares Core Team is a self-organizing agile-principled team focused on delivering regularly
scheduled releases and ad hoc bug fixes for the BitShares Core software. The actual number of
contributors and roles may vary within each development cycle (described below), leading to
variations in weekly compensation per contributor. The team has discretion in allocating resources
to meet the needs of each development cycle.
Producing reliable and secure software at scale requires ideation, organization, definition,
prioritization, development, testing and documentation. The ideal team composition includes roles
specializing in each of these functions and capable of contributing to many. The goal of a highly
functioning team is to fully utilize each individual's effort and together maximize their
collective output.
Development Cycles*
- Feature Release (non-hard fork):
- Three-week sprints
- Core Release (Hard Fork):
- Twice annually: first Thursday of June & December
*Subject to change upon consensus of Core Team Members
A typical Feature Release will likely span three weeks from planning thru tested and delivered
software, called a sprint. Many agile principals will be adopted by the Core Team, but do not
expect a strict scrum practice. This is a global team, so a formal daily standup is unlikely. One
should expect asynchronous communication within various collaboration tools keeping the team
informed of progress, plans and problems. The community are our stakeholders; we look to them for
ideas, enhancements and identifying bugs, then organize these into a backlog for future
development. The Coordinator facilitates the prioritization of the backlog items based on feedback
from the stakeholders and the Core Team. The team will keep the stakeholders informed of
development progress throughout the sprint.
At the beginning of a sprint cycle the Core Team meets to review the prioritized backlog and
identify the highest value items that each can contribute to, within the established time block.
Many features have dependencies and cannot be implemented within a single sprint. Therefore, the
team will create tasks, a subset of the feature, that can be delivered on time. A task may be
researching and defining requirements to be implemented later. A task may be writing a test case,
or perhaps implementing only a subset of a given requirement, or even documenting how existing code
functions. The team will maintain a sprint backlog comprised of the tasks selected from the project
backlog. Completing each of these tasks results in incremental value added to the project. Testing
is performed throughout the sprint to ensure functioning code from each increment.
As the sprint nears completion, the Core Team will begin release planning. They will select which
tested increments are ready to be included in a release candidate. This will be deployed to a
staging network for final validation. A release will be tagged within the bitshares-core GitHub
repo along with release notes. The team also produce stakeholder documentation detailing resource
allocations and budget consumption.
The final steps of the sprint include a retrospective look at how the team performed. Here we
reflect on our original estimates, the delivered increments and what contributed to our successes
and shortcomings. We will use insights gained from the retrospective to improve in the next sprint.
The following day we immediately begin our next sprint cycle.
Bounty Process (Implicit Budget)
The BitShares Core Team maintain a prioritized project backlog of ideas, enhancements, bugs and
BSIPs which they select from for their development sprint. The community is encouraged to comment
on the items to aid in refining requirements and guide prioritization. Effort estimates are first
assigned to the highest value backlog items. Unassigned and estimated project backlog items are
available for ad hoc bounty development. Successfully completing ad hoc bounty items is a primary
consideration for an invitation to join the Core Team on a future sprint.
The Core Team encourages ad hoc code contributions of estimated project backlog items from
community members and will compensate successfully merged code based on those estimates. The
Coordinator will facilitate onboarding new community contributors to claim a backlog item and
implement a solution that fits within the broader architecture design defined by the Lead
Developer. Care must be taken to ensure effort is not duplicated and can easily be merged within a
future sprint. Claimed items that become a dependency of a sprint may be recalled by the Core Team
to facilitate feature delivery. Compensation for a partially completed increment will be evaluated
by the Lead Developer.
Compensation for a successfully merged bounty item is drawn from the excess implicit budget
capacity within Table 1 when any Core Team Role is not fully allocated. The specifics for the
bounty process is still being revised (note: it is largely based on the process in use by the UI
Team).
BitShares Core Team Framework:
Accountability
- Maintain timely collaborative communications with each BitShares Core Team Member
- Participate in at least two of three weekly Collaboration Sessions (see Coordinator description)
- Target a majority of your weekly hours between Tuesday - Thursday
- Facilitates ad hoc collaboration
- Facilitates healthy work/life balance
Transparency
- Maintain working increments within Community facing collaboration tools
- Maintain timely updates within Community facing collaboration tools of work in progress and development priorities
Delivery
- Deliver the highest value work first
- Favor release schedule over feature completeness (see Development Cycles)
BitShares Core Team Member 'Contract Work' Guidance:
This section is to be considered guidance, not a legal statement. The BitShares
Decentralized Autonomous Community (BitShares DAC) controls the funds collected
by this Budget Worker and are issued as compensation to individuals performing
agreed work as described elsewhere in this document. Effort contributed by
individuals is considered by personal commitment as no formal employment
contract is intended or able to be formed between BitShares DAC and the
individual worker. Neither the BitShares Blockchain Foundation (BBF) nor the
BitShares Committee or any individual serving those entities are to be
considered employers of any agreed contribution. No BitShares Core Team Member
or Role is considered the manager or the employer of any individual person. Any
compensation received from the BitShares DAC might be considered earned income
for individual persons involved in their individual situation and may be
subject to tax reporting by the recipient. Neither BitShares DAC, nor the
BitShares Blockchain Foundation, nor BitShares Committee, nor the Coordinator,
or any Core Team Member will neither carry responsibility, nor command, nor
issue, nor prepare any document, including tax documents, to any entity or
natural person. All effort performed is a contribution to the BitShares DAC
adhering to its MIT license.
Each Core Team Member is encouraged to contribute in a responsible way with
respect to a work/life balance and legal employee engagements he or she might
have entered into, or enter, with an employer.
Table 2. Core Team Roles and Rates
| Roles (described below) | Hourly Rate (USD) |
|---|---|
| Lead Core Developer | $200 |
| Senior Core Developer | $175 |
| Core Developer | $150 |
| Junior Core Developer | $125 |
| Lead Business Analyst | $125 |
| Senior Business Analyst | $100 |
| Junior Business Analyst | $75 |
| Lead QA/Tester | $125 |
| Senior QA/Tester | $100 |
| Junior QA/Tester | $75 |
| Lead Documentation Specialist | $90 |
| Senior Documentation Specialist | $75 |
| Junior Documentation Specialist | $60 |
| UI/UX Liaison | $125 |
| Coordinator | $150 |
Core Developer
The Core Developer is a seasoned C++ developer primarily tasked with writing and documenting the
source code. Secondarily, the Core Developer is tasked with refining user stories, requirements
and process models prior to development as well as resolving bugs during testing.
Core Developer Key Performance Indicators
- Collaborate with Business Analyst to refine user stories, requirements and process models
- Collaborate with QA/Tester on bug identification and resolution
- Collaborate with the Documentation Specialist to review documentation and ensure it matches
the source code intent and implementation - Maintain code repositories within GitHub using GitFlow principles [7]
- Contribute to Code Review of peers and provide approval for Release
- Document code for the benefit of future development efforts
Business Analyst
The Business Analyst is a key role in a highly functioning team. They review the prioritized list
of enhancements and refine them into requirements prior to the Developer beginning their design.
Creating requirements documents often include user stories which narrate how the end user and/or
system behaves. Process models are another tool for conveying the requirements in a visual flow
diagram. Attention to detail and the ability to research and document are desired characteristics
During development the Developer will often collaborate with the Business Analyst to clarify and
refine requirements to ensure the implementation meets the desired behavior. The Business Analyst
will assist the QA/Tester with writing test cases as well as executing and documenting results
thereof. The Business Analyst will review and refine documentation produced by the Documentation
Specialist to ensure it accurately reflects the requirements.
Business Analyst Key Performance Indicators
- Maintain user stories, requirements and process models
- Collaborate with Core Developers to refine user stories, requirements and process models
- Collaborate with Documentation Specialist to revise developer documentation matches the intent
of the user stories, requirements and process models.
Documentation Specialist
The Documentation Specialist is technical writer able to interpret test cases, user stories,
requirements, process models and C++ source code. Primarily the Documentation Specialist will
write documentation for the development community on the GitHub Wiki and docs.bitshares.org
website. Secondarily, the Documentation Specialist will work with Core Developers to revise
developer documentation based on the intent of the user stories, requirements and process models
to ensure they match the intent and function of the source code.
Documentation Specialist Key Performance Indicators
- Collaborate with the development community to ensure documentation supports their efforts
- Collaborate with the Core Developers to review documentation and ensure it matches the source
code intent and implementation - Collaborate with the QA/Tester and Business Analyst to enhance documentation including user
stories, requirements, process models and test cases
QA/Tester
The QA/Tester is primarily tasked with writing test cases based on user stories, requirements and
process models, then executing the tests and documenting the results. Secondarily, the QA/Tester is
tasked with revising developer documentation with the Documentation Specialist.
QA/Tester Key Performance Indicators
- Maintain test cases within Aha!
- Collaborate with Core Developers to identify and document bugs in GitHub
- Collaborate with Documentation Specialist to revise developer documentation, ensuring it matches
the intended workflow
UI/UX Liaison
The UI/UX Liaison is the primary point of contact for planning, prioritizing, defining and testing
UI/UX elements impacted by the implementation of the Core software. The UI Team function
independently of the Core Team, but their combined efforts are interdependent. Therefore, the UI/UX
Liaison is integral to delivering our feature rich Core platform.
UI/UX Liaison Key Performance Indicators
- Maintain Feature Requests related to UI/UX
- Collaborate with Business Analyst and Core Developers to refine user stories, requirements and
process models
Coordinator
The Coordinator is an experienced agile project manager or scrum master with deep knowledge of
distributed ledger technology. Primarily, the Coordinator is tasked with general facilitation,
organization and prioritization of development efforts.
Coordinator Key Performance Indicators
- Maintain transparent communications with BitShares Community
- Maintain transparent communications with BitShares UI Project Manager
- Maintain transparent communications with Chinese Spokesperson
- Maintain transparent communications with BitShares Spokesperson
- Maintain prioritized backlog of issues/feature requests
- Maintain project roadmap
- Facilitate release cycles
- Facilitate communication to centralized exchanges listing BitShares tokens
- Maintain physical presence for BitShares within co-working space
- Maintain a pool of candidates to select from to fulfill open roles
- Contingency: If both a backlog of effort and an empty candidate pool for an open role exist,
the accumulated budget funds may be allocated to a recruitment effort to fill the open role
- Contingency: If both a backlog of effort and an empty candidate pool for an open role exist,
- Onboard and mentor Core Team Members
- Facilitate standing collaboration sessions (Thrice weekly 2-hour blocks dispersed for
international participation)- 02:00 - 04:00 UTC Tuesday
- 19:00 - 21:00 UTC Wednesday
- 11:00 - 13:00 UTC Thursday
- Approve invoices submitted by Core Team Members, forward to BitShares Blockchain Foundation
for remittance - Maintain vendor relationships for collaboration tools
- Facilitate Developer Conference attendance
Initial Core Team Member Introductions
Abit - Core Developer
Draft: I have contributed to the BitShares code base for many years [11].
Alfredo Garcia - Core Developer
I recently began my second 6-month Worker as a BitShares Core Developer [12]. Mainly I focus on the
bitshares-core software by implementing features, fixing bugs, testing, maintenance, etc. [13]. I
also develop outside the core tools for other developers and final applications for the BitShares
community. [14]
Bill Butler - UX/UI Liaison
I lead the BitShares UI team and have extensive industry experience: Founded an ISP in 1993,
NodeJS, Angular, PHP, CouchDB, SQL. UX/UI Experience [16]. I am currently VP Engineering for a
healthcare software development firm and have eight years’ experience managing development teams.
Peter Conrad - Core Developer
I am a knowledgeable and long-standing member of the BitShares community (@pc) and an active
developer for many years [9-10].
Ryan R. Fox - Coordinator, Business Analyst, QA/Tester
I have actively contributed to BitShares development from its inception [1-4]. I have extensive
professional background in project management with software development teams and am a professional
scrum master (PSM-1) with multi-national experience in financial services, mortgage banking and
manufacturing.
Taconator - Core Developer, Business Analyst
I began participating in the BitShares Hangout in early 2017 after submitting a patch and
associated unit tests related to the recurring withdrawals capability that already existed in
BitShares Core [8]. I also began publishing monthly reports on the fees collected by the BitShares
blockchain in April 2017. I have experience within various industries identifying problems of
non-technical end-users, designing technical products for solving those problems, and leading teams
to successfully build those technical products. (Just because one might have a "hammer" does not
mean that every problem is a "nail".) These solutions span from augmented reality applications on
mobile devices to global distributed software systems.
Tamami Sugimoto - Documentation Specialist, QA/Tester
I have created and revised documentation for BitShares over the past year [15]. I hold a Masters in
MIS and have held professional titles including Systems Analyst & Programmer, Web Designer and
Database Administrator. I have experience using Content Management Systems to re-organize multiple
websites. I am proficient analyzing system code in many programming languages and have created many
web applications and websites.
Collaboration Tools
The BitShares Core Team use various collaboration tools to organize their work, convey ideas and
aid development efforts. Transparency of development efforts to the community is a key requirement.
Tools selected by the team generally provide read/reviewer access for the community to observe
progress, track our time and provide feedback. Write/contributor access may be limited to a
specific Core Team role(s). License quantities and types will vary monthly, therefore $2,000 is
budgeted for tools. A non-exhaustive list is provided in Table 3 below.
Table 3. Collaboration Tools (Monthly)
| Description | Amount (USD) |
|---|---|
| Software Tools | $2,000 |
| --Code Repository | -- |
| --Continuous Integration | -- |
| --Continuous Code Quality | -- |
| --Product Roadmap | -- |
| --Process Models | -- |
| --Time Tracking/Auditing | -- |
| --Infrastructure Environment | -- |
| Escrow and Remittance (BBF) | $3,000 |
| TOTAL TOOLS BUDGET (MONTHLY) | $5,000 |
Select Core Team will meet prior to each of the scheduled DevCon events for team building,
in person collaboration and presentation preparation. The Core Team will participate in conference
events in constructive ways. A budget for Conference participation is provided in Table 4 below.
Table 4. Conference Budget (One-Time)
| Description | Accommodations | Amount (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| DevCon Spring 2018 - Shanghai, China | ||
| Travel round trip (up to $2000) | 5 FTE | $10,000 |
| Lodging (up to $150) | 5 nights | $3,750 |
| Meals (up to $60) | 5 days | $1,500 |
| DevCon Autumn 2018 - TBD, Europe | ||
| Travel round trip (up to $2000) | 5 FTE | $10,000 |
| Lodging (up to $200) | 5 nights | $5,000 |
| Meals (up to $80) | 5 days | $2,000 |
| TOTAL TOOLS BUDGET (ONE-TIME) | $32,250 |
Development Initiatives
The Initial Core Team has identified in Chart 1 a set of Initiatives to research, define and
develop as part of their 2018 Roadmap. A detailed Roadmap will be a deliverable of this Worker for
Community review. An 'Ideas Portal' will also be maintained to incorporate Community priorities
into the Roadmap.
Caveat: The Core Team cannot commit to deliver fully implemented solutions for all identified
Initiatives. The intent here is to provide guidance at the outset, realizing the Core Team
continuously evaluates and prioritizes new issues ongoing.
- Interchain Communication
- Atomic Cross Chain Transactions (ACCT)
- EOS.IO Integration Report
- Trustless Gateway
- Market Mechanics
- Market Engine Improvements
- Maker/Taker Model
- Bancor Protocol
- Consensus & witness_node Enhancements
- Database Storage Options
- Installation scripts / environments
- Confidential Transactions / Confidential Assets
- Hardware Wallet Integrations
- API & cli_wallet Enhancements
- Community Engagement
- Vote Decay
- Fee Schedule based on Market Pegged Assets
- Refine/Prioritize Existing BSIPs
Chart 1. Initiatives - 2018
Budget
The items listed in the tables below represent an upper bound on expenditures. All funds
collected and unused at the conclusion of this Worker Proposal will be returned to the Reserve
Pool [5-6].
Table 5. Core Team Budget
| Description | Amount (USD) | Daily | TOTAL BUDGET |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Core Team Roles (Table 1) | $15,000 | ||
| ++ Convert to daily (/7 days) | $2,143 | ||
| Total Collaboration Tools (Table 3) | $5,000 | ||
| ++ Convert to daily (/30 days) | $167 | ||
| Total Conference Budget (Table 4) | $32,250 | ||
| ++ Convert to daily (/44 weeks /7 days) | $106 | ||
| ≈≈ TOTAL DAILY BUDGET ITEMS | $2,416 | ||
| ≈≈ ≈≈ TOTAL 44 WEEK BUDGET | $744,128 |
Duration and Pay
This proposal will last for roughly 44 weeks, starting from 1st March 2018.
Payments:
- Invoices from Core Team Members will be submitted to the Coordinator by Monday 12:00 UTC for work
performed thru Sunday 23:59 UTC of the previous period - Coordinator will review and approve submitted time sheets, then forward an invoice to BitShares
Blockchain Foundation for release of funds from escrow to"bitsharesdev"account for remittance to
contributors - Coordinator will review and approve vendor invoices, then forward to BitShares Blockchain
Foundation for direct payment to vendor
Calculation:
- 3.9761 BTS/bitUSD = Settlement price of bitUSD at the moment of writing (2018-02-16)
- 2.5 = Collateral multiplier to cover market fluctuations and borrow with 2.5x collateral, as needed
- $2,416 USD/day * 3.9761 BTS/USD * 2.5 collateral multiplier ≈24,016 BTS/day
USD payment will be in bitUSD with method developed by the BitShares Blockchain Foundation [5].
References
- [1] BitShares Talk Profile, Ryan R. Fox
- [2] GitHub Repository, Ryan R. Fox
- [3] LinkedIn Profile, Ryan R. Fox
- [4] Twitter Profile, Ryan R. Fox
- [5] Budget Worker Template, BitShares Blockchain Foundation
- [6] Transparent Accounting, BitShares Blockchain Foundation
- [7] GitFlow, BitShares
- [8] GitHub Repository, Taconator
- [9] Professional Background, Peter Conrad
- [10] Implementation of BSIP-18, Peter Conrad
- [11] Core Dev Worker, Abit
- [12] Core Dev Worker, Alfredo Garcia
- [13] BitShares Core Contributions, Alfredo Garcia
- [14] GitHub Repository, Alfredo Garcia
- [15] BitShares Documentation, Tamami Sugimoto
- [16] BitShares GUI Worker, Bill Butler![initiatives.png]