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Contributor Compensation

Contractors

The term “Contractors” covers both corporate contractors and independent contractors.

  • Corporate contractors are companies that do work for Decred, e.g. Company 0, Raedah Group, Eeter. Corporate contractors typically employ a number of contributors who work on Decred (but for the corporate contractor).
  • Independent contractors are people that do work for Decred. This page explains how people who contribute to the project can become independent contractors.

Contractors contribute in a wide variety of ways including software development, design, communications, community support, research and documentation.

Decred currently has over 50 contributors (independent contractors and employees of corporate contractors), and you can see them on decred.org/contributors in portraits with badges indicating whether they work for a corporate contractor.

Billing and Payments

At the end of each month, each contractor prepares an invoice and submits it to the Decred Holdings Group LLC (DHG). The invoice lists the items the contractor has worked on and a charge (in USD) for each - typically these charges are for a number of hours worked at an agreed hourly rate.

USD amounts are converted to DCR at the average daily market rate for the previous month.

Once all of the invoices have been received and processed, payments to all contractors are made on the same day. This typically happens in the middle of the following month, around 2-4 weeks in. The intention is to turn payments around as quickly as possible but the process takes time and relies on timely invoicing by contractors.

As the DCR/USD conversion rate is pegged to the previous month, contractors are exposed to any volatility in the price of DCR that occurs during this period. As contractors will be unable to liquidate their earnings until payments have been processed, they should be mindful that prices can decrease or increase in the interim, and plan their finances accordingly.

Pay Rates

The hourly payment rate for a given contractor depends on which domain the contractor works within, eg. marketing, development, design, and also the type of work they are performing, eg. a developer working on critical consensus code will be offered more than a developer working on casual web development. A new contractor may start on a lower rate than some existing contractors, but their rate may be increased after they have delivered consistent work at an acceptable standard.

While it is understood that the cost of living can differ drastically in different parts of the world, the rate offered to a contractor is not adjusted to take geographic location into account. Rate is determined by the quality of an individuals contributions only. Taking location into account would not be feasible because it is relatively easy for a contractor to be dishonest about where they reside, and very difficult for project contributors to validate each others locations.

Request for Proposals (RFP) - Historical

Decred was launched with a Request For Proposal system in order to provide compensation for contributors working on larger or more significant projects. A document (RFP) would be produced which described the requirements and scope of a project, along with a clearly defined set of milestones and a reward specified in DCR. The RFP would be posted publicly and community members would be given a period of time to submit their proposals. After review, a proposal would be selected and awarded the contract.

The RFPs were stored on GitHub and they can still be viewed. The first, RFP-001, was looking for developers to overhaul the Paymetheus application. RFP progress and payments were made public via the now defunct Decred forum.

The RFP process worked well for certain types of tasks, however a need arose to have contributors engaged and compensated over the longer term and on a more flexible basis1. In January 2017 the RFP system was changed to a contractor model and Decred began to hire its first contractors. In October 2018 Politeia launched, this augments the contractor model by facilitating decision-making about the work which should be funded.

Sources

  1. Decred Blog, 2017 Decred Roadmap ↩