Telos Quarterly Report Q1 2022
Message from the Telos Foundation Guardians
The Telos Foundation has taken bold steps to ensure that accountability and self-governance are top priorities. This commitment has been reinforced by establishing the Telos Foundation Guardians, an oversight organization that has met weekly throughout Q1 of 2022.
The purpose and responsibilities of this group, although not finalized, cover a wide range of duties that ultimately ensure that the direction of the Telos Foundation aligns with community goals. While more responsibilities will likely be implemented in the coming weeks, at present, the TF Guardians’ organization is tasked with the following:
- Support and promote the Telos Network globally to increase adoption of the Telos Network.
- Publicly monitor and ensure the prudent use of Telos Foundation funding.
- Approve ‘TF’ account payments and promptly sign the agreed multi-sigs.
- Review and promote the Telos Technical Roadmap.
- Monitor and ensure the TBNOA document is accurate and all amendments are executed promptly.
- Support the use of a governance process that allows for arbitration of intent of code disputes.
- Appointing a CEO and holding them accountable for upholding the mandate of the Telos Foundation.
The Telos Foundation Guardians serve as the community’s voice in all of the above.
Telos Foundation
The first quarter of 2022 provided amazing progress for the Telos Foundation. The TF went from less than a handful of staff working with contractor teams to a fully integrated Marketing, PR, Community and Business Development collective. Whilst all the hiring came with expected growing pains the increased output already started to show by February.
Accomplishments:
- Over 4x growth in TF staffing
- Established Telos Ignite Grants and Ventures with 12M TLOS initial funding allocation - this program has seen 95 applications to date.
- Established Telos Spark Hackathon Series with hackathon 1 - TelosEVM with 25+ completed projects and over 100 individual participants
- Secured our first major conference presence with Consensus - coming up on June 9
- BD and marketing efforts helped onboard over 20 new projects in Q1
- Social Media grew exponentially with our key socials seeing 20% growth over this period
- ATH in exchange volume for quarter reaching $26,247,176 USD
- Website traffic up 20%
As part of our commitment to transparency we have prepared the following financial summary of TF Q1 spending. Please note that the denominations are in various currencies to match actual spending of the TF.
Definitions of the various buckets the expenses have been allocated to are as follows:
Community Relations
Community relations consists of a regional community manager, Telos Eagles and management Salary. In addition, community relations has initiated giveaways and influencer spending.
Governance
Payment for a vendor to rewrite the Telos Works system into an RFP process.
Liquidity & exchange
Payments for the salary of the manager of Liquidity and Exchange and for expenses paid to the service providers.
Marketing
Marketing consists of salary for marketing employees as well as different marketing initiatives (advertising, consensus etc.)
Operations
Operations consist of SAAS tools, job postings etc. used in order to ensure an efficient working environment at the TF, along with salaries of the CEO and COO of the TF.
Other
Payment to strategic Telos partner to cover RAM costs.
Partnerships
Partnerships consist of the salary and expenses for the 'Partnerships' team. The partnerships team is focused on onboarding DApps and creating partners for Telos.
PR & IR
PR consists of the salary for a PR manager and the costs for vendors managing PR publications.
Product
Redfin security audit etc, anything related to Web wallet, telos.net etc.
Bug Bounties
Payouts at the discretion of the TF for identification of bugs and security issues
Summary of TF Expenses:
USD Spend: $898,050.7*
TLOS Spend: 486,399.8 TLOS
ETH Spend: $28,712.60
Bug Bounty: 520,922 TLOS
*Note on USD spend: Roughly $400,000 USD was advance spend on Events and subscriptions for Q2-Q4. Consensus and Newswire make up the bulk of this.
Projected TF runway as per April 2022: 12 months
Telos Liquidity Team
Volunteers initially started this team during T-Bonds, Bounce sale in 2021 to help Telos Foundation with Exchange and Liquidity management - as they were severely understaffed at that time. The original mandate for this team was to be the multisig signers of funds and coordinate with TF to make decisions regarding liquidity management etc. Since the inception of this team, and with the support from Telos validators last year, responsibilities have evolved from simply managing funds and signing multisig, to making decisions on where and how liquidity should be grown and distributed. The team also monitors the TLOS markets and coordinates with exchange partners to ensure everything is operating smoothly. In addition, the team also does outreach towards institutional partners, new wallets, exchanges, etc.
In light of these added duties and the new liquidity incentive initiatives, the team has started the work to optimize the workflows, expand the current team, and establish a transparent structure and decision-making process over the last couple of months.
As of 23rd March 2022, the exchanges and liquidity team control $14,900,369 worth of funds. TLOS makes up 2/3 of this balance, while the remaining 1/3 comprises stablecoins and other cryptos. These funds are distributed across various bridges, exchanges, and liquidity pools to ensure sufficient liquidity exists.
At the moment, the primary costs for the team include service provider fees, exchange integration fees, etc. Currently, the salaries for the team are covered by TF and are expected to change with more funding and a new team structure(soon to be announced).
Service Provider Expenses:
January: 17,686.04 USDT
February: 24,408 USDT
March: 12,535.48 USDT
Total: $54,629.52 USDT
Exchange Fees:
EVM Integration fees - 100,000 USDT
Telos Core Development
We have grown the core development team significantly since January 2022 as we need a considerable amount of resources to deliver on the adjusted roadmap for Q2/Q3. To ensure our success, we took all possible measures to increase our numbers, and by June 2022, we expect a team size of 17 members, divided into nine full-time, six part-time, and two retainer assignments.
The 240% personnel increase compared to December 2021 clearly demonstrates our focus on delivering on the promises made by Telos Core Development and driving Telos, along with our valued community, to the forefront of the blockchain world.
We have implemented various operational processes, structures, and improvements to increase our efficiency significantly. The optimizations have been perceived well by the community and all members of the teams, including the Telos Foundation.
The latest bi-weekly development updates and newly introduced series of "Telos Tech Talks" AMA format improved our communication significantly.
Our adjusted and refocussed roadmap paves the way to support the strategic goals of Telos even more. The team has been working relentlessly on further improvements to our block explorers, EVM RPC performance, Docker scalability, and rollout.
We are in the process of making the fastest EVM even better! The team is developing a hybrid EVM "Super-Node" solution that will be easier to operate and integrate, offer top-notch history management, and combine it with the best available Ethereum clients.
TCD Budget Report Q1/Q2
A significant increase in team and resources comes with increased spending. While the original capital raised remained untouched for a decent time, the payroll and external spending have now reduced our runway.
Total quarterly cost Q1 2022: 285,000 USD*
Exceptional cost EOSIO+ coalition 2022: 450,000 USD
Projected runway as per June 2022: 17 months
*We value our team's personal information and comply with non-disclosure agreements, detailed staff costs or external rates are therefore not publicized.
