From November 15, 2020, to November 15, 2023, the Infrastructure Funding Plan (IFP) allocated 8% of the eCash (XEC) block reward, or ~500,000 XEC per block, toward development. This amounted to roughly 26.3 billion XEC per year, split evenly between Bitcoin ABC (the primary development team) and the Global Network Council (GNC), a group of large XEC stakeholders that vote on community-funded projects. Assuming an average XEC price of $0.00004 during that period, this translates to about $1.05M annually.
Then on November 15, 2023, the IFP share was increased from 8% to 32% in anticipation of the April 15, 2024 block reward halving. Roughly 43.2 billion XEC was earned by the IFP in those five months, and from the halving to today, another ~69 billion XEC has been earned. In total, that’s about 112 billion XEC, worth approximately $3.37M if we assume an average price of $0.00003.
This means that across the entire period from November 2020 to now, the IFP has generated about $6.5M, or about $1.4M per year, to fund both the core development team and GNC-approved projects.
Based on publicly available Phabricator/Github activity, it appears eCash has typically had the equivalent of about 10 full-time team members, including engineers, a general manager, part-time contributors, and support roles like community and social media managers. The GNC has also funded projects such as PayButton, Agora.cash, and the Chronik Indexer, along with smaller initiatives (some now abandoned).
Even if the entire $1.4M/year went solely to salaries, which it clearly does not, that would mean an average salary of $140K per person. As someone who has worked in corporate America for decades, these numbers seem reasonable accounting for a mix of junior and senior salaries, the lack of benefits, and the risks that comes with working for what is effectively a startup. But unlike traditional startups where early employees are usually given equity, contributors to eCash do not other than any XEC they purchase or earn, meaning competitive salaries are essential to attract and retain talent.
Based on this, the IFP appears well-spent as I can see no sign of lavish pay or wasteful self-enrichment. In other words, the IFP is not being abused, so if the price of XEC were to rise, there’s reason to believe the team would continue to allocate resources effectively.
Now there are some critics who argue the GNC acts as a gatekeeper while deciding which projects get to take advantage of the IFP funds, and that ABC itself acts as a gatekeeper to GNC membership. Some propose letting all Avalanche stakers vote on proposals in public to do away with the gatekeeping. While more democratic on paper, this could also slow decision-making and allow bad actors to siphon funds into vanity or self-serving projects. This is the tradeoff, openness vs. efficiency, and the current model is a hybrid that is part ABC oversight, part community allocation.
All this led me to an important realization:
🔥 44 unlocks and counting...