Summary:
This proposal aims to compensate Liqwid’s 5 Community Managers for their work in Discord moderating community discussion, answering questions and providing insightful feedback based on user requests. In many cases Community Managers serve as the first point of contact new users interact with when assessing Liqwid protocol for their specific needs or inquiring into the Liqwid protocol’s design and implementation. Liqwid’s Discord server is the central venue for community members to discuss current topics, ideate governance topics and discuss Liqwid and Cardano DeFi specific points. It’s critical this central venue for collaboration and discussion amongst Liqwid community members remains properly moderated.
The Community Manager role began as a volunteer-based role but has grown in moderation responsibilities necessitating payment for the role. Most CM’s spend meaningful hours each week actively engaging with the Liqwid community on the Discord server. As the Liqwid ecosystem grows with new community members joining daily the Community Managers are asked to take on a leading role in assisting new users, helping answer their questions as they complete initial market actions in the app or inquire about specific protocol functionality.
To date the Liqwid Community Managers have received a 200 ADA monthly payment from Liqwid Labs for this work.
Proposal Actions:
Continue the 200 ADA monthly payment to Liqwid Community Managers with the funding now originating from the Liqwid protocol’s monthly revenue.
Complete a one-time payment of 1,400 ADA to each of the 5 Liqwid Community Managers (7,000 ADA total) representing the past 7 months of Community Manager monthly payments which have not been paid out yet.
Technical Consideration:
This proposal’s actions do not include any component that requires technical consideration.
Conclusion:
The Community Manager role which began as a volunteer-based role has grown in scope of responsibilities to become the leading resource and first point of contact for new users. As a result of this growth in role responsibilities the Community Managers has received a 200 ADA monthly payment to date paid for by Liqwid Labs funds. The actions in this proposal include 1. future Community Manager payments to originate from Liqwid monthly revenues and 2. completion of a one-time payment of 1,400 ADA to each of the 5 Liqwid Community Managers (7,000 ADA total) representing the past 7 months of Community Manager monthly payments.
The Liqwid Labs Core Team supports this proposal’s actions and is appreciative of the superb work from our Community Managers serving as a key resource and first point of contact to new users.
Let me start by saying that I acknowledge and appreciate the important work the Liqwid Community Managers put in, but I don’t think payment for services provided should come from Liqwid’s protocol’s monthly revenue without establishing some baseline of what a Community Manager (CM) is and what they are responsible for. Furthermore, if we are going to ‘pay’ them do we ($LQ staker) get a vote on who to accept/deny/dismiss as a CM?
In regards to the proposed actions:
I would like to advocate to change the payment into a stablecoin instead of ADA.
As this work was done prior to this proposal it is my opinion that Liqwid Labs should cover these expenses and remove this action from the proposal.
Paragraph 2 explains in detail the role/responsibility of Community Managers:
The Community Manager role began as a volunteer-based role but has grown in moderation responsibilities necessitating payment for the role. Most CM’s spend meaningful hours each week actively engaging with the Liqwid community on the Discord server. As the Liqwid ecosystem grows with new community members joining daily the Community Managers are asked to take on a leading role in assisting new users, helping answer their questions as they complete initial market actions in the app or inquire about specific protocol functionality.
Also it is important to reiterate the Community Manager position started as voluntary, and more specifically each of the current 5 Community Managers volunteered to take on this Discord moderation responsibility and time commitmentfor free.
To your points 1 and 2:
Catalyst submits grant funding distributions of significantly larger values and uses ADA. This is a non-issue.
The work completed by Community Managers has always been in service of the Liqwid DAO never for Liqwid Labs. DAO employees who complete work in service of the DAO should be paid by the DAO.
In reaction to your reply I have the following to say:
I would like to see a CM being fairly compensated. Using a stablecoin helps in this regard from the volatile nature of crypto both up and down. I don’t want to see a CM being under- or overcompensated for the work that they do. For example paying a CM 200 ADA when ADA is $0,10 or $10 U.S. dollars does not seem fair to me either way.
I would argue that it is both in the interest of Liqwid Labs and the Liqwid DAO that (new) users of the protocol are being assisted in a helpful and timely manner.
I have no objection to starting the process of moving these payments under the umbrella of the Liqwid DAO, but I would like to see Liwqid Labs taking their responsibility of paying the outstanding months as this change should not be made retrospectively in my opinion.
As it stands now I cannot support this proposal. Thank you for your consideration.
Now that voting on proposal #96 (Liqwid Community Manager Monthly Compensation) is open I would like to share some final thoughts:
I wonder where this community is going when we allow proposal #96 to pass, we would collectively be saying yes to paying Community Manager @ Dev (RWP) 200 ADA a month for doing nothing as their last post on Discord was made on Friday, March 21, 2025 1:06 AM 3 months ago.
Reading the active and engaging discussion on reducing staking rewards and then seeing how easily we allow this mismanagement of funds in proposal #96 makes me think that it might actually be a good idea to cut staking rewards, as this community seems to have no understanding of the long term consequences.
In my opinion we should ALL be voting NO to proposal #96 and write a better one, where CM’s are being fairly compensated for the work that they do without allowing protocol funds to be mismanaged.
Last but not least it saddens me to see the Liqwid Team allowing this vote to go live fully knowing that not all CM’s are as active as the ones truly deserving of our full support.
All of our Community Managers (CMs) have contributed to Liqwid over the years and fully deserve fair compensation. It’s completely normal to see periods of lower activity from some members — what matters is their long-term commitment and impact.
I fully support our CMs, value their ongoing contributions, and encourage everyone to vote “Yes” on Proposal #96.